There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

The good half of the blogosphere appears, unfortunately, to have lost its senses over this post. Many bloggers I like and read regularly have mischaracterized this, not out of malice, but because they expect the worst from Obama (and really, who could blame them) and read the post through that prism. Some examples:

• Carol’s Closet calls it the “Obama Administration’s ‘Rat Out Your Neighbor Program.’”
• Michelle Malkin calls the initiative the “Internet Snitch Brigade.”
• Gateway Pundit called it the “Marxist Snitch Brigade.”
• Dan Collins wrote that “the White House has put out a call for narc minions to let them know about you, should you let it drop, even in casual conversation, that you oppose Nationalized Health Care.”
• Donald Douglas calls it “creepy.”
• Jeff Emanuel at RedState put a flashing emergency light at the top of his post labeling the white house.gov post a “call for informants” and exclaiming that “If you see anybody publicly opposing President Obama’s plan to implement a government-centric overhaul of the health care system, the White House wants you to report that person (or persons) ASAP.”
• Pundette called the whitehouse.gov post “truly astonishing“
• Even The Corner got it wrong, saying that the post was “asking people to rat out anyone expressing an opinion that the White House would classify as ‘fishy.’

And on and on and on and on. I like you guys, but you’re all wrong. The White house’s post says nothing about reporting your neighbors and everything about reporting what arguments are being made against the health care proposal. This is nothing more than the administration looking for help in what arguments may be circulating against its policies so that it can react to those arguments. (Why the administration of a president so touted for his organizational internet savvy needs help is another question.) UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh puts it quite correctly, I think:

In this instance, it strikes me that the terms “snitch” and “rat” are entirely misplaced (even allowing for some facetiousness on the poster’s part), as is the criticism of the government. The Administration is trying to promote a particular political agenda. They are naturally and reasonably interested in hearing what the arguments against it are, and doubtless sincerely believe that many of the arguments may be unsound or even factually false. They want to rebut such arguments, but they can’t do so promptly unless they hear about it promptly.

There’s nothing totalitarian about asking supporters to gather this information. And there’s nothing morally contemptible (as the terms “snitch” and “rat” suggest) in passing along this information, if you genuinely think that the information is misleading.

JammieWearingFool started out hysterical, then quoted the Volokh piece, but  he either missed the point or was writing tongue in cheek when he wrote that Professor Volokh “seems to believe I’m [JWF] about to be carted off by the Stormtroopers.” What Volokh wrote was:

Now of course if you think that the Administration would prosecute your friend for e-mailing you supposed “disinformation about health insurance reform,” then indeed you shouldn’t help the Administration do it. But, seriously, is that really likely?

I don’t see how JWF got that turned around.

Anyway, what is far more disturbing to me than the administrations “fishy” list — besides the obvious “what if Bush had done it?” double standard — is that the White house automatically classifies counterarguments as “disinformation” while it spews shit like an open sewer pipe. Which brings me back to The Corner, which redeems its hysteria earlier in its post with what I think is the best suggestion to come out of this mess:

The White House asked for a truth squad, so it seems to me that conservatives should submit any “fishy” statements from administration officials to flag@whitehouse.gov. But don’t expect any retractions anytime soon.

Just right!

UPDATE (8/7/09): Donald Douglas of American Power doubles down in a response to Washington Monthly’s Steve Bennen. First, Bennen:

It’s a shame yet another conspiracy theory reached the White House briefing room. ABC News’ Jake Tapper reports this afternoon:

Asked about Cornyn’s letter on Thursday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, “nobody is collecting names.”

The blog and tips email was because, Gibbs said, “we have seen, and as I’ve discussed from this podium, a lot of misinformation around health care reform. Some of it I think spread purposely. We have used on many occasions the Web site to debunk things that are simply not true. We ask people if they have questions about health care reform and about what they’re hearing about its affects on them, to let us know and we’d provide them information to show that that wasn’t true.”

Continued Gibbs: “but nobody is collecting names.”

Well, no, of course not. The very idea that the White House would be “collecting names” is about as legitimate as the idea that the president is a not a natural-born citizen. As nutty Republican conspiracy theories go, this was even more headache-inducing than most.

To which Douglas responds:

Hey, Benen, duh, THE OBAMACRATS PUT OUT THE CALL FOR NAMES, AND THEY POSTED A WHITE HOUSE E-MAIL ADDRESS SO OBAMALINGS COULD NAME NAMES!! THEY’RE GOING TO DO SOMETHING WITH NAMES!!

Don, where do you see that? You are inferring an awful lot. I’m with Douglas that I wouldn’t put it past the government, especially any Democratic administration (because they routinely attribute domestic policy positions of the other side to greed and evil) to gather names and harass its opponents. But the White House blog post didn’t ask for names. Period.

Now, if the administration does actively solicit names in this effort, I’ll reconsider my position. But Douglas (and I don’t mean to pick on him here, he’s one of many) simply assumes it is already going on.

My fight disagreement with my conservative colleagues has never been over what the administration is doing or is capable of doing, but if what the White House blog post said. Like a contract, I suppose, the parties’ conduct in performance can be used to interpret its terms. If that conduct tends to prove the administration meant the post as nefariously as my colleagues on the right seem to think, you’ll find me screaming as loudly as anyone.

David’s blog is The Unreligious Right:  The Opinions of a Highly Opinionated Right-Wing Atheist, and I found it today through a comment he left at Professor Jacobson’s. Obviously, he and I don’t see eye-to-eye on the existence of God. But here’s part of what David (who blogs as UNRR) had to say about recent criticism from right-wing bloggers of President Obama going out for ice cream with his kids while Iran is in turmoil:

There are so many substantive points on which to criticize Obama’s performance as president, that I find this sort of ridiculous attack completely idiotic. First of all, Obama is President of the United States, not Iran. It isn’t his job to project “concern” for Iranians, let alone 24 hours a day. He has a family, and sometimes he is going to do things with them. Maybe he should stop eating entirely, sit in a room and cry about people in Iran. Would that make these critics happy?

“Idiotic” is a strong word — stronger than I would use — but his substantive point is correct. This “scandal” should be noted as nothing more than a “what if Bush had done it?” moment — point out that Bush would have been crucified by the press for doing the same thing, that this president will receive no such criticism, then move on. As David notes:

Why should those of us on the right act like BDS-infected morons? Attack Obama for things he deserves to be called on, not for non-issues like going out to eat ice cream.

In fact, Obama is probably less deserving of criticism for his ice cream outing than Bush would be under the same circumstances. If Bush had done it, it would have been inconsistent with his outspoken concern for spreading liberty to others. When spreading liberty is not one of your chief values — indeed, when it is antithetical to one’s values, which I believe to be the case with President Obama — going out for ice cream during these events is meaningless. But I’d cut the guy a break even if I believed for one second that he cared about liberty.

UPDATE: I need to make a distinction here, in case it isn’t clear from my post. Do I think Obama’s virtual silence on Iran has been appalling? Yes. Do I think that a CBS reporter giving continuous updates on an ice cream outing via Twitter is a disgrace to journalism. Yes. But I think the guy has a right to take his kids for an ice cream cone, too.

In response, I received . . .  an e-mail stating  . . . that he writes under a pseudonym “[f]or a variety of private, family, and professional reasons.” I’m guessing that those reasons include that friends, family members, and his professional colleagues would be surprised by the poor quality and substance of his blogging.

The motive for Whelan’s exposure of the blogger? The anonymous blogger “abuse[d] his anonymity to engage in irresponsible attacks” and “has been biting at my ankles in recent months.” Quite petty, if you ask me. I actually find myself in agreement with Anonymous Liberal for the second time in a week, at least in part:

It’s really difficult to put into words just how despicable and childish this behavior is. This is a man who was a Deputy Assistant Attorney General. He’s currently the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. And he’s acting like a six-year-old.

In his post outing Publius, Whelan claims that he is doing the world a service by “exposing an irresponsible anonymous blogger.” The entire tone of the post, however, is petty and childish. It’s clear that Whelan’s only motive is getting back at someone who was critical of him.

James Joyner at Outside the Beltway also gets it exactly right:

While I generally find the practice of revealing people’s secrets to the public distasteful, there are times when it’s appropriate.  Public officials who are abusing their power is the most obvious case.   Here, however, there is no public benefit achieved. Whelan is simply annoyed that Publius had been “biting at my ankles in recent months” and critiquing his blog posts.

Jeopardizing a man’s career and family relationships over something so petty is simply shameful.

In short, in “outing” Publius, Whelan has outed himself as petty and thin-skinned. It’s good to see other righties noting the wrongness of this outing, including Just One Minute and a one-liner from Pirate’s Cove (who likewise thinks Anonymous Liberal makes some good points). And Walter Olson of Overlawyered writes at Point of Law that “the particular motives for anonymity in most of the instances I know about are more complicated and less illegitimate than one would imagine from the simple charge of cowardice.”

It’s hard to imagine a more comfortable environment for a liberal than the faculty of a law school, but if the guy wants to be anonymous, who’s to argue? In fact, in his own post about the outing, Publius — professor John Blevins — gives some pretty good reasons for blogging anonymously.

At first, I was  a little worried about blogging anonymously. I was afraid it would lead me to be intemperate. I don’t think I have been, but I’ll admit the cloak of secrecy occasionally tempts me toward more over-the-top writing that (I think) I engage in.

Like Publius, though, I think I have a pretty good reason to blog anonymously. My profession (law) is notoriously liberal. I  see no reason to share politics with clients, and my livelihood as a solo attorney depends mainly on referrals from others lawyers.  To top it off, I am in a relatively small community. I haven’t figured out yet whether that aggravates the risk that I’ll lose business or mitigates it, but for now, I’m staying under wraps.

(For anybody curious as to how I came up with “Deuce Geary,” it’s derived from the nickname we had in the Marine Corps for our field gear: canteens, cartridge belt, helmet, etc. Every Marine had to sign for his gear on a Form 782. Hence we referred to our field gear as “782 gear” or “deuce gear.” From that, I decided on Deuce Geary.  I wanted a cool name derived from my Marine Corps days, but all the cool names like “Razor Wire” were taken.)

H/T: Riehl World View.

UPDATE: Rick Moran puts it colorfully at RightWing Nuthouse: “I am very happy Ed has enjoyed his Captain Queeg moment and solved the mystery of the missing strawberries.”

UPDATE #2: Whelan posts in self-defense and does himself no favors:

A blogger may choose to blog under a pseudonym for any of various self-serving reasons, from the compelling (e.g., genuine concerns about personal safety) to the respectable to the base. But setting aside the extraordinary circumstances in which the reason to use a pseudonym would be compelling, I don’t see why anyone else has any obligation to respect the blogger’s self-serving decision.

An odd comment, coming from a conservative.  And this:

[Blevins aka Publius] wanted to present one face to his family, friends, and colleagues and another to the blogosphere. That’s understandable but hardly deserving of respect. If he wanted to avoid the risk of being associated publicly with his views, he shouldn’t have blogged.

Who says Blevins was presenting two different faces? What if, like me, his family and colleagues know is general political drift but he is otherwise politically enigmatic? How is being more forthright under a pseudonym misrepresentative? If he’s like me, Blevin is not contradicting anything he’s told anyone else. He’s just writing about topics that he doesn’t discuss with anyone else. I’m sure even Ed Whelan has friends that run the gamut from a person in whom he would confide his deepest thoughts to those with whom he is much more on guard. Is his distinguishing among those friends an associates not deserving of respect?

UPDATE #3: William Jacobsen — who, like Blevins, is a law professor — posts a reminder at Legal Insurrection that not not all the criticism is credible.

UPDATE #4: Simon Owens interviewed both Whelan and Blevins. His write-up is at Bloggasm.

UPDATE #5: Whelan apologizes online. Blevins graciously accepts. Whelan vouches for the sincerity of his apology.

To be fair here, our first observation should go out to our Republican and conservative friends who were supporters of President Bush for the last eight years. If you didn’t complain – and do so loudly and often – about President Bush shattering all previous records for presidential vacation time in the midst of two wars that he began and various other crises, you should know how you look if you complain now. All those trips to Crawford and other destinations were on the public dime, involving Air Force One, staffers, supporting crew, etc. And they cost a fortune. If you take to the streets in manufactured outrage over this evening out, you are hypocrites, and there’s really no other way to put it.

Now, for the rest of our friends, if you were critical of President Bush for his vacationing ways, will you really just shrug your shoulders and say this is “no big deal” since it’s Obama going out on the town? The trip still involved three Gulfstream Jets, a large staff and press corps following, blocking off traffic for hours across several blocks in Manhattan on a Saturday afternoon and evening and a total taxpayer bill which the White House couldn’t even estimate for us. And it took place not only in the midst of two hot wars, but on the eve of GM likely going bankrupt and a rising unemployment rate where millions of Americans are wondering if they’ll be able to afford all their groceries next month. Could the optics of this Broadway fiasco possibly be any worse?

Shaw puts those reminders in a post in which he terms the night out a “dumb move.” I’m not so sure about that. It would be a dumb move if Obama were to take flack for it anywhere but on righty blogs and from Republican politicians. It’ not a dumb move if it gets no negative mainstream press coverage . . . which I doubt it will. In fact, it’s pretty damn smart if the righty blogs can be painted as “hyperventilating” — which I think they are — and the vocal Republicans are painted as hypocritical for the reasons Shaw notes.

UPDATE: And more common sense, from DrewM at Ace’s:

I’m of two mind about this. A President shouldn’t be a prisoner in the White House and the simple fact is it’s expensive for him to do anything. It’s just the reality of the modern world.

What does bother me is that had George W. Bush or any Republican had done this, especially during this economy, the Democrats and their press mouthpieces would be going nuts.

North Carolina lawmakers are pushing to give Apple Inc. a multi-million dollar tax break should the company bring an East Coast computer server farm to the state — an estimated $1 billion investment, according to a state official with knowledge of the recruitment efforts.

***

While it has been known that North Carolina lawmakers were working on changing tax rules to benefit one company, the name of the outfit has been kept secret. The state official said Catawba and Cleveland counties are potential sites.

I realize that our system of providing tax breaks for various conduct incentivizes all sorts of things, and it can be argued that this is just another type of incentive. But when you offer an incentive for converting to green energy, for example, anyone can take advantage of that, providing they have the means to do so. Existing North Carolina businesses can do nothing to take advantage of this break except threaten to move out of the state

Hugh Hewitt says this story should be “placed on every legislator’s desk in Sacramento, and a stack of copies carried around Arnold’s office.” No, thanks. Want to bring down taxes for everyone? Great, more power to you. Want to screw every other business in the state by keeping their rates high and giving privileged status to a newcomer? Forget it.

I know I’m late to this game, but I need to point out the best conservative take I’ve seen on the topic, which comes from Plumb Bob Blog (with my emphasis):

At the near extreme, this report might be nothing more than the opinion of a paranoiac leftist at DHS thinking out loud that the militias are likely to use current turmoil as a recruiting vehicle. If it’s that, the only problem is that the wording is so unspecific that they’ve taken the entire political right in a net that was aimed at catching hard-right militia. They could solve the entire furor by retracting the report and re-releasing it with tighter wording, including a definition of “extremist” that excludes ordinary Republican and Libertarian issue voters. Let’s hope they do that.

At the far extreme, however, a government that plans to institute restrictive and anti-libertarian measures in the near future might issue a report like this in advance to categorize as “extreme” the expected outrage of ordinary citizens against the loss of their liberties.

And let’s be candid, here: if the Obama administration does intend to remove Constitutionally-protected liberties and criminalize their political opposition, in a style reminiscent of the Bolsheviks in Russia or the Maoists in China, then they are correct in warning against violence from opponents. That will happen; they can count on it.

He’s not making a threat, he’s stating a rather obvious truth. And his analysis is very level-headed (as usual, though some of the commenters at his pst find it sensational). No shrieking or hyperventilating.

And in doing so, he also demonstrates the ridiculousness of the debates we keep having, and especially those we have had since 9/11, over the legitimacy of tactics instead of ends. At best it is unproductive, at worst it is a dishonest tool wielded by both sides of the political spectrum.

Plumb Bob Blog suggests violence from even mainstream conservatives would occur if their very right to advocate is criminalized and reform by any lawful means is made impossible. And by “impossible,” I mean in the sense that reform is prohibited because democratic functioning has been replaced by a totalitarian government that makes no mechanism for peacefule change available and criminalizes dissent. And I also mean that the government must do this in reality, not just in the fevered brains of its opponents. We wouldn’t have condemned violent German resistance to Hitler as terrorism. And we wouldn’t condemn it in the nightmare scenario I have painted, at least so long as it was targeted.

When you’re a member of the radical left or right, on the other hand, you set the bar for revolution much, much lower.  When the establishment of the utopia imagined by Bill Ayers’s Weather Underground group in the early ’70s was stymied by the political process — that is, when they were unable to effect lawful change through the political (or legal) process (assuming they were ever interested in doing so, and that’s a generous assumption)  they decided that the deaths of 25 million Americans was a perfectly acceptable price to pay for imposing the utopia by force and stifling dissent after that.

Is there any doubt we would support violent resistance in the first scenario and condemn it in the second?  Same means, different causes.

The radical right described by the report is undoubtedly subject to the same temptations as the fringe left. And the report does seem to concentrate only on the fringe. As the lefty blog Crooks and Liars notes (emphasis in the original):

[The report] delineates that the subject of its report is“rightwing extremists,” “domestic rightwing terrorist and extremist groups,” “terrorist groups or lone wolf extremists capable of carrying out violent attacks,” “white supremacists,” and similar very real threats described in similar language.

Nothing about conservatives. The word never appears in the report.

And these fringe elements will believe that peaceful reform is impossible, and revolution thus justified, despite the fact that their right to organize politically is not hampered  in any way, let alone criminalized. Just think back to all the wailing about Bushitler — wailing that continued for his entire administration precisely because the wailers were free to wail.

Still, there is room for concern about how the report defines radicals in part by their issues. And the administration left itself open to the charge that they were linking mainstream conservatives and radicals by releasing the report just prior to the nationwide tea-party protests. While I think Michelle Malkin’s arguments that the report slams mainstream conservatives is over the top — the language she cites appears only to describes radicals on those views who are unwilling to abide the democratic process — DHS would be wise to take Plumb Bob Blog’s suggestion to explain itself and the report — and modify it, if necessary, to demonstrate that it does indeed draw a distinction between mainstream conservative political opposition and violence-prone radicals on the same conservative issues. (Better than their buck-passing, to be sure.) The administration needs to make clear that mainstream conservatives opposed to illegal immigration or abortion are no more allies of radical groups willing to do violence over these issues than Nancy Pelosi is of some modern-day version of the 70s lefties ready to kill millions to impose their utopia.

So, am I pissed if DHS is concerned about fringe right-wing groups? No, not really, as long as they are concerned about fringe lefties and radical Islamists. Concerned, I said. Not criminalizing opposing political viewpoints.

Morrissey closes his post with this:

In 2012, Republicans can point to the radicals Obama appointed to positions at OLC and show voters that he was lying about being a moderate. That’s where the effort needs to go.  Filibusters on appointments for ideological disagreements are every bit as illegitimate in 2009 as they were in 2005.

Morrissey is way too optimistic about 2012. I have no idea why he thinks the slobbering press coverage of Obama during the 2008 campaign will be any different then.  In that environment, how successful does he think Republicans could actually be at getting out the message he suggests?

And why not do both?  Threaten a filibuster and then, after the inevitable failure because of another “gang of 14,” hammer Obama in 2012?  At least if they do both, Republicans could say in 2012 that they tried to stop the radical train Obama had claimed not to be driving. Why not bring that up now instead of in 2012?

But I’m afraid that won’t happen because, bogus accusations from Kossacks and DUmmies notwithstanding, Republicans are always bringing knives to a gunfight.  They are so cowed by press coverage and distortions of their positions that they refuse to take any.

Case in point: the Democrats never had to actually filibuster Bush’s nominees.  All they did was threaten filibuster, and that was enough to keep them from coming to a vote. The Republicans should have actually forced them to drone on and on on the senate floor.  For every American that saw someone taking a principled stand, there probably would have been two that saw the Democrats as obstructionist.  Any objection I might eventually have to a filibuster would be for this reason only — purely tactical. But if they can accomplish the same thing just by threatening one, I’m all for it.

And does he think for one minute that if Republicans refrain from this, it will make any difference in the future? Charles Krauthammer pointed out in 2005 that the Democrats’ use of the filibuster was unprecedented in many ways:

This technique is defended by Democrats as traditional and rooted in history. What a fraud. The only example that comes close is Lyndon Johnson’s nomination in 1968 of (sitting) Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas to be chief justice. But this case is muddied by the fact that (a) Fortas was subject to allegations involving conflictsof interest and financial impropriety, (b) he did not appear to have the votes anyway, and (c) the case involved elevation on the court, not appointment to the court.

Even if we concede Fortas, that is one successful filibuster, 37 years ago, in two centuries of American history. In 2000, a small number of Republicans tried to filibuster two Clinton judicial nominees but were defeated in that attempt not only by Democrats but also by Republicans voting roughly 3 to 1 for cloture. 

***

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist seems intent on passing a procedural ruling to prevent judicial filibusters. Democrats have won the semantic war by getting this branded “the nuclear option,” a colorful and deliberately inflammatory term (although Republican Trent Lott, ever helpful, appears to have originated the term). The semantic device reminds me of the slogan of the nuclear freeze campaign of the early 1980s: “Because nobody wants a nuclear war.” (Except Ronald Reagan, of course.)

Democrats are calling Frist’s maneuver an assault on the very essence of the Senate, a body distinguished by its insistence on tradition, custom and unwritten rules.

This claim is a comical inversion of the facts. One of the great traditions, customs and unwritten rules of the Senate is that you do not filibuster judicial nominees. You certainly do not filibuster judicial nominees who would otherwise win an up-or-down vote. And you surely do not filibuster judicial nominees in a systematic campaign to deny a president and a majority of the Senate their choice of judges. That is historically unprecedented.

If Republicans want to take a really principled stand, the could threaten a filibuster now but propose to take it off the table if legislation or senate rules (I’m just not sure what is necessary) abolished the filibuster on judicial nominees (or at least appellate court nominees) forever.  The change would have to be very hard to reverse, so Democrats could not change it later when they see the political ground shifting.  I’d have a hard time swallowing this change, too, but at least it would make it easier to accept a refusal to a filibuster now.

Don’t expect a repeat of the Gang of 14. I doubt there are any Democrats right now who have the obvious need for media love that the Republicans in the Gang of 14 so obviously craved. 

Morrissey is, I think, naive on this subject. Look at history, and you’ll see that Democrats (and Republicans) have definitely sharpened their knives.

Start with the Supreme Court. Reagan had one nominee (Robert Bork) rejected, but his other three nominees to the Supreme Court — O’Connor, Scalia, and Kennedy — received unanimous confirmation, which would never happen today. Under Bush 41, Souter (apparently a sleeper agent for The Left) sailed through with only 9 “no” votes, but Thomas barely made it, 52-48. In President Clinton’s first term, while Republicans were still in the minority, his two Supreme Court nominees — Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Steven Breyer — received only 3 and 9 “no” votes, respectively.  And that was after Ginsburg avoided answering nearly every question on the ground that it would be inappropriate to comment on matters that might come before her as a justice (an innovation Bush’s nominees likewise exploited, to some extent). Then the votes on Alito and Roberts under Bush 43 were 58-42 and 78-22, respectively.

On to the appellate courts, where it looks like both sides have sharpened their knives.  According to a report from the Congressional Research Service (PDF):

Over the course of five successive presidencies, the Senate confirmation percentage for a President’s circuit court nominations has declined.

The great majority of each President’s district and circuit court nominations have been confirmed, except for the circuit court nominations of Presidents William J. Clinton and George W. Bush 

The confirmation percentage for district and circuit court nominations combined was greater than 60% for every congressional session from 1977 through 1990, whereas the district and circuit combined confirmation rate has been less than 60% for nine of the last 13 congressional sessions. !The average number of days elapsing between nomination date and confirmation has been higher for most Congresses in the post-1990 period than for prior Congresses. 

Starting with the 100th Congress (1987-1988), and in five of the eight Congresses since, an average of more than 100 days has elapsed between nomination dates and committee votes on either district or circuit court nominations, or on both. 

For almost every Congress in the post-1990 period, the percentages of district and circuit court nominations left pending at the end of the Congress were higher than corresponding percentages for the pre-1990 Congresses.

The Senate returned substantially more nominations during the 102nd, 106th, and 107th Congresses than during any other Congresses in the 1977-2002 period. 

The average number of days between nomination date and final action increased in Congresses ending in presidential election years. 

The vast majority of judicial nominations submitted during the 1977-2003 period received committee hearings and votes, as well as full Senate votes. However, the share of nominations receiving committee and Senate action declined during the 102nd , 106th, and 107th Congresses, and less than half of the circuit court nominations in the current 108th Congress received Senate votes on whether to confirm by the end of the first session.

Over the course of five successive presidencies, the Senate confirmation percentage for a President’s circuit court nominations has declined.

I’m afraid Morrissey’s argument is one for unilateral disarmament after one’s adversary has developed a new weapon. It would amount to a “nuclear option” that applies only when Republicans are out of power.  That’s not the high road.  That’s driving over it’s edge.

UPDATE and CORRECTION: 

I realized that in one place in the post I said not to expect another “Gang of 14″ yet in another said another “Gang of 14″ was “inevitable.” Hopefully, my meaning was clear from the context, but I should clear it up.  My reference to “inevitable” really meant that some Republicans would cave, not necessarily that they would have to join with Democrats to reach a consensus.  By saying not to expect another, I meant that Democrats have no incentive to join in one and won’t need to.

Now, for my updated thought . .  . I think the effectiveness of filibuster at enhancing 2012 prospects will depend largely on how well targeted the filibusters are. Morrissey advocates against opposing nominees because of ideological disagreements, but that is too absolute a rule. If filibusters are limited to the most radical fringe nominees, Republicans could later point to that exercise of discretion to say, “we weren’t obstructionist, we approved almost everyone; we reserved the filibuster  only for the most radical of the nominees,” then detail why those nominees were radical.  (Of course, if the filibusters fail, the nominees become appointees and we will have plenty of first hand experience with their radicalism.)

From what I’ve read, appellate court nominee David F. Hamilton seems to fit this description to a “T” — making it very smart for Obama to make Hamilton his first judicial nominee. No matter how well-deserved the criticism, Obama can argue that Republicans filibustered his very first judicial nominee and thus were obstructionists right out of the box.

UPDATE #2: Here’s a little Rule 2 for RSM’s generous response to my Rule 1 plea.

Patterico has a poll of sorts up, asking people to answer this question in the comments to his post (yes, with bullets AND numbers!):

However, when [Rush Limbaugh] says “I want Obama to fail,” what did he mean? His line could have meant one of two things:

• 1. Rush opposes President Obama’s policies, and feels that they are likely to lead to more suffering. He hopes Obama’s policies are never enacted to begin with. However, if they are enacted, as seems likely, he wants to see them succeed. He wants the economy to do well. He doesn’t want Americans out of work.

• 2. Rush opposes President Obama’s policies, and feels that they are likely to lead to more suffering. So, even if the policies do get enacted, Rush still wants them to fail. This is not because Rush wants more suffering for the American people. But he feels that, in the long run, the quick and dramatic failure of the policies might lead to Rush’s own proposed policies being adopted: namely, spending less and employing the free market. In the long run, this would be best for America.

Patterico says #1 is a “no-brainer,” with which I agree, but it’s hard for me to tell if he also means that #2 is a view conservatives should not hold.  If that’s the case, I don’t agree.

Government programs and their bureaucracies become hard and harder to kill the longer they go on.  Swift failure is the only chance of having liberty-killing agencies killed off.  Even temporary success would make killing off horrible programs next to impossible.  And simply putting down a bad program is not enough — it needs a stake driven through its heart, or it comes back.  (See, e.g., mohair subsidies.)

The Left doesn’t really mean what it has been screaming for nearly eight years (and misquoting Ben Franklin in the process): that it is not acceptable to give up liberty for security.  They mean that only when it comes to unimportant types of security, like keeping your kids from being blown up.  But when it comes to really important types of “security,” like satisfying class envy, they throw liberty out the window like old dishwater.  (Well, maybe not like old dishwater, which would have detergents that could harm the environment if thrown out the window.  But you get my drift.)

And remember, the Left says the Right is fixated on money.

UPDATE: Patterico now has a post up at HotAir in which he elaborates on the need for Rush and others to state their positions clearly and, in the process, takes apart David Frum’s longing for lefty love to illustrate that neither Frum nor Rush speaks for him.  Maybe I’m missing something (I only read his post once, and that’s not always enough for me), but Patterico doesn’t seem to come down on which of the two meanings he thinks should be attributed to Rush’s comments, (emphasis  original):

Some say: conservatives can’t worry about how they say things. They know their arguments will be distorted anyway, so they shouldn’t worry about being misinterpreted. I completely disagree with this argument. I say: when you know people will distort your meaning, you have to be extra careful to express yourself clearly.

I agree with this, but only up to a point.  The Left will ALWAYS distort what is said by the Right, not always in what was said or intended, but why it was said. In the mind of the Left, the Right has no good motives.  They are never motivated by what they think is good for the country, good for individuals, or good for society, but by greed, “mean-spiritedness,” (apparently for its own sake or to satisfy greed) and a desire to see people suffer (again, apparently for its own sake or to satisfy greed).  

So, Patterico seems to think that an interpretation of Rush’s comments as #2 is a bad thing because it plays right into the Left’s “evil motive” thesis:

But you can be forceful and clear all at the same time. For example, Rush could have said: “It doesn’t matter what I hope for. I know he’ll fail.” That would have been just as effective and compelling — but possibly less controversial. And while the controversy generated by this uncertainty over Rush’s meaning has been good for his ratings, it’s doubtful that it has been good for conservatives.

I agree with Patterico on the need for clarity, but we need to be clear motives as much as positions. A public perception that Rush meant #2 is bad for conservatives only because it is being dished out without context.  And by context, I don’t meant whatever else Rush may have said on that day, but the animating thought behind the “hope he fails” comment. I mean why Rush and other conservatives want socialism to fail, and that is because it strips away liberty.

To my mind, the person speaking most clearly about this at the moment is Mark Levin.  Rude, bombastic, and angry, yes, but crystal clear on his unwillingness to trade liberty for economic recovery. I don’t think it’s the kind of clarity Patterico wants, but it’s the kind we need.

Unfortunately, Levin’s clarity will likely be for naught.  Because he has a grating style, the Left will be able to attack him without ever actually taking on his ideas.

UPDATE #2: Gabriel Malor at Ace’s:

If the argument is merely about how rude and crude the party should be defending its principles then it’s just a waste of time. We’re always going to have folks who are more apt to foam at the mouth than sit down at a table and work out a winning coalition. Telling them to change their methods just results in another round of argument (as it did with Limbaugh this past week). This is what we see with folks whose livelihoods depend on ratings. Coulter, Limbaugh, Malkin, I’m looking at you.

Maybe I’m reading Malor wrong, but this strikes me as another plea for acquiescence in the bullshit double standards employed by the media instead of calling bullshit on those standards.  It’s surrender.  ”We’ll never change the media, so let’s play their game.”

Someone’s going to have to explain to me how Michael Moore, Maureen Dowd, Rachel Maddow, or Keith Olbermann is any less offensive than Coulter, Limbaugh and Malkin (whom I do find shrill, but maybe that’s mostly because she’s not also funny, like Limbaugh and Coulter are).  The big difference, again, is that the lefties a vilify conservative motives, while righties vilify lefty policies.

This difference needs greater exposure.  Sure, it gets talked about, but mostly in the right-wing echo chamber of talk radio and blogs.  What are we doing to take that criticism mainstream?

Before it’s all over, it’ll be called the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care bill.

Memorial.  As in after one is dead.  Sorry, folks, but it sounds like Rush was poking a little fun at Kennedy’s brain cancer.

Which doesn’t mean all the Democratic carping isn’t bullshit.  I don’t remember them being pissed off when Air America did a “comedy skit” that included the assassination of George Bush, or when Kossacks and DUmmies reveled in the news of Tony Snow’s cancer.  It’s just bullshit for a different reason than Morrissey thinks it is.

UPDATE: Context, context, context.  My apologies to Ed Morrissey. Radio Equalizer has an extended transcript from Rush’s show, and it is fairly plain to me, after reading it, that Rush wasn’t making fun of Kennedy and his ill health at all.  He was ridiculing Democrats for using Kennedy’s health to push nationalized healthcare. Big, big, big difference.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

Gee, ya think?  And you couldn’t predict this, you pointy-headed Ivy League brainiac?  Well, the answer is no, he couldn’t figure it out, because he refused to look at the evidence.

But he thinks moderates like himself can correct their own error and fix the president and his administration:

[M]aybe [moderates] can lure this White House back to its best self — and someday offer respite from the endless war of the extremes.

Doesn’t he understand that it’s not a war of extremes when Democrats are running the show?  That Democrats are simply incapable of  exploiting wedge issues, and that it is only because of surly Republicans that there is any rancor at all?

Allahpundit summed up Brooks’s battle cry quite well:

From there [Brooks] segues into a cri de coeur for a plucky band of moderates to seize the good ship America and heroically steer her between Obaman Scylla and Palinite Charybdis, although what that would entail beyond him and Frum periodically firing off ever more dour and exasperated op-eds is unclear.

Allahpundit also points out that Christopher Buckley recently sounded a similar alarm (though in decidedly lukewarm fashion).  Meanwhile, the Republicans for Obama remain clueless.  Still at their website:

We want Obama to continue to unite the American majority that wants to move forward and improve the long-term economic well-being and independence of our nation.

UPDATE: Ed Driscoll notes another convert.  (H/T: The Anchoress.)