Media Plays Referee! Exclusive!

TIME Magazine actually goes ahead and tells the inconvenient truth.

How out of touch is Barack Obama? He's so out of touch that he suggested that if all Americans inflated their tires properly and took their cars for regular tune-ups, they could save as much oil as new offshore drilling would produce. Gleeful Republicans have made this their daily talking point; Rush Limbaugh is having a field day; and the Republican National Committee is sending tire gauges labeled "Barack Obama's Energy Plan" to Washington reporters.

But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

It's a little stunning to see that in print. Calling out Republicans on their cheap and willfully stupid ploy? However did this happen?

Now, the second half of this is recognizing that this actually speaks to the inadequacy of drilling as much as the importance of proper car maintenance. Nancy Pelosi is actually doing something kind of smart - taking all the heat for blocking a vote on drilling while telling members of her party in tough elections to run against her. She knows that she'll be able to get a better deal in the next Congress if the Democrats can manage to win more seats. I'm not averse to this strategy. But it's really only a hop and a skip from a message that conservation works (which is the focus of the well-written TIME article) and a message that drilling for more meager supplies doesn't. As Al Gore has said, it's like a junkie looking for one last fix.

I think progressive environmental groups are right to call out Sen. Obama for backtracking on drilling. They're living up to their half of the Overton Window. I hope they also recognize the laudatory elements of the plan, including a focus on conservation, and these other innovative ideas:

In this energy plan, Obama recognizes that 837,000 troops have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As President, Barack Obama will ensure that more of our veterans can enter the new energy economy. He will create a new “Green Vet Initiative” that will have two missions: first it will offer counseling and job placement to help veterans gain the skills to enter this rapidly growing field; second, it will work with industry partners to create career pathways and educational programs.

Sent to fight a war on terror, many vets now know -- or will have to admit it soon enough -- that they ended up fighting an oil war instead; and there's a great danger lurking -- that they will feel used and sidelined after having served the nation at the risk of their lives. Embracing this fighting force and turning them toward the battle for a new global energy economy is simultaneously uplifting, pragmatic and healing.

Similarly, Obama recognizes the debt the nation owes to its auto industry, which for a century provided the backbone of American prosperity. It could not have been an accident that he chose to deliver his energy plan in Michigan, where he offered a vision of a bold future, way beyond what any US auto company CEO has ever dared to imagine: an industry revitalized by the manufacture of plug-in hybrid cars that get 150 mpg.

Obama will also provide $4 billion retooling tax credits and loan guarantees for domestic auto plants and parts manufacturers, so that the new fuel‐efficient cars can be built in the U.S. by American workers rather than overseas. This measure will strengthen the U.S. manufacturing sector and help ensure that American workers will build the high‐demand cars of the future.

At the heart of the plan is a target to put 1 million of these vehicles on the road by 2015, with the federal government a primary guaranteed customer. Nobody until now has floated a plan for the rescue of Detroit that makes so much sense, aligning the business success of the industry with both domestic job creation and national energy security.

I feel like I understand the "re-tooling" element of the auto industry rescue a lot better. Bailing them out is one thing - offering them free money to build plug-in hybrids is quite another.

I do wish he'd call out drilling as a gimmick - but the full-court press from the right has made that very difficult, because nobody got in front of this thing beforehand. Pelosi is being sharp by holding off the hordes until the next Congress, and Obama's plan does at least have a lot of commendable facets. The question is whether this new consensus on energy will be destroyed by the chip-chip-chip away of "Drill Now" Republicans who actually have a foothold due to the depressing cave from the Presidential nominee.

Now We Know The Source

Lots of forward movement in the Joe Klein/FISA debacle today. First of all, Peter Hoekstra, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, has outed himself as a source for Klein's mendacious article, and tried in the National Review to feed the public the same crap Klein lapped up:

As one of Klein’s sources for the complex technical and legal points that seem to be in contention — and because Klein, his critics, and Democrats in Congress have accused Republicans of trying to “misrepresent” these issues — it is important to correct and clarify the record on three critical points, which also bear heavily on the broader debate currently at hand.

First, the issue in both the Protect America Act that became law in August and the legislation currently under consideration in Congress, is how to ensure effective surveillance of foreign intelligence targets in foreign countries. The issue is not nor has it ever been about surveillance of Americans, as some Democrats have irresponsibly suggested. Under any of these bills, if the intelligence community wanted to target an American in the United States for surveillance, it would need to obtain an individualized court order.

This is completely untrue, but it's a Republican acting in bad faith, so never mind that. What's important here is that we now know who got to Klein. We know who he listens to. And we know how he forms his opinions.

Here on Planet Earth, people understand that letting telecoms off the hook for enabling lawbreaking would be a devastating threat to the rule of law.

ROBERT REICH: You'd think anyone who remembered J. Edgar Hoover's FBI and Nixon's CIA, the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 -- let alone the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution -- might be concerned about the government illegally snooping on Americans.

But executives at the nation's biggest telecoms didn't blink an eye when the NSA, America's biggest spy agency, came knocking. You want records of domestic phone calls? Sure, help yourself. Emails? Yeah, we got tons -- they're yours.

When word of this leaked out and the companies got sued by Americans who didn't particularly like the idea of government rummaging through everything they said or wrote, the telecoms went to Congress and complained it wasn't their fault. They deserved immunity from such lawsuits. They were only following orders.

Only following orders? What if the government told telecoms to use their technologies to spy on American bedrooms, or turn over our bank accounts, or our personal photographs, home videos, anything else we store on computers or transmit through cables or over the Internet? The "only following orders" excuse would make telecoms extensions of our spy agencies.

It's just common sense, which is lost on some of our elected leaders. And we're about to find out which ones are being bought off by the industry.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has won another significant legal battle, as a federal judge in California yesterday ordered the Bush administration (.pdf) to comply with EFF's FOIA demand and disclose documents revealing its "communications with telecommunications carriers and members of Congress" regarding efforts to amend FISA and provide amnesty to telecoms. Better still, the court imposed an extremely quick deadline for release of these documents -- December 10 -- so that "the public may participate in the debate over the pending legislation on an informed basis."

Needless to say, the Bush administration raised every argument it could to avoid having to disclose this information. These disclosures will reveal -- among other things -- which telecom lobbyists and other representatives were meeting with DNI Michael McConnell in order to secure telecom amnesty, as well as which members of Congress McConnell and other Bush officials privately lobbied. As an argument of last resort, the administration even proposed disclosing these documents on December 31 so that -- as EFF pointed out -- the information would be available only after Congress passed the new FISA bill. The court rejected every administration claim as to why it should not have to disclose these records.

We're going to find out which senators are meeting privately with lobbyists and the Director of National Intelligence to give away the rule of law in preference for telecom industry love. That's going to be a very interesting disclosure, much like Hoekstra's disclosure of lobbying Joe Klein. It's an incestuous little village in Washington and we're just starting to see it uncovered.

UPDATE: By the way, this is what a correction looks like, Time.

UPDATE II: It's important to note that Pete Hoekstra is crazy, and shouldn't be trusted in any way on national security, considering it was his bright idea to put Iraq and Al Qaeda documents online for wingnuts to peruse that included plans on how to build a nuclear bomb. This is Joe Klein's go-to source for national security questions.

Journamalism Exposed

This correction by TIME Magazine for Joke Line's swallowing whole of Republican spin on FISA has to be a joke:

In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.

Republicans say... Democrats say... it's all so complicated! Good luck, reader!

There you have it, everything that's wrong with modern journalism in two sentences. Reporters believe truly that they are now stenographers instead of referees on the side of truth. They would rather print blatant falsehoods and "balance" them with the other side of the coin than just take a side.

Given all this, you have to question what role there is for this kind of press at all. If I subscribe to Democratic and Republican press releases, wouldn't I get the same level of analysis?

Emptywheel has more.