The Right’s Latest Derangement

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One of the things that I’m simultaneously impressed and repelled by is the right’s ability to invent bizarre new smears where ordinary people would see no potential at all. How do they do it? The latest example comes from John McCormack at the Weekly Standard, whose headline blares:

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?

Where does this come from? It turns out that Obama has nominated University of Utah law professor Scott Matheson to a judgeship on the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Matheson is the brother of a congressman, Jim Matheson, who will be voting on healthcare reform in a couple of weeks. “The timing of this nomination looks suspicious,” McCormack says darkly. The acerbic Jon Chait, after noting Scott’s stellar qualifications, comments:

McCormack, before proceeding to speculate that the nomination is intended to pay off his brother, does concede, “Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge.” Come on, let’s not be so naive here. Sure, he’s a Stanford alum, Rhodes scholar, Yale Law School graduate, Harvard profesor, U.S. Attorney, and law school dean. Maybe that makes him “qualified” by the rock-bottom standards of this administration, even if he’s no Harriet Miers.

The real problem here, I think, is that McCormack isn’t really cut out for this kind of thing. This is Glenn Beck material, as he demonstrates so eloquently in his response to the news about Matheson: “Can I tell you something. How many times does someone from Utah need to be the linchpin that almost destroys the Republic?”

Now that’s the ticket! Forget about healthcare and pivot immediately into some grand conspiracy theory about the role of Utah in the destruction of the Republic. Beck is even a Mormon, but he doesn’t let that stop him. That’s what we all admire about the guy.

Anyway, terrific stuff. Enjoy it while you can, because tomorrow it will be something new.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

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