The Specter of Jail

"Even as The Truth About Hillary bounds up the best-seller lists, the right has rallied around a collective cry of foul play. The question is why. The book is, of course, a masterwork of personal attack, full of anonymous sniping and vile insinuation. But Klein's tome relies heavily on past Hillary character assassinations--most notably, Dick Morris's Rewriting History--and the rest mostly reprises old complaints about the former first lady. The outrage emanating from the right hardly seems attributable to the rather unremarkable trashiness of this volume. More likely, conservatives are launching a preemptive strike on what Klein identifies as one of Clinton's central mantras--'victimhood can be a political plus.'

"Piling on Hillary now, particularly over a collection of unsubstantiated trifles, would merely advance theories of her old chestnut, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Rushing to Hillary's defense would seem to be a canny strategy both to prevent her from building up too much public sympathy and to assert the intellectual honesty of the American right. But it could also turn out to be a major miscalculation."

With Bush set for a major speech tonight, much of the public isn't buying his take on Iraq, says this WashPost poll :

A majority of Americans reject claims by the Bush administration that the insurgency in Iraq is weakening and are divided on whether victory over the insurgents will have a major impact on terrorism elsewhere in the world, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Barely one in five Americans -- 22 percent -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker while 24 percent believe it is strengthening...

A majority of Americans reject claims by the Bush administration that the insurgency in Iraq is weakening and are divided on whether victory over the insurgents will have a major impact on terrorism elsewhere in the world, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Barely one in five Americans -- 22 percent -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker while 24 percent believe it is strengthening.

In this eye-catching LAT column, Michael Cross-Barnet recalls what happened to his father, Melvin Barnet, a copy editor at the New York Times, a half-century ago:

"On July 13, 1955, in Room 135-A of the Senate Office Building in Washington, my father tersely recounted his past. He said he had not been a communist since 1942. But when asked about other people, his lips were sealed. Twenty times the committee's attorney provided a name and asked my father if he knew that person 'as a communist.' Twenty times, my father gave the same reply: 'I assert my privilege, sir, under the 5th Amendment.' He would identify no one. Not even the man who had informed on him. Not even a dead person. The committee, he believed, did not have the right to ask him.

"After the hearing, he went to the Times' Washington bureau, where he was handed a note stating that his conduct 'has caused the Times to lose confidence in you as a member of its news staff.' His career in journalism was over -- he was 40.It is unfortunate that the Times fired my father for refusing to name names half a century ago. But the country was in the grip of fear and, as a new generation of Americans learned after 9/11, fear is a powerful emotion. What is more puzzling, and in a way more disturbing, is that 50 years later the New York Times won't admit its mistake."

Speaking of the NYT, Editor Bill Keller is making some changes based on an internal committee report. (PDF file here.) Some highlights involving dialogues with reporters and the staff's diversity:

"We have been more wary than most major newspapers about giving our readers direct access to reporters. There are valid reasons for this: an accessible address opens a reporter to spam, crude personal attacks and orchestrated campaigns that are easy to organize on the Web but can be terribly time-consuming for a reporter on the receiving end. The price of our inaccessibility, though, is that we may send a message of indifference. And e-mail access opens up another avenue for reporters and editors to get ideas and tips that can lead to stories. As the committee points out, technology offers us a sensible compromise: easy access to reporters who are willing to give it."