I've got a new "Think Again" column called "The DHS Report: Torturing the Truth" here and I've got a new Nation column about the New York Times Company, the Boston Globe and the craziness of the current situation in the newspaper business called "The Newspaper Biz: More Poison Please?" here

Also, here on the Daily Beast, I criticize a Times story that pretends to be about Obama selling out but in fact is about the fact that the Times chose to put a story on its front page that has a theme but absolutely no substance. And in this piece I refute yet another round of sloppy and misleading charges that Izzy Stone was a spy. And today I did this column about William Kristol and the art of failing upward in conservative American for the Guardian, and it's here. Oh, and the finalists for the Mirror awards for covering the media were announced this week and my work appeared in two categories: Best Single Article--Traditional for "Out of Print" (The New Yorker), and Best Commentary--Digital for a series of columns on the legacy of the Bush war against the press for the Center for American Progress, which are here. All of the nominees can be found here. One of the many fun aspects of an extremely fun job--that of New York Times op-ed page pundit--is the ability to just say stuff that may or may not be true but which you are under no obligation to demonstrate as such. Given the temptation, almost all pundits yield to this, and--surprise, surprise--not only does much of what they claim turn out to be false, but it also, by coincidence, matches almost exactly their own stated political prejudices. Is David Brooks the worst offender? I couldn't say. But I would say that you can't get away with this so easily in the blogosphere. Brooks would have to link to his sources, which I'm guessing, are either misread or imaginary. For instance this morning, he writes:

"There is little philosophical backing for a government as activist as the one Obama is proposing. Middle-class voters are not willing to hand over higher taxes in exchange for more federal services. The public is significantly to Obama's right on economic matters and needs constant evidence that he is not trespassing on personal freedom and individual responsibility."

Well, according to my research, this is exactly wrong. I researched the question rather carefully for Why We're Liberals, and based on the data available then, I discovered exactly the opposite of what Brooks claims, without evidence, to be true. Here's a bit from that:

We now have a situation in which not just majorities but massive supermajorities of the public tell pollsters that they hold views well to the left of what their political system produces: the very same positions ironically espoused by some of America's most famous and allegedly out-of-touch liberals... To offer just a few examples of this liberal-in-all-but-name attitude regarding economic and welfare policy, according to the 2006 survey, released in March 2007, roughly 70 percent of respondents believe that the government has a responsibility "to take care of people who can't take care of themselves"--up from 61 percent in 2002. The number saying that the government should guarantee "every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep" has increased by a similar margin over the past five years (from 63 percent to 69 percent). Two-thirds of the public (66 percent)--including a majority of those who say they would prefer a smaller government (57 percent)--favor government-funded health insurance for all citizens. Most people also believe that the nation's corporations are too powerful and fail to strike a fair balance between profits and the public interest. In addition, nearly two-thirds (65 percent) say corporate profits are too high, about the same number who say that "labor unions are necessary to protect the working person" (68 percent). When it comes to the environment, a large majority (83 percent) supports stricter laws and regulations to protect the environment, while 69 percent agree that "we should put more emphasis on fuel conservation than on developing new oil supplies," and fully 60 percent of people questioned say they would "be willing to pay higher prices in order to protect the environment." Regarding so-called social issues, only 28 percent of respondents agree that school boards should have the right to fire teachers who are known to be homosexual, while 66 percent disagree. A 56 percent majority opposes making it more difficult for a woman to get an abortion, while 35 percent favor this position. These findings reinforce previous polls like that in 2004 by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University, which asked voters whether "the federal government should fund sex education programs that have 'abstaining from sexual activity' as their only purpose" or if "the money should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives." The condom/contraceptive option won the day by a margin of 67 to 30 percent. Unsurprisingly, a similar number (65 percent) said they worried that refusing to provide teens with good information about contraception might lead to unsafe sex, while only 28 percent were more concerned that such information might encourage teens to have sex.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Americans even tend to side with liberals rather than conservatives in their attitudes toward religion. According to a 2006 study sponsored by the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative of the Center for American Progress and conducted by the firm Financial Dynamism, 67 percent of voters believe that religious freedom is a "critical" part of their image of America, compared to less than three in ten who believe the Judeo-Christian faith specifically is critical to this image. Only 20 percent of American voters approve of leaders using the political system to turn religious beliefs into action. In terms of the role that religious and moral teachings should play in public debate about key issues, American voters do not focus on the issues of abortion, gay marriage, and the kind of topics that so exercise conservative Christian leaders, but would prefer to see their churches lead on issues such as alleviating "poverty and hunger" (75 percent), "homelessness" (61 percent), "government corruption" (58 percent), "terrorism" (56 percent), "the environment" (54 percent), and "health care" (52 percent). Americans specifically reject the conservative Christian desire to suppress science in the service of religious dogma. Eighty percent of those questioned agree that "faith and science can and should coexist. We can respect our belief in God and our commitment to the dignity of every human life by using our scientific knowledge to help those who are sick or vulnerable." The same overwhelming number endorses the view that "stem cell research can be a force for moral good rather than a moral failing."

Remember those are pre-Crash figures. If anything they are even more compelling now then before. Or at least that's how I read this exhaustive study by my colleagues at CAP. Read all about it here.

CHARLES PIERCE
NEWTON, MA.

"First, I cut him with my Barlow/Then I kicked him in the side/I stood o'er him laughin' while he wallowed up and died./Judge, judge, good kind judge, send me to the 'Lectric chair."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "The Return Of The Prodigal Son" (Ray Bryant) -- Dick Cheney doesn't love vicarious sadism as much as I love New Orleans. True fact.

Part The First: Thanks to Digby for this amazing clip. And a big hoddy-toddy--Ole Miss joke--to Shep Smith who, I swear, one fine morning, is going to take an ax to his workplace.

Part The Second: Does Stephen Breyer have a daughter? ( A wife? A mother? Is he acquainted with anyone possessing breasts? If there is a just god, Breyer eventually will lock himself outside his house, naked, at high noon on Easter morning. How Dahlia keeps from hurling Jujubes at these people at moments like this remains a mystery to me.

Part The Third: This is an intriguing premise by Tom Ricks. I will leave the military implications of the notion to my former running-mate. However, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out that, if Ricks's proposal is enacted, Notre Dame is unlikely ever to win another football game.

Part The Fourth: Happy birthday to the presiding publican of one of my favorite joints along the docks of Blogistan. And I ask him, sincerely, was it about a bicycle?

Part The Last: Ah, The Future fires back.

Scroll down, as the kids say, for his response to this thing.

Attentive readers will note that, right there at the top, I expressed my admiration for what The Future has done. I was critical of his unseemly--and fundamentally gutless--tendency to gloat as thousands of people lose their jobs, all the while denying that he's doing it, but that's hardly "Shooting The Messenger." (Note--I said the HuffPo contributors don't get paid, which they don't. If you tell me the reporters get paid, I'll believe you, but I'd love to know if it's enough to keep a rat, as my grandmother would have said.) There's the usual pouter-pigeoning about the new age; "I'm not the reason people are deciding to take more direct ownership of their media production and consumption." Wowser. Aux armes, citoyens! Jesus, nobody said you were. Who are you when you're at home, as my grandmother also used to say.

All I did was ask the perfectly legitimate question of whether or not --in the new media age that The Future has helped bring upon us--anybody will be able to actually make a living at a craft to which I've devoted nearly 35 years of my life. In response, I get this remakable admission: "For Charlie Pierce and many of his journalism friends, this debate is about how they continue to get paid. For me, I don't give a shit who gets paid or how much, but whether people get the news they need to make informed decisions in a democracy. If people get paid in the process, great! If they don't, but people still get good information, then great!"

I would argue that there are a great number of people in a great number of professions having a great number of conversations about how they will continue to get paid. Auto workers come immediately to mind. I give a shit about all of them, including the people in my profession. I would argue that giving a shit about whether or not people should get paid a decent wage for an honest day's work is what progressive populism used to be about. I don't recall any legitimate progressive determining on his own which work is worthy of having a shit given about it. I would argue that my friend in Chicago, who was a decent and honorable sportswriter with two young kids and a mortgage, and who was laid off this week because the Chicago Tribune is owned by a vicious vandal named Sam Zell who needs to have his balls in the mouth of a shark right about now, is worthy of having a shit given about him. I would argue that the cafeteria workers, security guards, printers, drivers--and the newsroom staffs--at the newspapers in Seattle and Denver that went under are worthy of having a shit given about them. Here, from the invaluable Ms. Jane's place, is a story about which The Future, by his own admission, probably doesn't give a shit.

Of course, I do not understand the new world of progressive activism, where some professions are unworthy of having a shit given about them. I weep at my ignorance, of course.

You will note, for the record, that there is nothing in that previous passage that can be reasonably interpreted as having "attacked the messenger." The message, yes, but not the messenger. Were I to go on and point out that, for someone who doesn't give a shit whether people get paid for gathering and disseminating the news we need to make informed decisions in a democracy, The Future seems to be making a pretty tidy living his own self, and were I to go on to point out that making yourself comfortable while convincing the suckers to work for the honor of it is a business plan that would make Sam Zell green with envy, and were I to point out further that the great Australian phrase, "I got mine, Jack" seems now apropos to the discussion, that would be "attacking the messenger." I hope this clears up any confusion on the matter.

It seems fairly plain now that the torture story has the kind of legs that neither this administration, nor, certainly, the previous one, wish that it had. The question of whether there will be an investigation is now off the boards. There will be a number of them, official and unofficial. There are now too many people talking for anything else to happen. The career military and the FBI are pretty pissed and, sooner or later, the CIA lifers are going to push back and pin the whole thing on the political apparatchiks inside the Bush White House. That the apologists now seem to be simply rooting for another attack, after which they plan to gloat themselves back into power, is demonstration enough that they perceive the moral bankruptcy of their own position, and that they sense a very strong tide turning against them. The oddest thing is how seriously the rising outrage seems to have wrong-footed the Obama Administration. They had to know this was coming, even though torture--and the theories of executive power from which the atrocities sprang -- was nowhere near the issue during the campaign that it should have been.They've been stumbling around for two weeks looking for some way to spin this into the message of "Change" without actually doing anything about it. The best thing they can do is let the investigations -- all of them, official and unofficial -- continue to gather steam and see where the whole thing leads. Events are in the saddle now, and I don't think the president is comfortable with that, but there isn't anything else he can do about it. A while back, in response to some tut-tutting by the insufferable Parson Meacham, I suggested that, while anger might not take us very far, as he suggested, we should see how far it would take us anyway. I suspect we're about to find out. I didn't believe this for a long time, but I do now. Somebody's going to jail behind this stuff.

Timothy Barrett
Louisville, KY

Dick Cheney personally authorized the torture of enemy combatants and wants the Obama administration to continue to torture. Here is Cheney, consolidated from two recent interviews, "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it. It's been a remarkably successful effort, and I think the results speak for themselves. One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is that they put out the legal memos... but they didn't put out the memos that show the success of the effort." When asked if in hindsight he thought the tactics went too far, "I don't."

Cheney must be prosecuted for his role in defying U.S. law and International Treaty because "robust interrogation" really means torture. Walid Bin Attash, who lost a leg in Afghanistan, was subjected to a torture technique once eagerly employed by the Nazis, who referred to it as "pfahlbinden." He was stripped naked, had his wrists handcuffed to a metal bar above his head in a darkened cell, and was forced to remain there for the better part of two weeks. "After some time being held in this position my stump began to hurt so I removed my artificial leg to relieve the pain," Bin Attash told the Red Cross. "Of course my good leg then began to ache and soon started to give way so that I was left hanging with all my weight on my wrists. I shouted for help but at first nobody came. Finally, after about one hour a guard came and my artificial leg was given back to me and I was again placed in the standing position with my hands above my head. After that the interrogators sometimes deliberately removed my artificial leg in order to add extra stress to the position. The cuffs eventually cut into my wrists and made wounds."

Other detainees told the Red Cross they were routinely beaten, waterboarded, forced into coffin-like boxes while naked, bleeding and wounded, given enemas, and exposed to loud music, cold temperatures and frigid water. "I was never threatened with death. In fact, I was told that they would not allow me to die, but that I would be brought to the 'verge of death and back again.' "

And Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others at Fox think this is funny. Apparently, real "torture" inflicts immediate obvious permanent harm, like pliers to fingernails, scalpels to thumbs, drilling into a healthy tooth (since they like fictional accounts better than real ones). Simply beating someone bloody, throwing them into walls, pouring water over their faces so they can't breath (3 times a day!), freezing them naked for weeks at a time, or boxing them up with scurrying insects is fairly harmless because people heal. It's also ineffective since people will say anything to make it stop. I guess Hannity gets all his expertise from the TV show 24.

The people behind torture and this media frenzy defending it have relinquished their right to call themselves decent and honorable, if they ever were. We refrained from such outrage when the Soviet Union posed an actual existential threat with nuclear missiles. But these people argue that a terror group that must resort to car bombs and crashing planes to kill our people is a mortal threat to America's very existence. I don't buy it. I say they believe our economy is driven by big defense spending and have seen that people will complain less about domestic problems when a scary enemy is presented. The fools on TV are either too stupid to understand this or just don't care whose water they carry as long as they get paid. Limbaugh, Beck and Hannity are the willing puppets of lawless and inhumane opportunists. Dick Cheney is one of these criminals.

-- Jennifer Rauch, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Journalism
Long Island University
www.brooklyn.liu.edu/journalism

Hi, Eric-

I'm a journalism professor at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus, doing some research on why and how people use alternative media that you might be interested in. I'm including a link to the online survey below, with the hope that you'll participate in the (anonymous) study.

I'm also trying to spread the word to anyone who uses alternative media, including readers or writers of The Nation....

Warm regards,
Jennifer Rauch

Dear Alternative-Media User, You're invited to share your ideas about mainstream media and why we need alternatives. Go to http://tinyurl.com/altmedia to complete the online questionnaire; it takes about 15 minutes. The first 100 people to complete the survey can enter a drawing for a $50 gift card for Amazon.com. Your identity as a participant will remain confidential. Thanks for helping with this project! Jennifer Rauch, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus

David Durham
Chattanooga, TN

Regarding great 'Dead' performances, one era I see being sort of skipped over is the early '90's. Bruce Hornsby really gave the band a new spark, particularly Jerry. You could see him look at Bruce and there'd be this twinkle in his eye and this little smile on his lips, he was being energized! Listen to Greensboro '91, there's a second set (of course) full Dark Star that's really beautiful. It was the second night in Greensboro after an impressive Eyes of the World on the first night that clocked in at almost thirty minutes. Their shows at Madison Square that year were great too. The most fun was had at Boston Garden right after those New York shows though when they blew everyone's mind with a Help-Slip- Fire one night. I was already dancing to Franklin's Tower before I realized they weren't playing it.

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