Fact-checking FactCheck

Adam Reilly has a terrific post on a highly problematic piece put together by FactCheck.org, Annenberg’s normally reliable, nonpartisan debunker of lies and spin. Under the excited title of “Sliming Palin,” FactCheck presents five stories it says the media have gotten wrong about Sarah Palin.

Sliming? There’s nothing personal in there — it’s all on policy and politics, and it includes some errors that have been corrected and some differences in interpretation.

Sliming it isn’t, and the folks at FactCheck ought to think about why they’ve bought into the false construct that the mainstream media (as opposed to, say, Daily Kos and the National Enquirer) are, well, “sliming Palin.”

Closed-door government

The Boston City Council, having been found in violation of the state’s open-meeting law earlier this year, has come up with an all-too-typical response. According to Boston Herald reporter Ed Mason, council members today will take up an 80-page report that it commissioned urging the state to exempt them from the law.

Council president Maureen Feeney tells Mason that the law presents “challenges” and is “confusing.” Before I go any further, you should know that the law does nothing more than require governmental bodies such as the city council to conduct the public’s business in public, and to provide adequate notice of when its meetings will take place.

Councilor Michael Flaherty is quoted as saying that the law creates a “chilling effect,” claiming, “You can’t even have a conversation with colleagues in the hallway or in a session.” That’s an interesting observation. The law says that a quorum — that is, a majority — of members cannot discuss official business outside the context of a legal, publicly announced meeting.

If Flaherty had said, You can’t even have a conversation in the hallway with six or more colleagues about city business, that would be accurate. It would also underscore the absurdity of his complaint.

The law doesn’t even require public meetings when there is a good reason for them to be held behind closed doors. Various exceptions are allowed, most typically to discuss contract negotiations and lawsuits.

Any journalist, community activist or public watchdog who’s spent any time dealing with municipal government will tell you that the open-meeting law ought to be strengthened, especially with regard to punishing violators.

The law is a burden only to public officials who think the public is a burden.

More on Palin’s religious views

Steve Waldman of Beliefnet, who’s far more learned and sensible on the subject of religion than I am, takes a close look at Sarah Palin’s religious pronouncements and places a few of them in the “scary” category.

In particular, Waldman singles out Palin’s request that people pray that a natural-gas pipeline would be built. “Saying a particular public policy is God’s will is far over the line, considerably beyond anything that George W. Bush ever said,” Waldman writes. “It means the advocate is impervious to argument, and critics are going against God’s will.” No kidding.

My earlier post on the subject.

Tone-deaf Obama

How could Barack Obama be so tone-deaf as to talk about “lipstick on a pig,” given all the lipstick references surrounding Sarah Palin?

The McCain campaign, naturally and shamelessly, is claiming that Obama called Palin a pig, which he didn’t. But, really, Obama is almost inviting the Republicans to misinterpret him. (Via Mickey Kaus.)

Now if Obama wants to call Palin a cheap, grasping hack, that would be entirely accurate.

MSNBC’s news-opinion dilemma

It looks like the political cross-dressing act at MSNBC has reached its limit. According to Brian Stelter of the New York Times, talk-show hosts Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews will not anchor the cable network’s coverage of the upcoming debates or on election night, which should tone down the battle between NBC’s journalists and MSNBC’s opinionators.

I have quibbles about this, but overall I think it was the right move. Barack Obama has no bigger advocates in the mainstream media than Olbermann and Matthews, and it has looked strange all year to have serious journalists like Tom Brokaw, Brian Williams, Andrea Mitchell and, before his death, Tim Russert seeming to answer to them. Recently, it all boiled over on the air.

Olbermann and Matthews reportedly will continue to appear as analysts, while David Gregory will serve as the anchor. That’s all fine. My larger concern is that in addition to being moved out of the anchor slots, they will also be expected to tone down their opinions, lest they run afoul of the Republicans’ current war against the media. Olbermann was exactly right in his revulsion at Republican efforts to stamp their brand on the terrorist attacks of 9/11, even if it was unseemly for him to do it from the anchor desk.

The problem, of course, is that there are no such scruples about the dividing line between news and opinion at Fox News. Stelter, for instance, does not question the fiction that Bill O’Reilly is not allowed to anchor Fox’s convention coverage, a piece of information that would be a surprise to anyone tuning in between 8 and 9 p.m. the last two weeks. Fox’s signature news personality, Brit Hume, is a good journalist, but he also leans noticeably to the right.

MSNBC this year is experiencing the first semi-success of its benighted existence by loading up on liberal political talk shows. Today Rachel Maddow debuts at 9 p.m., extending that trend. I don’t know how long it can last, since the network is still firmly ensconced in last place. But as long as network executives can find a way to keep the journalists and the talkers from ripping each other’s throats out, MSNBC has become a refreshing alternative to Fox News.

I just hope it’s Williams and Brokaw who are driving the anchor-desk shift — and not Rick Davis and Steve Schmidt.

Teasing out Palin’s religious views

Is Sarah Palin a conservative evangelical Christian? Or is she something quite a bit more exotic than that? It’s an important question, because she herself has suggested she holds some peculiar beliefs that could affect the way she executes her duties as a public official.

The two best stories I’ve come across on Palin’s religious beliefs are this piece on NPR, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, and one in today’s Anchorage Daily News by George Bryson and Richard Mauer.

First, the NPR story. Hagerty, who’s been described as a conservative Christian herself (though I can’t find a relevant link), does Palin the favor of taking her faith seriously, describing Palin’s beliefs as those of a Pentacostal. Here’s an excerpt for you to chew over:

“Pray our military men and women who are striving to do what is right also for this country — that our national leaders are sending them out on a task that is from God,” Palin said. “That’s what we have to make sure that we’re praying for, that there is a plan and that plan is God’s plan.”

Poloma [Margaret Poloma, a scholar of Pentacostalism who is a Pentacostal herself] says some people might hear that and say Palin believes this is a holy war, or that Pentecostals think this is a holy war.

“I would think it’s fair to say. Yes,” Poloma says.

One reason, Poloma says, is that most Pentecostals believe Islam is a false religion.

Let’s turn next to the Anchorage Daily News story, which describes her visit to her former church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, last June. That’s the appearance at which she made the comments about God’s will and the war, as well as her suggestion that Alaskans should pray for a natural-gas pipeline. Now consider this:

Later, senior pastor Ed Kalnins — with Palin standing at his side — spoke about tapping into Alaska’s natural resource wealth in order to fulfill the state’s destiny of serving as a shelter for Christians at the end of the world.

“I believe that Alaska is one of the ‘refuge states’ — come on you guys — in the Last Days,” Kalnins said, raising his arm to underscore his point. “And hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to this state to seek refuge. And the church has to be ready to minister to them.”

Oh, my.

So what are Palin’s own beliefs? It’s hard to say, given that neither she nor the McCain campaign is talking about her religion. (And try to remember the last time a Republican candidate at the national level didn’t go on about his religious beliefs at great length.)

The Daily News story does hint that perhaps she’s not as out-there as some of her activities make it sound — noting, for example, that she advocates but has not pushed for teaching creationism in schools and banning state benefits for same-sex couples. But I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel better if someone prays for a gas pipeline but doesn’t actually mean it.

And what about her apparent acquiescence when Pastor Kalnins went off about Alaska’s role in a post-Apocalypse world? Does she think he was on to something, or was she just being polite? I would argue that Americans have a right to know if the woman who may be our next vice president uses the Book of Revelations as a guide to forming public policy.

Purely by coincidence, I wrote about the Constitution’s lack of a religious test a week before Palin was named. As I argued then, the government may not disqualify a candidate for religious reasons, but we the people are free to judge a candidate on any criteria we like, including religion. We all have our religious test.

Quite frankly, anyone who prays for a gas pipeline violates my religious test. (I’ll give her a pass on the war, since her remarks could be construed as merely praying for the safety of the troops.)

How long does the McCain campaign plan on keeping Sarah Palin under wraps? When is she going to answer legitimate questions about her career, her qualifications and her beliefs?

Palin’s ethics-complaint maneuvers

Earlier this week Sarah Palin, acting as governor, took out an ethics complaint against herself. She then asked the personnel board to investigate charges that she had abused her office in the “Troopergate” affair. Since the personnel board has jurisdiction, she argued further, then the state Legislature’s probe would have to be shut down.

The personnel board is appointed by the governor, though the three currently serving were named by Palin’s Republican predecessor, Frank Murkowski, whom she defeated in a hard-fought primary in 2006. But it’s not quite that arm’s-length; Palin reappointed one of them, Debra English, and English now chairs the board.

Looks like the Alaska Legislature is not going to roll over, though, for the moment at least, Palin has escaped being subpoenaed.

Sarah Palin’s tall eBay tale

In her convention speech on Wednesday, Sarah Palin wowed the delegates by telling them she had taken her predecessor’s taxpayer-funded luxury jet and sold it on eBay.

Oh, wait … she said she “put it on eBay.”

Big difference, as it turns out, because it didn’t sell, and she eventually turned it over to a private broker, who unloaded it at a loss. So on top of everything else, it appears that we also have to parse every word she says.

No such problem with John McCain, who bragged the other day that Palin “sold it on eBay — made a profit.” That’s just wrong.