grist

rich on clinton on bosnia online

From Sunday's NYT:

The Clinton campaign’s cluelessness about the Web has been apparent from the start, and not just in its lagging fund-raising. Witness the canned Hillary Web “chats” and “Hillcasts,” the soupy Web contest to choose a campaign song (the winner, an Air Canada advertising jingle sung by Celine Dion, was quickly dumped), and the little-watched electronic national town-hall meeting on the eve of Super Tuesday. Web surfers have rejected these stunts as the old-school infomercials they so blatantly are.

Senator Obama, for all his campaign’s Internet prowess, made his own media mistake by not getting ahead of the inevitable emergence of commercially available Wright videos on both cable TV and the Web. But he got lucky. YouTube videos of a candidate in full tilt or full humiliation, we’re learning, can outdraw videos of a candidate’s fire-breathing pastor. Both the CBS News piece on Mrs. Clinton in Bosnia and the full video of Mr. Obama’s speech on race have drawn more views than the most popular clips of a raging Mr. Wright.

mistakes unmade - maybe

The Democrats finally found some backbone on spying and the House voted today to reject immunity for telecoms who colluded with the NSA and the president, and to add more restrictions onto the Bush illegal spying program. Here's Glenn Greenwald:

One Democrat after the next -- of all stripes -- delivered impassioned, defiant speeches in defense of the rule of law, oversight on presidential eavesdropping, and safeguards on government spying. They swatted away the GOP's fear-mongering claims with the dismissive contempt such tactics deserve, rejecting the principle that has predominated political debate in this country since 9/11: that the threat of the Terrorists means we must live under the rule of an omnipotent President and a dismantled constitutional framework.

It is possible that the House will ultimately end up capitulating to the President, but I have real doubts about whether that will happen. They have defied the standard GOP Terrorism-exploitation attacks for weeks, allowed the Protect America Act to expire (once the President refused to extend it), and now passed a very good bill even in the midst of intense GOP/media attacks. They did so as a result of a shrewd strategy and a willingness to frame and engage the debate aggressively. ... It's hard not to believe that there's not at least some significant sea change reflected by this.

And more from ACLU and NYT, including this resonant tidbit:

Republicans convinced Democratic leaders to convene a secret session of the House on Thursday evening to discuss classified intelligence related to the phone companies’ role in the N.S.A. program. Republicans said the session was critical to understand what role the companies had played, but Democrats accused their counterparts of political grandstanding. It was the first secret session since 1983, when the House met behind closed doors to consider funding for the contra rebels in Nicaragua.

I [heart] Gail Collins

From the NYT Op-Ed page:

The Spitzer scandal has completely undermined my confidence as a voter. You pull the lever for your feisty clean-up-the-government candidate with years and years of experience putting the bad guys in jail, and it turns out he’s into high-risk, high-priced hookups. Or, if we go back to the Rudy Giuliani era, he has a meltdown and calls a press conference to announce he’s divorcing his wife so he can marry his mistress.

No more electing prosecutors to high office, people. Too high strung.

How can you guarantee that a candidate isn’t going to go all weird on you 14 months into the job? It’s not that we expect perfection, or even good performance. ...

However, although Spitzer has been in New York politics for years and years, I never ever heard a single person say, “What if it turns out he’s paying for $1,000-an-hour call girls with wire transfers — you know, like the ones he used as evidence when he was attorney general?”

"status update"

I did a quick analysis of who was who among my Facebook friends. Here's what I found:

with all due respect ...

"If anyone should be suggesting vice presidential candidates, it should be him, Obama said.

"'With all due respect. I won twice as many states as Sen. Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Sen. Clinton. I have more delegates than Sen. Clinton. So, I don't know how somebody who's in second place is offering vice presidency to the person who's in first place,' he said.

"Obama also said the Clinton campaign was 'hoodwinking' voters when it suggested he was not ready to be president while also floating the possibility of a joint Clinton-Obama ticket.

'I don't understand,' he said. 'If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?'"

More from CNN ... | Video of it ...

UPDATE: The NYC tabs do a nice job sometimes, but there's no one like the Brits for snappy headlines, e.g., Obama spurns double ticket hints, from the Beeb.

orange you glad you hired an entertainment liaison?

Allison continues to thrive, getting Oscar ink in industry rag The Washington Post for the ACLU's red carpet success as nominees Julie Christie and Alex Gibney wore orange "Close Guantánamo" ribbons.

AND IT SHOULD BE ADDED: ... that the triple-threatening media, activism, webby Jenny Egan is the brains behind most of the Close Guantánamo campaign.