Dynamist Blog
MOST PERNICIOUS STATUTE
At the press conference announcing the indictments of Martha Stewart, U.S. Attorney James B. Comey said, "This criminal case is about lying--lying to the F.B.I., lying to the S.E.C., lying to investors."
Not fraud, lying. That rang a bell. At the last advisory board meeting of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), I had a conversation with FIRE co-founder Harvey Silverglate about the expansive tools federal prosecutors can use to snare just about anyone. (Harvey is both a principled civil libertarian and a criminal defense attorney.) Number one on the list is the infinitely pliable 18 USC sec. 1001, which makes it a crime to lie to a federal agent.
Last night, I emailed Harvey to see if he had written anything about the statute that I might link to. His articles on the subject aren't online, but he sent the following:
I consider this statute to be one of the most pernicious of all. Here's why. The crime is committed by making a material false statement to any federal official, not under oath. Mind you, the federal official can lie his head off to the citizen and it's no problem. This turns liberty on its head. Some "government of the people" where "the people are sovereign."
Worse, federal officials rarely get the statement in writing or on tape. So it's the word of two FBI agents who conducted the interview and then wrote-up their version of the interview in an FBI 302 form report. If the agents' memory conflicts with those of the interviwee, guess who wins?
Worse yet: Here's how the feds abuse this statute. They interview a witness; they write up the Form 302 report claiming that the witness said stuff helpful to the Feds' investigation or prosecution of the chosen target; the witness is then told he/she has to testify against the target; the witness says that what the 302 report says is not an accurate summary of what the witness actually told the agents (it's not on tape, of course); the feds tell the witness that unless he/she testifies consistent with the 302, the witness will be charged with a 1001 "false statement" violation (i.e., either the earlier version supposedly told to the feds was true, or the new version is true, but both cannot be true, so one is false -- hence the witness must now testify consistent with what the 302 report says he earlier told the interviewers).
When the feds cannot prove a substantive crime, they proceed to entrap the defendant, or potential but unhelpful witnesses, with this pernicious statute and these pernicious techniques.
Add up the number of government officials to whom we may not lie! Awful.
So far I haven't found an online copy of the actual indictment, so I can't confirm that this statute is involved. But it certainly sounds like it.
Update: Thanks to reader Joey Gibson for directing me to The Smoking Gun's posting of the indictment, which does indeed include charges under 18 USC sec. 1001.
NAOMI, YOU IGNORANT SLUT
Just when I thought Naomi Wolf couldn't get any dumber in her Nightline appearance to discuss Martha Stewart's indictment--a topic she obviously knew absolutely nothing about--she let fly with this amazing observation: We don't know the names of the men (get it, men) in the Enron case!
That's right, folks, no one has heard of Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling. Certainly not the Nightline audience.
Honestly, Pam Anderson would be a more intelligent interview.
OLD MEDIA DAYS
The great Chuck Freund recalls the days of real media consolidation:
I was staring powerlessly into the black hole of media futility. But then I remembered something: My local newspaper, the very one I'd just thrown aside (the very one, as it happens, in which Shales had announced the Apocalypse), used to own a local TV station here in Washington when there were hardly any TV stations to own. In fact, it used to own the very radio station that was still droning away in the background. Indeed, it used to own one of the two-and-a-half newsweekly magazines when newsweeklies mattered. It owned all these things at the same time. I realized that, for decades, this media monster had been the gatekeeper to my brain. For me, it was too late! If media consolidation is an informational threat, then I was already its victim. Could I trust anything I thought?...[a big cut here--vp]
The usual portrait of the pre-1975 media scene is that those were the happy days before cable speeded up the news cycle and before the Internet created Drudge. Everybody listened to Uncle Cronkite at dinner, and a handful of tweedy critics could make or break a book or movie. Thoughtful editors had the luxury of carefully considering whether to run a story, and careful reporters understood that they had to pile up their sources. Politicians were articulate, network TV took journalism seriously (say, "Edward R. Murrow"), and nobody had ever thought of the concept of "infotainment." Etc.
This is a pretty familiar refrain. The short version is that American journalism's best days were spent as the midcentury gatekeeper, and that the advent of new media has turned what was once a comfortable media hierarchy into a fast-lane mess. You can't very well evoke the period as one of market dominance without undermining both the mythology and its usefulness as a truncheon against the new media. Your best option is to ignore the historical fact that the supposed golden age coincided with an era of market dominance.
Read the whole (short) thing.
HONDA ENGINEERING
My friend Mike Snell passes on this link to a truly remarkable Honda ad that Mike describes as "Rube Goldberg meets Mr. Potts from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Check it out, but take Mike's viewing advice: "If you have a slow server you will be screaming in agony before the entire ad plays. To prevent snatching your head bald, walk away from the computer for a few minutes and allow the ad to falter, chatter, shudder, halt, and then lunge to its conclusion like a drunk, bouncing off imaginary walls. Once it has run through once, go back to the site and start over. It should then run at normal speed and you will be treated to something extraordinary. Ahh, the human mind."
TECH
This looks cool--but too big for my girly wrist.
MEDIA BASHING
Glenn Reynolds replies to my item below.
UPDATE: Virginia Postrel doesn't think this is a positive account. I disagree. The story we're hearing is that Iraqis hate us, and crazy Shiite clerics are in charge. This says Iraqis don't hate us, and crazy Shiite clerics are having to threaten people to get any traction. That seems better than the conventional wisdom to me.
Virginia seems a bit miffed about Tim Blair's New York Times jokes, too. But if the Times had more writers like Virginia, people wouldn't be joking.
I'll take his point on the Iraq story, though that's not what he said in his post. (He said it was "distinctly positive," which implies less balanced view.) As for trying to justify the incessant Times bashing by suggesting that the Times should have more writers like me, that won't fly.
First of all, the Times is full of smart, conscientious, hard-working people who don't deserve to be bashed every day because sundry bloggers don't like their bosses. Second, this incessant sniping is coming from people who don't do reporting and rely every day on the reporting of the people they're trashing. Third, even the Times's annoying political bias is as much a function of its readers as it is of its editors, possibly more so. In my experience, the editors are far more open-minded and thoughtful than the readers who write them letters. Finally, the Times would be a disaster if it were full of writers like me, because I despise trying to get sources to tell me things they don't want me (or the public) to know, and I'm not especially good at it. I love learning new stuff, but I consider even easy reporting, like the stuff I do for D Magazine, to be a time-consuming pain--too much waiting by the phone, too many dead ends. That's why I got out of the newspaper business at an early age. The blogosphere is full of commentators, because commentary is easy and quick, and media commentary is the easiest and quickest of all.
In an email, Glenn referred me to his reply to Jeff Jarvis's sophisticated and freedom-loving post on big-media bashers. I'm with Jeff on this one, except I always use a plural verb with "media." It's not just a copy-editing tic. It's a point. The media are not one thing but many.
"DISTINCTLY POSITIVE"?
InstaPundit says this long report from Iraq "offers a distinctly positive view of the situation there." I beg to differ. The report is certainly pro-American, a striking fact since the author started as an anti-war activist. But he doesn't paint a happy picture of conditions in Iraq.
The greatest fear of the man on the street is that the Americans will tire and leave. "We pray that they stay and stay forever" is the feeling of the vast majority, but they look both ways before they say it.
Why? The answer is quite simple. The following is the translation of a letter being given out throughout Iraq in various forms.
"'In the name of God the most merciful and compassionate'
"Do not adorn yourselves as illiterate women before Islam (From the Koran)
to this noble family,
We hope that the family will stand with brothers of Islam and follow the basic Islamic rules of wearing the veil and possessing honorable teachings of Islam that the Muslims have continued to follow from old times.
We are the Iraqi people, the Muslim people and do not accept any mistakes.
If not, and this message will be final, we will take the following actions:
1. Doing what one cannot endure (believed to be rape)
2. Killing
3. Kidnapping
4. Burning the house with its dwellers in it or exploding it.
This message is directed to the women of this family.
Signed."
This message from a Shiite Islamic organization says it all and explains in a nutshell why, though finally liberated, the Iraqi people still live in fear.
That's "distinct," but I wouldn't call it "positive." I'd call it bone-chillingly scary. But what do I know? I'm just a dumb blonde New York Times writer. Moral of the story: Read the whole thing.
INITIAL REVIEWS
The bound galleys of The Substance of Style went out last week, sparking a very early review in the form of a Dallas Morning News editorial. It gives a good summary of the book's main ideas. The conclusion:
"Despite lapses of taste (Extreme Makeovers) and common sense (skyrocketing rates of teenage plastic surgery), it's good that the public is waking up to the ways caring about design can improve our lives. Cheers to Ms. Postrel for explaining how separating style from substance is an unnatural cleavage."
WEDDING STORY?
What is the back story to this highly atypical NYT wedding profile? The last line only adds to the mystery.
Marie Dolores Gerardo and Angelo Dominick Iannaccone were married yesterday by Msgr. Joseph J. Granato at St. Lucy's Roman Catholic Church in Newark.
Mrs. Gerardo-Iannaccone, 60, retired from the First Avenue School in Newark, where she taught second grade. She graduated from Seton Hall University. Her parents, the late Josephine and Nicholas Gerardo, lived in Newark.
Mr. Iannaccone, 72, retired as a supervisor in charge of production and shipping at the Coastal Steel Company, a former manufacturer of steel wire for cages, shopping carts and other products, in Woodbridge, N.J. His parents, the late Elvira and Joseph Iannaccone, also lived in Newark.
This is a first marriage for the bride and bridegroom, who met in Newark over 50 years ago through members of their families.