MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: June 24, 2007

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June 30, 2007

Bush Staffers Want to Grow Oranges in the Arctic

In this week's Rolling Stone Tim Dickinson, a former MoJo editor, waded through thousands of previously-FOIAd documents and emails to construct a comprehensive look at the Bush Administration's campaign of global warming denial.

Mother Jones was among the first on this beat back in spring of 2005 when Chris Mooney uncovered the administration's attempts to silence the global warming debate by way of its close ties to ExxonMobil, and that company's funding of climate change skeptics.

Interestingly, Tim notes that many of the documents he details in his feature were in plain sight, not buried from the public under any sort of top secrecy. I too, as the fact-checker for Mooney's piece two years ago, recall the reams of documents, the trail of evidence linking high-ranking administration employees, such as Larisa and Paula Dobriansky and Phillip Cooney, to the upperest of oil-industry crust.

Check out Tim's piece for a good summary, and for doozies such as this email to ExxonMobil lobbyist turned White House adviser Cooney, from White House energy staffer Matthew Koch, who, upon hearing about an industry-funded study that refuted warming was happening at all said:

"What??!! I want to grow oranges in the Arctic!"

Did he not learn anything from Jack Abramoff? If you are going to be callous and mess with the nation and people's lives on a grand scale, please, at least refrain from boasting about it in email verse.

June 29, 2007

What is Jay Rosen For?

For the past three days, writers and editors at Mother Jones have been engaged in a flak session over at the blog Press Think, and more recently, the Huffington Post, where NYU professor Jay Rosen has lambasted the magazine's package of stories and interviews on "Politics 2.0." Or rather, he has lambasted the "framing" of the stories, which is to say he's unhappy with the way we introduced the stories in our press release and in the opening essay. Thousands of words have been expended on the subject, but Rosen's beef can be summarized (I think) like this: In a shameless ploy to promote itself, Mother Jones has set up a false tension between the idea that Politics 2.0 is revolutionary and the idea that it's irrelevant, and then congratulated itself with showing how neither one is true. "The Mother Jones editors," Rosen writes, "had a great story about politics and the web within their grasp, but they were too busy fabricating myths they could bust up later— and so they missed it."

Personally, I haven't felt a need to respond to Rosen in our own blog because I feel his critique is, on its face, kind of silly. But I think some of the issues that have come out in the discussion of his post are worth talking about, and so I'm going to wade through this. First, in response to Rosen, I wrote in his blog:

Much of your argument against our Politics 2.0 package presupposes that the extremes of thought on net politics--"revolutionary" or "irrelevant"--do not exist. I will grant that people who are truly informed on the subject don't hold black and white views, but the rhetoric that they and the press employ frequently comes off as totally unambiguous, and results in a mistaken impression that things really are that simple. It is thus unfair to say that we are setting up two straw men. The straw men are already there. Yes, knocking them down is easy, but it's also a way to, in the process, explore a lot of interesting issues raised by politics 2.0 with more complexity and nuance. . . .

What we have done is allow people in the field--actual bloggers, actual professors, actual online political consultants--to weigh in themselves, and we're allowing anybody to comment on their thoughts at the end of each article and interview online. Our "idea," in short, is have a bunch of people talk about their ideas. It's not revolutionary, but it's very Web 2.0, and it differs from the I'm-an-expert-so-let-me-tell-you-how-it-is approach that bloggers have come to expect and loathe in the print world. I fear that if we had opted for the latter, you'd simply be caviling over that instead.

In response, Rosen said that we should have simply "framed" the package as an exploration of "the complex landscape of Politics 2.0 with some of the world's best guides." He wrote:

But... and here we come to the contradictions at the heart of this little episode... that isn't the stance you wanted to take. Doesn't feel tough enough. Non-dramatic. It lacks that savvy sheen print journalists like to have on the surface of their work. Your desire, I believe, ran counter to your concept.

Rosen is missing several important points, I believe. For one, he's writing from the perspective of an avid blogger who is familiar with the ins and outs of the Politics 2.0 world (I think) and doesn't seem to realize that some of our readers, especially of the print magazine, are not. People with less exposure to that world need to understand the big questions at play--What's the deal with this grand Politics 2.0 talk?--before they will see a reason to read about it. So we use that question as a starting point and then flesh it out with more nuance. It is a classic element of magazine journalism: Will Al Gore stop global warming? Well, here's Al Gore, and here's what he says and what he'd doing. And so on.

Rosen believes that this approach, in its more intellectually lazy forms, is associated with the print media. The thread over at HuffPost has veered off into condemnations of the mainstream media and exaltations of the blogosphere as a less spin-oriented alternative. I do think that blogs serve as a crucial check on journalistic folly, but I don't think that they have proven to be any less susceptible to the same "framing" issues. Case in point is Rosen himself. Over at HuffPost I noted that Rosen had written his post under the headline: "Printing Press Progressives at Mother Jones Try to Debunk the Political Web." Talk about framing. I wrote back:

Are we printing press progressives? Then what about our well-established blog? Are we trying to "debunk the political web?" We're certainly interested in dispelling hype when it exists, but the way you phrase it makes it sound like we are out to expose the political web as a sham, which we aren't, and it isn't. Indeed, we are a part of the political web (or did you mean to say citizen journalism?) So who is guilty of lazy and self-serving framing here? This question leads naturally to ones about your motives for attention, which mirror your questions about our motives for attention. Pretty mind bending. But hey, I'm sure you can handle it since you're a salaried NYU professor.

So this leads to the question: What is Jay Rosen For? (His book was called "What Are Journalists For?). I'm sure he's good for something, but I'll let him answer as to what that is. Meanwhile, he still hasn't responded to my question about why he is accusing us of setting up straw men, only to do so himself.

Supreme Court Stops the Insanity

Finally a little bit of sanity on the bench! Yesterday’s 5-4 decision, written by Justice Kennedy—whose votes have helped temper the Court’s conservatism on capital punishment (if nothing else)—found that Texas should not execute Scott Panetti because his mental illness prevents him from comprehending the reasons for his death sentence.

Panetti is schizophrenic with a history of depression, paranoia, and delusions. He was hospitalized 14 times before he killed his in-laws in 1992. One hospitalization came after he buried furniture he thought was possessed by the devil. After being arrested and charged with capital murder, Panetti said that “Sarge”—one of his personalities—committed the murders. Panetti then fired his lawyers so that he could represent himself at his 1995 trial. He wore a purple cowboy suit and 10-gallon hat to the courthouse, and addressed the jury with old-western phrases like “runaway mule” and “bronc steer." Jesus Christ, John F. Kennedy, and Pope John Paul II were among those who he subpoenaed to testify.

When the “circus” was over, the jury voted to convict and sentence Panetti to death. One juror said that Panetti’s irrational behavior was scary, and that was the reason the jurors chose death. Since arriving on death row, Panetti has believed that Texas is conspiring with the devil to kill him so that he won’t be able to preach the Gospel anymore.

Think this all sounds crazy? What’s even crazier is that despite the obviousness of Panetti’s illness, his lawyers toiled for 12 years filing dozens of petitions with four unsympathetic courts before the Supreme Court finally stopped the insanity. Well, temporarily at least. The case will now go back down to the federal district court, which will decide whether Panetti has no “rational understanding” of the connection between his crime and execution.

Executing the mentally ill is unconstitutional, but because the standard is so high to prove incompetency, not a single inmate since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976 has successful overturned his death sentence based on mental illness. Five to 10 percent of death row inmates suffer from a serious mental illness. And it's worth noting, the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, and the American Bar Association all support abolishing the death penalty for the mentally ill.

—Celia Perry

Privatization Backlash

At the direction of New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, the state has been studying the possibility of privatizing various public assets to pay down its mounting debt for close to a year. Among the assets potentially on the table was the state's 148-mile turnpike, a long-term lease on which, some analysts believe, could fetch more than $20 billion. Back in January, Jim Ridgeway and I explored the growing toll road privatization trend, and found it, in many cases, to be a dicey proposition that was being pushed by investment banks, particularly Goldman Sachs, where, incidentally, Corzine once served as chairman.

Under fire from New Jersey residents and state lawmakers—when I drove the Turnpike a couple weeks ago I saw a billboard blasting the privatization option—Corzine said yesterday that he won’t seek to privatize the state's roads. "New Jersey's roadways will not be sold; and they will not be leased to a for-profit or foreign operator," he said in a statement.

Coincidentally, or maybe not, Corzine made this statement on the same day that the Spanish toll road operator Cintra (which, with its partner, Macquarie Infrastructure Group, currently holds leases on the Chicago Skyway and Indiana Toll Road), lost its bid to overhaul and operate a highway in Texas to a public entity. As Reuters notes, this development could "stall road privatization plans in other states." This could prove seriously problematic for a number of companies, including Cintra and Macquarie, who have positioned themselves to take advantage of toll road opportunities in North America. Nor does this bode well for the investment banks, including Goldman, that have raised multibillion dollar infrastructure investment funds on the assumption that a private highway boom was imminent.

Get Out the Vote...With Ringtones?

As if cell phone ringtones weren't annoying, ubiquitous and pervasive enough, now ringtones have gone all political on us.

Ringtones08.com says you should, "Let your cell phone do the talking. Exercise your freedom of speech and ring!" Come on, now. Not to sound like a curmudgeon or anything, but if folks need a ringtone to get fired up about an endless war or your First Amendment rights, we've got bigger problems to address.

That said, I couldn't help but notice that "Klaus Flouride" created some of the tones. Is that the same Klaus Flouride that played bass guitar for the 80s punk band the Dead Kennedys? WTF? The "GeorgeAllenMacaca" ring tone mixes a hip hop beat with a quote from Allen 's famous "macaca moment" speech. The "Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" ring mashes a quote from George Bush about former FEMA director Michael Brown with the Arlo Guthrie song, “The Train They Call the City of New Orleans.”

But the ring tones are pretty janky. For better ring tones and a better laugh, check out Obama ringtones on the Daily Show.

My advice? Switch your phone to vibrate and move on. Also try checking out our latest issue, which just hit newsstands, where we ask a whole mess of politicos and digerati, are we entering a new era of digital democracy complete with Hillary ringtones, or just being conned by a bunch of smooth-talking geeks?

We also spell out the latest on cell-phone activism and the political power of text messaging.

Blogger Hubris 3.0

Micah Sifry, co-founder of the Personal Democracy Forum and a guru when it comes to the impact of technology on politics, was not pleased—not pleased at all—with my piece on the lefty blogosphere in our latest issue. “You study a few trees and decide that you can describe a forest," he writes, in the comments section of MoJo's blog, and questions the premise that top liberal bloggers have become an elite or part of the Democratic power structure. I'm sure the numerous bloggers (some of whom I note in my piece), who have parlayed their online musings into political consulting work and prominent staff positions on campaigns, would plainly disagree with the latter.

As for his contention that the liberal blogosphere doesn’t have an elite—look no further than "Blogroll Amnesty Day," when, last February, a handful of big kahuna bloggers, including Atrios and Kos, purged their blogrolls of the small fish who had secured coveted spots there. Explaining the move, Atrios wrote, "one of the big complaints by new bloggers is that it's impossible to get onto blogrolls because established bloggers tend not to add them. They're right. A big reason for that is that everyone feels a wee bit guilty about removing blogs from their blogroll, so they're hesitant to add new ones to an ever-expanding list." So, he decided to purge his roll and "grow it again naturally, adding blogs I find myself wanting to read on a regular basis."

Fair enough. His blog; his decision. But the casualties of this purge could also be forgiven for feeling that they were at the mercy of an elite, who, on a whim, decided to stop directing traffic to them, cutting down their readerships considerably. As one angry blogger wrote:

Fuck the big boys. They're the blogospheric equivalent of the Washington pundits who think they're better than bloggers because they get invited to the right parties and of the Democrats who hold fundraisers where they take money from corporations. We hold bake sales and support our candidates twenty-five bucks at a time. What's hilarious is that most of these guys come out of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign, only a taste of success has made them forget all about people-powered.

And Chris Bowers, himself an elite blogger who writes at MyDD, noted at the time: "The blogosphere may have started as a new form of individual punditry, but at its elite levels, the progressive blogosphere has now moved beyond that. Take a quick look at the structure of the new progressive blogosphere elite, and consider how difficult it is for a new blog to break into this group." He also posited that "it is very possible that the blogosphere will either collapse due to a lack of funding, or develop into a new form of establishment elite." I think there's evidence to suggest that certain top tier bloggers have already become firmly entrenched in the political establishment —unless dining at John Edwards' Georgetown digs or strategizing weekly with Democratic leadership aides doesn’t count.

Sifry is also upset about my depiction of Townhouse, the invite-only email list administered by blogger/activist/consultant Matt Stoller whose members (Micah, are you one of them?) are select blogger/activists/consultants.

“You have one on-the-record source attacking Kos and other ‘elite’ bloggers for running a ‘Skull and Bones’ like email list,” he writes. “That hardly is proof of anything in my mind.”

Given that the first rule of Townhouse is that there is no Townhouse, it was quite a challenge to get even one person to talk about the list on record (though I spoke to several people about the list who did not want to be quoted, even anonymously). It's my understanding that any list member who speaks about it publicly, or even acknowledges that it exists, risks immediate expulsion from the list. Incidentally, that's precisely what happened to Maryscott O'Connor of My Left Wing, who was unceremoniously dumped from Townhouse after my article came out. O’Connor had this to say about Townhouse: “It's fucking Skull and Bones, man. The very secretive, behind-closed-doors nature of it is anathema to everything that blogging is supposed to be about: accountability. We are supposed to be showing the way, not skulking around behind closed doors, coming up with strategies. Those are the people who we're trying to fight. I know about 'the real world' and all that shit. But we're the idealists, aren't we?"

(Fun fact: According to an email I obtained, sent out to Townhouse members by Stoller in March, the list is now a commercial enterprise. Subscriptions run $60 per year for individual subscribers and up to $1000 for organizations, the proceeds of which will go to pay Stoller’s rent and health care costs, according to his message.)

One of the questions O'Connor raised when we spoke, an interesting one I thought, is what will become of the once independent bloggers, the idealists, now that they’ve worked their way into the inner sanctum of the Democratic machine. Will they change it for the better from the inside, or simply become a new generation of win-at-any-cost political operatives. It’s a question worth asking, but I don’t think anyone has any answer just yet.

It’s worth noting that I didn’t disrupt the sanctity of Stoller's semi-secret blogger thinktank for the heck of it. I did so because I thought it was worth raising an episode that occurred last summer, when Kos appealed to list members to "starve" a particular story of "oxygen," one that was damaging to his friend and business associate Jerome Armstrong. As TNR's Jason Zengerle noted at the time, the episode seemed “just another case of politics as usual.” It also seemed a bit hypocritical, given that the spirit of blogging, at least as I understand it, is about transparency and accountability, not about squelching unfavorable stories.

Sifry calls my piece an “indictment of all progressive bloggers” and “humbly” suggests that my "attitude towards online journalism and blogging could use an update.” While I fully acknowledge that I have a lot more to learn about the brave new world of online journalism, politics, and activism, I would suggest, just as humbly, that the egalitarian blogtopia Sifry knows and loves is changing—and not always for the better.

Supreme Court Race Ruling 'Judicial Activism'

The U.S. Supreme Court reignited the debate over how to appropriately handle diversity in U.S. public schools when it overturned policies intended to diversify student enrollments in Jefferson County, Kentucky and in Seattle.

Political leaders called yesterday's ruling "appalling," "a terrible blow to school districts," and "judicial activism." Others said that the ruling gave racist school policies a "smackdown." Some are going so far as to say the ruling marks a return to segregation, while others claim that existing, binary (white and black) notions of race still cloud the debate.

It's worth noting that at least one of the original plaintiffs in the case was a white mother who was disappointed that her child didn't get accepted into her first school of choice. Many plaintiffs in the case (not necessarily white) were also pissed that schools were using race as a determining factor for "tiebreakers."

How educators define and treat race from here on out remains to be seen — since the ruling stopped short of prohibiting all consideration of race in K-12 education.

For an inside look at those involved in the Seattle case check out this MoJo interview with David Engle, former principal of Ballard High, who resigned rather than eliminate the racial tiebreaker at his school.

June 28, 2007

Two Reporters Blow The Whistle On FOX News

Rewarding Polluters Fuels Gulf Of Mexico Dead Zone

A new study determines that U.S. taxpayers are subsidizing the Gulf of Mexico dead zone. This is an area of coastal waters -- visited in MoJo's The Fate Of The Ocean -- where dissolved-oxygen concentrations fall to less than 2 parts per million every summer. According to a paper published at Environmental Science & Technology Online, these findings bode poorly for the Gulf, as more and more acres of land are planted with corn to meet the growing U.S. demand for alternative fuels. Farmers in areas with the highest rates of fertilizer runoff tend to receive the biggest payouts in federal crop subsidies, says Mary Booth, lead author of the paper. What's more, they have fewer acres enrolled in conservation programs compared with other parts of the Mississippi River basin. Agricultural nitrate loading could be reduced substantially if farmers took just 3% of the most intensively farmed land out of production.JULIA WHITTY

Monaghan's Ave Maria Town Open for Piety

So GQ nabbed an interview with the ever-elusive Tom Monaghan, the Domino's Pizza mogul turned Catholic-utopia builder. Monaghan wouldn't talk with MoJo when we covered the development of his $400 million university, Ave Maria, earlier this year. But GQ is different; he can tell them things like, "If I didn’t have my faith, I’d make Hugh Hefner look like a piker.”

Hef allusions aside, the GQ profile digs into Monaghan's motivations for building what will become a Catholic universe set amidst former panther habitat. Turns out he's always wanted to be an architect, and is now living his dream having built the anti-Las Vegas, complete with a towering cathedral and town square modeled after Siena, Italy, all tucked in the middle of the Florida Everglades.

The town, which the WSJ once compared to a "Catholic Jonestown," will be as pious as possible; if Monaghan had his way contraceptives and pornography would be outlawed. After all, his goals are big ones; he plans to "reinvent hometown living," one condo at a time.

June 27, 2007

Please Describe To the Jury What Happened..."Sounds Like..."

Tory Bowen of Nebraska says that she was raped, but testifying in court is a little difficult because the judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, has instructed her that neither she nor the prosecutors can use the following words: "rape," "sexual assault," "victim," assailant," "sexual assault kit." The words were banned at the request of defense attorneys, who also wanted the words "sex" and "intercourse" banned, but the judge did not go that far, presumably because the trial would then have been reduced to a game of charades. The jury will not be informed that the words have been banned.

This is the second time around for the accused, Pamir Safi. His first trial resulted in a hung jury when jurors deadlocked, 7-5. The banned words were in place at that trial, too.

Apparently, rape defense lawyers throughout the country are asking that the word "rape" not be used by the alleged victim and the prosecutor. This made me wonder whether anyone had asked an alleged armed robbery victim not to use the words "steal," "rob," and "gun." Or whether a witness to a murder has been barred from saying "murder," "kill," or "dead." I'm guessing the answer is no. Indeed, law professor Wendy Murphy of the New England School of Law says that "that is a profoundly unfair thing for a judge to do. I have a problem with the idea that you can compel a witness to contrive their testimony. I have a problem (with a judge) directing a witness, not the government, to say certain words. It impugns their candor, their credibility."

And, Murphy added, Bowen won’t be able to explain to jurors why she’s using clinical words--or, worse, words that imply consent--when she describes the encounter with Safi.

Glass Houses

The Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the president and the v. president of the Senate today for information related to the warrantless wiretapping program. The subpoena is a result of the ever-expanding examination of what the hell is wrong with Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department. I'm all but certain it won't unearth anything of value, but there's a lesson in it, nonetheless: If you're going to stretch the boundaries of the law, you have be competent enough not to beg for an investigation. In other words, the Bush administration might have gotten away with its attempt to stretch the law so aggressively that a handful of officials threatened to resign if there hadn't been a sh-t show so big that everybody and his dad got a chance to air their grievances before the Senate and the American public. On the other hand, the word impeachment remains strangely absent from Democratic discourse, so maybe you can have your cake and eat it, messily, while also throwing stones from your glass house. See what I'm sayin'?

Chris Rock(s) 2008

Mother Jones Makes Chicago Tribune's Annual 50 Favorite Magazines List

Hot(tish) off the Chicago Tribune presses, their list of the magazines they consider to be the best in the country.

"Every year we ask each other what periodicals we've been reading, and then we ask you. Every year we argue about what makes a good magazine and why we rush to pick up certain titles or swipe them from a neighbor's desk. We urge each other to try something new, and we smack our foreheads when a title bubbles up that we'd completely missed."

"...Mother Jones. As well-written, at its best, as anything out there (check out the story on the guy who gets 60 miles per gallon in a plain old Honda Accord), Mother Jones is a lot better than we remembered. Unabashedly liberal but more entertaining than the Nation and journalistically oriented but more passionate than the news weeklies, it fills a need we didn't know we had."

They like us, they really, really like us! We're one of only six mags given a shout-out in the news/business/point of view category. And if you're into who got dissed—and there are some most notable exceptions—I've pasted the whole list in after the jump.

Our 50 favorite magazines
June 26, 2007

It's becoming a rite of summer: Every year we ask each other what periodicals we've been reading, and then we ask you. Every year we argue about what makes a good magazine and why we rush to pick up certain titles or swipe them from a neighbor's desk. We urge each other to try something new, and we smack our foreheads when a title bubbles up that we'd completely missed.

This year we've been paying special attention to media on the Internet. Most magazines have a Web presence, but we've picked out five sites that offer something special, something more than the same content we read in print. Take a look and see what you think -- and please tell us what's on your personal magazine rack these warm summer days.

ctc-tempo@tribune.com

BOOKS/LITERARY/WRITING

The Believer. A monthly magazine in which length is no object, it vows to focus "on writers and books we like. We will give people and books the benefit of the doubt." The design is remarkable; the paper stock is thick and satisfying, and so is the writing.

Granta. Combine fiction, fine photography and collections of essays, and what do you get? Brilliance, if it's Granta. Four times a year the British publication puts out an approximately 300-page periodical, featuring everyone from Gabriel Garcia Márquez to Bill Bryson.

The New York Review of Books. This ancient, much-revered and now iconic magazine is still the gold standard for serious cultural criticism. Larry McMurtry and Joyce Carol Oates are among the working artists who pause to contribute luminous essays to the NYRB. Plus, you can't beat the personal ads in the back.

The New Yorker. Katherine Boo's story on the closing of one of the worst high schools in Colorado wasn't just challenging and moving, it was absolutely riveting - and a reminder that, if other magazines have more bells and whistles, the New Yorker has, pound for pound, more quality writing and reporting than anyone around.

HOME LIFE

Blueprint. From the Martha Stewart empire, her latest guide to personal style puts an emphasis on easy step-by-steps. In the Real Simple mold but with a hipper mood, Blueprint combines home, fashion and food coverage, and spares us the impossible dreams disguised as "good things."

Cottage Living. OK, so the term 'cottage' means different things to different people, but the underlying philosophy - "comfort, simplicity, style" - helps clarify. Regular gardening, decorating, shopping and travel articles complete the mix. Our favorite: a back-page feature giving "cottage" curb appeal to a plain-Jane exterior.

Fine Gardening. You're a smart gardener but you don't know everything. You'd like good ideas, design inspiration for real people's yards, plant suggestions and clear, well-illustrated advice from experts that respect your intelligence. This is the magazine for you.

Garden Gate. Newer gardeners can feel safe in the arms of this bimonthly, which is all about being cozy and accessible. There are lots of explanations, diagrams and plans, and a big spread of reader tips.

This Old House. Despite the name, there's pretty good landscaping stuff in these pages too. You won't find articles on pruning clematis or choosing hydrangeas, but you will find excellent, well-presented advice on planning, installing and maintaining lawns, trees, shrubs and other basic plants, as well as patios and paths. It's also the best magazine source for learning how to use tools.

Organic Gardening. The ancient eminence of the organic world has become bright and lively. It's packed with good information on growing all kinds of plants - right up to roses - in a safe, environmentally friendly way. We like the concise reports on scientific research into what works and what doesn't.

ReadyMade. For the hip and crafty, ReadyMade provides DIY project ideas and instructions plus household tips and useful craft information. Projects vary and range from instructions on converting a vintage radio to play an iPod to creating a faux mosaic with paint chips. An inspiring magazine that makes us want to get off the couch and do something crafty.

FOOD

Cooks Illustrated. It's still the best and most trustable (no ads) consumer food mag going. Just reading through the steps that go into finding one of their perfect recipes always teaches you something useful about culinary chemistry. Everyday Food. Maybe it's because it fits in your purse, but this graphically pleasing monthly from the Martha Stewart camp makes pulling together quick, delicious and attractive meals seem manageable.

Gourmet. Still the queen of foodie mags. Great vintage and modern recipes blend with terrific travel features - Kashgar anyone? - practical pointers and poignant writerly essays such as Scott Simon's moving, Beard Award-winning "Conflict Cuisine" last year.

Saveur. Reading Saveur is like taking a trip to a new land each month, though it certainly covers cooks and dishes closer to home too. It's a magazine for cooks who are ready to move on from the 15-minutes-or-less recipes and their required mind-set. We love the nuggets of food festival news and history.

ARTS/MUSIC/POPULAR CULTURE

Juxtapoz. The "lowbrow" art bible for those who love artists on the pop fringe. Insightful, knowledgeable writers pen cover stories about the appeal of Mark Dryden's dreamy (read: nightmarish) kewpie doll paintings and tattoo art, in addition to lavishing illustrated profiles on artists such as Vincent Valdez, Slick and Adam Wallacavage. An entire article on Iggy Pop - the painter? Count us in.

Mental Floss. Sure, it's a snarky take on pop culture, history, science and the arts, but the magazine is also informative, quirky and creative in its writing and subject matter ("The 20 Greatest Mistakes in History"). The Web site, mentalfloss.com, is a delight for trivia buffs, and the blog offers knowledge nuggets for everyone.

New York. Is Amy Larocca the best fashion writer in America? Or the best street reporter? Read her hilarious, laser-sharp interviews for the fashion-on-the-street feature, "The Look Book," and judge for yourself. "The Look Book" is emblematic of New York, not because the magazine is really about fashion, but because it excels at nearly everything it does: crime coverage, real estate notes, commentary, trend stories.

Paste. Too young for Rolling Stone but not young enough for Blender? Then Paste probably speaks to you. Covering everything from alt country to indie film, Paste continually surprises with elegantly designed, thoughtfully written pieces that ponder the direction of the culture. Reviews are consistently thought-provoking and snarky, even if very few records get less than a three-star rating. If nothing else in the magazine appeals, something on the free enclosed CD should hit a nerve.

Rolling Stone. This 40-year-old icon has regained its mainstream relevance - it has stopped trying to compete with Maxim and FHM and returned its focus to thought-out profiles of musicians and in-depth, expressive political features. You don't go to Rolling Stone for sex and lifestyle advice; you open it because the magazine knows its music and has a story or two left to tell.

Us Weekly. Tribune reporters read all the Serious Highbrow Magazines. Really. But, to judge from the near impossibility of obtaining the new copy of Us magazine from the in-house library, we read the Queen of the Gossip Magazines first. And with headlines such as "The Final Insult: Shiloh Was No Accident!" backed up by a story that actually delivers the goods, who can blame us?

Vanity Fair. We always knew that Vanity Fair was cute and well-connected, but in recent years we've come to appreciate that the debutante of the glossy magazine world is one heck of a street fighter, able to get a scoop ("Big Throat's Identity") that the big boys would kill for. VF can be cloying - check out the rapturous story on new parents Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes - but hey, no one's perfect. And we loved the Suri Cruise photos.

Venus Zine. A locally published magazine with a focus on women in the arts, Venus Zine features high-profile stars alongside independent artists. The magazine is jam-packed with profiles, interviews and feature stories about female musicians, artists, filmmakers and designers. A magazine that shows women can rock.

Wired. A terrific monthly chronicle of pop cultural technology that just keeps getting better. First it gives us the snapshots of the evolving world of tech and science. Then there are the illuminating regular features, such as "What's Inside" or "Mr. Know It All." Finally there are the richly reported stories, such as "The Sad Decline of NASA" or "The New Atheism" or "The Science of Human Enhancement." Our fave was the "How-To" issue, with advice on everything from hacking your iPod to boosting your brain.

STYLE

Best Life. We're men and we want to be better. No, really. So we read this monthly from the makers of Men's Health. It's like Real Simple for the American male. Already it has made us better fathers, better employees, better bosses, better husbands, better cooks, better investors - and better looking - or at least we think so, because we're feeling much better about ourselves these days. No, really.

Esquire. OK, so it's not as solid as it was in the '70s, but neither are rock 'n' roll and the Miami Dolphins. Today the magazine shines with gripping non-fiction pieces and quick-hit articles on fashion, health and food/booze. It even manages to make celebrity interviews readable.

Glamour. This nearly 70-year-old monthly, which boasts a generous mix of beauty tips, fashion spreads, health news, sex advice, celebrity interviews and feature articles (global warming, violence against women, bulimia, etc.), still doesn't show its age. With staples such as "Jake: A Man's Opinion," "Would You Dare?" and its annual "Top 10 College Women" competition, there's something for almost everyone. But the feature that grabs our attention like a bikini wedgie on the beach is "Do's and Don'ts." Definitely a do.

Men's Journal. Lots of cool products, such as the latest bikes, shades and shoes, plus nifty feature stories and profiles that range from politics to ecology to high adventure. The consumer features - which wristwatch keeps on ticking while you're scuba diving off the Great Barrier Reef? - seem to overwhelm the stories in recent issues, but it's a handsomely produced magazine that makes you want to leave your desk and go sky-diving.

TRAVEL

National Geographic. Smart, beautiful, resolutely international, National Geographic tells stories that are thought-provoking ("Jamestown: The Real Story") and important ("The Big Thaw: Ice on the Run, Seas on the Rise"). This magazine remains true to itself and relevant to its readers.

Southwest Airlines' Spirit Magazine. Southwest has the best in-flight magazine to be found in a crusty seat pocket in front of you. We were surprised by a recent cover story on the online phenomenon "Second Life," complete with a big, glossy photo of an avatar on the front. There's the usual stuff on spa vacations and "7 Things to Do in Nashville," sure, but even these articles seem well thought out.

NEWS/BUSINESS/POINT OF VIEW

Discover. This is the science magazine for anyone who flunked 11th-grade biology. It tackles topics ranging from global warming to black holes to Neanderthals with a refreshing lack of academic jargon. And you thought you'd never understand string theory.

The Economist. We hope there will always be an Economist. As newsweeklies go, it's the one that impresses most consistently, time after time, not just for its amazing comprehensiveness - sections covering the U.S., the Americas, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Europe as well as Britian; world finance and economics, science and technology, and books and the arts - but also for its tone, which manages a detached, stiff-upper-lip quality that makes you believe, whether it's true or not, that opinions are secondary, sir, and here, first, are the facts.

Harvard Business Review. You aren't a business executive. You don't care about business. So what business do you have reading this legendary magazine with the intimidating-sounding name? It has interesting features that end up sounding more like outtakes from "Dr. Phil" than typical biz-school boilerplate, as human emotions clash over money and power. Case studies about corporate challenges are fascinating. The clean layout is refreshingly minimalist n this age of overheated graphics. Best of all, if you carry a copy under your arm, you will automatically pick up 20 IQ points.

Mother Jones. As well-written, at its best, as anything out there (check out the story on the guy who gets 60 miles per gallon in a plain old Honda Accord), Mother Jones is a lot better than we remembered. Unabashedly liberal but more entertaining than the Nation and journalistically oriented but more passionate than the news weeklies, it fills a need we didn't know we had.

Time. Last year, we could barely distinguish between the two major newsweeklies. But Time's redesign and rethinking has made it superior to rival Newsweek. The layout is clean and inviting. The most important stories (political, environmental, global) are longer and richer. The others are more succinct. The commentary seems much sharper. And it's just more fun to read.

The Week. The highly credible newsweekly's editors save busy readers a lot of time by scanning hundreds of U.S. and international media sources and featuring the best opinion columns, stories, book, movie and television reviews and gossip. Crisp, concise and often funny, The Week never wastes your time.

SPECIAL INTEREST

LensWork. Simply gorgeous printing of fine photography at your fingertips six times a year from our Canadian neighbors. Informative, well written articles that invigorate the creative process within, and without the techno mumbo jumbo. This little magazine is not just for photographers but for anyone who understands that photography is a passion.

Lincoln Lore. With the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth looming in 2009, where better to get the scoop on the 16th president than this quarterly publication of the Lincoln Museum in Ft. Wayne, Ind.? A recent issue featured six pages on the disputed parentage of Lincoln's mom, an essay on Lincoln and U.S. conservatives, and lengthy reviews of books about the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincoln's use of language and slavery.

MAGIC. Because magicians are so secretive about their craft to begin with, it's appropriate that this monthly glossy is not available at a newsstand or library - it's only sold at magic shops and through subscription. A veritable who's who of magicians contribute each month with essays on craft, tricks, product reviews, finessing that stubborn "Goshman Pinch" move of yours, plus profiles of the conjurer du jour.

Men's Health. True to its tag line, "Tons of Useful Stuff," Men's Health offers more than just exercises for "Hard Abs!" which also makes it entertaining - and enlightening - reading for women.

Mountain Bike. For and by knobby-tired enthusiasts, it includes trail guides, adventure stories and how-to's such as taking big drops, clearing rock piles and (we'll probably need it) limping home on a busted bike. As the little sibling to Bicycling, it has the resources to do its own gear guides when many similar publications are going to reader comments or simply reprinting information from the manufacturers.

Psychotherapy Networker. Pssst, wanna know what your therapist is reading? It's this journal about the craft and science of the talking cure. The articles are meaty and finely nuanced. A recent example: The 10 most influential therapists over the past quarter-century. No. 1? Carl Rogers.

Smithsonian. With the magazine that accompanies membership in the Smithsonian Institution, you know to expect well-written and well-researched articles on astronomy, archeology, exotic flora and fauna and so on. It's the unexpected - a profile of a man who built large-scale, fantasy flying machines, the patent office records of an invention by Abe Lincoln - that keep you looking forward to the next issue.

ToyFare. ToyFare has been on our "best of" list three times, and for good reason. Not only is it impeccably written and displays an uncanny (OK, creepy) knowledge of the collectible toy business - it also is the only magazine that makes us consistently laugh out loud with its naughty, literate word balloons placed in the most inappropriate places.

Wondertime. A relative newcomer, the parenting magazine was launched last spring to "celebrate a child's love of learning" and covers all stage of development from newborn to age 6. Clever, well-written and beautifully designed, it also features readers' family traditions and useful tips such as how to play Red Light, Green Light, how to throw a ball or tie a shoelace, and how to explain to your children why a mosquito bites.

ONLINE

Mothering.com. An extension of the flagship "natural family living" magazine, Mothering.com will link you to like-minded moms who want to know more about extended breast-feeding, drug-free and home births, vaccinations, midwifery, organic foods, homeopathy and co-sleeping. On the site, you can ask experts questions, plug into a live chat with a doula or browse the media section to find a video of a natural home birth. The independently spirited site also promotes activism. Both the magazine and the Web site are blissfully free of the plastic junk advertised in mainstream parenting magazines. Digital subscriptions are $20 for a year.

New Scientist.com. The still-lively print version has been a science and technology favorite since 1956. But the magazine's 21st Century offering, NewScientist.com, includes the excellent content from the print edition, the ability to search more than 60,000 articles, along with blogs on environment, space and technology. The site also includes breaking news updated daily and a science and technology jobs database. Full access requires a subscription to the print magazine, which includes special in-depth reports, news on emerging technologies, interviews with high-profile personalities and editorial comment.

The Onion A.V. Club (avclub.com). While free satire weekly The Onion carries the mantle of Spy magazine, its serious arts and culture section - the A.V. Club - is a direct descendant of long-form 1960s-style journalism exemplified by Esquire and Playboy. While, yes, the A.V. does have a print incarnation, its online version offers expansive, career-spanning interviews with authors, filmmakers, actors - even video game creators. Better yet, smaller features like "Commentary Tracks of the Damned" (a breakdown of DVD commentaries from bombs like "The Wicker Man" remake) make the A.V. Club a must-read beyond the literate, compact reviews from writers such as Tasha Robinson, Scott Tobias and Nathan Rabin. It's the kind of place you can get lost, once you fall into the archive's search function.

Pitchfork Media (pitchforkmedia.com). In the same way MTV prompted a re-evaluation of the importance of radio, online music criticism has leapfrogged old print standbys when it comes time to find the next big thing in music. There is no better example of this shift in cultural weight than Pitchforkmedia.com. The Chicago-based site debuted in 1996 but has gained notoriety in the past few years as it's credited with being at least partly responsible for the success of several indie rock-acts, including The Arcade Fire, Broken Social Scene and Tapes 'n Tapes. Pitchfork Media even expanded its empire with a music festival for the past two years (Union Park, July 13-15). With daily news, album and concert reviews, interviews, and audio and video clips of brand new or unreleased songs, Pitchfork has become synonymous with being at the cutting edge of the music you can't find on the radio.

Slate.com: If it's opinion you like, they're still serving it up hot and fresh and fun at this well-known online mag, which pretends to be about politics but really is one of the best cultural mags around. Christopher Hitchens is always good for a chuckle, and arts critics such as Troy Patterson and Dana Stevens are a couple of scribbling scamps you just shouldn't miss. The writing at Slate.com is sharp and topical; the essays are short; and the Web presentation is dandy.

Contributing: Tim Bannon, Geoffrey Black, Beth Botts, Carmel Carrillo, Julie Deardorff, Wendy Donahue, Helen Eckinger, Robert K. Elder, Monica Eng, Doug George, Carol Mighton Haddix, Julia Keller, Dan Kricke, Charles Leroux, Lilah Lohr, Maria Mooshil, Emily Nunn, Kevin Pang, Patrick T. Reardon, Becky Schlikerman, Nara Schoenberg, Dimitry Tetin

Cheney Smackdown

Dick Cheney has claimed that his office is not subject to National Security Archives oversight of its handling of classified information because the vice president, as president of the Senate, is not part of the executive branch. Yet, to avoid public scrutiny of his meetings with energy industry leaders, Cheney declared that going public "would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch." Question 1: Does this contempt for the constitution violate Cheney's promise to uphold the same document?

Cheney apparently considers himself his own special branch of government, outside the requirements of democracy—and perversely, he may just have a point. The report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (more here) reveals that outsourcing of government responsibilities to private contractors is "the fastest growing component of federal discretionary spending." And Halliburton, the company Cheney once led and from which he continues to receive payment, has taken the lion's share of the growing business. Halliburton saw a six-fold increase in its income from government contracts under the VP—err, Senate President's watch. Question 2: Is this ethical?

So maybe the Dark Lord's ultimate agenda is simply personal greed. ThinkProgress points out that Cheney's stock options are worth more than 300 times more now than they were at the start of his second term. By contrast, the taxpayers have not profited from the arrangement. The House report concludes that 118 contracts—worth $745.5 billion—"experienced significant overcharges, wasteful spending, or mismanagement." Question 3: How is this not impeachable?

Blogger Hubris 2.0

I've enjoyed reading the insightful blogger responses to Mother Jones' "Fight Different" package on internet politics. I've also enjoyed the less insightful ones. I was particularly entertained by this morning's post on Techpresident, which is (usually) a smart group blog on everything politics 2.0. Techprez blogger Alan Rosenblatt has decided today that the mainstream media is too obsessed with his ilk (if he's flattered, it doesn't show) and that they're failing to look more broadly at "how the web is playing an enormous role in all aspects of politics." Singled out for specific calumny is our very own bastion of old thinking:

[A]fter reading so much mainstream press coverage about Politics 2.0 lately (for example, in Mother Jones this month), one might conclude that the sun rises and sets only on blogs and the bloggers that write them. There is so much more to online campaigning that we do ourselves a great disservice when we narrow our focus too much on blogs.

Thank you, Alan, for helping me understand why blog discourse often reduces to phrases such as "fucking dumbass."

If Alan had actually read the package, he'd see one story on bloggers out of four main pieces and 27 published interviews with netizens, digerati and politicos. Here's what Alan says Mother Jones is missing, which, since he's too lazy to look for himself, I've conveniently linked to stories in the package that deal with each subject: "the web is playing an enormous role in all aspects of politics, including fundraising, volunteer organizing, message dissemination, and voter engagement through social networks and social media." That's brilliant, Alan. Thanks for letting us know.

The most interesting thing about the Techpresident post is how it illustrates the blogosphere as echo chamber. Some bloggers earn their soup by setting up the old media as a paper doll to be burned, which works fine as long as nobody reads the old media to see what they're actually saying and nobody in the old media reads the blogs and bothers to debunk them when they're wrong. Fortunately, I see some light at the end of the tunnel here. For one, Mother Jones has a blog (hi, Alan!) and we can tinkle on logos just like the Calvinists.

All of this is not to say that Techpresident is a lame blog. I'm glad that Techprez blogger Cfinnie linked to my interview with Howard Dean (thanks, Cfinnie!). Too bad Alan doesn't read his colleagues either.

PS: I want to include a link to the blog of Seth Finkelstein, who is quite well-informed about many of the same issues we are discussing here and in the blog post on Rosen. I highly suggest following the links he's pasted into the comments below, and in his post. Also see our post from Dan Schulman for discussion about gatekeepers.

Waste in Federal Contracts Now More Than $1 Trillion

Last year California Rep. Henry Waxman released an in-depth report on government-contract spending under the Bush Administration. It found that:

Between 2000 and 2005, federal procurement spending rose by over 80%.

No-bid and other contracts awarded without full and open competition increased by more than 100%.

Contract mismanagement led to rising waste, fraud, and abuse in federal contracting.

Today Waxman released this year's analysis, which shows that what was already bad has actually gotten much worse.

For the first time EVER the federal government has passed $400 billion threshold in contracts for the year.

More than half of this spending — more than $200 billion in new contracts — was awarded without full and open competition.

The total value of wasteful federal contracts now exceeds $1 trillion.

Get the full rundown, and have a look at specific contracts, here.

Louisiana to Make "Partial-Birth Abortion" a Crime

Yesterday a Louisiana House bill that would criminalize so-called partial-birth abortions passed 104-0. Never mind that there is no such thing as partial-birth abortion, it is still mentioned by name 18 times in the three-page bill. If passed, the law will allow the sentencing of doctors who perform abortions to up to 10 years of "hard labor" and a fine of up to $100,000 (which actually seems low; why not really go for broke and slam them with million-dollar fines?). The bill would also allow the mother, father, or maternal grandparents if the woman is underage to sue the doctor for damages.

The bill makes an exception for cases where a mother's life is threatened (but not for cases of rape and incest), which is often precisely when doctors use the technique, usually in later-term abortions, of removing a fetus from the uterus whole to avoid harm during extraction.

This is a ban on 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions without saying as much, but it also eliminates a type of procedure that could save a woman's life at any point in her pregnancy. Does it fly in the face of Roe? Sure, but such bills are du jour: Already, 31 states ban the procedure, and now Louisiana is upping the ante, ensuring that women in their recovering state will have to search far and wide to find an abortion doctor willing to help them.

June 26, 2007

Forget Politics 2.0, What About Pot 2.0?

At the risk of dating myself, back in 1988, when I was close to graduating from college, the average THC level in pot was 3.5 percent. And today? Well today the government says it's 8.5 percent, which is up from 7 percent in 2003. And if I scored some weed in Oregon, it's possible that I'd be buying pot that has a THC level of 33.12 percent. Clearly, as Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), scolds us, "we are not talking about the drug of the 1960s and 1970s— this is Pot 2.0."

Ah, the 2.0 meme. We at MoJo are guilty of of exploiting it ourselves. In this case, what do these numbers mean? To this Reason says:

As The Drug War Chronicle's Scott Morgan notes, this increase is a far cry from drug czar John Walters' 2002 claim that "the potency of available marijuana has not merely 'doubled,' but increased as much as 30 times"—a ratio that could not possibly hold true unless you were comparing the most potent marijuana money can buy to nonpsychoactive ditchweed.

Clearly, Nick Gillespe and his crew know their chronic. Invite us to some Reason parties! Extra points if we can party with Jack Shafer.

So different pot has different potencies. This has always been true, or I have read. But consider that the figures that NIDA quotes rely on research from the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Potency Project. As Gary Greenberg reported in MoJo back in 2005, NIDA grows pot at Ole Miss—a partnership that forms the only legal producer of marijuana in the U.S. (and an irony I'll leave to fellow fans of Terry Southern to mull over). Ole Miss bases this particular batch of research on "59,369 samples of cannabis, 1,225 hashish samples, and 443 hash oil samples" that have been confiscated since 1975.

(Wait just a minute, what about the aforementioned pot from the 60s and [half of] the 70s?)

But while 62K-odd samples of weed sounds like a lot and all, what of NIDA/Ole Miss' ability to assess potency? As Greenberg points out (in a piece on the affect a sprayable form of medical marijuana known as Sativex might have on both sides of the drug debate that is much more serious than this blog post), the anti-drug policies of the government have filtered down to Ole Miss' research, to the point where:

NIDA's brown, stems-and-seeds-laden, low-potency pot—what's known on the streets as "schwag"—cannot stack up against the dense green, aromatic, and powerful sinsemilla favored by most medical marijuana patients (and grown by Sativex producer GW). Doblin asked the University of Mississippi to grow the good stuff for him, but they refused, so he approached a botanist at the University of Massachusetts, who applied to the DEA to grow research-grade pot in a 200-square-foot room in the basement of a building in Amherst. This started a whole new kind of collegiate rivalry, the Rebels squaring off against the Minutemen over the quality of their pot. In a letter to the DEA, Mississippi's botanist—after pointing out that no one had ever officially complained about the "adequacy" of their product—trumpeted recently acquired "custom-manufactured deseeding equipment" and a new stock of seeds that had allowed Ole Miss to amass more than 50,000 joints' worth of a "special batch" of high-potency, smooth-smoking weed.Three and a half years after UMass kicked off the battle—and only after a judge ordered the feds to make their decision—the Rebels prevailed, its monopoly preserved when the DEA denied UMass the license necessary to grow pot legally.

Ya gots to love the fight for government grants. In any case, the feds have taken their potency data and used it to craft a film called "The Purple Brain" (purple being the 2.0 version of Maui wowie), which NORML is calling Reefer Madness 2.0.

As in so many things these days, one wishes for something approximating independent analysis. I don't trust the government's research on drugs; its hyperbole and scare tactics on pot in particular seemed design to defend status quos (border and prison policies) that worsen, not solve, larger societal problems at hand. Nor do I trust NORML et al, even, and perhaps especially, when, having gotten nowhere on legalization per se, they reframe the issue as a balm for the sick and dying. Allowing medical marijuana is a no-brainer in my book, but I just think it's a little unseemly when perfectly healthy pot-positive types hide behind AIDS and cancer patients.

The problem is that as long as the government forbids most independent marijuana studies—by limiting the ability to get the stuff legally—we're likely to remain buffeted by agendas, not guided by science.

But meanwhile, don't those confiscated samples of pot providing some kind of trend line seem fishy on its face? Any statisticians out there?

CIA's "Family Jewels"--All 702 Pages of Them

Poison pills, mafiosos, casinos, and Cuba—sound like the plot of a mobster flick? Nope. How about the elements of the CIA's plot to assassinate Fidel Castro that began in 1960? Shady dealings carried out by the U.S. intelligence agency surfaced decades ago through leaks and disclosures made to the Church Committee, but today we get the full 702-page story. With the declassification of the "family jewels"—an internal accounting done in the wake of Watergate to document a quarter century of nefarious activities that were "outside the legislative charter" of the CIA—comes the indisputable proof that CIA leadership oversaw years of murderous schemes, kidnapping, domestic spying, and human experimentation.

Last week, CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden called the release "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency." But it makes you wonder what the U.S. government will be releasing forty years from now. Probably then the revelations will be less like the Godfather and more like a creepy Orwellian thriller.

—Celia Perry