DANIEL HENNINGER SURVEYS THE FALLOUT FROM RATHERGATE and some other journalistic scandals:

The prominent case studies here are Dan Rather’s failed National Guard story on CBS and the front page the past year of the New York Times (a proxy for many large dailies). Add in as well Big Media’s handling of Abu Ghraib, a real story that got blown into a monthlong bonfire that obviously was intended to burn down the legitimacy of the war in Iraq. I think many people thought the over-the-top Abu Ghraib coverage, amid a war, was the media shouting fire in a crowded theater. . . .

Two months ago, Gallup reported that public belief in the media’s ability to report news accurately and fairly had fallen to 44%–what Gallup called a significant drop from 54% just a year ago. The larger media outlets have been pushing the edge of the partisanship envelope for a long time. People have kvetched about “spin” for years but then largely internalized it. Not in 2004. Big Media chose precisely the wrong moment to give itself over to an apparent compulsion to overthrow the Bush presidency.

He’s not entirely pleased with this outcome, nor should he be. Read the whole thing.

THANKS to all the folks who’ve been making donations through the Amazon and PayPal buttons. Each one offsets dozens of hatemails.

I HATE NAZIS. But I love John Howard.

I SAID EARLIER that it was too soon to be thinking of the 2008 elections. Apparently, these bozos don’t agree:

NS greetings, we would like to proudly announce our intention to field National Socialist Movement candidates in the 2008 Presidential Race. These probable Candidates would be for the Presidency and Vice-Presidency of the United States of America. We will announce the names of these individuals, along with our Public Proclamation in 2007, and perhaps others running for Public Office within the National Socialist Movement.

No openly National Socialist Candidate has ran for the Presidency of the United States, since Commander George Lincoln Rockwell planned on doing so, prior to his assassination in the 1960’s. The National Socialist Movement hear by declares its intention to change that, and give the American People a probable choice when they go to the ballot booths in 2008.

The American People deserve far better than to have to make an ill informed choice between the lesser of two evils. Let them vote National Socialist in 2008.

Well, we disagree on a lot of things. Nazis. I hate those guys. (And the Illinois ones, too.)

I’VE BEEN REALLY HAPPY WITH MY NIKON D70 (some sample pix here and here). Now DPreview reports rebates on Nikon and Canon digital SLRs for anyone out there who may be on the fence. I have, by the way, added links to DPreview and Steve’s Digicams — along with Glenn Fleishman’s WiFi Networking News — to the “recommended” section over on the right, replacing the various candidate blogs that were there for months. I’m happy to make the change, which I hope will anticipate a shift away from the recent extra-heavy emphasis on politics.

WAITING FOR NEWS ON RATHERGATE: Over at GlennReynolds.com.

UPDATE: RatherGate envy?

ANOTHER UPDATE: From today’s Wall Street Journal:

Is it just me, or does the whole mainstream-media-generated controversy over blogs savor of an attempt to score a hit against blogs out of pique and envy? Blogs completely changed the tenor of reporting in this campaign, notably giving CBS and the New York Times black eyes at crucial moments. Would it be unrealistic to see the gleeful reporting on the fallibility of the blogs as a feeble and rather clueless attempt to dent their credibility — in effect, to say, you’d better leave it to the pros next time? Of course, virtually all the mainstream media (MSM) cheerfully jumped on the supposed Kerry victory bandwagon, leading, as blogger Mickey Kaus put it, to the “Seven-Hour Presidency of JFK.” But then the MSM have never been too good at self-analysis.

It’s not just you.

And this CBS apology isn’t for RatherGate. Sheesh.

UPDATE: Reader Hunter Weatherly emails: “CBS Apology explained: People actually watch CSI!”

LIFE CAN BE SWEET.

SCOTT OTT’S AXIS OF WEASELS has broken the top 1000 at Amazon. It’s currently at 925. With a bullet!

UPDATE: Not everyone is doing as well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Brian Micklethwait thinks that Scott’s sales are good for bloggers in general.

VANITY FAIR HAS LAUNCHED ITS NEW WEBSITE, with a feature that looks suspiciously as if it might turn into a blog. I hope so.

MARTIN PERETZ: “I actually believe that, had Lieberman won the nomination, he would have won the election. . . . John Kerry would not have been a good president; he might even have been a dangerously bad one. Next time, Democrats need to nominate not merely a candidate who they imagine can win but a candidate who deserves to.”

UPDATE: Read this, too: “I think its safe to say that a majority of American voters have rejected the ‘not-Bush’ doctrine.”

GERRYMANDERING IN THE HOUSE: David Broder says it’s more of a threat to democracy than many appreciate:

The Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to rehear the Texas redistricting case, but unless it someday decides to curb partisan gerrymandering, the makeup of the House is almost immune to change. Thanks to rigged boundaries and the incumbents’ immense fundraising advantage, nearly 96 percent of the “races” were won by a margin of at least 10 percent. Richie noted that 29 of the 33 open seats (with no incumbents running) stayed with the same party. The turnout of voters was about 50 percent higher than in off-year 2002, but party ratios in the House barely budged.

At the founding of this republic, House members were given the shortest terms — half the length of the president’s, one-third that of senators — to ensure that they would be sensitive to any shifts in public opinion. Now they have more job security than the queen of England — and as little need to seek their subjects’ assent.

This is a real problem.

UPDATE: A reader sends this link to a New Yorker article by Jeffrey Toobin. Several other readers note that gerrymandering is suddenly being seen as much more of a threat to democracy now that it’s protecting Republican incumbents. That’s probably true, but that doesn’t mean the basic point isn’t right.

Perhaps we should look to Iowa.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More on gerrymandering from Prof. Bainbridge.

PHONECARDS FOR THE TROOPS: Go here if you’d like to help.

I WROTE ABOUT THE RELIGIOUS LEFT in my first Guardian column on the elections, and now Dan Gerstein is encouraging Democrats to show “More Muscle, More God, Less Shrum.” And in what probably isn’t a coincidence, it looks as if Hillary Clinton is trying to boost the amount of God-talk on the Left.

I guess “Jesusland” is expanding to the blue states — though if you’ll read my Guardian column you’ll see that it was really always there.

UPDATE: More thoughts on religion, here.

I WAS GOING TO GIVE THE WHOLE CBS THING A REST, but this Colby Cosh response to Eric Engberg’s piece is too good not to mention.

And, say, when is that RatherGate investigation going to be complete?

ED CONE WONDERS why there weren’t more (i.e., more than a very few) conservatives at BloggerCon. (Here’s a related post by Robert Cox.)

I never seriously considered attending, as it was my plan all along to take things relatively easy post-election, and cross-country travel doesn’t go with that. I enjoyed the first Bloggercon at Harvard very much, despite feeling a bit ganged-up-on by people who thought I was foolish for not endorsing their characterization of the Plame case — hmm, my take is looking better with time, though, isn’t it? — but I’m a lawyer and thick-skinned. I havent’ been since then, but I get the sense that these events are taking on more and more of Dave Winer’s personality and slant. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it will tend to narrow their audience.

UPDATE: Speaking of blog get-togethers, here’s one asking whether blogs tipped the election, featuring Ana Marie Cox, Daniel Drezner, Henry Farrell, and Michael Tomasky.

HUGH HEWITT writes that the activists who are going after Arlen Specter could learn a few lessons from Zell Miller, and adds:

Parties do have to agree on some non-negotiables. For Republicans that list includes a commitment to battle obstructionism in the judicial confirmation process, but it ought not to include a loyalty oath on every nominee. I and the vast majority of Republicans are pro-life, but I know there aren’t enough pro-life votes in the country to empower a governing coalition.

George W. Bush collected around 59,750,000 votes, about 3.5 million more than did John Kerry.

What percentage of Bush’s votes were pro-choice, I wonder? Thirty? Twenty? Ten?

Even if it is only 10 percent, those 5.7 million votes provided Bush with his margin of popular-vote victory. Should the first action of the new Senate be the announcement that pro-choice Republicans will not be trusted with power? . . .

Beginning a new era with a purge is simply the worst possible politics, a self-inflicted wound, and one the consequences of which could be far reaching and awful.

Seems right to me. Hugh makes another useful point, too: “A party without a vigorous minority loses the ability to police itself. And then the nuts rush in.”

UPDATE: Brett Thomas says that the percentage is pretty big: “roughly 20.8 million, or 35% of Bush’s voters in 2004 think abortion should be “Always Legal” or “Mostly Legal” (including your humble author). You lose twenty percent of those voters and we’re quite possibly sitting here wondering who President Kerry is going to appoint.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Anti-Specter blogger Countertop Chronicles finds Hugh persuasive: “[T]his is probably in line with my long standing prior position, my hard and fast rule of political and life survival, Pigs Get Slaughtered. Conservatives should take a breather and learn a lesson from gay rights activists, who probably regret filing that Massachusetts lawsuit right now.”

MORE: Reader Paul Stukel says that Hugh and I have it wrong:

At issue is not whether Specter is pro-life or not pro-life. What is at issue is whether Specter agrees with the broad spectrum of conservative, libertarian and moderate thought that the Courts shouldn’t be an alternative, unelected legislature. The concept of a “living Constitution” is completely oxymoronic (particularly when our Constitution provides a very straightforward process when “updating” is needed – nowhere therein, I might add, is a provision for unelected judges to take care of that for us), and completely antithetical to liberty. Surely you understand that. Specter clearly does not.

Again, it’s not about pro-life. It’s about Constitutional integrity. Why are we confusing the two?

Well, I can see that argument. But I don’t see it as the one that the folks at The Corner are making.

WIRED NEWS is pouring still more cold water on vote-fraud claims.

UPDATE: Read this, too: “While there are inherent problems with electronic voting, the current allegations about Diebold and the 2004 election just don’t hold much water.”

GLOBAL WARMING ON MARS: I blame Halliburton.

FREDERICK TURNER writes on religious and secular voting in America.

SCOTT OTT’S BOOK, AXIS OF WEASELS, is doing very well on Amazon, in terms of both sales-rank and reviews. I look forward to it becoming a major motion picture!

MAX BOOT: “It is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, but I will make an exception for Yasser Arafat, the pathetic embodiment of all that went wrong in the Third World after the demise of the European empires.”

Read the whole thing.

NPR’S ANNE GARRELS IS REPORTING that Sarin nerve gas has been found in Fallujah. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: NPR has changed the story to say that it’s kits to test for Sarin. Thanks to reader Gary Schamburg for the tip.

THERE’S AN INTERESTING DEBATE ON AGING RESEARCH between Aubrey de Grey and Jay Olshansky, over at FightAging.org.

SOME INTERESTING THOUGHTS on the shocking lack of diversity in higher education, in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

FRANK J. HAS A BLOCKBUSTER INTERVIEW with the hackers who stole the election for Bush. Meanwhile, Karl Rove’s most effective agent is already getting ready for 2008.