If It's Sunday, It's John McCain

John McCain appeared on Meet the Press this Sunday, and while the content was unremarkable, a little portion at the end was pretty revealing.

DAVID GREGORY: This is your 54th appearance on Meet the Press. Now I know you're a competitive guy. Bob Dole still holds the record at 63. And so we've been doing the calculations here. We think we can make this up, maybe within a year's time. If you're game for that.

JOHN MCCAIN: I'd love to try. Thank you, David.

DAVID GREGORY: Sen. McCain, thank you very much for being here.

David Gregory was making a joke. And yet there's still much to this that's remarkable. John McCain has appeared on Meet the Press - just one of the multiple Sunday morning talk shows - 54 times, and I would guess that most of them have come in the years since announcing for President in 1999, since before that he was a more obscure figure in Washington. I can't imagine there's anyone else even close to that number. And yet McCain is an easy guy to find on the Rolodex and get to appear on your show. It points to a staleness in the official discourse.

And while this was McCain's inaugural appearance on Meet The Press this year, he has done Face the Nation in 2009, Fox News Sunday on two occasions, and sat down with John King of CNN as well, not to mention the celebrated Twitter-view with George Stephanopoulos. That's 5 appearances and counting and we're only at the end of March. McCain is actually crushing the once-a-month appearance schedule that Gregory jokingly set out for him.

I should mention at this point that McCain lost the 2008 Presidential election.

Geithner Meets The Press

President Obama sat down with Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation today, but I was actually more interested in Timothy Geithner's back-to-back appearances on Meet The Press and This Week With George Stephanopoulos. These were his first two appearances on the Sunday shows, coming out of a week where he announced major initiatives to engage in a public-private partnership to buy up toxic assets, and to re-regulate the financial sector. Both interviews had some interesting moments.

On both shows, Geithner was asked about the potential flaw in the plan for toxic assets, that the banks simply won't sell at the prices set by private investors, because taking losses would reveal the banks to be insolvent. Geithner didn't have the best answer for this other than to urge the banks to "take risk again." Indeed, there is no mechanism to force the banks to sell. In addition, on the issue of counter-party payments from AIG, Geithner demurred at any potential efforts to recover money from Goldman Sachs and other banks who were paid out whole on their credit default swaps instead of being forced to negotiate, pivoting instead to the need for more tools to step in and take over a firm like AIG:

GEITHNER: George, we came into this crisis as a country without the tools necessary to contain the damage of a financial crisis like this. In a case of a large, complex institution like AIG, the government has no ability, had no meaningful ability to come in early to help contain the fire, contain the damage, prevent the spread of that fire. Restructure the firm, change contracts where necessary, and helped make sure that the financial system gets through this...

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it would have been the right thing to do, right?

GEITHNER: If we had the legal authority, that's what we would have done. But without that legal authority, we had no good choices. We were caught between these terrible choices of letting Lehman fail -- and you saw the catastrophic damage that caused to the financial system -- or coming in and putting huge amounts of taxpayer dollars at risk, like we did at AIG, to keep the thing going, unwind it slowly at less damage to the ultimate economy and taxpayer.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So how about now, Goldman Sachs is taking other government money. They got this $13 billion whole from AIG. Congressman Brad Sherman and others have said, they should give that $13 billion back.

GEITHNER: George, the important thing is, we have no legal ability now. That's why I went to Congress last week, to propose a broad change in resolution authority so that we have the capacity to do what we do with banks now.

I suspect that will be a less-than-satisfying answer to most people. Basically Geithner is trying to keep the past in the past, particularly with respect to AIG.

On some other fronts, however, Geithner displayed a definite concern to reel in the massive financial sector and build a broad-based economy that can better manage systemic risk. Here is an answer from Meet the Press on his regulatory proposals:

SEC'Y GEITHNER: Core thing is to make sure that the institutions at the center of our financial system are subject to much more conservative, much tougher requirements on capital and leverage that are applied more evenly and more effectively, frankly. We need to make sure that hedge funds and derivatives come within a framework of oversight so we protect the system from the risks they may present. And we need to make sure the government has the authority it needs to come in more quickly, to help contain the damage, restructure the system, so we can have a stronger system going forward [...] We need a better model. What we're proposing to do is use a model that exists for small banks that was designed by the Congress in the wake of the S&L crisis, build on that model and give the government a capacity to act more quickly, more effectively to contain the damage at least risk to the taxpayer and the economy as a whole.

Certainly, over-leveraging caused a good deal of this crisis; other countries where the banks are leveraged more conservatively are in better shape. Obviously, the devil is in the details - there are currently no capital requirements for hedge funds in the Geithner proposal, for example, and the real issue is whether the regulation will be strictly enforced. Our experience with bank regulators who are too cozy with the subjects they regulate recently suggest that the real problem is a lack of will.

But I thought Geithner's willingness to talk about the need to restructure the American economy, at the macro and the micro level, was interesting.

MR. GREGORY: Time magazine this week has its cover, and it's very interesting. I want to put it up on the screen for our viewers to see. "The End of Excess: Why the crisis is good for America." And there's a big red "reset" button. And everybody talks about reset. Obviously this is not a good crisis for America right now. But take a longer view. In the long run, is this crisis necessary for this economy?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: I think the adjustment to a period of excess is necessary. You never, you never want to have a crisis to remind people of the importance of living within your means, not borrowing too much or why regulation of the...(unintelligible)...is important. You never want to have a crisis that's damaging to make that point. But we're going to emerge stronger than this. When we get through this people are going to care less about what they make, more about what they do, what they achieve with what they make, and that will help make this country stronger.

MR. GREGORY: Will the economy be fundamentally different? Will people own fewer homes? I mean, home ownership, will that go down? Will consumption change? Will our lives change in a meaningful way?

SEC'Y GEITHNER: I think people will be living within their means more, which is helpful. We want to have, you know, a stronger, more sustainable recovery. Not a recovery based on a artificial boom that's not going to be sustained. We need to end this, this, this pattern of having booms and busts at the kind of frequency we've seen. That has to change. And that'll make the, that'll make this a better place to live and a more productive economy going forward.

Further, Geithner understands the importance of active engagement with the crisis, not to ease up on the pedal because of a few positive indicators. And he talks about the need for a broader segment of society to share in the benefits of recovery than the wide gap between the rich and poor we've seen explode in the past decade.

GEITHNER: Now, the important thing, though, is that we keep at it. You know, the big mistake governments make in recessions is they put the brakes on too early.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Is that what happened during the depression? Is that what Franklin Roosevelt did?

GEITHNER: That's one thing that happened in the depression. It's happened in Japan, too. It's happened in a lot of countries in the world. They see that first glimmer of light, and the impetus to policy fades and people are putting on the brakes, and we're not going to do that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So income inequality goes down?

GEITHNER: It should go down. Again, you know, if you look at the record of performance in the '90s, you know, we had very strong productivity growth during a period of fiscal discipline, fiscal responsibility, strong private investment, and the gains were shared much more broadly.

We can do that as a country, but it requires getting this government to do a better job of doing things only governments can do. That's why I assume important we get better outcomes. That's why fixing our health care system and get costs growing more slowly is so important. That's why we need a better energy policy. And that's why infrastructure needs to be improved.

This mirrors what the President has been saying about sustainable growth rather than feeding into the same boom-and-bust cycles and propping up the same elites who took these tremendous gambles. Or in the words of Joe Biden - "We need to save markets from free marketeers."

Obviously, words are less important than actions. But this perspective can hopefully guide the Administration through this crisis, and provide the kind of investments needed to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to share in the recovery. I'm not convinced that Geithner is the best advocate for reducing inequality and stopping the casino on Wall Street, so from the outside the work continues to keep pushing for a newer, safer, more durable economy.

Sunday Morning Shows: Making It OK To Sleep In Since the 1950s

HuffPo sez that David Gregory will take over as the host of "Meet The Press." There are only about six people who actually care about this, so let me address them: Gregory is a sycophant who epitomizes Village "wisdom," and the show will be a crashing bore with the same old parade of bobblehead media stars getting the same old questions. NBC could have made a splash here and chose Rachel Maddow, but they fell back on the old CW.

Oops! Somebody Read Arnold's Record

When Arnold Schwarzenegger was tapped to be one of the guests on Tom Brokaw's first episode moderating Meet The Press, I'm sure he thought it would be the same lazy, glorifying interview that he always gets from a national media that has no idea how he's governing the state of California and simply knows him from his box-office receipts and magazine covers. These were the principles that guided someone like Tim Russert, who wasn't at all balanced when interviewing Republicans, and especially someone like Schwarzenegger, who let that slip in this rememberance of the late NBC host:

...Governor, you were the guest of Tim Russert several times.

GOV. ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER (R-CA): Several times, and he always did great interviews with a lot of humor, tough questions, but we had a great time, and I really miss him, I have to say that. And he was--I remember when I ran for governor, he called me, and he says, "If you make that, if you win, then I will take care of the rest." And I said, "What are you talking about?" And he says, "I will get you to run for president. I will make sure that we change the Constitution." Well, it never happened, but anyway, I miss him very much.

Nice role for a journalist, to assure politicians that he will personally interfere to amend the Constitution in their favor.

But Brokaw actually did his homework a bit, and the difference between a Russert interview and this one was evident in the very next question.

MR. BROKAW: When you ran for governor in 2003, you ran as a fiscal conservative who would change the system. You would bring businesslike techniques. Now you're facing a $15 billion deficit here in California. Unemployment is running at about 6.8 percent. You've got the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression. If you were the CEO of a public company, the board would probably say, "It's time to go."

GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: Are you always that positive?

Man, you have to see the video for the look on Arnold's face when he realized this wouldn't be a junket. Priceless.

Inexplicably, Schwarzenegger defended his record by talking about how he "was able to bring Democrats and Republicans together." Hmm, I must have been asleep for the past several years when he managed that.

The rest of the interview goes downhill from there. Evan Halper has a good recap. Arnold must have been THRILLED when Brokaw moved on to the Presidential race. It's particularly amusing when he laments that politicians in Washington can't get anything done. That's right, it's just the politicians in WASHINGTON that are the problem.

Amazing how the tenor of the interview changes when the interviewer makes the bold step of being prepared. Arnold never knew what hit him.

No To Todd

Kos has endorsed Chuck Todd to replace Tim Russert on Meet The Press.

Todd, who's a fine numbers-cruncher, would be a good choice if (a) he ever interviewed any political figure ever, and (b) he had any inkling of an interest beyond horse-race politics. On that he's quite good, but Meet The Press is not solely a horse-race poltics show, or at least it's not supposed to be. It airs all year round, even in non-election years, and sometimes it actually devotes itself to covering an issue or two. And there's no indication that Chuck Todd would be able to ask any kind of non horse-race related question.

We need LESS pundits concerned only with the horse race, not more.

I approve of Kevin Drum's suggestion of returning to its roots, with a panel of experts asking the questions instead of one moderator with idiosyncratic beliefs. That's actually how Russert got the gig, by performing well on the panel in the Garrick Utley days. At the very least, it would signal an end of the interminable "bunch of journalists talking to themselves" shows.

Punk'd

Rudy Giuliani got thrashed yesterday on Meet the Press, and what was significant to me was that Tim Russert needed two or three other full hours to get to all of the subjects worthy of discussion to put Giuliani on the hot seat. This is a year out from the general election, and there's just too much out there on Rudy right now, so much that you might consider it a deliberate strategy to confuse everyone. I mean, Russert couldn't even get into the unbelievable dishonesty of Rudy's ads (of course, that's not what Russert does; he doesn't measure politicians up against the truth, he measures them up against their own statements). But what did get said was enough.

Russert prosecuted the famed prosecutor, enumerating one Giuliani scandal after another. All Rudy could do was giggle. He reminded me of that ancient clip in which Bobby Kennedy grilled some miscreant at a Senate hearing and the bad guy laughed at every question. Bobby finally said: "Are you going to tell us anything or just giggle? I thought only little girls giggled?." Sexist, yes (it was 1959).

But it destroyed the giggly witness.

That was Rudy yesterday. All giggles and deer-in-the-headlights terror.

And with good reason. There are no good (or any) answers to the questions Russert posed about "Driving Miss Judy," Giuliani and Associates' client list, Bernard Kerik, etc etc.

And Russert didn't even ask about the priest-rapist on Rudy's staff.

Like I said, there wasn't enough time.

And another scandal popped up DURING the show, when Rudy decided to alienate a full subset of the population.

Giuliani, who appeared on NBC's "Meet the Press," said he did not believe homosexuality was aberrant. What is sinful are "the acts, not the orientation."

I know this is the position of the Catholic church, but let's get real; it's a dodge. It means that you are repulsed by gay people and consider their behavior to be sinful. It's like saying you don't have a problem with murderers, just the murder. Would Rudy admit to that very Christian position? Of course not, such a thing is only OK when hating the gay.

Further, it turns out that Giuliani's firm, which he still draws a salary from, was hired by the utility industry to lobby against the addition of a renewable energy standard in the Congressional federal energy bill. The ethically compromised nature of the campaign continues.

How Very Centrist Of You

I just participated in a discussion with thereisnospoon and hekebolos from Daily Kos about the terms "moderate" and "centrist" and how they played out in yesterday's debate on Meet the Press between Markos Moulitsas and Harold Ford (there's a good writeup of that here). You can listen to the discussion via podcast over at Political Nexus.

I thought Markos did a great job against a fairly stacked deck. David Gregory (sitting in for Tim Russert) framed the debate as an ideological battle between liberals as represented by the blogosphere and centrists as represented by Ford. It was an imprecise way of describing it. Markos himself is pretty moderate, and the opinion on the blogosphere ranges over a whole series of policy stances. There are plenty of "moderate" Democrats, as defined by an ideological stance on policy positions that is in the middle of the extremes on the left and the right, that have earned the support of the blogosphere. "Centrist" is actually a code word that means the type of person determined to preserve the status quo and suck up to the Beltway establishment elites, the Broders and Ignatiuses and Slaughters and Quinns of the world. This "centrism" is more about blurring the lines between the parties completely and arguing for "bipartisan solutions," which really means "shut up all dissent and do what we, your sensible elite overlords, tell you to do." Adversarial democracy demands vigorous debate in public so that a well-informed citizenry can make choices between a range of alternatives. "Centrists" do not want the people to have those choices, and would rather make the choices for them. The debate between the DLC and the blogosphere for the soul of the Democratic Party is not one about liberal versus moderate; it's about inside versus outside, about a few oligarchs versus a panoply of voices.

I also think that this insistence by the elites who rule our discourse for "sensible bipartisan solutions" ends up narrowing the bands of opinion, at least on the left. The belief from these elites is that we live in a fundamentally conservative country where "real Americans" can only be found in the center of the nation, literally and figuratively, and that voices on the far left represent some sort of fringe element instead of the mainstream of America on many issues (health care, getting out of Iraq, etc.). The nutjobs on the right can literally advocate anything and it isn't met with as much fervor, because they are typically arguing for an entrenchment of the status quo. Where anyone argues for REAL change, the elites see them as unserious and silly and unfit for public discourse (see Kucinich, Dennis).

It was a pretty good discussion, go have a listen at Political Nexus.

UPDATE: Thereisnospoon has further thoughts on this here. And yes, Harold Ford did make a real cheap shot calling Daily Kos an anti-Semitic site, then turned around and said he would appear at the NextGen Yearly Kos Convention. Harold Ford: pro anti-Semitic sites! (and to be clear, Daily Kos is most certainly NOT that.)

Your Liberal Media

We've just come through a week where the Attorney General outright lied to Congress, where Senate leaders called for a special prosecutor to investigate him on charges of perjury, where even the New York Times has called for Abu G's impeachment if the Solicitor General fails to appoint a special prosecutor, where two members of the executive branch have been found in contempt of Congress, where Iraq appears to be slipping into a deep political crisis and a potential fracturing, to the extent that Nouri al-Maliki may be ready to demand Gen. Petraeus' ouster, where new evidence shows that Pat Tillman may have been killed for his political views, where this morning's paper brings us news of massive data mining on a scale that has yet to be disclosed:

To put this into perspective, remember that the White House has been willing to go to the public and make a positive argument for certain surveillance procedures (notably evasion of the FISA Court strictures) which appear to be illegal on their face. This must be much more serious and apparently something all but the most ravenous Bush authoritarians would never accept. It is supposedly no longer even happening and hasn't been for a few years. So disclosing it could not jeopardize a program. The only reason that suggests itself is that the political and legal consequences of disclosure are too grave to allow.

...with all of this stuff going on, Meet the Press had on this panel of the punditocracy...

NBC's "Meet the Press'' - Dan Balz and Eugene Robinson of The Washington Post, Andrea Mitchell and Chuck Todd of NBC News, Ron Brownstein of The Los Angeles Times and John Harwood of CNBC.

...and spent at least the first half-hour on the Hillary/Obama spat. Now, I've written about that too, but clearly it's not the only thing that's happened this week. Tim Russert opened the report with "what a week this has been!!!" and he looked almost ready to fall off his chair, hyperventilating at the prospect of getting to talk about Hillary for the next 18 months.

These are the least serious people in America, who are passing themselves off as the most serious people.

UPDATE: I also saw this Cokie Roberts/David Gergen exchange where Cokie, the ultimate concern troll, warns against Democrats moving leftward because "that is going to be a biiiiig problem for them 'just like it was in Vietnam.'" This is typical bias from the Washington Elites, who live in a total bubble and have no idea what the mood in the nation is like. Fareed Zakaria, who must get out more, first of all corrected that "way to the left" is not where any of the likely 2008 Democratic nominees are, and furthermore, distance from Mr. 28% Bush is unbelievably popular in the country. Digby says it best:

Roberts and Gergen are exalted Village elders. Roberts is supposedly a representative of "Democratic centrists" and Gergen a representative of "Republican centrists" but they are both really representatives of the establishment that represents the interests and prejudices of The Village. "The people" are abstract concepts they use in various ways to bolster their central argument that power is best left in the hands of "sensible" elders like themselves. When the people "speak" they are either "Real Americans" asserting their desire that sensible elders lead us out of the wilderness or dirty hippies who want to take the country into perdition.

If we do nothing else, we should ensure that the Democratic candidates pay no attention to these gasbags. That's not to say they shouldn't pay attention to the actual press narratives and the stereotypes that will inevitably emerge. But the punditocrisy should be shunned and ignored. They are promoting their own interests and those interests are always hostile to Democrats, who by dint of their more diverse coalition of Americans, are simply not as willing to bow down to the establishment. They are effectively agents of the Republican party simply because that is the party of authoritarian followers who will put their trust in the elite village elders. Democrats will never win by catering to them. Indeed, it is in our best interest to treat them as the hostile force they are --- it certainly didn't help to try to appease them with "centrism" as the last 20 years have proven in spades. Look at what they and the Republicans have done.

Back from Sac

I just rolled in from the CDP E-board meeting. There's a lot to be shared about that experience. For now, you can watch Lindsay Graham get his ass handed to him by Jim Webb on Meet The Press today. Honestly, I don't think we'll see much more of Webb on the Sunday shows because he's simply too good at it. Huckleberry Graham looked like a 4 year-old in debate against a Rhodes Scholar. Webb is unassailable when talking about the military. Lindsay's shucking and jicing simly won't work against this adversary. The commentariat must have collectively dropped their teacups watching this one.

Colin Powell on Meet The Press

Wow. On Meet The Press this morning Powell called for Guantanamo to be closed. NOW. And he said we should "get rid of the military commission system." Think Progress has video and transcript:

Guantanamo has become a major, a major problem for America’s perception — as it’s seen, the way the world perceives America. And if it was up to me, I would close Guantanamo — not tomorrow, this afternoon. I’d close it. And I’d not let any of those people go. I would simply move them to the United States and put them into our federal legal system. The concern was, well, then they’ll have access to lawyers, then they’ll have access to writs of habeas corpus. So what? Let them. Isn’t that what our system’s all about? And by the way, America, unfortunately, has too many people in jail, all of whom had lawyers and access to writs of habeas corpus. And so we can handle bad people in our system. And so I would get rid of Guantanamo and I’d get rid of the military commissions system, and use established procedures in federal law or in the manual for courts martial. I would do that because it’s more equatable and it’s more understandable in constitutional terms. But I’d also do it because every morning I pick up a paper and some authoritarian figure, some person somewhere, is using Guantanamo to hide their own misdeeds. So essentially we have shaken the belief that the world had in America’s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like the military commission.

His reasoning seems to be that it feeds into a negative perception about America rather than that it's inherently wrong, but it's nice to see him advocate so strongly for the progressive (i.e. mainstream) position. He's still a very trusted voice, his role in taking us to war notwithstanding.

At the end of the interview, when asked about his presidential choice, Powell was coy.

RUSSERT: Any endorsements?

POWELL: Oh not yet, it's too early.

RUSSERT: But you'll support the Republican?

POWELL: It's too early.

RUSSERT: Would you support an independent?

POWELL: I'm going to support the best person I can find who will lead this country for 8 years beginning in Jan. 2009.

RUSSERT: Of any party?

POWELL: The best person...

If that's not a sign that the moderates are going to break for Democrats in 08, I don't know what is.

Head Cowering Under the Pillow

I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle, Vice Presidential Debate, 1988

I'm no John F. Kennedy.

Bill Richardson, Meet The Press, today

I know he was (sort of) joking, but it's the perfect quote in the context of Richardson's appearance today. I haven't felt more embarrassed to be a Democrat than watching him on the show. How could anyone in politics not know Tim Russert's shtick by now? Russert and his team dig up quotes to paint you into a corner. It's what he does. It's all he does. How do you not prepare yourself for that?

Richardson honestly looked like a guy they plucked out of a diner eating breakfast rather than someone in public life 25 years. He looked worse than I'd ever seen George Bush look in an interview. Truly. On the issues he was incoherent. He couldn't give a straight answer. He couldn't even look Russert in the eye (and when we interviewed him at the CDP convention he did the same thing, he never looked up).

What a perfect end to an ignominous week. I think I'll go to sleep and start over.

The Egg That Refused To Hatch

Christy Hardin Smith has a rough transcript of Orrin Hatch's embarrassing performance on Meet The Press this morning.

HATCH: "This has been badly handled by people…not by Judge Gonzales, but by others….These are top flight people, doing a terrific job…."

HATCH: "I have never seen him prevaricate. I have never seen him do anything that was wrong." (Vouching for AG Gonzales' credibility.)

HATCH: Boy, I'll tell you, there ought to at least be some evidence that something was really wrong here and uh, and uh, to imply that there was criminal activity…And in the Monica Goodling case. Let's be honest about it. Her attorney…it was one of the most gutsy letter…letters I have ever seen. He's says that the atmosphere is so poisoned on the Judiciary Committee, with no real justification, that he's not going to put her through it because, uh, you never know how they would miscontrue what she has to say.

RUSSERT: Sen. Hatch, let me ask you a simple question, however, if in fact the Preseident decides that Mr. Gonzales should step down…

HATCH (interrupting): Well, now, that's the President's decision. (Read in an unctuous tone.)

RUSSERT: And the President came to you and asked you to be the next AG, would you do it?

Sen. Hatch demurs and says he'd be awfully hard to confirm, all the while scowling about what meanies the Democrats are for asking questions. And then says that Gonzales is incapable of lying. (And says it with a straight face.)

Kudos to Sen. Pat Leahy for maintaining a straight face throughout this whole appearance. I think I would have found myself falling out of my chair laughing at Hatch's blustering, knickers in a twist performance. Leahy did manage to tweak Hatch for "actively campaigning" for the AG position this week (am still not certain if he was kidding, or if he was really tweaking him for it — but either way, it was hilarious.)

She didn't mention Hatch trying to spin out of the fact that he pleaded with the Bush Administration not to fire the US Attorney for Utah back in 2001. And while Russert was pretty solid today, he didn't approach the fact that the current US Attorney for that state is Brett Tolman, a Hatch protégé who, as a staffer for Arlen Specter, submitted the provision in the Patriot Act (since overturned) that allowed the Justice Department to appoint US Attorneys without Senate confirmation. Kyle Sampson is also a Hatch lackey, that didn't get mentioned either.

You think that Hatch is the only Senator going out of his way to defend Alberto Gonzales and the White House because he knows that the way into Bush's heart is through loyalty and he wants to be the man when the Attorney General finally gets canned?

The Tom DeLay Media Blitz

Tom DeLay is currently under indictment in Texas. Most people under indictment decline to talk to the media. This one's on a book tour. The question is, why would the media enable it?

DeLay wrote a book (OK, his ghostwriter wrote a book for him), "No Retreat, No Surrender" (is Bruce Springsteen looking to sue?), that will personally enrich him as he pays mounting legal bills to try and keep himself out of jail. In the past two days, DeLay has appeared on Meet The Press, NPR's Morning Edition, and the Today Show, commenting on the issues of the day like the US Attorney scandal, Iraq, and more, all the while promoting his book. In fact, at the end of Sunday's show, Tim Russert HELD UP HIS BOOK and mentioned it by name, will a little back and forth. It's not unusual to have authors on the Sunday shows promoting their product, but is it all that normal for Tim Russert, at the end of a policy discussion with four people, to completely switch gears and start promoting a book? Did Tom Andrews get a chance to promote his upcoming projects? Joe Sestak? Richard Perle? It was highly unusual to me.

The book is certainly controversial and provocative, with DeLay stepping on everyone in government who ever come in contact with him.

[Gingrich was an] ineffective Speaker. He knew nothing about running meetings and nothing about driving an agenda.

Nearly every other day he had a new agenda, a new direction he wanted us to take. It was impossible to follow him.

[The Republican] leadership was in no moral shape to press [for Clinton’s impeachment].

It is now public knowledge that Newt Gingrich was having an affair with a staffer during the entire impeachment crisis. Clearly, men with such secrets are not likely to sound a high moral tone at a moment of national crisis.

Incidentally, those quotes come from the book, out of a Robert Novak column in yet another example of book promotion for DeLay.

Why are all of these supposedly respectable outlets giving valuable air time to Tom DeLay while he is under indictment? Why are they indirectly funding his legal defense? And who put out the book in the first place?

Sentinel HC is the publisher of "No Retreat, No Surrender." They are a right-wing publishing house who, two years ago, put out the factually challenged "The Truth About Hillary" by Edward Klein, a book rife with inaccuracies and lies. Here are some of their other titles. It's a hit list of maybe the biggest dolts in the wingnut-welfare chain:

A Matter of Character : Inside the White House of George W. Bush
Ronald Kessler: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
George W. Bush is a direct and decisive man who is much nicer to his Secret Service agents than Bill Clinton was, according to author Ronald Kessler...

America's Victories: Why the U.S. Wins Wars and Will Win the War on Terror
Larry Schweikart: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
From the Revolutionary War to the War on Terror, the American military has consistently beaten the odds. It's not luck.

Bringing the Jobs Home : How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis--and How We CanFix It
Todd G. Buchholz: Hardcover: Sentinel HC

Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)
Mona Charen: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Charen focuses on the facts to reveal exactly why liberals are wrong-and how their proposals hurt the very people they claim to be fighting for...

Leaving the Left: Moments in the News That Made Me Ashamed to Be a Liberal
Keith Thompson: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
One man's personal story of his conversion from lockstep liberal to free-thinking conservative

New Glory : Expanding America's Global Supremacy
Ralph Peters: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Since World War II, Americans have been the world’s true revolutionaries, expanding the frontiers of human liberty by fighting and winning ...

The Arrogance of the French : Why They Can't Stand Us--and Why the Feeling Is Mutual
Richard Chesnoff: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Imagine the fun Mark Twain would have had with France’s undeclared war on America...

The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought
John Gibson: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
Yes, Virginia, there is a war on Christmas...

Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports
Kate O'Beirne: Hardcover: Sentinel HC
A top conservative writer explores the feminist assault on our families, schools, workplaces, and military

Now, only a publishing house who prints this kind of piffle would then let Tom DeLay's ghostwriter pen a book. And they have every right to do so.

I'm just wondering why NBC and NPR feel the need to turn over their shows to what amounts to a fundraiser for a court case. And I hope Ronnie Earle and prosecutors in Texas have their TiVos handy, as anything he says can and ought to be used against him.