Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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Your Daily Newt: Saddam Hussein's Hacker Army

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Jan. 31, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Saddam Hussein, computer hacker (artist's rendering)

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

Newt Gingrich was speaking candidly when he told a New York Times reporter in 1995, "I don't do foreign policy." But that didn't stop his mind from occasionally wandering over to the national security realm. In Gingrich's 1995 college course—funded mostly by donors to his political action committee—he used the work of his futurist mentors, Alvin and Heidi Toffler, as a starting point for discussing America's precarious place in the world. Specifically, Gingrich warned of a horror scenario in which Saddam Hussein trained a hacker army to cause civil unrest by issuing 500,000 American Express cards and then charging absurd fees:

There are implications of the emerging Third Wave information age for the world system and for national security. That's part of why I mentioned Toffler, Alvin and Heidi's book, War and Anti-War, because you've got to think about, you know, what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had hired 10 hackers at the beginning of 'Desert Shield' and had decided to electronically try to break down American system? Not killing people, not setting off bombs, but, for example, issuing 500,000 new American Express cards. Or simply charging absurd fees. Breaking down telephone systems. Sending signals to turn off Georgia power company's electric plant. I mean, how much damage could you do on the information side?

Which raises the question: If Saddam Hussein had tried to destroy the American economy by charging absurd fees on credit cards...would we have even noticed?

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Your Daily Newt: Defending Evander Holyfield's Honor

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Jan. 30, 2012 8:23 AM PST

Former heavyweight champ—and Newt Gingrich constituent—Evander Holyfield.

As a service to our readers, every day we are delivering a classic moment from the political life of Newt Gingrich—until he either clinches the nomination or bows out.

When the World Boxing Council told Evander Holyfield it would strip him of his championship belt in 1990 if he didn't defend his title against Mike Tyson, the Georgia native knew just whom to contact—his sixth-district congressman. After beating an out-of-shape Buster Douglas to become number one, Holyfield scheduled his first championship defense against George Foreman. Both the World Boxing Association and the International Boxing Federation (boxing is sort of a bureaucratic nightmare) consented, but the WBC demanded that Holyfield take on Tyson first—or lose the crown by default.

So Holyfield asked to Gingrich to weigh in. And Gingrich, in turn, dashed off a characteristically bombastic letter to the WBC:

"It would be outrageous for the WBC to violate its own bylaws and take the title of heavyweight champion of the world away from Mr. Holyfield when he has done nothing wrong. If the WBC did strip him of the title, there would surely be cause for an official inquiry."

There was no inquiry; a New Jersey court ruled that the WBC couldn't strip Holyfield of a belt he'd fairly earned. The Tyson fight would have to wait, though, as the former champ was sent to prison later that year.

Newt's New-Age Love Gurus

Gingrich's intellectual mentors are former Marxist organizers who envisioned a future full of serial marriages and open relationships.

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Jan. 30, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Newt Gingrich.

A ghost from Newt Gingrich's past paid him a visit in South Carolina, and it wasn't the one you're thinking of. In late January, as reporters buzzed over the ABC News interview with the candidate's second ex-wife, Gingrich was finishing up a town hall at a dove-hunting ranch in the low-country town of Walterboro. That's when a balding, middle-aged man stood up and announced himself as a first-time caller, longtime listener: "I've been following your career," he said. "And I was excited about the revolution in 1994. I was so excited about it I read your reading list"—a reference to Gingrich's tip sheet for freshman legislators. "You know, Alvin Toffler…my eyes teared-up reading that stuff."

These days Gingrich doesn't spend much time talking about Alvin and Heidi Toffler, the world's most famous octogenarian pop-futurist power couple, and the brains behind Future Shock, The Third Wave, and Powershift. But the Tofflers, whom Gingrich has long counted as friends and mentors, have deeply influenced him, and their ideas have formed the foundation for much of what he says. He devoted a two-hour session of his mid-1990s college course to teaching The Third Wave, wrote the foreword to their fifth book (although Alvin's appears as the sole author of Future Shock and Third Wave, the two have always collaborated), and adopted their new-agey vernacular as his own. When, in 1995, a Wired reporter ask Gingrich what he thought of Al Gore, he called the vice president "totally Second Wave"—Tofflerese for "so last week."

There's a pretty good reason why Gingrich has stopped talking about the Tofflers, though: He's running for president. Their work focuses on outlining the social, political, and economic revolutions that will define the years to come: Future Shock posits that the great challenge of our times will be how efficiently we adapt to technological advances (analogous to "culture shock"). The Third Wave argues that mankind is transitioning from an industrial "second wave" of civilization to an information-based "third wave." But beyond their prescient analysis of the emerging information age, the duo predicted a new era of social norms that are straight out of Pat Robertson's nightmares—polygamy, baby-making factories, gay parents, and serial marriage. Not exactly the types of concepts that play well with the conservative voters Gingrich is trying to woo.

Gingrich first met the Tofflers in the early 1970s, at a conference on future studies in Chicago headlined by the couple. ("[A]nyone who took the trouble to fly all the way from Georgia for my speech was obviously a man of impeccable judgment," Alvin joked to the New York Times in 1995.) A few years later, while Gingrich was teaching geography at West Georgia College, the pair invited him to attend their "Conference on Anticipatory Democracy" in Washington as the lone Republican in a sea of Democrats.

They hit it off. When Gingrich was elected to Congress, he started the Conservative Opportunity Society and the Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, and invited the Tofflers to address both groups. As he began to articulate publicly his own vision for the future, Gingrich borrowed heavily from his mentors.

Gingrich infused his 1984 book, Window of Opportunity, with themes from Future Shock and The Third Wave—and for his efforts, received their glowing endorsement. "One may violently differ with many of congressman Gingrich's views, while still admiring his intellect, originality, and future consciousness," Alvin Toffler wrote in a blurb.

[Read the full article]

10 Top-Notch Daily Newts!

From space sex to tree sloths, a selection of the wit, wisdom, and weirdness of Newt Gingrich.

—By Tim Murphy

| Sat Jan. 28, 2012 4:00 AM PST

Every weekday since December 8, we've published Your Daily Newt—tidbits of wit, wisdom, and (mostly) weirdness from presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich. Here's a selection of 10 of our favorites. (If that isn't enough, browse our entire collection of Daily Newts, see the highlights of Mother Jones' 27-year romance with Newt, and read our guide to Gingrich's greatest verbal bombs.)

#1: The 100-Mile High Club

Shutterstock; Wikimedia Commons

Before he promised moon colonies, Newt suggested that private space flight would open up space tourism—especially for honeymooning couples looking to get astronaughty. As he put it: "Imagine weightlessness and its effects and you will understand some of the attraction."

#2: Bring Back the Dinosaurs!

Mark Avery/Orange County Register/ZUM

Newt in 1995: "Why not aspire to build a real Jurassic Park? (It may not be at all impossible, you know.) Wouldn't that be one of the most spectacular accomplishments of human history?"

#3: Legalize It! Execute Pot Dealers!

Mark Makela/ZUMA

In 1982, Gingrich penned a letter to the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association calling for medical pot to be legalized. Yet in 1996, the then-House Speaker was the lead sponsor of the Drug Importer Death Penalty Act, which, as its name suggests, would have made importation of even a small amount of marijuana punishable by life imprisonment (for the first offense) and death (for the second).

#4: Hillary Clinton's a B****

In 1995, Gingrich's mother told 60 Minutes what the then-Speaker really thought about the First Lady.

#5: The Soviet Union Will Last Forever!

Patrick Fallon/ZUMAPress Patrick Fallon/ZUMA

Newt in 1984: "We must expect the Soviet system to survive in its present brutish form for a very long time. There will be Soviet labor camps and Soviet torture chambers well into our great grandchildren's lives." The Soviet Union collapsed seven years later.

#6: I'd Rather Be Watching Tree Sloths

Throwa_uk/Flickr

In 1995, Newt insisted that being elected president was not "one of the three highest items" on his life's checklist. Instead, he said, "I would really love to spend six months to a year in the Amazon basin, just being able to spend the day watching tree sloths."

#7: $40 Billion for Laptops

Dan Herrick/ZumaPress

After being sworn in as Speaker of the House in 1995 on a promise to tear down the welfare state, Gingrich waited one day before proposing a $40 billion entitlement program to help poor Americans to buy laptops: "I'll give you a nutty idea that I'm just tossing out because I want to start getting you to think beyond the norm. Maybe we need a tax credit for the poorest Americans to buy a laptop."

#8: A Little Terrorism Now and Then Isn't All Bad

Asked in 2008 about the war in terror, Gingrich expressed frustration that the public wasn't sufficiently concerned about terrorists on a day-to-day basis. His suggestion for how the government could end Americans' complacency? "It's almost like they should every once in a while have allowed an attack to go through just to remind us."

#9 Bilingualism: Si! Bilingualism: No!

Newt in 1997: "Do you realize that there are two hundred languages spoken in the Chicago school system?...Let's pair up the kids. You get Sally to speak Cambodian and and Sally gets you to speak English. If they succeed, we give each of them a thousand dollars. We'd have kids practicing language seven days a week."

Newt in 2007: "We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto."

#10: He's Just Playing Dead

Baby Newt. Robin Nelson/ZUMA

Beware, future opponents. According to a story about Gingrich in Time: "Newt Gingrich had a favorite game when he was growing up in Hummelstown, Pennsylvania. His pal Dennis Yantz would pretend to beat him up and leave him crumpled on the curb. 'When a car would pull up to see what was wrong,' Yantz recalls, 'Newt would jump up and scream 'SURPRISE!' We would do this over and over again.'"

Newt's Moon Base: Not as Illegal as You Think

—By Tim Murphy

| Fri Jan. 27, 2012 9:38 AM PST

A polling station in the early primary state of Mars, circa 2132

On Thursday, Zeke Miller did the galaxy a public service and pulled up Newt Gingrich's 1981 bill to establish a system by which space colonies could be admitted to the Union as states. Today, he reports that not only was Gingrich's bill—which Newt cited again in his speech on Wednesday—kind of nutty, but it also would have violated international law had it passed (and had anyone tried to colonize the moon in the name of the US of A). That's because the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which the US has ratified, banned any nation from laying claim to a particular piece of the intergalactic pie (or cheese).

All well and damning. But that doesn't mean Newt's space dreams are ruined. The former speaker, who conceded this week that the statehood-in-space idea was "the weirdest thing I've ever done," has previously proposed a slightly different settlement path that would be totally legal. In his 1984 book, Window of Opportunity, Gingrich proposed creating a permanent international research base on the moon, not unlike those currently in existence on Antarctica. It would be open to the "Free World" and the "United Free World Alliance," and would be viewed as a path to global stability and world peace:

[We] should do something in concert with al the other free people of the world to show that our joint commitment to freedom rises above nationalism; we should do something which celebrates the power of high technology that will remind us and everyone else that the greatest single factor in the rising standard of living over the last millennium was not our politicians and academic intellectuals, but rather our inventors and business entrepreneurs; we should do something which holds out an improving future to the entire Third World so that everyone can realize that our path, rather than Castro's dictatorship, is the wave of the future; finally, we should do something which is peaceful and knowledge-oriented as a first step toward creating a Human Peace in the next millennium. The most appropriate single millennium project would be the opening in January 1, 2000 of a lunar research base for the whole free world.

Such a project, international in scope and governed in accordance with international space law as opposed to the Constitution, would be permitted by the Outer Space Treaty. Nothing about it would be all that different from the policy Gingrich proposed in Florida this week, except there would be no path to statehood—at least until President Gingrich pushes the "Everything on the Moon Belongs to America Treaty" through the United Nations.