A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT.

A QUESTION from the New York Times.

Why don’t they start asking similar questions about the Joyce Foundation . . . ?

AT ECOTOTALITY: “Why the Gore story matters.”

UPDATE: In all of this, we’re just following in Eric Alterman’s footsteps. Here’s what he wrote in the September, 2004 Atlantic Monthly (not available for free, alas):

Needless to say, Hollywood offers nearly limitless opportunities for anyone seeking to expose hypocrisy in the lifestyles of the rich and progressive. Laurie David, who dedicates herself to fighting for improved fuel-economy standards and reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable: a private plane. (She’s not just a limousine liberal; she’s a Gulfstream liberal.) One night I visited the home of the former TV star Heather Thomas (The Fall Guy) and her husband, the entertainment lawyer and philanthropist Skip Brittenham. I drove past SUVs and assorted luxury vehicles on what felt like a quarter-mile-long driveway to a mansion large enough to house one of the small Amazonian villages the Brittenhams want to save. Just the energy consumed by the house and all the vehicles would power a sizable chunk of Amazonia. And this was nothing next to the Sunset Strip home of Stewart and Lynda Resnick, where I attended a book party for the journalist and progressive candidate-conspirator-hostess Arianna Huffington. Guests picked at smoked-salmon and caviar hors d’oeuvres beneath twenty-foot ceilings supported by towering Greek columns. Each gilded room was larger than most New York City apartments. The house would not he out of place if plunked down as an extension of Versailles, save for the enormous bust of Napoleon in one of the salons. The Resnicks, Lynda told me, are the “largest farmers in America”; they are the country’s biggest grower of fruits and nuts, and a member of the Sunkist cooperative (she urged me to try the selection of new Sunkist beverages at the well-stocked bar); they also own the Franklin Mint. Later I listened to her refer to the celebrity-laden crowd as “disenfranchised.”

But it’s a rich lode of hypocrisy, and it’s nowhere close to mined out. And who knew that Eric Alterman was the original coiner of the term “Gulfstream liberal?”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Also in 2001, Jonathan Rauch coined the more-euphonious “Learjet liberal,” though he wasn’t really talking about global warming or energy efficiency.

And there’s more, over at Creative Destruction.

MORE: Don Surber comments on the coverage:

After reading the Editorialist’s coverage at the Washington Post of Al Gore’s overuse of electricity, I don’t want to hear about Republican hypocrisy ever again.

If Al Gore were a Republican, the story of his consuming 20 times the national average while lecturing the rest of us on cutting back on our energy use would be front page news from coast-to-coast. Late-nite comedians would have a field day. The editorial pages would puff up about Republican hypocrisy.

Instead we get excuses, excuses, excuses. . . .

As a proud member of the mainstream media, let me suggest that this double-standard — this refusal to hold Al Gore accountable for his actions which are contradictory to his words — only feeds the belief that the media is biased in favor of liberals — particularly born-to-the-manor, overfed, limousine liberals who consume 22,000 kilowatts of electricity each year in just one of his three homes.

Well, look at the kind of people who own newspapers . . . .

AND YET IT’S SUPPOSED TO BE PART OF THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE:

The government is not denying the fact that it knew what was happening. Nor is it saying the plaintiffs were wronged but are asking for too much money. The government is instead arguing that it had no duty to come forward.

Remember that.

MAYBE THIS IS WHY I’VE BEEN FEELING SO CHEERFUL LATELY:

If there’s one thing that mitigates the annoyance of having to witness the antics of the current wave of hair-shirt prophets, it’s the hours of harmless fun that their hypocrisy never fails to provide. Only recently, we’ve had Gore’s house to condemn, Feinstein’s jets to gawp at, and now, delightfully, we have Prince Charles’ pies to savor:

Via the London Evening Standard, we learn that the prince who would ban McDonald’s has a few guilty secrets of his own. It turns out that a Big Mac “contains fewer calories, fats and salt than some products in [Charles’] own organic Duchy Originals food range”. The horror!

Mmm. Pie. More on Prince Charles here.

A GUIDE TO PODCASTS AND PODCASTING, from Mark Glaser.

THOUGHTS ON FREE SPEECH, from Ann Althouse.

UPDATE: Still more on free speech, here.

SOME CRITICISM of the U.S. News law school rankings. I think they’re modestly useful, but just remember that their chief purpose is to sell magazines.

And yes, I realize that the same observation applies to everything you read in magazines, etc.

MORE PRAISE FOR JOHN EDWARDS, from Doug Weinstein.

UPDATE: Rand Simberg charges historical revisionism.

PUTTING PELOSI ON THE SPOT:

Republicans plan to force a floor vote on Rep. William Jefferson’s move to the Homeland Security Committee in an unprecedented maneuver to force Democrats to go on the record supporting their embattled colleague who is the target of a federal bribery investigation.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) pledged to call for a recorded vote on the House floor when Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) introduces a resolution to make the Jefferson move official.

Pelosi removed Jefferson from the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee in response to Justice Department allegations that the Louisiana Democrat had accepted $100,000 in bribes and stored $90,000 of them in his freezer. The speaker then gave Jefferson a seat on the Homeland Security, and Democrats agreed to the change in a closed-door caucus in February.

“The idea that Homeland Security is less important than the tax-writing committee is ludicrous,” Blunt said Wednesday.

You could see this one coming.

A MESSAGE FROM General Petraeus.

IN THE MAIL: Daniel Drezner’s new book, All Politics is Global, on international politics and regulation. Looks interesting — though the type’s a bit small — and it’s certainly well-blurbed.

A LOOK AT “GREEN” OSCAR GIFT BAGS, and the tax code.

MORE GLOBAL WARMING HYPOCRISY:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein offers plenty of tips on how California households can combat global warming, such as carpooling and running only a full dishwasher.

But one bit of information Feinstein declines to share is the number of times that she flew last year on her husband’s Gulfstream jet, which burns much more fuel per passenger-mile than commercial airliners.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger also has asked constituents to do their part to conserve energy — including cutting summertime power consumption — even though he takes to the skies on leased executive jets.

Aides say there is nothing contradictory between the pro-green pronouncements and the flying habits of the Democratic senator and Republican governor.

Some environmentalists aren’t so sure. “There appears to be a discrepancy between calling on people to make personal reductions and using a private jet that exacerbates the problem,” Clean Air Watch President Frank O’Donnell said.

Gee, you think?

MICKEY KAUS looks at bipartisan wishful thinking on Iraq.

LAST MONTH AT THE CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW, I REPORTED on Sony’s new Internet HDTV plans. Now Sony is introducing the TVs that go with the plan.

ILYA SOMIN HAS THOUGHTS on the new Iraq oil deal.

HATEFUL BLOG COMMENTS DON’T MATTER: Except when they do.

A FAREWELL TO BLOGGING, at Seixon.

MORE ON CARBON OFFSETS, at The Economist: “I find it hard to believe that Mr Gore has actually reduced his carbon output ‘as much as possible’—and if Mr Gore so believes, I invite him to take a train up to New York, where I will show him what a more carbon efficient lifestyle looks like. The carbon offsets, on the other hand, sound like a very reasonable plan. That is, they did until I began thinking about them. . . . Obviously, the same is true of individual conservation efforts. Thats why any attempt to abate global warming has to be massive. Huge numbers of people in the rich world have to fly less, drive less, consume less, and live in smaller houses. If Mr Gore really wants to encourage this (as I do), then he should try leading by example. ”

Read the whole thing.

UH OH: “Stock markets around the Asia-Pacific region opened sharply lower Wednesday after a dizzying sell-off in China sent global markets into a tailspin.”

Let’s hope things settle down soon.

ADVICE TO AL GORE DEFENDERS: Start here!

UPDATE: No, really, that’s a better approach than the one you’ve been taking.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Whatever you do, don’t listen to Jim Treacher though.

WHY IS DONALD RUMSFELD LAUGHING?

JOHN MCCAIN’S PROBLEM:

Two words:

McCain-Feingold.

The fundamental difference between McCain 2000 and McCain 2008 is that he put his name on a law that forbids people from speaking out against their congressman within 60 days of an election.

Wrong on abortion? That has not stopped Rudy or Mitt.

Wrong on gay marriage? Rudy lived with a gay couple after his second wife kicked him out of the house.

Gun control? It has not stopped Rudy or Mitt.

McCain-Feingold.

That is a show-stopper. Ever step in fresh dog-doo? The smell sticks to the shoe all day. That is what McCain-Feingold is to the senator from Arizona.

He is no longer John McCain. He is McCain-Feingold. . . . Americans do not like to be told to shut up.

McCain-Feingold told Americans to shut up.

Even Feingold could not run with it. He should be Obama. Instead, he is stuck on the sidelines because of McCain-Feingold.

I think that’s right.

DUKE (NON) RAPE UPDATE:

Defense attorneys have continued to scrutinize Meehan’s data, however, and today’s motion reveals that they have uncovered even more DNA—from additional unidentified males—that Meehan’s amended report failed to include. . . .

Mike Nifong obtained the indictments of three people on a charge of rape, in which the accuser’s then-present version (her April 6 statement) claimed that the crime had included anal rape. Even if North Carolina did not possess an Open Discovery law (which required turning over of all material to the defense), and even if North Carolina law did not require turning over of all test results obtained from a non-testimonial order to the defense, how would it not be exculpatory to have “discovered the DNA of at least two males in the accuser’s rectum that did not match the Defendants, their lacrosse teammates, or anyone else who provided a reference DNA sample”?

After all, this is the same Mike Nifong who in a 2000 case dismissed an indictment on rape because “results of DNA testing exclude the defendant as the perpetrator of this crime.”

The politics were different then. But it’s starting to look as if Nifong should wind up in jail himself. This goes way beyond simply prosecuting a weak case.