A post over at Grim's place helped this process along considerably. In it, he quotes several passages from Aristotle on rhetoric:

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds. The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker; the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind; the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

...There are, then, these three means of effecting persuasion. The man who is to be in command of them must, it is clear, be able:

(1) to reason logically,
(2) to understand human character and goodness in their various forms, and
(3) to understand the emotions-that is, to name them and describe them, to know their causes and the way in which they are excited.

Grim's post bothered me a bit. I disagree with his assessment of the candidates, and yet the way he framed the discussion helped clear up something that has puzzled me:

... in our current Presidential contest, we have one man who is apparently good by general standards, which is to say Rick Santorum, the lowest-polling figure in the race; one man who is apparently not good, but who is a highly effective speaker, which is to say Newt Gingrich; one man who may or may not be good, but is a terrible speaker, which is to say Mitt Romney; and one man who is said by some to be good and others to be wicked, and by some to be a great speaker and by others to be a terrible one, but who is currently the actual victor of the last Presidential contest.

Grim's assessment here gets to the heart of what it means to be persuasive. Throughout the primary, I've been stunned at how people with roughly the same values can look at the same candidates and perceive diametrically opposite things about them. A case in point: Grim instinctively trusts Rick Santorum. Santorum has persuaded him, and yet Santorum's inability to build broad support even during the primaries (where he doesn't have to win over independents or moderates) suggests he is not broadly persuasive. Grim deems Santorum to be "a man who is apparently good by general standards". If we're talking about his personal life, the same is true of Mitt Romney, a man Grim deems to be "a man who may or may not be good". If we're talking about political integrity, there is ample reason to question whether Santorum is, in fact, good by general standards... and yet, Grim trusts him. This is important, I think.

Newt Gingrich is widely considered to be an effective and persuasive speaker. I don't argue that he is not verbally adept, but I find Gingrich to be the least persuasive of the Romney/Santorum/Gingrich trio (yes, I'm ignoring Ron Paul), even though I agree with many of Gingrich's stated positions on the issues. I can't get past the towering ego, the bombast, the conspicuous lack of self control and advance planning. I don't trust what he says because I wouldn't trust Gingrich farther than I could throw him. Because I don't trust him on a gut level, Gingrich's undoubted verbal facility actually works against him where I'm concerned.

And then there's Romney. Grim instinctively distrusts him. I instinctively trust him, but agree that he is anything but a natural politician. In my estimation, his too visible discomfort with the transparent asshattery of campaigning redounds to his credit. I don't trust people who enjoy campaigning and the last thing I want is a President who excels at playing upon the emotions of the electorate. Campaigns force candidates to say extremely stupid things the electorate wants to hear. Having the good sense to appear slightly ashamed and/or impatient with this is, in my mind, a good thing.

What explains Grim's and my conflicting impressions of the candidates? More and more, I believe it comes down to emotion. We choose with our gut and then, hopefully, rationalize the decision after the fact. I say hopefully because this rationalization process can temper our gut reaction or solidify it depending on the degree to which we're able to avoid the tendency to pay attention to only those facts that confirm a decision already made.

I'll bet you're wondering when I'll get around to fairness. Be patient - I'll weave it in momentarily.

Update: I will not, after all, be posting the second half of this post. I apologize to you all.

"And so when I talk about our financial institutions playing by the same rules as folks on Main Street, when I talk about making sure insurance companies aren’t discriminating against those who are already sick, or making sure that unscrupulous lenders aren’t taking advantage of the most vulnerable among us, I do so because I genuinely believe it will make the economy stronger for everybody. But I also do it because I know that far too many neighbors in our country have been hurt and treated unfairly over the last few years, and I believe in God’s command to 'love thy neighbor as thyself.'" "I know the version of that Golden Rule is found in every major religion and every set of beliefs — from Hinduism to Islam to Judaism to the writings of Plato," Obama added.

The president said he often falls to his knees in prayer, and emphasized the role of his religious values in determining where to lead the country.

"I’d be remiss if I stopped there; if my values were limited to personal moments of prayer or private conversations with pastors or friends. So instead, I must try — imperfectly, but I must try — to make sure those values motivate me as one leader of this great nation."

Obama maintained that his call for the wealthiest to give up their tax breaks, he's doing so out of economic necessity, but also in line with biblical teachings.

"And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense. But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that 'for unto whom much is given, much shall be required,'" Obama said, noting Jewish and Islamic teachings say much the same thing.

Cue the Uber-outraged Shreikery about separation of church and state in 5... 4... 3...

On second thought, strike that. This is obviously one of those arguments the media attack when they don't like the outcome, but embrace when they do.

- Bill Quick

Huh. And here I always thought the male of the species was considerably smarter than that.

How depressing to be so convincingly informed otherwise.

~ Thomas Sowell

It is with the heaviest of hearts that the Blog Princess confesses that her support for Mitt Romney is wavering. How can we trust a candidate whose every utterance is nicely calculated to please everyone and offend no one (except on the numerous occasions when he is accused of not being calculating enough)? What kind of man allows his statements to be truncated, neatly excised from their surrounding context, and mischaracterized? The completely unprecedented nature of this debacle is all the proof I need of Mr. Romney's hopeless incompetence.

An electable candidate would have the foresight never to say anything that could be distorted by his opponents.

I'm not going to link to Mitt's latest gaffe, nor will I quote it in full. By now we have all heard parts of it and perception is all that matters. I only know that I cannot support a candidate who coldly and calculatedly refuses to profess believable solidarity and deep, personal concern for the least fortunate among us.

An authentic conservative would have promised that under a Republican President, poorly educated members of the permanent American underclass with few or no marketable skills will compete effectively with the sizeable portion of the middle class who are currently also unemployed. And damnitall, he would have made us believe him.

Perhaps Mr. Romney doesn't actually feel any solidarity or concern for the very poor. But the least he could do would be to emote convincingly or say something that makes no sense, but doesn't offend anyone.

Yes, that would make me trust him.

h/t: my Dad

What does your guy think of Valentine's Day?

a) A great opportunity to express his love in an exciting, romantic way?

b) A pressure filled nightmare where he's forced to produce...or else?

Yes, the dreaded V-Day can be a minefield for men, says Marcus Osborne, of StraightMaleFriend.com. Sure, some guys absolutely love it or see it as an opportunity to score brownie points with their lady friends--even though couldn't care less about the holiday. But many guys live in fear--knowing it's going to be a night in the doghouse with Scooby Snacks for dinner if they don't come through.

"Valentine's Day is the holiday where only the guys can really lose," Marcus insists. "Because even though he could not give a rip about being on the receiving end of a V-Day gift, he knows full well he'd better bring it for his lady love. Every guy knows that even if she tells him, 'Oh you don't have to worry about getting me anything for Valentine's,' he'd damn well better worry about getting her something for Valentine's."

Speaking of that "something," Marcus adds, a smart guy knows there are bonus points if his gift is better than the ones her girlfriends' guys got them.

It's hard to think of anything less likely to make a man feel loving towards his partner than setting up what amounts to an arbitrary relationship test and then letting him know he's being graded on his performance.

The idea that people should take time periodically to do the kinds of things they did when they were courting isn't a bad one. We all get busy, we all get complacent, and we all tend to magnify our own contributions to a relationship and gloss over the many things our loved ones do for our sake.

But I'm not sure that spending money on a woman is the best way to show her you care. I can remember the first year The Spousal Unit and I were married. For Valentine's Day, I cooked him a special meal and wheeled our son into town (a 3 mile walk) to buy my husband a card. I picked fresh flowers and put them on the table. And he came home, after working and attending class, late. With nothing.

And I was very hurt, not because I really cared whether he'd gotten me a card or not but because of what I assumed it meant about how much he valued me.

The thing is, had I just looked inside my wedding ring, I would have seen evidence of his love and thoughtfulness: he had our initials and the date of our wedding engraved inside. I didn't think of anything that special for him. Had I looked around our small apartment, I would have been reminded that he cared enough and was responsible enough to go to work and provide for his wife and son at an age when most young men don't even want to commit to a second date.

The thing I dislike most about Valentine's Day is that it encourages us to focus on the wrong things. Contrasted with flamboyantly romantic gestures, the immense worth of what we already have fades into the background.

And yet it is what happens on the other 364 days of the year that has the power to make us happy or miserable. The odd thing is that over the years I've found that the more I remember to thank my husband for the thousand small things he does every single day, the more likely he is to remember the romantic gestures that make me feel like a young girl on her first date.

Funny how that works.

There are dangerous facts, the knowledge of which threatens certain people, institutions, the social order, and so forth. Must they be made public no matter what? I think as a general matter, the presumption has to be on the side of disclosure, but that’s not a mandate. That’s simply to say that the more “dangerous” a fact, the greater the discretion that must be employed when deciding whether or not to make it public. If a reporter in wartime gets a tip about troop movements, he doesn’t have the moral right (or, as it happens, the legal right) to broadcast that information. If a reporter discovers during wartime that a general is taking bribes from a defense contractor, the moral equation shifts. Many times people who believe facts dangerous to themselves should be suppressed do so under the excuse of the common good (I’m thinking about you, Your Grace). But the fact that authorities can and do abuse discretion to cover their own backsides does not mean that discretion itself is a discredited concept.

Five years ago, the science site Edge.org published a scientific symposium in which respondents — most of them prominent scientists and science journalists — answered the question: “What’s your dangerous idea?” The question was bounded like this:

The history of science is replete with discoveries that were considered socially, morally, or emotionally dangerous in their time; the Copernican and Darwinian revolutions are the most obvious. What is your dangerous idea? An idea you think about (not necessarily one you originated) that is dangerous not because it is assumed to be false, but because it might be true?

I had no trouble thinking of several such ideas. But there's an even more interesting twist on the notion of dangerous ideas that takes the form of arguments we dismiss out of hand when used to question a core belief, but embrace wholeheartedly when used to defend a core belief:

“’Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,’ said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. ‘But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.’”

Be sure to read the list of alternate explanations towards the end of the short article. Close to the top of my Dangerous Ideas list would be one promulgated by Dr. Haidt himself: that regardless of our ideological leanings, we arrive at moral judgments using our guts and employ reason after the fact to lend the appearance of dispassion or objectivity to what amount to emotional/aesthetic judgments.

Luckily for you, I can explain that away :) A big reason I write online is that having to justify my initial take on an issue often opens my eyes to arguments I hadn't considered. How much of what consider to be great ideas are really only our passions, dressed up for public display?

Discuss amongst yourownselves, you hypocritical racist, ignorant, inbred, snake handling Red Staters, you.... :)

One of my all time favorite questions came from a man who had pressured his wife of 4 years relentlessly to have sex with another couple. Eventually, the poor woman gave in and the two of them hooked up with another married couple and did what people generally do in these situations - have lots of hot, nasty monkey sex.

The husband wrote in with a heart wrenching dilemma: having cajoled, threatened, and pestered his wife into doing something she did not want to do, he was now tortured by recurring visions of his spouse screaming in ecstasy for 2 hours while another man had sex with her.

[thud]

Like I said, it's a guilty pleasure. But even I can't laugh at today's sad tale of woe:

Q. Friend Has Revised One-Night Stand Story: A friend recently called me and said she had a one-night stand after drinking too much. She was beating herself up over drinking too much and going home with a guy she met at a bar. I reassured her that everyone makes mistakes and didn't think much more of the account. However, since then, she has told many people that she was a victim of date-rape—that the guy must have put something into her drink . She spoke to a rape crisis line, and they said even if she was drunk, she couldn't have given consent so she was a victim of rape. She now wants to press charges—she has the guy's business card. I have seen her very intoxicated on previous occasions, to the point she doesn't remember anything the next day. I'm not sure on what my response should be at this point. Pretend she never told me the original story?

Leaving aside for a moment the utter inanity of people writing in to an advice columnist hoping she will let their conscience off the hook (or the amusing thought of a fiendish, would be date rapist who thoughtfully leaves his business card so the victim will have no trouble finding him), I am just stunned.

Pretending you never heard the original story is NOT an option here. We're talking about someone making a false criminal accusation that could land an innocent man in jail.

The right answer is to go to your friend and tell her that if you find out she has filed rape charges against this man, you will have no choice but to contact his defense attorney and offer to testify in his behalf.

**************

Just for you, spd!

Quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in ages.

At the time I wondered whether we'd see a similar analysis of the behavior of the female passengers and crew. This is only a single data point:

The body of Peruvian ship’s waitress Erika Soria has been recovered from the wreck of the Concordia. It has been revealed that as the ship went down, and Captain Schettino was busy being one of the first off the ship, the young Peruvian waitress, working on her third cruise, stayed back to help dozens of passengers into the lifeboats. The last time rescued passengers saw her, she was giving her lifejacket to an elderly man.

Three cheers for decency, no matter where it is found.

On a somewhat related note, I was intrigued by this article about a culture where women have the upper hand in most things and men are fighting for equal rights under the law:

Mr Pariat, who ignored age-old customs by taking his father's surname is adamant that matriliny is breeding generations of Khasi men who fall short of their inherent potential, citing alcoholism and drug abuse among its negative side-effects.

"If you want to know how much the Khasis favour women just take a trip to the labour ward at the hospital," he says.

"If it's a girl, there will be great cheers from the family outside. If it's a boy, you will hear them mutter politely that, 'Whatever God gives us is quite all right.'"

Mr Pariat cites numerous examples of how his fellow brethren are being demoralised. These include a fascinating theory involving the way that gender in the local Khasi language reflects these basic cultural assumptions.

"A tree is masculine, but when it is turned into wood, it becomes feminine," he begins.

"The same is true of many of the nouns in our language. When something becomes useful, its gender becomes female.

"Matriliny breeds a culture of men who feel useless."

I talk to Patricia Mukkum, the well-respected editor of Shillong's daily newspaper. She assures me that her heritage is only one of the reasons why she has risen to the level she has and points out that the tradition of excluding women from the political decision making process is still very strong in their culture.

As a mother of children by three different Khasi fathers however, she is the first to admit that their societal anomaly has afforded her ample opportunities to be both a mother and a successful career woman.

Making reference to the routine problems facing women just over the border in West Bengal, Miss Mukkum is resolute.

"Our culture offers a very safe sanctuary for women," she declares.

I found the second bolded portion of the article particularly interesting as apparently, excluding women from the political sphere has not guaranteed equal treatment for men. As a side note, it would also appear that a society run by women is not the egalitarian utopia it is so often conjectured to be.

A lot of people's smug assumptions are confounded here.

Finally, not gender related (except in the sense that I suspect my amusement is somewhat enhanced by having two x chromosomes):

I'm a rational anarchist.
I'm a market anarchist.
I'm an anarcho-capitalist.
I'm a crypto-anarchic small-L left libertarian Republican.
Really, I just like blowing stuff up.

...culture is an adaptation, which exists because it conferred a reproductive advantage on our hunter-gatherer ancestors. According to this view many of the diverse customs that the standard social science model attributes to nurture are local variations of attributes acquired 70 or more millennia ago, during the Pleistocene age, and now (like other evolutionary adaptations) “hard-wired in the brain.” But if this is so, cultural characteristics may not be as plastic as the social scientists suggest. There are features of the human condition, such as gender roles, that people have believed to be cultural and therefore changeable. But if culture is an aspect of nature, “cultural” does not mean “changeable.” Maybe these controversial features of human culture are part of the genetic endowment of human kind.

This new way of thinking gained support from the evolutionary theory of morality. Defenders of nurture suppose morality to be an acquired characteristic, passed on by customs, laws and punishments in which a society asserts its rights over its members. However, with the development of genetics, a new perspective opens. “Altruism” begins to look like a genetic “strategy,” which confers a reproductive advantage on the genes that produce it. In the competition for scarce resources, the genetically altruistic are able to call others to their aid, through networks of co-operation that are withheld from the genetically selfish, who are thereby eliminated from the game.

If this is so, it is argued, then morality is not an acquired but an inherited characteristic. Any competitor species that failed to develop innate moral feelings would by now have died out. And what is true of morality might be true of many other human characteristics that have previously been attributed to nurture: language, art, music, religion, warfare, the local variants of which are far less significant than their common structure.

The implications of this dangerous idea would place Progressive public policy squarely in opposition to Science:

If we follow the evolutionary biologists, therefore, we may find ourselves pushed towards accepting that traits often attributed to culture may be part of our genetic inheritance, and therefore not as changeable as many might have hoped: gender differences, intelligence, belligerence, and so on through all the characteristics that people have wished, for whatever reason, to rescue from destiny and refashion as choice. But to speculate freely about such matters is dangerous. The once respectable subject of eugenics was so discredited by Nazism that “don’t enter” is now written across its door. The distinguished biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA, was run out of the academy in 2007 for having publicly suggested (admittedly in less than scientific language) that sub-Saharan Africans are genetically disposed to have lower IQs than westerners, while the economist Larry Summers suffered a similar fate for claiming that the brains of women at the top end are less suited than those of men to the study of the hard sciences. In America it is widely assumed that socially significant differences between ethnic groups and sexes are the result of social factors, and in particular of “discrimination” directed against the groups that seem to do less well. This assumption is not the conclusion of a reasoned social science but the foundation of an optimistic worldview, to disturb which is to threaten the whole community that has been built on it.

If morality is a natural survival strategy that confers tangible benefits on both individuals and groups, then it follows that government really should be in the business of encouraging moral behavior. That dangerous idea presents challenges for both progressivism and conservativism.

I'm pretty sure your take will differ depending on whether you're a man or a woman. Men almost always talk about it as though it were something women do for no reason. And most women view it as a response to being repeatedly ignored/blown off - in other words, as a two-way dynamic in which neither party is without fault:

Nagging—the interaction in which one person repeatedly makes a request, the other person repeatedly ignores it and both become increasingly annoyed—is an issue every couple will grapple with at some point. While the word itself can provoke chuckles and eye-rolling, the dynamic can potentially be as dangerous to a marriage as adultery or bad finances. Experts say it is exactly the type of toxic communication that can eventually sink a relationship.

Why do we nag? "We have a perception that we won't get what we want from the other person, so we feel we need to keep asking in order to get it," says Scott Wetzler, a psychologist and vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. It is a vicious circle: The naggee tires of the badgering and starts to withhold, which makes the nagger nag more.

Google's assessment of my gender notwithstanding, I take the latter view. If, when asked to do something, the other party responds by:

a) Doing it within a reasonable amount of time, which is NOT the same as "immediately",
b) Saying, "I can't/won't do that now but I will do it by [insert self-imposed deadline here]", and then following through, or
c) Says, "No, I won't do it",

.... there is no reason ever to bring the matter up again.

I don't like nagging. It does sometimes work (that's why women - and some men - do it). But the whole dynamic is dysfunctional: the nagging itself is disrespectful but so are the passive aggressive avoidance techniques that provoke the response in the first place.

My husband is the more consciencious of the two of us and I am the more laid back one. So he has more reason to nag me than I, him. But there are times when I have asked him to do something and for whatever reason, he doesn't get to it. When that happens, I usually try to choose a good moment to sit down with him and explain why whatever I've asked him to do is really important to me and that I just need to know when he might be able to do it, or if not, whether I should just hire someone.

The thing is, I don't ask him to do things very often and he doesn't ask me to do things for him. For the most part, when either of us wants something done we just do it ourselves.

So. Much. Easier. than getting all bent out of shape.

Background:

Many websites are part of the Google Display Network, a service which enables Google to show ads on those websites. Now since Google wants to show you ads that are relevant to you and your interests, it doesn't want to select them just based on the content of the sites you visit. So it quietly keeps track of the types of sites you visit in the Google Display Network and on partner sites in order to discover what appears to interest you the most.

Now before you panic, you should know that — according to Google — no personal information is recorded during this tracking process.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight....

I seem to remember some text parser years ago telling me that VC was written by a man. It's a good thing I'm secure in my womanliness.

[sob!!!!]

Princess, the star of New Jersey's Popcorn Park Zoo, has correctly picked the winner of five of the last six Super Bowls. She went 14 and 6 predicting regular season and playoff games this year, and has a lifetime record of 88-51.

Her pick this year: The New York Giants.

The Bactrian camel's prognostication skills flow from her love of graham crackers. Zoo general manager John Bergmann places a cracker and writes the name of the competing teams on each hand. Whichever hand Princess nibbles from is her pick. On Wednesday, she made her pick with no hesitation at all, predicting bad news for Bill Belichick, Tom Brady and the New England Patriots, even though the Las Vegas oddsmakers have New England favored by about 3 points.

Her only miscue in the big game was picking the Indianapolis Colts over the New Orleans Saints two years ago, indicating that even camels know it's generally risky to go against Peyton Manning.

Next up: Stuffed Marmoset Picks GOP Presidential Nominee. Remember, you heard it here first.

h/t Texan99, who is a snooty Cultural Elitist :p

Despite frequent counterarguments that this perception is attributable to media lies and bias, it's not hard to see where it comes from. Mr. Gingrich is now on his third marriage. His serial adultery troubled potential conservative supporters (hard to blame that one on the media elite) enough that they demanded - and received - an utterly meaningless no-more-adultery pledge from the former Speaker. Having previously chosen to ignore not one, but two no-adultery pledges similar promises to his first two wives, how seriously should we take a promise made to total strangers?

Oddly, when money was involved Newt's aggressive "Have you no decency?" shtick was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the candidate meekly offered up another promise, the underlying assumption of which is that he cannot be trusted to obey his current wedding vows. What is such a pledge, if not an admission that his questionable judgment in personal matters is a legitimate concern to voters?

But then we're talking about a candidate who suggested that making millions of dollars buying up troubled companies and restructuring them is a shameful act best atoned for by giving the money back. When his opponent returned the favor by suggesting that money earned lobbying for taxpayer backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be returned, Mr. Gingrich belatedly discovered the weaknessnes in his former line of attack. But no matter - and no need to take responsibility! It turns out that Barack Obama made him say those awful things!

“It’s an impossible theme to talk about with Obama in the background. Obama just makes it impossible to talk rationally in that area because he is so deeply into class warfare that automatically you get an echo effect. … I agree with you entirely.”

- A True Conservative, explaining how Barack Obama forced him to say things he doesn't really believe.

In the Washington Examiner, Byron York takes on Newt's other ethics perception problem - his conduct while in office:

The IRS concluded the course simply was not political. "The central problem in arguing that the Progress and Freedom Foundation provided more than incidental private benefit to Mr. Gingrich, GOPAC, and other Republican entities," the IRS wrote, "was that the content of the 'Renewing American Civilization' course was educational...and not biased toward any of those who were supposed to be benefited."

The bottom line: Gingrich acted properly and violated no laws. There was no tax fraud scheme. Of course, by that time, Gingrich was out of office, widely presumed to be guilty of something, and his career in politics was (seemingly) over.

York's account, so far as it goes, is truthful but his arguments are disturbing on several fronts. They echo those of the Speaker whenever Newt's refusal to honor his wedding vows, his lobbying activities, or the turmoil he created as Speaker of the House during the Reagan (Oops! thanks for the correction, Don!) Bush years are raised. Questions of substance are deflected by accusations of media bias or petty partisan motivation. In the Examiner, York devotes the bulk of his defense to analyzing the motivation of Gingrich's accusers. But the salient question here is not whether Democrat-sponsored investigations were partisan in nature (duh...), but whether there was a reasonable basis for them. It is notable here that Gingrich's own characterizations of the investigation are demonstrably untruthful. The committee was not, in fact, partisan:

The ethics panel was far from a “partisan” committee. Three of the panel’s Republican members joined all four Democrats in the 7-1 vote to recommend that the full House reprimand Gingrich — on a single charge of misleading the committee.

York also failed to mention the disturbing fact that 88% of House Republicans voted to approve the sanction and $300,000 penalty. Clearly the vast majority of Newt's own party members were disturbed by his behavior. Are they partisan too? York also found it unnecessary to mention Gingrich's involvement in the House Banking Scandal:

When both were serving in the House in the early 1990s, Mr. Santorum said Mr. Gingrich resisted helping him expose abuses at the House-run bank. The extensive practice of members writing bad checks became a major scandal that rocked Washington and eventually led to ethical reprimands for 22 members of Congress, as well as convictions of four former members, a delegate and the House sergeant-at-arms.

...Neither Mr. Santorum and Mr. Gingrich mentioned Mr. Gingrich’s own vulnerability in the banking scandal — that he had 22 kited checks, including a $9,463 check to the Internal Revenue Service.

I'm fairly certain that if I kited a $9,000 check to the IRS, I would be in serious trouble with the law, but also with my own conscience. This is hardly a moral grey area. I've excerpted the article for the sake of brevity but I encourage you to read the whole thing. Gingrich's check kiting can not be breezily dismissed as mean spirited partisan attack or a minor breach of Byzantine House rules:

His 22 overdrafts including a $9,463 check to the IRS was a major issue in his re-election campaign that year and nearly cost him his seat which the then House Republican Minority held by a razor-thin margin of 982 votes that fall.

That kind of deflection is a problem as are selective, strategic omissions of the historical record.

Newt Gingrich rose to power by accusing prominent Democrats of ethical and moral lapses. When a politician does that, his own record had better be squeaky clean. He began his political career by going after House Speaker Jim Wright for a book deal that he claimed violated House rules. But Gingrich's own book deals soon drew similar - and utterly predictable - scrutiny. A second Gingrich book deal generated ethical questions from impertinent CNN news anchors his fellow conservatives:

Mr. Gingrich, who made his reputation attacking the ethics of Democratic lawmakers, also conceded that many Republicans apparently believed that the enormous advance gave the appearance of improperly profiting from the party's electoral success.

He said he had made his decision before Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, who will become the Senate majority leader next week, publicly criticized the proposed contract on Thursday. Mr. Gingrich said he had heard conflicting advice from friends and associates. But in the end, he said, he was convinced that the advance gave off the wrong signals.

He said he was particularly taken by the remarks of an "older precinct committeeman" in Lancaster, Pa., who was said to have told Representative Robert S. Walker, "Tell our new Speaker we all worked for this victory, and he should not take advantage of our efforts."

Mr. Gingrich said: "You know, sometimes you hear things and something you haven't quite gotten suddenly becomes clear. And I realized that we really owed it to every person who was on the team to say to them, "We don't want anyone at any level to think we're taking any advantage.' "

Mr. Gingrich, in a tone of amiable puzzlement, attributed the dispute partly to his own charged position in political life and partly to an "age of extraordinarily cynical, adversarial press, an age of a White House press corps that devoured Carter, tried to devour Reagan and lost, devoured Bush and are now working on devouring Clinton."

Mr. Gingrich's book deal has attracted a great deal of press attention, but it has come under especially strong criticism from some conservative columnists, including Robert Novak and William F. Buckley Jr.

In addition to whatever damage Mr. Gingrich feared the conflict could do to his legislative goals, a dispute over a lucrative book contract holds a special political edge for him. In one of his best-known attacks on Democratic ethics in the past, Mr. Gingrich helped bring about the downfall of a Democratic House Speaker, James Wright of Texas, in part by raising questions about Mr. Wright's sales of a vanity-press book, "Reflections of a Public Man."

Note that once again, Gingrich's judgment is being questioned, not by the snooty media elite, but by his fellow conservatives. Fast forward to 2011 to find the former Speaker embroiled in yet another controversy involving profits from one of his books:

Newt Gingrich has a non-profit organization focused on promoting leadership. That’s all well and good, except that the non-profit has also been sending a lot of money Newt’s way by buying up cases of his books, among other things.

A non-profit charity founded by Newt Gingrich to promote freedom, faith and free enterprise also served as another avenue to promote Gingrich’s political views, and came dangerously close, some experts say, to crossing a bright line that is supposed to separate tax-exempt charitable work from both the political process and such profit-making enterprises as books and DVDs. The charity, Renewing American Leadership, not only featured Gingrich on its website and in fundraising letters, it also paid $220,000 over two years to one of Gingrich’s for-profit companies, Gingrich Communications. It purchased cases of Gingrich’s books and bought up copies of DVDs produced by another of the former House speaker’s entities, Gingrich Productions.

In other words, Gingrich set up a self-licking ice cream cone. He can’t touch the money to his non-profit, but his non-profit can certainly be a customer for his other for-profit ventures. Which, while probably not technically illegal, certainly stinks.

A non-profit law blogger explains the issues involved:

...the report alleges that Gingrich founded and operated charities in a manner that necessarily benefitted his private profit-making entities and, to a lesser extent, his political ambitions. For example, the charity mentioned in the quoted text above purchased books and DVD's produced by Gingrich's for profit publishing companies and also paid for charter jets used by Gingrich to promote movies his private businesses produced.

...Charities must benefit someone in order to achieve a charitable purpose. But when that "someone" is an insider, the benefit seems less coincidental and more purposeful, as is the case when an insider "skims" profit for his own benefit.

This lengthy article outlines Newt's extensive intermingling of non-profit and for-profit ventures that seem to end up lining the former Speaker's pockets.

It's entirely fair to point out the media's notoriously uneven coverage of scandals involving Democrats and Republicans. It's also fair to note - as York correctly did - that ethics investigations are often launched for partisan purposes. But partisan motives don't necessarily mean there's no substance to allegations of misconduct. Nor does acquittal prove innocence.

Newt's accusations against Jim Wright were partisan in nature, so it's hardly surprising that they led to reciprocal scrutiny of Gingrich's handling of similar deals. The ensuing investigations and scandals cost American taxpayers money and created a useful distraction from the conservative agenda. His serial check kiting is unquestionably unethical. This is not even a grey area.

When a politician goes to Washington and uses his political contacts to make millions of dollars, that raises questions. When money is exchanged between tax exempt non-profits and for profit ventures that directly benefit said politician, people should be asking questions. Gingrich is hardly alone in this, but his conduct raises real questions - especially when his statements are contradicted by public records or he makes highly questionable claims:

In 2003, Gingrich gathered about two dozen Republican House members who opposed a $395 billion Medicare prescription drug benefit to pitch them on why they should support it, former Representative C.L. “Butch” Otter, who said he was in the room, said in an e-mail.

Otter, who supports Mitt Romney in the Republican presidential primaries and is now governor of Idaho, said it was “obvious” to him and others in the room that they were being lobbied. The meeting occured as Gingrich was building the Center for Health Transformation, which was seeking financing from drugmakers.

Gingrich has also bragged of killing legislation, often a goal of lobbyists. During a Dec. 10 Republican presidential debate, he said he “helped defeat” a proposal to lower carbon emissions known as “cap and trade” through a nonprofit advocacy group he founded called American Solutions.

’Influence Peddling’
“Gingrich’s boasting reveals, truly, what he was doing: He was working for and against specific legislation. That’s lobbying,” said Craig Holman, who pushes for tougher lobbying and campaign finance laws as a lobbyist for Washington-based Public Citizen. “When it comes to promoting or attacking or defeating legislation, that is influence peddling.”

Energy companies are among the top donors to American Solutions. The group took in more than $1.3 million from two of them, Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) and Devon Energy Corp. (DVN), during the last two election cycles, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political money in Washington.

The entanglement of Gingrich's empire of non-profit, not for profit, and for profit groups with lobbying is troubling to me. It may or may not be illegal but it is morally questionable, especially when millions of dollars flow from interested parties to an impenetrable network of tightly coupled 527s, non-profits, and for-profit enterprises.

When a politician deliberately chooses to question the ethics of his politican opponents, it should surprise no one if they retaliate in kind. If Mr. Gingrich sincerely believes ethics are important (as opposed to being merely a convenient weapon to bash his opponents with), we should expect his personal and professional life to meet the standards he publicly champions. He can't skirt the law or push the boundaries.

That is clearly not the case here, and while I have no objection to setting the record straight with regard to the eventual ruling of the IRS on the charges presented to them, I do object to selective airbrushing of the historical record. One of the biggest complaints conservatives had during the 2008 election was the media's odd refusal to vet Barack Obama. If we think this vetting process is important, we should not be too quick to dismiss vetting of Newt Gingrich's record by attacking the motives of anyone who dares to ask questions.

All politics is partisan. What matters is not the subjective motives of various actors, but the facts on the ground. It is a virtual certainty that a Republican president will be on the receiving end of relentless media scrutiny. I don't believe Newt Gingrich's record can withstand such scrutiny. At a time when conservative ideas must gain traction and credibility with the American public, the last thing we need is to be continually distracted with accusations and investigations of the type Mr. Gingrich found so very useful during the Reagan years.