The American Prospect's proposal to stifle press freedom

I think a lot of good work comes out of The American Prospect, but holy cow is this a bad idea:

Because of the important role the press is supposed to play in democracy, the courts have made it virtually impossible for those misrepresented in the press to win a defamation lawsuit. On one hand, this deference has created a free and vibrant press, uninhibited by fear of retaliation. But there's a flip side: With no accountability, false stories crowd out the truth, end up misleading the public, and leave victims without recourse. Freedom of the press, it turns out, often amounts to the freedom to deceive. Given that outright partisanship increasingly crosses the line into pure falsehood, shouldn't it be easier to sue?

The Prospect's Pema Levy proposes that a journalistic code of ethics be established—she doesn't say by whom, but I presume the government—which would create a standard of "substantial truthfulness" that could then be used by juries when the lawsuits inevitably come.

The problem with the proposal is that we have substantial evidence that making it easy to sue journalists doesn't do much to make them more truthful—instead, it makes it harder for them to actually report controversial truths. Look no further than the United Kingdom, where journalists get sued for reports that defendants merely don't like. The result is that U.S. publications with international readerships are routinely sued in Great Britain for reports that would be laughed out of court here.

Levy is right that it is sometimes more difficult to get the truth out once a lie has been established. I'm not sure how you solve that. But her proposal seems more likely to stifle the truth than to help it blossom. The process is messy and ugly at times, but it beats the alternative.

Mr. Mom Chronicles: This is why it is occasionally difficult to do freelance writing from home.

I didn't pose this picture. He just decided to crawl up the back of my chair while I was working.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush Presidency!

Just in case you forgot, from a fabulous new tool created by the Economic Policy Institute:

I'll return to income inequality writing this weekend.

Cutting government, Tea Party-style

Friend and sparring partner Rick Henderson suggests I wouldn't give the Tea Party credit for anything under any circumstances. Not so. I am kind of impressed by this, if it holds:

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R., Ky.) has announced that the continuing resolution coming out of his committee — and likely to the floor sometime next week — will contain $100 billion worth of spending cuts for the remainder of the fiscal year (through September). This marks a significant political victory for House conservatives like Reps. Jeff Flake (R., Ariz.), RSC chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio), and freshman members who insisted that the cuts previously announced by party leadership were insufficient.

That's not to say that I'll like the proposed cuts. I certainly reserve the right to criticize the specifics. But I've been critical of Republicans for awhile because of their habit of shouting about the need for cuts but failing to come up with specifics or, you know, cut anything. There's political risk in cutting dollars from programs that have constituents, and every program has constituents. It would appear the fresh-faced Tea Party GOPers are willing to actually do something—and even if I think it might be the wrong thing, I can at least acknowledge that it's not cynical.

What the Tea Party can do to prove it's serious about liberty

Some Tea Party Republicans joined Democrats in defeating a renewal of Patriot Act provisions this week. That's the topic of my column with Ben Boychuk. My take:

It is appropriate the Patriot Act renewal was defeated the same week reports emerged that former President George W. Bush had canceled a trip to Switzerland, largely to avoid the possibility of criminal charges for approving the torture of terror suspects in the aftermath of 9/11.

For one week, at least, the gap between the Tea Party's rhetoric and the reality of Republican governance was narrowed. It had been embarrassing to see conservatives decry "tyranny" in the form of slightly higher marginal tax rates and entitlement programs, all while offering silent acquiescence -- or full-throated support -- to the government's efforts to conduct warrantless wiretaps on Americans, operate secret prisons abroad, waterboard terror suspects, and then to try those suspects before the kangaroo courts known as military commissions.

The gap remains, however. While nine new Republican lawmakers voted against the Patriot Act renewal, 78 other GOP freshmen -- many backed by the Tea Party -- voted for it. And as President Bush's failed trip to Switzerland demonstrates, the United States has still failed to come to terms with the fallout from its worst actions after 9/11.

If those Republicans want to strike a blow for freedom -- and embarrass President Obama in the process -- they can push to close down Guantanamo Bay prison, hold public hearings about White House plans to assassinate American terror suspects abroad, and call for the prosecution of Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, John Yoo, and anybody else suspected of breaking the law (and American values) in the name of the War on Terror. They'd be striking a blow for freedom that many liberals hoped would come from a Democratic president.

Anybody can vote against the Patriot Act. Real civil libertarians prosecute Dick Cheney.

Ben would rather see the Tea Party focus on reducing government spending. Read the whole thing for his take.

Why income inequality matters

See Part One of this series.

So we’ve established that there’s growing income inequality in the United States. The second question is: Does it matter?

This isn’t a question that’s well-answered in Paul Krugman’s “The Conscience of a Liberal.” He does a good job demonstrating that the inequality is growing, and he makes a reasonable case for why that’s happening—something that we’ll examine more closely in the next installment of this week’s series. And he talks a lot about pre-New Deal America (the Gilded Age, a time of extreme income inequality) being a time where the people on the low-end of the scale faced crushing poverty.

But Krugman doesn’t really make the case that the current growth of inequality is bad, so much as he takes it as a given. And while he laments the 1950s as a time when the middle class shared broadly in American prosperity, he seems more interested in seeing the country’s richest men and women get their comeuppance. He has, perhaps, not-bad reasons for that, but I’m not so much interested in keeping the elites reined in as in ensuring that the rest of Americans can fairly expect to provide for their families.

Can they or can’t they?

Relative to the rest of the world, they can. Here’s a chart that was posted last week in the New York Times’ Economix blog:

What’s notable about this chart is two things. First: America’s inequality is growing rapidly, but it’s still not quite as startling as the inequality in some emerging nations. (Although it is still massive, really massive, compared to other developed nations.) And relative to those emerging countries, America’s poorest workers are still doing quite well. Says the Times’ Catherine Rampell: “Yes, that’s right: America’s poorest are, as a group, about as rich as India’s richest. Kind of blows your mind, right?” The cost of living is higher here, of course, but it does suggest that poorer workers here have a better shot at clothing and feeding their families than people in much of the rest of the world. Not to suggest that it’s easy or fun.

(Compared to other developed nations, though, the poorest 10 percent is actually … poor, with a median income below the median income of the poorest 10 percent for that group of countries. Our richest 10 percent, however, blow away the richest decile of every other nation.)

If we grant that low-income American worker aren’t quite so impovershed by worldwide standards, though, there’s still reasons, I think, to be concerned about widening income inequality. Here’s a few.

The text of the Equal Rights Amendment

Doing some reading about feminism tonight, which prompted me to look up the text of the Equal Rights Amendment. At the barest beginnings of my consciousness—back in the late 70s—I can remember some hubub. But I didn't know what the hubub was about. 

This is it:

	Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.
	Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
	Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

Doesn't seem like that should've been that big a deal. So why was it?