A few things caught my eye as I was heading out the door...

TNC:

Conservatives pride themselves on their skepticism, and generally dismiss liberals as soft-headed Utopians. But in so many ways, political conservatism is Utopianism for the powerful. It isn't broadly skeptical of human nature, so much as it's broadly skeptical of people its agents don't particularly like. Hence the sense that Americans are intrinsically "good people," that this country "is the best nation that ever existed in history," that the South is home to "the greatest people that have ever trod the earth," and that the murder of four little girls in Birmingham was the work of a "Communist" or "crazed Negro," which had "set back the cause of white people."

Hence the notion that those voting against gay marriage, are not actually, in the main, motivated by bigotry, but a belief in tradition and family. But very few people would actually ever describe themselves as bigots. We think we know so much about ourselves. This is a country--like many countries--which is deeply riven by ethnic bias, and gender discrimination. And yet we don't seem to know any of the agents of that discrimination.

John Cole:

So, to review, the wingnuts took a seat that would have been a win for the Republicans, so much so that the seat had not gone to a Democrat since Reconstruction and the Democratic candidates had been getting about 35% of the vote the last few elections, ran the Republican out of the race, brought their own special kind of crazy to town, and the voters rejected them handily.

Even I didn’t expect Owens to win. I seriously hope they pursue this strategy nationwide.

In other news, a Goldman employee has finally lost a job, with Corzine out in NJ. I know nothing about the election there, nor the one in Virginia, but I do know that Terry McAuliffe is not Governor. That is a good thing.

The only really bad thing is the repeal of the gay marriage law in Maine. Other than that, I’d be hard pressed to draw any conclusions from yesterday other than that Sarah Palin is still a loser. I’m sure that won’t stop the right-wing hacks from claiming this has been a bad result for Obama, but let’s face it- everything is good news for Republicans.

RNC Chair Michael Steele:

"You're Not Gonna Spoil My Juice Right Now. You're not gonna take this high away from me."

Brian Beutler:

Most of the commentary about last night's elections has centered around Republican pickups in the New Jersey and Virginia statehouses. But what's gone largely unnoticed is that the two congressional seats up for grabs last night both went to Democrats, and that will have immediate ramifications for health care reform.

The NY-23 seat abdicated by Republican John McHugh (who resigned to become Secretary of the Army) went to Democrat Bill Owens--the first Democrat to hold the seat in over a century. And the CA-10 seat abdicated by Democrat Ellen Tauscher (who resigned to become Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs) went to Democrat John Garamendi.

That creates some simple arithmetic. Yesterday, Democrats had 256 voting members in the House. By week's end, they'll have 258.

Michel Steele again:

The GOP renaissance has begun.

Steve Benen:

New York has 29 congressional districts. As of today, the state is represented by 27 Democrats. As recently as a few years ago, Dems had "only" 21 seats from New York.

What's more, New England, made up of six states, has 22 congressional districts. Currently, the region is represented by 22 Democrats.

So, north of the Pennsylvania border, there 51 congressional districts representing 34 million people. Republicans have a whopping two seats.

John Cole:

Could Chuck Todd explain to me how many votes in Congress for health care reform Chris Christie and McDonnell have? Our media is just hopeless.

Kevin Drum:

I understand that everyone wants to spin yesterday's election results in the best possible light for their side, but the sheer volume of yak is astonishing. Was there this much postgame analysis after the off-off-year elections in 2005 or 2007? I don't remember it, but maybe I'm just forgetful these days.

In any case, jeez, can we all get a grip? Democrats lost races in two states. That's a bummer for them, but hardly a referendum on the future of the party. Republicans lost one House seat after a stupid primary squawl. That's a bummer for them, but hardly a referendum on the future of conservatism. Everyone needs to turn down the dial before this election becomes the balloon boy of politics.

Steve Benen:

The Washington Post published a lengthy analysis of political independents in July 2007, based on a survey conducted by the Post in collaboration with the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. The result was a pretty straightforward reminder: there's an enormous amount of political diversity among independents.

Strategists and the media variously describe independents as "swing voters," "moderates" or "centrists" who populate a sometimes-undefined middle of the political spectrum. That is true for some independents, but the survey revealed a significant range in the attitudes and the behavior of Americans who adopt the label. [...]

The survey data established five categories of independents: closet partisans on the left and right; ticket-splitters in the middle; those disillusioned with the system but still active politically; ideological straddlers whose positions on issues draw from both left and right; and a final group whose members are mostly disengaged from politics.

Appealing to "independents" is inherently tricky if "independents" don't even agree with one another.

There. Now you know what I think.

So let me get this straight: attending a ceremony at Dover Air Force Base to honor the fallen is "narcissistic," but landing a jet on an aircraft carrier while dressed in a flight suit to proclaim a war that has only just begun over is the height of patriotism?

So this is narcissistic:

And this is patriotic:

Good to know.

For the past week or so, I've been unable to figure out what to write about the special election being held in NY-23. But the news that the Republican Party's candidate, Dede Scozzafava, has dropped out to make way for the Conservative Party candidate, Doug Hoffman, has fixed that.

The district should be a safe seat for the GOP. The party's nominee, Scozzafava, is actually to the right of the median member of her party in the NY State Assembly. Hoffman, meanwhile, doesn't even live in the district. And his party is mostly a joke. Here, for example, is the entirety of their position on NATO, one of the 20 major issues listed in their drop-down menu:

"NATO must redefine its mission or we should deem it an institution that outlived its usefulness."

But once a weird collection of national conservative activists got involved, Scozzafava's campaign tanked and Hoffman's took off. And the result? The GOP is now rallying behind the Conservative Party candidate.

Looking back over the entirely of American history, there are plenty of examples of a strong majority party co-opting the ideas, ideals, and language of a small third party that posed a threat to its coalition. But its hard to find an example where a party that had recently badly lost a series of national elections found their way back to the majority by embracing the candidates and ideologies of a fringe third party. In fact, so far as I know, there aren't any examples of that. And my guess is, this won't be the first.

The point of a political party is to build an organization that can bring together a diverse coalition of peoples and groups to win elections, at the state, local, and national levels. You don't do that by having out of state activists overrule the decisions of leaders at the local level. You can try it if you like, but in the end you'll discover I'm right. It won't work.

UPDATE: Well, okay then. Apparently Newt Gingrich agrees with everything I just said.

UPDATE II: And then Scozzafava endorsed the Democrat Bill Owens. Here's her statement:

"You know me, and throughout my career, I have been always been an independent voice for the people I represent. I have stood for our honest principles, and a truthful discussion of the issues, even when it cost me personally and politically. Since beginning my campaign, I have told you that this election is not about me; it's about the people of this District.

"It is in this spirit that I am writing to let you know I am supporting Bill Owens for Congress and urge you to do the same.

"It's not in the cards for me to be your representative, but I strongly believe Bill is the only candidate who can build upon John McHugh's lasting legacy in the U.S. Congress. John and I worked together on the expansion of Fort Drum and I know how important that base is to the economy of this region. I am confident that Bill will be able to provide the leadership and continuity of support to Drum Country just as John did during his tenure in Congress.

"In Bill Owens, I see a sense of duty and integrity that will guide him beyond political partisanship. He will be an independent voice devoted to doing what is right for New York. Bill understands this district and its people, and when he represents us in Congress he will put our interests first.

"Please join me in voting for Bill Owens on Tuesday. To address the tough challenges ahead, we must rise above partisanship and politics and work together. There's too much at stake in this election to do otherwise."

This is exactly, precisely why the party purification strategy that hard core conservatives are pursuing will drive their party further into the minority. You cannot grow if you insist on purging anyone at the margin of your party that's closest to the center.

And while I'm updating... several of you wrote me to ask how this is different from the strategy the Netroots pursued from 2004-2008. One or two even suggested that I'm being hypocritical. But no, I'm not.

The Netroots pursued a "more Democrats, better Democrats" strategy, which meant that you first expand the size of the party by welcoming in people at the rightward edge of the coalition, then you improve your candidates by nominating people who better represent the party's core values. Or in terms of voters, first you convince them to vote with your party, then you convince them to vote with you on the issues.

Conservatives have inverted this, and are instead pursuing a "better conservatives, more conservatives" strategy, and that won't grow their party back into the majority.

This is one of the best illustrations of how the "some people are saying" phenomenon works in our modern broadcast media system. I've always maintained that those mythical "some people" are nothing more than a combination of their colleagues and other media personalities. I never expected I'd get such a perfect illustration of that fact, produced by the Daily Show no less!

“I feel relevant.”

That quote comes from Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who in three words has perfectly captured the absurdity of his approach to representing his constituents.

Hey Joe? It's not about you. It's about them.

Good to know that CT is still a Federalist stronghold, even after all these years.

UPDATE: This from Lieberman a few days ago is also worth highlighting:

There’s a hard core of partisan, passionate, hardcore Republicans. There’s a hard core of partisan Democrats on the other side. And in between is the larger group, which is people who really want to see the right thing done, or want something good done for this country and them — and that means, sometimes, the better choice is somebody who’s not a Democrat.

The first quote perfectly captures Lieberman's neo-federalism. This one perfectly captures Village Politics. Partisans, according to the good Senator, don't "want to see the right thing done" and don't "want something good done for this country." They must be ignored! But the mass of people in the middle! They are virtuous! And wise! And intelligent! Just like Joe.

If I didn't dislike the state so much, I'd consider moving there in 2012 just to help the candidate nominated by the Democratic Party knock this pompous ass out of the Senate.

In my "playing catch up" post earlier tonight, I wrote the following:

if only 20% of Americans consider themselves Republicans, but nearly double that number self-identify as "conservative," what does this mean? Most likely, it means that some people are so conservative that they don't feel at home in the GOP, some are conservative Democrats, and some don't know what they are talking about. More importantly, it means that you should ignore these "liberal vs. conservative polls" and focus only on the ones measuring party ID. After all, its party ID that's important come Election Day. And ideology? That's only important in discussion section.

As if on cue, here's a poll from Pew measuring how people perceive the various news networks. The key finding:

14% of people think FoxNews is "mostly liberal," and 24% think Fox has no ideology.

Now do you believe that these polls don't measure anything meaningful?

I have so many posts saved that its almost overwhelming. While I watch baseball, time to play catch up....

+ Another in a series of "this is why we voted for Obama" moments. Kevin Drum:

It's a testament to the difficulty of healthcare reform and the power of the healthcare lobby that it's able to make reform of Pentagon procurement look almost easy by comparison. But that's how it's turned out: at the same time that President Obama's healthcare reform has been fighting through the congressional underbrush one painful subparagraph at a time, his defense cuts have practically sailed through. Remarkably enough, he's succeeded almost completely in cutting back the weapons platforms he targeted earlier this year, and he's succeeded so quietly that I'd pretty much forgotten it was even happening. But it did, and the defense appropriations bill Obama signed yesterday included nearly all the cuts he had asked for...

+ This, however, is not why we voted for him. To be honest, there still is not enough public pressure to make this happen. And without public pressure, it won't happen. Which would be sad, except: that's how our system is supposed to work!

+ I don't care who Obama plays basketball with. Wait no, I do... I want him to play basketball with whomever he wants to play basketball with. He's a guy, so like all guys, I suspect it he will play with other guys. Why anyone would see this as a problem is beyond me. Oh, wait... The only people who see it as a problem are people in the media who are looking for a good controversy that will "drive the conservation" for a day or two.

+ I might have mentioned this before, but I had absolutely no idea that Glenn Beck's last book is supposedly inspired by Thomas Paine. And I say "supposedly," because there is absolutely no way that Beck would say such a thing if he had actually ever read Thomas Paine. Take, for example, his pamphlet on Agrarian Justice, which is really just an extended riff on one of the many subjects he covered in Rights of Man. It's an argument for a redistribution of wealth from landowners to the rest of society for, in his words "for the loss of his or her natural inheritance." As in, its an argument that we would today describe as "socialist." So... either Glenn Beck is a socialist, or he hasn't read the works that he claims directly inspire his arguments beliefs.

+ Speaking of strange conservative arguments, check out this bit of analysis from the Democracy Corps study of the conservative movement:

A central part of the collective identity built by conservative Republicans in the current political environment is their belief that they possess knowledge and insight that the majority of Americans – whether too lazy or too misguided to find it for themselves – do not possess. A combination of conservative media outlets are the means by which they have gained this knowledge, led by FOX News (“the truth tellers“), and to a lesser degree conservative talk radio. Their antipathy and distrust toward the mainstream media could not be stronger, and they fiercely defend FOX as the only truly objective news outlet.

This is how many movements work late in life. They become so insulated, and so self-referential, that they become convinced that they and only they know the truth about the world around them. So long as the movement retains majority support, this isn't much of a problem. But once they fall back to minority status - as all movements inevitably do - this obviously becomes an enormous problem.

This time around, this particular movement faces a very unique problem. Fox News, their "truth tellers," have absolutely no interest in actually telling the truth. Their interest is in ratings, and in affecting the 24-hour, short term news cycle. Top-down broadcast media do not and cannot do long term party building. And that, I suspect, is creating a feedback loop that is driving both the network and its politically active viewers further and further from the center of American politics. The more extreme the view, the more attention it gets and the more polarized Fox viewers become. What breaks the cycle? Honestly, I have no idea. Yet. But give me some time. That's one of the things I'm working on.

+ Former Pres. Clinton was in VA recently on behalf of the Deeds campaign, and he offered up a great explanation of the meaning pre-election polls:

...polls are both accurate and they're not."

"So are the polls right?" he told the audience gathered in McLean. "The answer is yes, no and maybe."

"Yes, the polls are an accurate measurement of the voter groups that they talk to in proportion to each other," Clinton said. "The no answer is, that's not a profile of the people who voted in the primary...or in the general election in 2008."

"The maybe is you," he told the crowd. "The maybe is what you do in the next two weeks, and whether you're prepared to step into the breach."

+ Speaking of polls... if only 20% of Americans consider themselves Republicans, but nearly double that number self-identify as "conservative," what does this mean? Most likely, it means that some people are so conservative that they don't feel at home in the GOP, some are conservative Democrats, and some don't know what they are talking about. More importantly, it means that you should ignore these "liberal vs. conservative polls" and focus only on the ones measuring party ID. After all, its party ID that's important come Election Day. And ideology? That's only important in discussion section.

+ Andrew Sullivan's take on the blackness of America is a must read. As is TNC's short response.

+ You know how I'm always railing on about the natural irrationality of human behavior? Here's a great bit of evidence backing my view. It's not just humans. It's monkeys too. Which, assuming you aren't one of those people who wants to
"teach the controversy," shows that our behavioral biases might just predate out humanness. They are old. They are deep. And they are something we will never be able to overcome.

+ While I'm standing on my favorite soap boxes... Data show that the strength of the economy when you graduate from college has an impact on your wages more than 15 years later. The stronger the economy, the more money you can and will make a decade and a half later. You know what that means, kids... we aren't in this alone. We rise and fall together, no matter how fantastic our individual talents are. We are the community, and the community is us.

+ This might be my favorite quote from the entire debate over health insurance reform:

The political beauty of the public option opt-out, in a nutshell: the red states will throw a tantrum & hold their breath -- until they turn blue.

+ If this is true, its incredibly depressing. Short version from Kottke:

JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs made $6.8 billion in profit last quarter. Basically they borrowed money from the US Govt at 0% and then bought bonds from the US Govt that paid 2-3%.

+ If you haven't seen this, you need to stop and watch it. Its four minutes you'll never forget. Its also while I will always and forever believe in "we, the people" - and by we, I mean all of the people:

+ Last but not least. Its fucking fall, bitches:

I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get my hands on some fucking gourds and arrange them in a horn-shaped basket on my dining room table. That shit is going to look so seasonal. I'm about to head up to the attic right now to find that wicker fucker, dust it off, and jam it with an insanely ornate assortment of shellacked vegetables. When my guests come over it's gonna be like, BLAMMO! Check out my shellacked decorative vegetables, assholes. Guess what season it is—fucking fall. There's a nip in the air and my house is full of mutant fucking squash.

If MSNBC is conservative all morning (3 horus of Morning Joe), and liberal all night (Keith, Rachel, Ed), how is it "liberal" in the same way Fox is "conservative"?" Did I miss the announcement where Fox added a truly liberal AM host?

Oh, right....

All of this "teh media is biased" stuff is just stupid. Until the day comes when Skynet runs our media system, it will always be biased. The question isn't if, it's how. For god's sake, even the norms of objectivity are a form of bias, given that they require reporters to fit stories into preconceived templates.

Is Fox biased? Of course. Its run by Roger Ailes.

Is MSNBC biased? Of course, its run by GE.

Is the Washington Post biased? Of course, it, like POlitico, is run by people who believe it is their job to cover official Washington as it wants to be covered.

I could go on, but I hope you get the point.

Like me, the New Yorker's Steve Coll is a life long Redskins fan. Like me, he has had enough:

My grandfather had four season tickets; he had purchased them just after the Second World War. My father had two season tickets. He was a lawyer who handled ABC Television; when the Redskins played on Monday nights, at home, I would tag along with him to pre-game cocktail parties and allow myself to be patted on the head by Howard Cosell. To say that I became a Redskins fan as a boy would be incomplete.

I attended the team’s three winning Super Bowls. The last one, in 1992, required me to fly to Minneapolis from New Delhi, where I was then posted as a correspondent. I might have considered myself an extremist if I had not understood my case of Redskins-dom, empirically, to be somewhere near the median.

I attended the final game played by the Redskins at R.F.K. Stadium, in 1996. Afterward, I climbed over railing onto the field, pulled up several chunks of turf, stuffed them into my pants, and walked nonchalantly, alongside other looters, towards the exits. At the time, I held a position of responsibility at the Washington Post. I feared that I might be arrested and embarrass my employer, and yet I walked on. Some days later I carried the turf to a cemetery in Northeast Washington and planted it beside my grandfather’s headstone.

Tonight, the Redskins will play the Philadelphia Eagles at home on national television. If you tune in, you will undoubtedly hear the commentators speak at length about the crisis that now surrounds the team. The owner, Daniel Snyder, is widely reviled in Washington, and for good reason. He meddles, bullies, and trusts his own football judgment too much. John Kent Cooke, who ran the team before Snyder purchased it about a decade ago, remarked recently that Snyder had “destroyed the franchise.” Fans did not generally receive this comment as hyperbole. The issue is not the team’s performance on the field, dismal as that is. It is the culture created by the owner—one of greed, expediency, and mean-spiritedness. The general atmosphere around the team suggests Zimbabwe—a failed state, an intractable dictator, and an impotent and suffering populace.

Three years ago, I got news that after more than a decade on waiting, my name had finally cleared the season tickets wait list. Despite the fact that I live in Boston, I bought the tickets. I figured it would cost me, but worst case scenario I would be able to sell the tickets I couldn't use on StubHub. Last season, one game didn't sell. This season, so far two. Worse, I couldn't even give the tickets away.

I don't blame the players. I don't blame the coaches. I blame the owner and the GM. We've desperately needed a new O-Line for years. But they draft wide receivers. I have no idea if those wideouts are any good, of course, because our quarterbacks never have time to throw the ball.

I wish their was a way to fire the owner. But there isn't.

Hey Dan Snyder: are you happy? You have totally destroyed one of the proudest franchises in all of professional sports. Nice work. But hey: at least when you die, you will be remember. Remembered as the mad who destroyed one of the few institutions in DC that brought the entire city together. Well done, sire. Well done.

Via Kottke, Christopher Hitchens on his travels around the world debating religious believers::

I haven't yet run into an argument that has made me want to change my mind. After all, a believing religious person, however brilliant or however good in debate, is compelled to stick fairly closely to a "script" that is known in advance, and known to me, too. However, I have discovered that the so-called Christian right is much less monolithic, and very much more polite and hospitable, than I would once have thought, or than most liberals believe.

Next up, Hitchens travels the world debating liberals, only to discover that they too are "much less monolithic" than he "once would have thought."

I've been hammering this point for nearly a year now, but after having spent the better part of the last month reading about the election of 1800 and its aftermath - I'm embarrassed to admit I had no idea why Jefferson considered it to be the revolution that saved The Revolution - I think I have a new, much more concise way of getting to my point.

In times of intense partisanship, bipartisan outreach does two things. First, it clearly identifies which members of the other party you can work with by drawing them closer to you. Second, it clearly identifies which members of the other party are beyond your reach, pushing them further away from you. If done properly, these two outcomes are likely to realign the parties along new lines, increasing the size of your majority while driving your opponents further away from the political center.

Ezra Klein sees it:

...one or two crossover Republicans may not make a bill look bipartisan, but they probably make the rest of the Republicans look partisan. And for the purposes of congressional Democrats, that may be almost as good, or even better.The only thing worse for Democrats than Republican opposition is popular Republican opposition.

So does his friend Matt Yglesias:

You can think of the aftermath of the stimulus vote. Securing the votes of three moderate Republicans didn’t lead anyone to characterize the bill as a bipartisan endeavor. Instead, it simply served to delegitimize the “real Republican” credentials of the three Republicans who voted for it.

That is the point of bipartisanship. To simultaneously pull friendly politicians into your orbit while delegitimizing the rest. Jefferson did it in 1800, so much so that the Federalist Party had entirely disappeared within a decade or two. Whether Obama knows it or not, he's pursuing a strikingly similar strategy in 2008.

Will it work? We won't know until 2012. Until then, remember this: Ronald Reagan and his party were deeply unpopular heading into the 1982 midterms. And then, all of a sudden, it was morning again in America.

Ignore the polls. Ignore the chatter on cable TV. Focus on the work that needs to be done to make sure that dawn comes.

This story form the Watertown Daily Times, via TPM, is pretty hilarious:

A flustered and ill-at-ease Mr. Hoffman objected to the heated questioning, saying he should have been provided a list of questions he might be asked. He was, if he had taken the time to read the Thursday morning Times editorial raising the very same questions.

Coming to Mr. Hoffman's defense, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, who accompanied the candidate on a campaign swing, dismissed regional concerns as "parochial" issues that would not determine the outcome of the election. On the contrary, it is just such parochial issues that we expect our representative to understand and be knowledgeable about, if he wants to be our voice in Washington.

Hoffman is the Conservative Party candidate that all of the conservative die-hards are supporting instead of the so-called moderate that their actual Republican Party has nominated in the three-way NY-23 special election.

You gotta love it when the small government, states' rights people are attacking questions about local politics as parochial, regional, and therefore unimportant. That's brilliant.

Via Sullivan, Jonah Lehrer:

Our brain has been designed to believe itself, wired so that our prejudices feel like facts, our opinions indistinguishable from the actual sensation. If we think a wine is cheap, it will taste cheap.

And of course it's not just true with wine! That same phenomenon explain why, among other things: expensive pharmaceuticals often produce results no better than cheap placebos; Rush Limbaugh can use a spoof to confirm what he already "knows" about Obama; and conservative economic theory's description of human beings as rational utility maximizers has been so predictably and disastrously wrong.

Eventually science and economics will come to understand that perception doesn't just influence reality, it creates it. And when science does, it is going to look back and laugh at the silly theories that people accepted as fact during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. New modes of inquiry such as behavioral economics and network science are the leading edge of a massive rethink of our understanding of the way the animals we call human beings work.

We aren't robots. We don't do cost-benefit analysis in our heads. And even when we do our best to think rationally, our bodies are wired in ways that bias our calculations. Because no matter how hard we try, we can never "overcome" our emotions. But why should we? They are part of what makes human beings so beautifully complex. To explain them away as some sort of utility function is to miss the entire point of what it means to be alive.

VP Biden, via the NYT:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had a blunt response on Friday to the latest broadsides from former Vice President Dick Cheney: “Who cares?”

In the latest exchange between old and new administrations, Mr. Biden rebuffed his predecessor’s criticism about President Obama’s handling of Afghanistan as “absolutely wrong.” And Mr. Biden rejected the last review of the war conducted by the White House under former President George W. Bush and Mr. Cheney as “irrelevant.”

The dismissive reply, which came at the end of Mr. Biden’s three-day swing through Eastern Europe during an interview with reporters traveling with him, underscored the weariness in the current White House with Mr. Cheney’s periodic assaults. At the same time, advisers to Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden consider the former vice president a useful public foil and have not shied away from escalating the debate by taking him on directly.

I suppose "weariness" is one way to describe it. Another would be "accuracy." Cheney doesn't matter. He was VP, now he isn't. He'll never serve elected office again, in part because while he was in office, he got everything wrong. So seriously: who the hell cares what he thinks? He's Mr. Irrelevant. And if members of the "liberal media" - you know, the ones who are rallying to the defense of their "sister" "news" organization, FoxNews? - didn't cover him, it would be like he didn't even exist anymore. Which, as far as I and the Obama Administration are concerned, he doesn't.

Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor reports on the benefits of an open-camera concert policy:

During the 2008 Lights In The Sky tour we began an open camera policy for stills and video during all NIN shows, inviting fans to capture the events with anything from a cell phone to a hi-def video camera. The results have been overwhelming, filling our own galleries with thousands of images and videos from every show, and inspiring a number of ambitious fansourced video projects within the NIN community. Some of those projects are starting to surface now, and we couldn't be happier with the way the fans have organized themselves and created some truly impressive work.

On the recent Wave Goodbye tour, we were unable to professionally film the band's performance of The Downward Spiral at Webster Hall, due to exorbitant fees requested by the LiveNation venue. Our open camera policy, however, remained in tact, and as soon as the show ended fans took matters into their own hands, organizing online to track down everyone who had filmed HD footage of the show. Now, only two months later, the group has released a polished, edited, downloadable DVD of the full Downward Spiral performance from Webster Hall. The entire thing has been recorded, edited, and distributed entirely by fans, and it's the latest example of the amazing things fans will do when their creativity isn't limited by outdated, misguided restrictions.

You can watch "The Downward Spiral: Live" in HD on this YouTube playlist. You can download it via torrent as a burnable DVD or an iPod/iPhone-friendly video from this page (click the question mark link on that page if you're new to downloading with torrents).

We filmed all of the other final Wave Goodbye shows professionally, and you can expect to see that footage surface in some form or another in the future. In the meantime, we appreciate the efforts of The NIN Hotline, This One Is On Us, and everyone else who helped to immortalize the Webster Hall performance.

"Fans took matters into their own hands." Which, as all good musicians know, is where the power has always been. Us musicians, we are nothing without our fans. Sure thing, we could play to an empty room, but why would we want to?

What you see here in this example is just the leading edge of a massive shift in the way information and entertainment is produced. We can all be creators now. Broadcasting is the way of the 20th century world. Top down delivery is dying. In its place, the Great Conversation is being born.

Goodbye Lippmann, hello Dewey. Goodbye Federalists, hello Jeffersonians. We, the people, are finally moving back into the center of public life. Welcome!

WaPo:

When the first Bush administration banned the media from covering the arrival of the fallen at Dover Air Force Base during the Persian Gulf War nearly 20 years ago, the stated reason was to protect the families' privacy.

But in the six months since the controversial ban was lifted, and 258 families were allowed to choose whether they wanted the press present, 60 percent said yes, according to the military.

In August, the Pentagon quietly amended the policy so that families were given a third option for coverage. Now they can have military camera crews cover the short, solemn ceremony at Dover, known as a dignified transfer, while still barring professional news reporters. An additional 15 percent of families have chosen this option, meaning that about 75 percent of all arrivals of the country's war dead are covered in some fashion.

But just because families consent to coverage doesn't mean news organizations are always interested. After First Amendment advocates fought for the right to document the arrival of the flag-draped metal caskets, dubbed "transfer cases" by the military, there are often just a handful of journalists on hand. More than a third of all ceremonies open to the media during the first six months were covered by a single outlet: the Associated Press.

Meanwhile, the military, which had feared from the beginning that families who said yes to media coverage would be disappointed by the turnout, has provided its own crews to cover those events approved by the family and posts the images on the Web. As a result, the Defense Department has become one of the main distributors of the images of the fallen.

It's a development that troubles free-speech advocates who think the press, not the military, should ultimately capture the images the public sees.

First of all, I told you so. From the earliest days of the Bush Administration's absurd policy, I had argued that it was an insult to families and to the fallen that photojournalists weren't allowed to cover the ceremony at Dover. I often got blasted for it by conservatives via email, who in almost every instance made the neo-federalist argument that elites, not the people, should be able to decide what's best for the people. All I ever wanted was for the government - our government - to give people the choice of how they would like the vent covered. I'm not surprised that a majority want the event open to the media, but in the end that's not what is important. All that matters is that the families are not restricted from making their own choice.

Second, I don't understand why it is considered a problem by some that only the AP, or "worse," only the DoD, is covering the event. The AP provides service to more than 1,700 papers. A world where each of those papers had to send their own photographer would not be a better world. As for the DoD, so long as they make the photos available to everyone, I don't see what the problem is. In fact, if they put the photos into the public domain through a publicly accessibly database, everyone wins. Unlike the AP, which maintains copyright over their photos, the DoD photos should belong to the public. The same public that these brave men and women died fighting to defend.