Making Waves

"Part of the problem is the structure of cable news. The typical format is a debate between two people, one liberal and one conservative. It requires little expertise from the participants and conveys little information to the audience. It works best for familiar, hotly contested domestic issues like abortion and gay marriage, where the audience already knows what it thinks.

"Iraq can be approached this way, too: Did Bush lie? Will it hurt him in 2006? Could the Democrats do better? All these debates work well on television because they're about us. The Jaafari story, by contrast, is unintelligible precisely because it's not about us. There's no preordained partisan story line. What the viewer needs is less opinion than information, less heat than light. And that's just what our cable talk shows rarely provide."

Cheney's little problem has set off lots of new-veep speculation, and National Review's John Miller says:

"Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is perhaps the likeliest choice for Bush: He trusts her and no doubt believes she would carry on his foreign-policy vision, which is how his presidency will be remembered in history, for better or worse. Although she has never held elective office, she is certainly qualified for the job -- more so, in fact, than a lot of Washington's current officeholders.

"Beyond that, Bush may find the idea of selecting a black woman to be irresistible. You can almost hear Karl Rove whispering in his ear, 'Condi wins in 2008 -- and this cements your legacy as a president whose agenda, upon leaving office, was affirmed by the voters once again. It's the next-best thing to a third term.'

"For conservatives, Rice would be a cause for concern primarily because she is a blank slate on domestic issues. On abortion, she has said she is pro-choice; on racial preferences, she seems to be at least a moderate supporter of affirmative action. Neither of these is a good sign, though the latter may not matter much in an electoral sense. Her stance on abortion, however, could pose real problems, both for her and for conservatives.

"It is entirely possible that she would surprise and delight suspicious pro-lifers: Many of them would want to like her, and she could speak broadly about the culture of life, adopting much of Bush's rhetoric. She could also signal that she is operationally pro-life on the most pressing issues, from judicial selection to legislation that bans partial-birth abortion. Yet conservatives aren't looking to be surprised and delighted. Their very temperament calls for something else: They would prefer a veep with a proven track record -- not just on abortion, but on any number of issues. Where does Rice stand on federal spending? On tax cuts? On welfare reform? On gay marriage? Conservatives won't want to feel trapped between their guesses and their hopes.

"And this could lead to a political disaster for the GOP. What if Vice President Rice sought the party's presidential nomination in 2008 -- but that Republican primary voters rejected her for a true-blue pro-lifer? Suddenly, Bush's legacy burnishing would backfire."

In other words, be careful what you wish for.

Scooter Libby now has a Web site for his legal defense fund, describing him as "one of the unsung heroes in fighting the war on terror."

Used to be, you'd promise a source anonymity and just keep his or her name out of the paper. Now Techdirt reports on a Washington Post piece on a computer hacker, "one young botnet herder, who remained nameless (other than an online handle). Part of the agreement he apparently made with the Washington Post was that his small town not be identified either. The article contains a few random details which could apply to just any number of small towns throughout the country -- so they seemed safe enough. However, there was also a tightly cropped photo designed to not really give away any info in the image. Unfortunately, as many people have learned, there's more than meets the eye when it comes to data associated with digital files, and it didn't take long for some Slashdot readers to take a gander at the photo's metadata, and work out the probable location of the young man.

"Some are wondering if the Washington Post (who famously kept Deep Throat's identity secret for three decades) may now face some sort of liability should the individual actually be revealed through this bit of metadata sleuthing."

Finally, is the NYT blowing off intern applicants from a Rutgers professor who has criticized the paper? Here's the incriminating e-mail, and the scoop .