Sedate showdown: Elena Who?
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 30, 2010; 9:02 AM

A tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico was bigger news. David Petraeus's quickie confirmation was bigger news. Larry King giving up his talk show was bigger news.

I knew that Elena Kagan's first day of Senate questioning was receding on the media radar as I saw less and less of her -- except as a visual backdrop -- and more and more of John King and Candy Crowley, Bret Baier and Chris Matthews.

By mid-afternoon the cable news networks had almost completely given up on live coverage of the Judiciary Committee hearings.

You know an event hasn't made much hard news when the most popular sound bite is the nominee, having been asked by Lindsey Graham what she did on Christmas, replied: "Like all Jews, I was probably at a Chinese restaurant."

She is the funniest high court nominee in recent memory. That didn't buy her much good will with the Republicans, who had their preordained lines of attack. But they seemed resigned to the political reality that she will become the third woman on the Supremes.

NYT: "Elena Kagan deflected questions about her own views on gun rights and abortion during her Supreme Court confirmation hearings on Tuesday, instead describing Supreme Court precedents. She declined to say whether terrorism suspects must be warned of the right to remain silent, saying the issue was 'quite likely to get to the courts.' "

WP: "Elena Kagan told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that her political outlook is 'generally progressive,' but the glimpses she offered of her legal views defied Republican efforts to pigeonhole the type of Supreme Court justice she would be."

The LAT says Kagan "was accused of shading the truth about her role in a controversy over military recruiters at Harvard University. 'The overall picture that she portrayed of the situation seems to me to be disconnected to the reality,' Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the panel, said after an extended spat with Kagan. 'I believe that's a serious matter.' Sessions also said that she was not 'rigorously accurate' and that he expected 'intellectual honesty' from prospective justices."

But that issue had already been thoroughly aired, so, in purely political terms, there were no real surprises.

Kagan made clear at the outset that she wasn't going to divulge much in the way of specifics, prompting this observation from Commentary's Jennifer Rubin:

"Shocking, I know, but Elena Kagan tells the Senate she's not going to talk about any cases 'that might come before the court in the future.' And she's not going to talk about past cases. What then, will she talk about? The weather? So far she's been asked about cases, and she's explained the rulings, like a competent law student. (Professors actually critique cases in class.) So the hearings are largely a waste of time and, frankly, any senator who votes to confirm her at this point is throwing in the towel on a reasonable standard for vetting nominees."

Byrd's final months
This Politico piece troubled me, but no one will want to make an issue of it after the long-serving senator's passing:

"A lawmaker's health is one of the most tightly guarded secrets on Capitol Hill, but in Sen. Robert Byrd's case, that was especially true.

"Even Majority Leader Harry Reid, who was back home in Nevada campaigning, was caught flat-footed by Sunday's announcement from Byrd's office that the iconic West Virginia Democrat -- at 92, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history -- was 'seriously ill,' according to Senate insiders. . . .

"Yet no one outside Byrd's inner circle quite knew how serious his condition was, and his aides were tight-lipped with the press and public, a situation hardly uncommon when it comes to powerful political figures who become critically ill."

Wasn't he being dishonest with the people who elected him?

'Sources' open fire
I raised the same questions about this WP piece, and here is Yahoo's take:

"The Washington Post and ABC News explained Monday why both news organizations relied on anonymous sources for stories claiming that Rolling Stone may have violated source agreements in reporting its explosive profile of Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

" 'The sources would only allow us to use the material on condition of anonymity,' Post National Security editor Cameron Barr told Yahoo! News. 'Given the significant impact of the Rolling Stone story, we felt the public's interest in seeing what military officials had to say about how it was reported and fact-checked was greater than in keeping that information to ourselves because the officials wouldn't come on the record,' Barr continued. 'We independently contacted several sources for the story.'

"Yahoo! News called attention to The Post's initial story shortly after it went online Friday, noting that reporter Karen DeYoung relied on an unnamed 'senior military official' to make allegations against Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings' methods for sourcing. The official did not provide evidence to back up his or her viewpoint, such as specific quotes in the Rolling Stone article that were supposedly off the record, or the point at which an off-the-record agreement was hashed out. . . .

"In both the Post and ABC News stories, reporters sought comment from Rolling Stone, and the magazine vigorously defended its sourcing of the story. But even though the news organizations did their diligence in getting both sides, there's a rather glaring irony in other press outlets relying solely on anonymous sources for a story about sourcing."

Weigel wars
Now that ex-WP blogger Dave Weigel has apologized for skewering conservatives in leaked e-mails, the Nation's Ari Melber challenges his explanation:

"His problem was actually pretty basic. He got caught going negative on people who matter. . . .

"Being positive keeps sources calm and access open, while being negative -- especially when it seems 'avoidable' -- undercuts the access stories that drive so many bureaus. And this is where Weigel's insults overlap with something more important.

"Weigel could have dispensed with his digital Burn Book and still practiced great journalism. (That's what he says he'll do now.) Solid reporters have to be pretty negative, however, hassling powerful people and scrutinizing motives while defying their very credible threats of retaliation. We will have a new general in Afghanistan because one reporter just met that challenge. But it's worth appreciating how Michael Hastings' bombshell article narrated glaring truths that were not so much hidden from the press as concealed with the press. Many beat reporters simply 'would not risk burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal's remarks,' as Politico explained in an unusually candid description of access journalism."

Does it depend on whom the blogger is verbally assaulting? At Andrew Breitbart's Big Government site, Morgen Richmond titles a post "I Like the Dave Weigel Who Insulted Liberal Pundits A Lot Better":

"As long as Weigel is airing more of his JournoList laundry, perhaps it should be pointed out that at one point in time Weigel aired this same kind of vitriol against leading liberal figures.

"For example, do you think Dave still thinks Paul Krugman is 'obviously insane', 'simple-minded' and a 'cancer on the Times'? Does he still think that Krugman's column is a 'litany of propaganda, lies, and insults'?

"Does he still think that Maureen Dowd 'sucks' and that her work is 'absolute tripe'? Does he still wonder: 'why is this woman employed'?"

As for Andrew Breitbart, he wants to get his hands on the now-deleted JournoList, a listserv with 400 members founded by liberal Post blogger Ezra Klein -- and is willing to cough up some cash:

"We want the list of journalists that comprised the 400 members of the 'JournoList' and we want the contents of the listserv. Why should Weigel be the only person exposed and humiliated?

"I therefore offer the sum of $100,000 to the person who provides the full 'JournoList' archive. We will protect that person's privacy and identity forever. No one will ever know who became $100,000 richer -- and did the right thing, morally and ethically -- by shining the light of truth on this seamy underworld of the media."

Ah -- so you can betray your buddies without public exposure!

Salon's Alex Pareene takes aim at a different blogger -- one who jumped on Joe Biden calling the custard guy a "smartass":

"The author of that blog post, it may surprise you to learn, is a Republican. His name is Jimmy Orr, and the L.A. Times does not apparently want you to know that he is a Republican.

"Orr regularly contributes to the Times 'Top of the Ticket' blog. 'Top of the Ticket' provides, according to its description, 'Politics and commentary, coast to coast, from the Los Angeles Times.' Its primary editor is Andrew Malcolm, a reliably snide former Laura Bush press aide whose job seems to be to spin every story in a way that maximizes the chances that Matt Drudge might link to it. Malcolm, at least, mentions the Bush connection in his L.A. Times bio.

"As for Jimmy Orr? There is no information on the site about this character!. . . .

"There's nothing wrong with the Times hiring conservatives to blog for them. If the Times wants a conservative blog, they can go ahead and launch a conservative blog. The point is to actually identify it as such. Right now the Times seems to be catering their online product specifically for Drudge and the right-wing blogosphere while pretending it's still objective in the traditional old newspaper sense of the word. To have a professional Republican flack attacking Democrats without identifying himself is just stupid and insulting."

No disclosure? That's absurd.

Joe-mentum
It's not like the McChrystal saga wouldn't have become huge news anyway, but the AP says one morning show was the catalyst:

"While it's simplistic to think MSNBC's morning show influenced [the] result, it's no stretch that 'Morning Joe' helped put McChrystal's words at the top of the national agenda. 'Morning Joe' may not have a lot of viewers, but the show tends to be on in important places.

"Mike Allen, chief White House correspondent of Politico and a regular on the show, said that a senior Obama administration official told him, 'I saw the funnel cloud forming on 'Morning Joe.'

"A phone call at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday startled Rolling Stone editor Eric Bates, telling him that a car would be by in 20 minutes to take him to the MSNBC studios. Bates had been booked for the show on Wednesday, to talk about a BP story and a 'foreign policy story' that Rolling Stone had upcoming that he didn't identify beforehand. It was the McChrystal story, and it was breaking fast: The general and his aides had been quoted disparaging Obama and his national security aides.

"During the hour he appeared, the 'Morning Joe' audience of nearly 600,000 viewers far outpaced the season average of 377,000, the Nielsen Co. said."

Sins of the sons
Should the children of politicians be off limits to the media?

Liberal blogger Keli Goff, looking at Meg Whitman's California campaign, is disturbed by "the series of alleged incidents involving her adult sons. Between them they have been accused of assault and of having some questionable racial attitudes, to put it mildly. You can read about the allegations and view corresponding police reports here and here.

"While I was initially hesitant to write about them at all, since yes, I know they are not the ones running for office, I thought about it and wondered why I shouldn't. Don't they represent one of Whitman's most significant contributions to the world, as does the child of any person? Also since Whitman cited her investment of time and energy in raising her children as being the primary reason she didn't register to vote until she had nearly reached the half-century mark (an egregious example of using your family as a political shield that should make feminists of all political parties shudder) then why isn't assessing how well her investment turned out, fair game?"

But is it the mother's fault (or the dad's) if a kid turns out badly? This strikes me as a very slippery slope.

Firing the pollster
"Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas announced today he will file a lawsuit against MD-based pollster Research 2000, alleging that polls Research 2000 was conducting for the liberal blog were fabricated.

"Moulitsas published a report by three readers he describes as 'statistics wizards' that he says shows 'quite convincingly' that Research 2000 was manufacturing the results of weekly national polls. 'Based on the report of the statisticians, it's clear that we did not get what we paid for,' Moulitsas wrote on his website."

Company president Del Ali responds to TPM: "I will tell you unequivocally that we conducted EVERY poll properly for the Daily Kos."

That is one messy divorce.

More on Gore
The National Enquirer, which last week withheld the name of a Portland, Ore., masseuse accusing Al Gore of sexual misconduct, has gotten her to go on the record. Molly Hagerty, 54, told the tabloid, "He's not what people think he is -- he's a sick man!"

Hagerty, who says the former vice president sexually assaulted her in 2006, tells the Enquirer she is coming forward now because, "I want justice served." But she declined for more than two years to submit to an interview with Portland detectives, and after she did, authorities found insufficient evidence to open an investigation.

Gore's office has declined comment since the story surfaced.