Times does the DMCA. Op-ed watching isn't my beat—and I had some problems with the corrections offered on this parody Times correction page (mirrored, list of mirror-project sites here) that made the rounds earlier in the week—but this is just too fucking much. The Times has gone nuclear on Robert Cox, proprietor of The National Debate, invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to force his ISP to shut his site down, ostensibly for Cox's having infringed the Times' copyright by creating a standalone page mimicking its (freely available) online look-and-feel—but really, basically, for thoughtcrime:

You have copied numerous elements from a legitimate The New York Times on the Web page [says the cease-and-desist letter from Times counsel], complete with live links and actual advertisements, and have altered it to display and solicit criticism of The Times Op-Ed columns. ... And you are compounding the offense by encouraging others to follow your lead.

This is disgusting. Calpundit gets it about right: "You'd think the publisher of the Pentagon Papers would show a little more respect for free speech and a little more tolerance for criticism."

posted by michael  2:04:01 PM  
tell me about it []  

 

Sloppy Oppel. Richard A. Oppel, Jr. commits several fouls in his piece on the current budget fracas ("Senate Approves Budget Intended to Curb Deficit"), which is focused on the rising tide of deficit dissent among Congressional Republicans. Actually, "focused" is way too generous: Oppel's report kind of swirls hazily around the story without ever managing to find a narrative line, either in the week's budget machinations or in the White House-Congress tug of war. The vagueness may be pre-emptive: strangely, in a piece that offers some remarkable instances of sniping between the Administration and the Thugs on the Hill (and delivers one full-on howler from Trent Duffy at the White House, to the effect that "President Bush has been the lever of spending restraint in Washington" for the last three years), Oppel is completely unwilling to address the most salient aspect of the budget story, namely the implications of a Republican uprising for Bush's political health.

Anyway, let's go to the videotape:

The Senate voted early Friday morning to approve a $2.4 trillion budget resolution for next year that could imperil President Bush's drive to make all his tax cuts permanent while it tries to shrink the federal deficit faster than the White House proposes.

The vote came hours after budget deliberations broke down in the House following a rebellion by Republicans who demanded that party leaders take tougher actions to control spending. Taken together, the moves reflected apprehension among some Republicans that the deficit is gaining new currency as an election-year issue.

"The budget issue is a very critical issue, and frankly, a defining issue for many members of Congress," Representative Jeb Hensarling, a freshman Texas Republican who has emerged as a leader in efforts by conservatives to rein in what they consider unsustainable spending growth, said in an interview this week. He added: "I didn't come to Congress to grow government."

Much as I love to see GOoPers discomfited, especially Texas GOoPers, that second graf is cheap and unfair. Nor is it supported by the quote that follows, which seems intended by Mr. Hensarling as a clear statement of principle. Of course, political calculation can hardly fail to enter into it, but Oppel offers nothing anywhere in his piece to substantiate the (implicit) claim that election-year apprehension rather than genuine concern over the deficit is the primary motivator of the mini budget revolt among Repubs.

The books get balanced, sort of, in the second half of the piece, which segues to Democratic critique of the Bush tax cuts (as the principle budget problem) by saying that "Democrats wasted no time capitalizing on the dispute" among House Republicans. Does Oppel really need to suggest opportunism here? Further, after correctly noting that this year's government receipts are expected to fall to a 53-year low (as a percentage of GDP), and that they'll be lower in actual dollars than they were four years ago, Oppel writes the putative Republican reply as a non-sequitur:

Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, estimates that almost half of the decline in tax revenue as a percentage of gross domestic product has been caused by the tax cuts, and the other half by the state of the economy.

Mr. Bush and other Republicans say the tax cuts were needed — and still are necessary — to spur the economy. But some Republicans in Congress say they fear that the economic growth from the tax cuts will be frittered away over time by the effects of the deficit, unless it is more aggressively reckoned with.

How does "economic stimulus" answer the criticism about receipts? Did any Republican offer it as an answer, or did Oppel take it on himself to do the job for them? And just to add to the sins of commission here, notice the way the last sentence of that quote assumes "economic growth from the tax cuts" as a fact—it's capital in the bank that might be "frittered away"—and not as a highly debatable political assertion.

Lazy, sloppy Oppel. No soup for you!

posted by michael  1:33:32 PM  
tell me about it []