Scott McClellan Sacrifices His Few Remaining Shreds Of Dignity For Unworthy Boss

108 thoughts on “Scott McClellan Sacrifices His Few Remaining Shreds Of Dignity For Unworthy Boss”

1. survey says:
   a) never
   b) never

2. how does he look himself in the mirror, knowing that saying these ridiculous things is his life’s work?
   Maybe he’s broken all the mirrors in his life?

3. Be on the lookout for the phrase “I appreciate the question.” President Bush often uses it, too.

4. Don’t get too excited, Hilzoy. It isn’t as if this group of hacks has never been taken on a ride before (see, e.g., Iraq, the structure of the tax plan, SS). Just using recent events to project forward, you’d have to say that the press will pack it in soon enough. So maybe McClellan is playing this just right.
   If anything, this is a test for the media to pass, not the Administration. And I haven’t been too impressed by their efforts so far.

5. how does he look himself in the mirror, knowing that saying these ridiculous things is his life’s work?
   It’s not his life’s work. It’s a temporary unpleasant assignment. I’m guessing that once it’s done, in Jan, 2009 or sooner, he will move on into a lucrative position with some right-wing organization.

6. Charles’s “Diary of a Sick Mind” title works pretty well for the Scottie transcript, too.

7. SomeCallMeTim: If anything, this is a test for the media to pass, not the Administration. And I haven’t been too impressed by their efforts so far.
   To be fair, it sounds as if journalists are willing to ask questions… but their employees are not willing to publish either questions ro answers.

8. I told Scottie to use the robot voice. It was so effective in practice. What has gotten into him? He’s like an opossum in headlights. He’s going to get run over.

9. Scottie! They’re killing you!!

   Scottie McClellan, remember the robot voice- use the robot voice!

10. As I was watching the video of the press briefing, I kept trying to remember that bit from the Philadelpha Story when Katherine Hepburn says, about a gossip columnist: to think that a grown-up man would stoop so low. Or something like that. — And how does he keep from touching the tip of his nose to make sure it’s not growing?
    Questions, questions.

11. Charles’s “Diary of a Sick Mind” title works pretty well for the Scottie transcript, too.
    Works pretty well for just about everything I’ve seen CB write would be my observation.

12. Scottie! They’re killing you!!

    Scottie McClellan, remember the robot voice- use the robot voice!

13. I can’t wait for the clips on “The Daily Show” tonight, will be even better than Olberman.

14. Postit: civility. The rules. Don’t go there.

15. Hilzoy
    Sorry, I never learned to fence and would prefer the use of both arms thus precluding any attempt at my gentrification.
    Regardless, statement withdrawn – sentiment retained.

16. Thanks 😉

17. That last bit is my favorite: “no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States.”
    If only he weren’t so busy helping OJ find the real killers, that is.

18. Another fine post, hilzoy. Thanks for that.
    I for one would like to see the WH Press Corps pin down whether, in fact, the “investigators” have requested that the WH not comment “from this podium during an ongoing investigation.” And if, in fact such a request was made, who exactly made it and when, exactly. If Scottie’s not just evading but actually inventing here to cover his boss’s ass, the results would be interesting.
    Feet to the fire sort of thing.

19. Or does he just not give a damn about the fact that one of his advisors revealed classified information?
    The aide said that guys like [writer Ron Suskind] were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” … “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

20. Jes:
    To be fair, it sounds as if journalists are willing to ask questions… but their employees are not willing to publish either questions ro answers.
    I don’t believe that at all. The scouting report on this WH has always been that its great strength is message discipline. Not that its lies are convincing, or well told, or even marginally charming; just that they are repeated ad nauseum. The only way this is sufficient to explain the last four years of coverage is if the journalists responsible for coverage are lazy, cowed, or incompetent. (I make no claims about which it is.)

21. Kind of OT, but I just got a snippy email from the government for including a couple of classified documents as attachments to a brief. Punchline: We got the documents off the internet, having found them with Google.
    (It wasn’t a public filing, so we didn’t ‘reveal’ anything. Now we have to argue about what procedure to use to properly cleanse our servers, laptops, etc.)
    I’m in agreement with many others on Mr. Rove’s criminal liability (lack thereof), but I wonder about whoever it was who confirmed Ms. Plame’s status. Suppose Novak just guessed. Someone somewhere confirmed that the guess was right. Wasn’t that a crime?

22. Absolutely OT: I get a periodic email with new case filings. It gives names or parties, lawyer(s), docket number, and a brief explanation of the case. This just in:

    Fraud and intellectual property theft action. Defendant Twentieth Century Fox stole plaintiff Whitehead’s play entitled “God v. Satan” and turned it into the movie “The Passion of the Christ” and made billions of dollars. Plaintiff is a drama and creative writing professor at the University of Maryland, and seeks $800 million.

23. Does the President have an unusually severe case of weakness of the will? Is he so completely inept that he hasn’t figured out how to get what he supposedly wants so badly? Or does he just not give a damn about the fact that one of his advisors revealed classified information?
    I suspect it could actually be all three, but I’m gambling on numbers one and three.

24. SomeCallMeTim: I don’t believe that at all.
    Well, I’m afraid you justabout have to, given that transcripts show at least one reporter persistently asking McLellan the right questions.
    Further, I recall other such incidents in the past where McLellan was asked tough questions… but they never got published in the mainstream media.

25. Funny, Phil, but I’d bet the farm on #2.

26. As a general proposition, xanax, I pretty much agree that GWB is inept, but in regards to Is he so completely inept that he hasn’t figured out how to get what he supposedly wants so badly?, I think he knows exactly what he wants and how to get it, and is, in fact, getting it.

27. Wow. Spectacular gaggle. And check out CNN, who not only picked it up, but came about as close as CNN can to calling Rove a hypocrite and a liar.
    Meanwhile, the good folks over at Redstate are practicing some of the most amazing states of denial I’ve ever seen. I mean, if you’ve got a strong stomach, click through–there’s some high-quality lunacy going on over there, truly batshit-quality, in order to invent something, anything, that excuses Rove and vilifies Plame/Wilson. The new wingnut talking point is apparently that Plame herself and her villainous wrongdoings at the CIA are the /real/ focus of the investigation.
    Simply stunning.

28. phil: You’re right. I’d’a lost the farm. At second glance, #3 looks much more on target.

29. Catsy:Simply stunning.
    Trevino’s noble effort seems to be descending toward ‘Little Green Fascist’ territory. Perhaps TacitusII deserves a re-visit?

30. Jes:
    We’ll see. My own bet is that within three weeks we’ll see this story all but disappear. One thing this Admin. is really, really good at is riding out the rough spots until everyone gets bored.

31. xanax: I think both 2 and 3 are right, myself.
    And RedState: wow. I don’t normally drop by there that often, but I considered writing something on LeonH’s amazingly bad piece on “atheistic evolution”, and so read through the comment thread on that piece. (Decided not to write on it, since playing ‘count the fallacies’ is something I only do when I’m deeply bored.) And now this — ?? What’s up with them?

32. I just want to take a moment to point to Gannon Mark II has infiltrated the press corps:
    QUESTION: Considering the widespread interest and the absolutely frantic Democrat reaction to Karl Rove’s excellent speech to conservatives last month, does the president hope that Karl will give a lot more speeches?
    Gee, that’s not unsubtle at all now is it?

33. EXCLUSIVE- Scott McClellan sits down and kibbutzes

    The delightful Hilzoy will no doubt forgive Three Bulls! for the ridiculous trackbacks, Haloscan is jumpity today. OW is giving you the factual take on Scottie’s press conference, but Three Bulls! has evidence that Scottie is holding back his powers….

34. SomeCallMeTim: We’ll see.
    If you check the transcripts, you can see.
    My own bet is that within three weeks we’ll see this story all but disappear.
    I’m sure you’re right. Though it’s a story with legs – the MSM rarely publish anything on it, but still, it keeps coming back and back and back.
    The point I was trying to make, though, was that you can’t blame reporters for not asking questions, when they evidently are: you can blame their employers for being unwilling to publish.

35. Holy cow, hilzoy, that entire entry should be Exhibit A in “How Not To Form An Argument.” I think I caught the naturalistic fallacy, the argument from consequences and the argument from ignorance there. Anything else?

36. Funny how the righties just can’t recognize a lie when they see one. Its called denial folks, and you need Republican rehab.
    Bush and McClellan were so righteous back in 2003 when they indicated that whoever did this bad thing would be fired. Oh, and Rove, et al. did not do it — it seemed no one in the White House knew who did make the disclosures.
    Of course, when they said this, they knew Rove was a leaker, and point blank lied about that also.
    Hypocrites. Meanwhile, the redstaters have fun with self-delusions — anything to avoid acknowledging the lie.

37. phil: “Anything else?”
    Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

38. That “Cannon Mark II” might be Les Kinsolver, actually. He works for some RW outlet. His specialty is using the WH Press Gaggle to bring up some imaginary EEEEvil the Democrats have committed, and to do so with a suitably appalled tremor in his voice.
    It’s that tremolo bit that puts Les heads and shoulders above the other RW hacks, in terms of sheer theater. He’s like a professional mourner from The Old Country.

39. Yoiks. “Gannon,” that is; not “Cannon.”
    The difference between the two is that no one takes Kinsolver seriously. Even McClellan practically giggles at him. He’s comic relief.
    Gannon offered, um, a different kind of relief. And only in his off hours (SFAIK :).

40. It’s treason, but is it treason?
    And who told Ahmed Chalabi that the United States had broken Iranian codes?

41. Probably Bolton.

42. Rove is probably McClellan’s boss in the de facto sense, but presumably not in the official sense. It’s more like he’s sacrificing his dignity for his officemate. They probably grab lunch at the cafeteria together.
    I love this perverse fiction that Bush would call Rove into his office and have a formal Q&A about l’affair Plame. Like they don’t spend half the day talking to each other and like they haven’t talked about their press strategy on Plame about a million times already.

43. Jes:
    you can’t blame reporters for not asking questions, when they evidently are: you can blame their employers for being unwilling to publish.
    That would be a more compelling argument if I didn’t see many of these same reporters (e.g., David Gregory, who is on the tape) every Sunday on TV fellating the Admin. I’d argue that such TV shows give the reporters substantially more space and freedom to air their concerns without immediate interference.
    But I’m willing to wait three Sundays to see if I’m right. So, I now officially reserve judgment.

44. “In a month, as usual, so-called “liberal” bloggers will be wondering how this business disappeared with Rove getting off scot-free and why 90% of the public doesn’t know or care about it, and the right-wing nutcase commenters will be gloating.
    Even if an honest prosecutor does go after Rove, and he is charged or simply fired, it won’t matter. It won’t “stick” to Bush. If anything, in that case the corporate media will portray Bush as the one who was wronged and pump up a big Bush-sympathy fest.
    Wake up. The old world is dead. The democratic republic of America is dead. We live in a new world, the world of the post-capitalist corporate feudal state. The empire of the top one percent. Corporate dictatorships are the state now, and the commerical media is state-controlled media. It’s all about keeping the public anesthetized, hypnotized, stupid, ignorant and docile. And it’s working very well.”
    …secularanimist at Kevin Drum’s Rove thread

45. SomeCallMeTim: I’d argue that such TV shows give the reporters substantially more space and freedom to air their concerns without immediate interference.
    Since when? Unless the TV shows go out live, their employers have editorial control. Even if they go out live, their employers always have editorial control of anything but the most immediate reaction.

46. Jes:
    I’m not trying to start an argument, but:
    1. For a person with high media profiles and the salaries to match (e.g., Russert) to claim that he lacks the power to heavily influence the broadcast strikes me as arguing that superstar NBA players have less control over team direction than the coach. Not buying it in either case.
    2. If media-savy people desperately want to report the truth, but are being prevented from doing so by their overlords, I’d expect a river of leaks about that to media-focused magazines and websites. Maybe there have been such leaks; if you’re aware of them, I’d love a pointer.
    3. To the extent that a reporter’s presentation on an opinion show is contingent on not presenting the truth as he sees it, he’s sold out and he’s a hack. These aren’t struggling beginners; they make a good living at their real jobs. OTOH, I’m sure they get invited to some cool DC parties.
    Maybe you’re aware of information or evidence (other than one day or one week of questions)that I’m not. But I seem to remember a spate of these “the media is turning against Bush” posts once before, and nothing came of it. Gaggles afterwards weren’t noticeably more aggressive, either.

47. Some Call Me Tim: I’m not trying to start an argument, but
    Okay. You undoubtedly have more direct experience of US media than I do.

48. Phil: you had to ask, and worse still, I had to answer. (Note for others: it’s about this.) I may get bored after a bit, but:
    Neither atheism nor evolution implies that there is nothing but matter. If we were nothing but matter, that would not imply that we were not unique, special, or worthy of protection. (I think this is just what you might call the fallacy of no argument whatsoever.)
    The Pauling cite might be either an appeal to authority or a generalization from an insufficient sample (of one.) It’s also absurd to call it a ‘logical conclusion’, but let that pass.
    Atheistic evolution does not imply that we are doing ourselves a disservice by keeping the weakest members of our society alive. This would require the further premiss that the only forms of ‘service’ in existence are things that advance our fitness as a species, and also that the weakest members of our society do not advance that fitness. (Tell that to any of the scrawny scientists who do all sorts of useful things.) The Darwin quote: appeal to authority again. Darwin may have thought this, but that doesn’t mean it follows from evolution, with or without atheism.
    Neither atheism nor evolution implies that there is no life after death. That claim, if true, does not imply that the wicked and the good receive the same recompense, absent the assumption that one os only rewarded after death. And even if that were true, it wouldn’t imply that there is no value to being good, unless one also assumes that the only reason to be good is because one hopes to be rewarded in some way. (The view that Leon H attributes to atheists thus turns out to be a premiss in his own argument.)
    As to this: “I could go on by noting that if atheistic evolution is true, Marx was correct and Locke was wrong, there is no justification for condemning the Nazis, and so on and so on” — huh? None of it follows at all.
    Leon H’s main point seems to be that if we’re nothing but matter and there is no God, then there is no justification for morality. This is simply false. God is not necessary for such a justification, and His existence also doesn’t help provide one.
    That’s my little survey.

49. And SCMT: I’m betting that this story will not go away, for the simple reason that the law has gotten involved. If not for that, I’d be with you.
    If you read the appellate court’s decision in this (I’ve misplaced the link), it’s pretty clear that the judges, who have seen Fitzgerald’s evidence in camera, are convinced it’s pretty serious.

50. I watched the gaggle gun for Scottie, and call me a bleeding heart, but I felt very sorry for him. What a freakin’ lousy job at a time like this. I hope his s.o. had a good stiff drink waiting for him when he got home.

51. Analyzing the ScottBot

    I can’t add much to the commentary by Hilzoy, Kevin Drum, Billmon, and others, but I can write a Perl program to analyze text. Here are phrases used by Scott McClellan three or more times during today’s press briefing:
    9
    get into com…

52. “and there is no God, then there is no justification for morality.”
    I also read that whole thread, and tend to agree with Leon H more than disagree, tho of course from the evil nihilist-and-loving-it side of the argument.
    Leon H, as many smarter men before him, seeks an justification for morality external to humans and their intellectual artifacts. He thinks this transcendance necessary for universality. I, Kant and Nietzsche, to name two, tend to agree.
    Is it important? Is it important to Leon H that he can say Osama did an indisputably, transcendentally “bad” thing. Most of us are satisfied with not liking what Osama bin Laden did to the degree we would put a bullet in him.
    PS: I really like a ditinction between “ethics” and “morality”. Morality, perhaps for hilzoy, including everything between genocide and wearing white shoes after Labor Day, almost by definition limits universality and tends toward relativism. If we define “ethics” as that which is universal and transcendentally based, then we can admit ethics is impossible, and then understand morality better.

53. It’s a top aide providing truthful information to journalists in response to lies told to embarrass the administration and our government.
    I like this quote from Powerline. No, I love it. Please analyze it in detail, because just off the top of my head:
    1) What they refer to as “truthful information” is actually untruthful information. This is undisputable fact.
    2) They refer to “providing…information to journalists” as something that it would be silly to criticize. However, they don’t note that providing the information in question to journalists is illegal and compromises national security.
    3) What they refer to as “lies” is actually the truth. This is also indisputable fact.
    You’d like to think that if you pointed this out to them, it would change their minds.

54. Back on topic, the Washington Press Corps is a trip. It is important to understand that everyone in the room knew Rove was the leaker two years ago, as I in Dallas understood two years ago. They were unable to say so because they couldn’t prove it.
    It is crazy. “Matthews and Mitchell told me off the record it was Rove, but if I challenge them on it publicly, they will deny it or refuse to comment.” I bet there are dozens to hundreds of DC residents who could say something like that, but of course, wouldn’t.
    In any case, this should put today’s Kabuki dance about being lied to into a little warped perspective. They knew the lies two years ago.
    PS:Been visiting rightie blogs, and the big talking point is that Plame and Wilson lied about Niger, damaging National Security, in a spiteful partisan attempt to get the President. History is being rewritten while we watch.

55. A guide to deciphering RNC talking points, part 1:
    The Democrats are engaged in blatant partisan political attacks.
    Translation:
    The accusations being made are 100% true and potentially damaging to us.

56. Been visiting rightie blogs, and the big talking point is that Plame and Wilson lied about Niger
    I guess we are back to that big distinction between Bushworld and the world that the rest of us inhabit — only one is reality based.

57. … the fallacy of no argument whatsoever.
    A classic! Perhaps a corrolary of the famous “proof by blatent assertion”?
    Forgive me for commenting without reading Leon’s post on Redstate, but I could not resist Hilzoy’s remark,
    Leon H’s main point seems to be that if we’re nothing but matter and there is no God, then there is no justification for morality. This is simply false. God is not necessary for such a justification, and His existence also doesn’t help provide one.
    It’s our job to create our society and choose the basis for human interaction. I happen to think that the founding documents of the United States made a pretty good start. It seems to me that God is neither necessary nor sufficient.
    I do thank God for objective reality. Without that, I shudder to think what these jerks might come up with.

58. OT: Bob M: Kant did not think that, actually. Nor is it true that without God there can be no “justification for morality external to humans and their intellectual artifacts.” Nor, finally, is it true that absent such a justification, everything is relative.
    Compare: there’s a serious debate about whether mathematics is just what you might call one of our intellectual artifacts. At any rate, numbers are not objects in the physical world, and if they are objects on some other world, there’s a serious problem about how we know about them.
    It seems that we know about them because we are able to construct proofs about them and their properties. If so, then we don’t know about them in the way we know about ordinary ‘independently existing things’ — namely, by something analogous to perception — but because, given certain initial concepts, what we think about numbers is not at all arbitrary.
    It is not clear to me, in principle, why the same couldn’t be true of morality.

59. I happen to think that the founding documents of the United States made a pretty good start. It seems to me that God is neither necessary nor sufficient
    I’d argue that the founding documents had a wee bit of God talk:

    When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

60. given certain initial concepts, what we think about numbers is not at all arbitrary.
    Don’t underestimate that “given certain initial concepts” bit. Mathematics cannot be said to be “universal” or “true”, because the whole game depends on one’s accepting those initial axioms, which can’t be proven. You can point out how useful they are in modeling the observable world, but that’s something quite different than proof or universality.
    Similarly for morality — if two people agree on a few basic principles (e.g. the sanctity of innocent human life, happiness as a desirable end, whatever), then they can engage in moral reasoning and argument, to the extent that their shared assumptions allow it. But if they can’t agree on even one first principle or one common goal, there’s no absolute, incontrovertible external authority that can be appealed to to justify either person’s positions.

61. In what way are mathematics “not proven” or not “universally true”?
    It’s my understanding that most of our high tech is based on quantum and Einsteinian, not Newtonian, physics; esp. data-mining, modeling, and fuzzy logic software. Not to mention the Dark Side applications, like nukes and photonic weaponry.
    Those applications work. Doesn’t that prove the underlying math is valid/true?

62. DaveC: I’d argue that the founding documents had a wee bit of God talk
    Yes but was any of it ‘necessary or sufficient’?
    Your move.

63. CaseyL: first, it only proves that they have worked so far, whereas we normally take statements like ‘2+2=4’ to be necessary (e.g., unlike generalizations that could be falsified tomorrow.) And second, it leaves unanswered the question how to account for our knowledge of mathematical claims.
    KenB: without wanting to get too far afield: there are two things about math: one, the need for axioms to get started with (and, generally, conventional axioms), and second, the fact that we can reason from them to all sorts of odd conclusions. LeonH’s view, as I understand it, denies that the second is true in ethics, which I find odd.
    Ethics does have to start somewhere. But it’s not obvious that it has to start from basic moral principles (as opposed to, say, necessary presuppositions of human agency.) Nor is it obvious that they would have to be merely conventional.
    There are some claims that we have to accept. Arguably, Descartes’ ‘I think, therefore I am’ is one of them, if you take a suitably thin view of ‘I am’. Descartes gets onto trouble when he tries to move from this claim to claims about external objects: God, the external world, etc. Which is to say: it’s precisely the fact that what he’s trying to do is to describe, a priori, objects whose existence cannot be known in that way that trips him up. Given any analogous starting-point, the fact that ethics might not try to describe an independently existing reality might be an advantage. But only, I think, if reason, working from the starting-points, could deliver actual content without having to rely on something like perception. IF it could do that — and of course that is the big ‘if’ — I think the status of the claims it arrived at would be no more spooky or ‘arbitrary’ or whatever than the claims of mathematics — though obviously they’d differ in lots of other respects.

64. “OT: Bob M: Kant did not think that, actually.”
    OT:I am not going to argue the 2nd critique in this forum, but merely say the the categorical imperative is imperative because it is categorical, and “category” refers back to the 1st. You can say that “categorical” simply means by reason of its form independent of its substance but that is actually talking transcendental-like. There are also the implications of immortality at the end of the 2nd and the teleology of the 2nd half of the third (discussed recently at Stanford Encyc.) indicating a need for Eternal Justice. And Kant, IMO, believes we need reward-after-death in the same sense and to the same degree we need space and time. In order that the world make sense.
    In any case, all this is mostly irrelevant to what people actually do, as said on Leon’s thread.

65. What amuses me about that RS post is that they don’t know that God apparently doesn’t help these questions – and that I actually do agree with their conclusions about science and morality.

66. was any of it necessary or sufficient?
    I think that the emphasis was on the Divine as the source of the rights of individual human beings, rather than an assumed Divine Right of tyrants. This is the same type of religious viewpoint that leads us to oppose would-be theocracies and other tyrannies that assert some greater good that must be imposed on the masses. My understanding is that the blessings of God are bestowed from the bottom up, rather than the top down, and that the original source of this idea is the Sermon on the Mount.

67. Bob M: you’re right, we probably shouldn’t do the 2nd Critique here. But two cryptic notes: first, I think ‘categorical’ refers to categorical judgments, not to the Categories as a whole; and second, God and immortality are implications of morality, not vice versa.
    rilkefan — if only Leon H’s ignorance of the Euthyphro dilemma were the only bad thing about the post…

68. CaseyL, I have always thought it was cool that EEPROMs rely on tunneling — it’s not that often that you run across practical applications of quantum mechanics.
    DaveC, I take it you agree those words are quite stirring. That is the one reference to (Nature’s) God (there is none in the Constitution). Just enough, in my opinion.

69. I am not saying that the founding documents, or founding fathers had one particular sectarian religious point of view. What I am saying is that they acknowledged the fundamental mystery of our existence, and had less than certain faith in the notions and ideologies of humans, and more faith that there are larger and possibly unknowable powers that no one person cannot fully understand.
    From Lincoln’s Second Inaugural:

    Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
    With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

70. But, I might add that Licoln was the single most reviled and hated president in American history, sepcifically because of the unpopularity of the war. Somehow he defeated McClellan and preserved the Union.

71. My favorite Plame-related quote:

    evidently, Karl Rove has lost the backing of top Democrats

72. Venturing further afield,
    Neither atheism nor evolution implies that there is nothing but matter.
    Hilzoy, I guess this is true but isn’t atheism pretty closely linked in this day and age, to materialism? I mean there’s no reason you couldn’t (a) disbelieve in Divinity and (b) believe in Souls; indeed at some times of my life this has approximately described my own situation. But I don’t think very many people (like vanishingly few) currently do both of those things. Or is that not what you meant?

73. And yeah, I know it sounds weird to say “I kind of believe A sometimes” and “I think belief A is held by practically no-one” — my explanation for this, is that I haven’t held the belief firmly over a long term of my life but only played with it on and off. FWIW.

74. I think more pertinent questions would be: does anything exist outside of matter and energy? Does intelligence count as either? Is life a completely separate category? If we widen our scope to permit the existence of matter, energy, and life (as distinct from nonlife), does atheism recognize anything outside of that set?

75. 42
    *runs away*

76. Atheistic evolution does not imply that we are doing ourselves a disservice by keeping the weakest members of our society alive. This would require the further premiss that the only forms of ‘service’ in existence are things that advance our fitness as a species…
    It also relies on the common misunderstanding of the term “fitness” as used by Darwin et al as meaning “strongest” or “most capable” instead of its actual meaning, “suitability for the given environment”. Given the right selection pressures, “fitness” could turn out to be quite unfit indeed…

77. CaseyL, I have always thought it was cool that EEPROMs rely on tunneling — it’s not that often that you run across practical applications of quantum mechanics.
    Lasers?

78. Don’t underestimate that “given certain initial concepts” bit. Mathematics cannot be said to be “universal” or “true”, because the whole game depends on one’s accepting those initial axioms, which can’t be proven.
    Sure they can; you just have to phrase your conclusions a bit more carefully, e.g. instead of asserting
    * “2+2=4”
    you have to assert
    * Given a particular system S (e.g. first-order deductive calculus) and base theory T (e.g. Peano arithmetic), one can prove “2+2=4”
    or something similar.
    In addition, there appears to be a minimal theory that almost everyone familiar with the concept of mathematics accepts as true (usually a weakened form of PA, e.g. Robinson’s Q). That theory is a real candidate for a “universal” theory, at least across humanity. There was even a discussion on the Foundation of Mathematics email list some months ago on what it would mean if PA were proven inconsistent (the closest we come to “false” in these discussions); the short answer was that no-one could offer anything constructive whatsoever.

79. Lasers?

    Of course. Also, how about STMs?
    Most all of solid-state physics relies heavily on quantum mechanics, so you can take your EEPROM and generalize it out to pretty much everything that uses solid-state junctions.

80. Slarti: atheism not being a codified belief system, I was treating it just as: the denial that there is a God. One can deny that there is a God without implying much of anything about what else there might be.
    There are atheists who believe in all sorts of things. Some of those odd people who believe in auras and crystals are surely atheists; likewise, Buddhists.
    Leon H was really talking about materialism, I think. Evolution had nothing at all to do with it, and atheism is just the denial of one of the many things a materialist says does not exist.
    About life: I would have thought that life would not count as a separate ‘thing’, like a new kind of particle. It’s more like ‘locomotion’: something that some of the things made of particles do, under certain conditions.
    If so, it’s consistent with materialism. (If it weren’t, and materialism implied that nothing was alive, it would be obviously false and not worth bothering with.)

81. hilzoy:
    I suppose that life could be thought of as a subdivision of matter (assuming that all life is made of matter), so maybe that wasn’t all that good of a point.
    Still, energy is different from matter, even though (in theory, I guess) energy and matter can be transformed into each other. To transform, say, my computer into energy (ignoring the fact that this would instantly vaporize me, my desk, the building I sit in, Orlando and I shudder to think of what else) and back requires a third thing that no one’s talking about. I guess that thing is what distinguishes various objects made of matter from other, different objects made of matter.
    Anarch: on the off-chance that anyone ever mistakes me for a math geek, I’m going to point them in your direction.

82. Slartibartfast: Still, energy is different from matter, even though (in theory, I guess) energy and matter can be transformed into each other.
    Actually, this is done in practice all the time.

83. Actually, this is done in practice all the time.

    Sheesh. Yes, of course. But as far as I’m aware, a glass of beer (for instance, not that I was thinking longingly of one) has not yet been turned into energy, or vice versa. Be sure and let me know if I’m wrong on that. On second thought, the process of expending, say, a multimegaton thermonuclear warhead simply to get a beer in exchange seems excessive. And, more directly, we have not converted organized matter (atoms, molecules, for instance) to energy (or vice versa).

84. Anarch: on the off-chance that anyone ever mistakes me for a math geek, I’m going to point them in your direction.
    One of my manifold nicknames in college was “Math Ho” on the grounds that I kept on giving it away for free…

85. One of my manifold nicknames…

    Ugh.

86. On second thought, the process of expending, say, a multimegaton thermonuclear warhead simply to get a beer in exchange seems excessive.
    only if it’s light beer.

87. You mean your variegated nicknames, or the nicknames that you were given while you hung around the manifold?

88. CaseyL: What I am saying is that they acknowledged the fundamental mystery of our existence, and had less than certain faith in the notions and ideologies of humans, and more faith that there are larger and possibly unknowable powers that no one person cannot fully understand.
    Agreed, but the fundamental mysteries of our existence have become less and less of a mystery as science has progressed to explain much of what at one time could only be answered by faith and belief in religous doctrine.
    Thankfully, they also realized that such dependance could be and was abused by self appointed champions with detrimental effects on good society and they interposed a seperation between church and state to prevent this. Note they didn’t exclude faith or religous doctrine they constrained those who might abuse the power of same.

89. “But as far as I’m aware, a glass of beer (for instance, not that I was thinking longingly of one) has not yet been turned into energy, or vice versa.”
    Hasn’t it though? Calorie is a measure of energy, after all. I vaguely remember something to do with the high energy bond in adenosine triphosphate.

90. Slartibartfast: Sheesh. Yes, of course. But as far as I’m aware, a glass of beer (for instance, not that I was thinking longingly of one) has not yet been turned into energy, or vice versa. Be sure and let me know if I’m wrong on that.
    The heavier atoms in that glass of beer were created through nuclear processes that involved matter/energy conversion. Life itself (of which beer is but one consequence) would have been impossible but for the ability of stars to turn small atoms into larger atoms plus energy. And at some point the first particles condensed out of a sea of radiation before being forged into more complex forms. On the timescales we are talking about when discussing the origins of life and the universe, matter/energy conversion is quite relevant, and very real.
    I know this sounds like so much pedantry, but I think it is an important point in this discussion. Folks like Leon H. make matter sound like so many bits of junk in a drawer, just waiting for someone to come along and do something useful with them. But this is manifestly not the case. Knowing that matter is another form of energy illustrates just how dynamic and self-sustaining the universe is (in the near term at least). Who needs mystical energy when there is so much very real energy all around us and in us? Why would I need a disembodied soul to animate me when I have an elaborate metabolic process and an intricate network of nerves giving me the capacity to navigate my world and to do creative things?
    And if I have a soul that is independently capable of perception and cognition, why would the loss of my sense organs render me unable to percieve, or the loss of brain tissue diminish my ability to feel or reason? These are questions that I don’t think proponents of a dividing line between natural and supernatural can easily answer.

91. I didn’t say that, postit. (I’m not saying you misquoted me; I’m saying I’m not the one who made that comment.)
    As a person who doesn’t cotton well to the idea of gods in general, and Yaweh in particular, it’s not something I’d be likely to say, either.
    Ah: found it. DaveC said it.

92. Katherine: Hasn’t it though? Calorie is a measure of energy, after all. I vaguely remember something to do with the high energy bond in adenosine triphosphate.
    That is a matter of converting one form of energy into another form of energy. Slarti is talking about converting matter into energy, a more ambitious undertaking. Mass is conserved in the metabolization of the sugars in beer.

93. CaseyL Ooops my bad! Apologies.

94. Right, that was stupid of me.
    OT: any recommendations keep from becoming science illiterate when you leave school? I am far from science-phobic but like anything you don’t use, it fades. Especially chemistry.

95. Not disputing anything you’re saying, Gromit, but my intention was not to get into the time aspect of things, but to discuss how matter and energy are to us, right now two quite different things. If in fact they’re simply different manifestations of a third kind of thing, then my point still stands: there’s more to the universe than matter.
    Plus, there are forces. Which, for all I know, may be yet another manifestation of that which manifests variously as matter and energy. Not being anything like a real physicist, though, I’m already way over my head.

96. Read lots of science fiction, Katherine.
    Or just keep some books around that are abstractly about science, that you enjoy reading. I highly recommend Tim Ferris’ Coming Of Age In The Milky Way as a reference for our current idea of where we are in relation to the universe and how we got here. The rest, I have no idea.
    Calorie is a unit of energy, though; you got that part right. Gromit simply pointed out that that particular (chemical) energy you referred to was stored in molecular bonds and not expressed as a change in mass (as happens in nuclear reactions).

97. a glass of beer (for instance, not that I was thinking longingly of one) has not yet been turned into energy,
    Oh yeah? Then how come it moves me to the bathroom?

98. Then how come it moves me to the bathroom?

    It was dread of sitting in urine-soaked trousers (assuming that trousers are in fact present) that moved you, Bernard. Who said that emotions have no energy?

99. I’m no physicist, either. But best I can recall, a force is a relationship between mass and energy.
    And, Katherine, there’s nothing stupid about it. At least I hope not, because that was my first thought, too (my second was photosynthesis, which is essentially the same error). Besides, I get the impression your intellectual resources are much better spent than are mine, anyway.

100. “and materialism implied that nothing was alive, it would be obviously false and not worth bothering with.”
     Hmmm. Maybe the apparent qualitative differences between biological activity and geological activity are an illusion due to our short life spans. Not that I am saying that rocks and rivers have consciousness, but did you know that elephants communicate with very low-frequency sounds, and the Greeks had the nymphs and stuff. Food for thought, huh.

101. Now, forces are the exchange of particles, so everything is mass/energy.

102. Katherine, you can find a lot of stuff to read just by Googling — for example, here is a paper with quite a lot of numerical detail on fusion — I haven’t checked the numbers myself, but it looks likely. Slarti’s note prodded me to look up how much mass gets converted to energy in a megaton-scale explosion (answer: not very much).
     As I proved by my comment above, I am also no physicist but the subject interests me so I have read a lot. Slarti is right of course that quantum mechanics is the basis of solid-state electronics. I guess I was thinking of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics — the wave/particle duality rather than just discontinuous electron energy levels. But, come to think of it, even the notion of discontinuous transitions between quantized energy levels is weird. For some reason it just doesn’t seem as weird.

103. How we got from Scott McClellan to mass-energy conversion is beyond me. At least we didn’t go walkabout into strange matter and quark-gluon plasma.

104. Because talking and thinking about the WH, its minions, and their concepts of “truth”, “reality,” and “the Law,” are so insubstantial that we needed the comparitively firm footing and intuitive validity of high order physics as a kind of antidote.

105. Speaking of Scotty, I have several questions about this remark from Tim Russert:

     “As one Republican said to me last night, if this was a Democratic White House we’d have congressional hearings in a second.”

     1. Does anyone dispute its truth? I don’t think you can, I think this Congress’ record speaks for itself–from Goss’s “I’ll investigate if you bring me a blue dress” on Plame, to the response to the misleading intelligence before Iraq, to the utter indifference to the various torture scandals.
     2. Is anyone going to argue that this is an okay way for Congress to behave?
     The only possible argument I can think of in response is “the Democrats do it too” or “the Democrats would do it given the chance” or “the Democrats would be equally hackish in drumming up investigations that the President didn’t deserve.”
     3. Have the Democrats actually acted in a way that is comparable? We haven’t had a Democratic majority in Congress and a Democratic President together much, lately. Congress was pretty hard on LBJ about Vietnam, as I understand it. I’m not aware of many major scandals that went uninvestigated during the Carter administration. And, I just checked this–in what has to be one ofthe first special prosecutor in the Whitewater matter was appointed before the 1994 midterms with Clinton’s consent (Robert Fiske).
     I don’t see a failure of a Democratic Congress to investigate a Democratic President on charges that even approach this level of seriousness and corroboration.
     As far as the idea of an anti-Bush witch hunt if the Democrats retook power in 2006–I realize that past performance is no guarantee of future results. But, the major Democratic Congressional investigations of Republican Presidents I am aware of are Watergate, Iran-Contra, and BCCI (not really so much at the president). Are any of those frivolous, unwarranted, irresponsible? They manifestly were not, I don’t think. I am sure there are some other investigations I’m not remembering, but I find it more or less impossible to believe that you can point to anything that is anywhere near comparable, in the level of viciousness or the frivolity of the charges, to the Clinton impeachment.
     4. Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that the Democrats in Congress are just as likely to over-investigate Bush as the Republicans are to under-investigate him–in a situation where there are allegations this serious and well corroborated, in a situation where everyone is a partisan hack and might makes right in Washington, aren’t we better off with divided government than not? Checks and balances, and all that? Especially considering that Democrats would be exceedingly unlikely to take both Houses of Congress back and it is impossible to imagine that they could remove Bush from office even if they wanted to?

106. “Today, the White House press corps finally deigned to notice the fact that Karl Rove has been named as one of the people who outed Valerie Plame.”
     Seems this statement is false. Rove has not been named as one of the people who outed Valerie Plame.
     Focusing on the facts seems to be relevant to this issue.

107. Rove has not been named as one of the people who outed Valerie Plame.
     Yes, he has.
     Focusing on the facts seems to be relevant to this issue.
     Focus on them then, instead of wrongly accusing others of not doing so.

108. bob, actually the qualitative difference between living and non-living is firmly thermodynamic in nature and independent of what time frame you look at. a really big really slow form of life might evade our notice but it would definitely be different from geochemistry. Ilya Prigogine is the go-to guy on this subject.
     personally, I think it’s time we faced up to the fact that “alive” is a first-class phase of matter distinct from gas, liquid, solid, or any of the exotics, but alas that doesn’t seem to have a lot of traction in the physics community…

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