A bunch of dummies working for various news organizations on Friday entered the apartment of Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, the now-deceased accused attackers in this week's mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, because the landlord allowed them. See, unbeknownst to many in the field of journalism, the oversight of what constitutes "journalistic ethics" has recently been put in the hands of random California landlords.

It's a really great system that every profession should try. "I hear what you're saying about the rules, but that random guy over there said it was okay, so let's do it." Just a top-class way of doing business.

Anyway, for those who were watching MSNBC, what transpired was some sort of odd combination of the Jake Gyllenhaal film "Nightcrawler" and Charlie Brooker's Channel 4 series, "Black Mirror," to which more and more moments in the media are becoming comparable. Viewers were treated to the sight of reporter Kerry Sanders rifling through Farook and Malik's belongings, with no editorial restraint whatsoever. Dude was literally just picking up household objects, shoving them in front of a camera, and broadcasting them to the whole wide world.

All fun and games until you start broadcasting random photographs of people, and the identifying information on the drivers licenses of those not suspected of crimes!

Here's what the Society of Professional Journalists' ethics chair, Andrew Seaman, a fresh-faced fellow with the responsibility of coming up with something a bit more politic than, "Hey, you guys, that was effed up and you should feel terrible" to say about it, said about it:

Journalists should feel free to investigate stories when and where possible. They need to minimize harm in their reporting, however. Walking into a building and live broadcasting the pictures, addresses and other identifying information of children or other people who may have no involvement in the story does not represent best and ethical practices.

For its part, here's what MSNBC had to say about this (via HuffPost's Michael Calderone):

""We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review," an MSNBC spokesperson said in a statement. ... MSNBC and other news organizations were invited into the home by the landlord after law enforcement officials had finished examining the site and returned control to the landlord, Although MSNBC was not the first crew to enter the home, we did have the first live shots from inside.

There's a symmetry here. Ethics say: You should not broadcast, willy nilly, pictures of certain things on live television. MSNBC says: Hey, you know what, you're right. Our bad. Cool, so we're all agreed that putting the drivers licence of Farook's mother, with her Social Security number and the address where she resides and where Farook's infant child is currently sheltering, was a bad idea.

But there's a discordant note in there, and it's one worth interrogating. Per MSNBC: "Although MSNBC was not the first crew to enter the home, we did have the first live shots from inside."

Why did you need to get the first live shots from the inside?

Seriously. Why was that important? What is the journalistic importance of getting -- not the first live report -- but the first live shots of the inside of an apartment?

I didn't get the first live shots of this apartment, and you know what? I feel pretty damned great about it. In fact, give me a minute, I'm gonna high-five myself.

Okay, back to my question. Why was it important to beat all competitors to having the "first live shots" of this apartment?

I ask this because this is how I would have typically expected a news organization to handle this situation. A crew enters the apartment, they shoot footage, the reporter explores the scene, asks questions, directs the camera to points of interest, offers on-the-scene explanations, all very patiently and professionally, and then they step outside and edit everything into a cogent package, focusing only on what's important and omitting that which isn't, perhaps under the supervision of another adult whose job is to "produce" this package.

But that's not what happened. MSNBC wanted the "first live shots" of the apartment. And they succeeded! I do not want to take that away from them. They did it. By scrambling through an apartment, sifting through random items, as if it were some sort of demented scavenger hunt. 

But why? Did anyone think to stop and ask, why do we have to do it this way?

See, the reason I bring it up involves some of the terms that Seaman uses in his assessment of the situation. Words like "investigate," a verb that suggests thoroughness, taking the time to do good, painstaking, and delicate work. The word "methodical" comes to mind, as in "done according to a systematic or established form of procedure."

It's almost as if a journalist guided by a "systematic or established form of procedure" is, de facto, guided by ethics.

Whereas a journalist guided by "that dude over there, Doyle Whatshisname, with the crowbar, who says that he's chill if we want to pry the board off the door and stumble around picking up teddy bears" is acting in a way that is out of sync with the conventional notion of ethics. Perhaps they are guided by some desire to get "the first live shots from inside."

So, why is it important to get the "first live shots from inside?" Maybe the importance is intrinsic to the content that was obtained -- content which MSNBC is still bragging about getting first. So let's examine what that content was. 

• A wall calendar.
• A prayer rug. (Sanders: "It’s possible that this prayer rug has been left in the position where it was." Possible? Why I'd go so far as to say "probable," there, Scoop!)
• Shredded documents. (Sanders: "The FBI must have decided that whatever was in here wasn’t that important because even when documents are shredded, they can be very painstakingly put back together." Well, you sure better hope that's what the FBI decided!)
• A check in the amount of $7.98.
• A computer monitor.
• "All-in-one printers and scanners and keyboards."
• A bag of mixed nuts.
• A closet with hangers.
• A crib.
• A teddy bear.
• Dolls and other toys.
• An unwrapped gift. 
• Children's books, including a grade school Arabic reader and "Bedtime stories from the Qu'ran."

And, of course there were all of the things that MSNBC is sorry to have gotten the first live shots of, like "photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review." 

So, if the importance of getting the first live shots of the apartment's interior can be explained by the contents of those shots, then what content did the trick? The $7.98 check? Maybe it was the mixed nuts? I will admit, I kind of am curious about the "all-in-one printer and scanners and keyboards" thing.

In the effort to get the "first live shots" of this, there was something important missing: editorial judgment -- the thing that informs you that a teddy bear is not the same as a drivers license, which is not the same as an empty closet, which is not the same as a half-eaten sack of nuts. A voice that says, "Include this. Emphasize this. Leave this out. Don't broadcast this." Editorial judgment, properly applied, may preclude the possibility that you get the "first live shots" of the interior of an apartment. It doesn't preclude the possibility of getting the best story, about this apartment's interior, however.

Nevertheless, MSNBC maintains, in the face of criticism, that it was important to get "the first live shots" in this case. There is much they regret. Much they are sorry about! But what they want you to know that getting these precious, "first live shots" was a virtuous thing to have attempted to do.

But I have a different theory. Nah, wrong. 

No, it was not important to get the first live shots of the apartment's interior. I actually believe that in this case, it would have been absolutely okay to not have gotten the first live shots of this apartment. It would have actually been completely all right to have been late to broadcast this story, perhaps even last to broadcast this story.

In fact, here's a thought: This information could have been obtained professionally and ethically, and then -- bear with me here -- never broadcast at all! A producer could have said, "Hey, thanks for the work, but there's nothing we can do with this, this is literally just some toys and random photos and furniture, good effort, though," and this would have still been journalism! Sometimes, journalism is what you choose to not do, to not show, to not produce. 

It's true, you're not gonna win a Peabody Award for restraint. But you're not gonna win a Peabody Award for this crap either. So guess what? It's a wash.

So, here at the end of the day, this question remains: Why do you need to have the "first live shots" of a terrorist's apartment?

I think that the right answer is, "It is actually not necessary to have the first live shots of a terrorist's apartment." If there's anyone at MSNBC who disagrees with that, pinkslip the lot of them.

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Subscribe here. Listen to the latest episode below:

So, that happened:  This week, we lived through the horrors of two mass shootings -- one in Colorado Springs, Colorado and one in San Bernardino, California. On Capitol Hill, the living has become easy: a comms director tells the staff social media intern, "Tweet something about prayers," and the day rolls on. It's not just inaction -- it's brutally efficient inaction with repetitive pageantry and playacting.

We'll fight this battle of broken records with our Aug. 28 interview with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), whose urgings to action, and his reminder that Congress continues to simply give a "quiet endorsement" to these murders will remain relevant -- until that day when it isn't.

In hopeful news, world leaders have assembled in Paris to discuss the next steps to combat climate change, and observers are coming away feeling fairly optimistic about what's unfolding. And closer to home, a few lawmakers have hit upon one of those small ideas that make a big difference -- a way to help working class parents make ends meet by providing them with diapers, a product that poor parents spend an astonishing portion of their income procuring. Joining us to discuss this is Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.).

Meanwhile, in Washington, a big winner has emerged in the fight to pass a highway funding bill and, naturally, it's an obscure bank with enough lobbying clout to get key lawmakers to just hand it money. Finally, the ostensible mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, is presiding over the biggest public crisis his city has faced during his tenure -- so why is he so angry about Politico's Mike Allen asking him about his vacation plans? 

"So, That Happened" hosts Jason Linkins, Zach Carter and Arthur Delaney are joined this week by HuffPost reporter Dave Jamieson.

This podcast was produced, edited and engineered by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with assistance from Christine Conetta.

To listen to this podcast later, download our show on iTunes. While you're there, please subscribe to, rate and review our show. You can check out other HuffPost podcasts here.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience: sothathappened@huffingtonpost.com. 

If you've ever wondered if some of the dullards who populate the editorial pages of our newspapers are just handed copy to turn in, courtesy of clapped-out corporate public relations professionals, the Nov. 23rd op-ed that appeared in The Hill under the byline of Harry C. Alford is going to serve as hilarious proof to your thesis.

The piece in question is titled "EDMC settlements chart new direction for private-sector education." Now, EDMC -- which refers to the Education Management Corp. -- might not be an organization with which you are familiar. If you're well-versed in the scammy enterprises that purport to be "for-profit post-secondary institutions," you'll know EDMC as the organization that just settled their fraud case with the Department of Justice. If you're a fan of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), you'll recognize the name EDMC as one of her continued targets of ire.

And if you are Harry C. Alford, the president and CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, you'll recognize EDMC as the people who handed you an op-ed to submit to papers under your name, leaving instructions for you to follow in the middle of the copy -- instructions which you, and The Hill's editors, never noticed and thus forgot to remove before the op-ed was published.

Whoopsie!

The upshot of this piece that appears under Alford's byline is simple: despite the fact that EDMC was made to settle with the Justice Department to the tune of $95.5 million, this is good news for the for-profit sector and bad news for its critics. And let me assure you, this is true! EDMC allegedly defrauded taxpayers out of $11 billion, and under the law, the federal government could have potentially recovered $33 billion. That everyone settled for a pittance in this instance does, indeed, speak to a bright future for these grifters.

This op-ed goes on, presenting this whole debacle as something that could have been avoided if the defrauded students had only been smarter, but there's no worries now, because EDMC will be better arming those students with the information they maybe should have had in the first place (or some colorful version of that information, anyway). And best of all, EDMC will continue to do business, despite having demonstrated that leaving them to their own devices is a multibillion-dollar mistake.

Why is this especially good news, from the supposedly authentic point of view of Alford, hander-inner/passer-offer of other people's work? Because EDMC is an industry leader, by gum! Why, they'll steer the whole sector in the right direction, if they could just be allowed to continue to ply their trade. And where will the sector be steered, by EDMC, chastened fraud settlers? Toward accountability, and most importantly, transparency. The free market will work once again! As "Alford" puts it:

These changes are not general statements of good intentions; they are binding. They are going to create fundamental improvements in transparency and accountability, and all of higher ed should sit up and take notice!

But there is also a bigger picture here.

EDMC is one of the private sector's largest, most visible companies. What they have called their "blueprint for change" will certainly have influence. And it is all happening at a particularly important time.

This op-ed would be a simpering, duplicitous mess if Alford had written it. The good news, I suppose, is that he clearly didn't. We know that because in the piece's 19th paragraph, whoever did write this piece left in a parenthetical aside to whoever was going to be putting their byline on the piece. Alford missed it, and so did whoever edits this section of The Hill, but we spotted it.

 I have to admit, this is quite a demonstration of their commitment to transparency!

Anyway, keep an eye out for more great op-ed pieces over at The Hill, which have almost assuredly been written by someone or something.

-----

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below:

If you were doing anything that even closely resembled "having a life" over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, you might have missed the news that the New Hampshire Union Leader handed out a (relatively early) Republican primary endorsement to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.

It's a pretty big deal. As Toby Harnden wrote -- so sagely! -- back in 2011, "It's easy to dismiss the importance of today's endorsement of Newt Gingrich by the New Hampshire Union-Leader." Indeed. So easy.

But not dismissing the paper's latest choice entirely is Tom Moran, the editorial page editor of Christie's home state newspaper, The Star-Ledger. Moran, as it turned out, was very puzzled as to why the Granite State paper endorsed Christie. So he called up his counterpart in Manchester, the Union Leader's editorial page editor, Grant Bosse.

They had a nice conversation. Got down to brass tacks. Discussed several matters germane to Christie's record. And afterwards, Moran came away with the story: No one at the Union Leader actually knows what they're talking about.

"The [Union Leader] knows almost nothing about his record as governor," wrote Moran.

Cool, cool, the system works.

It's not as if the Union Leader didn't attempt to make a case for Christie. The paper noted that Christie "has prosecuted terrorists" and "dealt admirably with major disasters" and "he tells it like it is and isn't shy about it." And if that sounds like maybe the Union Leader was working off research culled from a coloring book about Chris Christie, well, you aren't the only one to think so. During his talk with Bosse, Moran went over several key details about Christie's governorship, only to discover that Bosse wasn't particularly well-versed in any of them.

Just to give you a sense of the level of the room at the Union Leader, "It has nothing to do with [Christie]," was Bosse's response to Moran's inquiries about Bridgegate.

It gets worse from there. Per Moran:

How about pension reform? The board in Manchester did not know that Christie broke his core promise on that by skipping pension payments. "I don't know if we went into the weeds on pension reform," Bosse said.

The editorial said he "dealt admirably" with Sandy. That would come as a shock to the actual victims, 60 percent of whom say they are dissatisfied with the state's response.

On jobs, the paper saw no reason to check Christie's dismal record. "Politicians don't create jobs, so we didn't want to give that any credibility," Bosse said.

How about the state's nine credit downgrades on Christie's watch as governor?

"Durrrrrr," replied Bosse. (I'm paraphrasing.)

Of course, the strange thing about the Union Leader's endorsement of Christie is the extent to which it's actually a non-endorsement of several other candidates. "We don't need another fast-talking, well-meaning freshman U.S. senator trying to run the government," said the Union Leader of Marco Rubio. "We don't need as President some well-meaning person from the private sector who has no public experience," the paper said of Carly Fiorina.

"Other candidates have gained public and media attention by speaking bluntly," said the Union Leader of ... well, somebody? Here I thought that "telling it like it is" was one of those qualities that these editors held to be important.

I guess it's an interesting clash of different points of view. Moran, who's watched Christie up close for over a decade, thinks the governor is a liar. Bosse, who's found something to admire in Christie's romp around the Granite State, believes the New Jersey governor "knows what he is saying because he has experienced it."

I'll note that it only took about a week for Christie to come around to defending the residents of his state against Donald Trump's slander against them, which is probably the right amount of time to determine whether it was politically smart to do so.

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below:

Also on HuffPost:

Welcome once again to our Michael Bloomberg Clockwatch, an infrequently updated journal of every time some columnist, out of ideas and deadline looming, summons up that old chestnut, "Michael Bloomberg should run for president."

Who will be the last columnist to die for this mistake? Maybe Jamie Stiehm, writing in U.S. News & World Report -- a publication here seen being pretty lax about the topics for which the "world" needs "reports."

Is there a man who can save the party of Republicans from themselves? There may be one, but only one. His name is Michael Bloomberg, and he used to be a Republican (when he was mayor of New York) and a Democrat before that. Now Bloomberg is an independent waiting to be asked to dance by a party that is taking American politics and values down.

Here's where we must ask if Stiehm -- who might be some sort of satirist, who knows? -- is at all familiar with the modern-day Republican Party and its guiding philosophies. I submit to you that she is not. For example:

Bloomberg, to his great credit, is the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. He's a can-do man who can see the future coming in and cares about generations beyond our selfish state of things.

So, he's not a good fit for Republicans.

He cares about public health in a more meaningful way than Dr. Ben Carson, taking stands against smoking and soda consumption.

Right, Republican voters make fun of him for all of this. (Though I suppose everyone does.)

Finally, in the wake of murders at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado, we're forced to face the fact that there is not one prominent Republican in office who is pro-abortion rights.

Whoa! You don't say!

Bloomberg, meanwhile, is pro-abortion rights.

Yeah ... see, this is just one more reason why no one from the Republican Party is trying to recruit Michael Bloomberg to run for president under their banner.

I'll say no more, except: Bloomberg is the man of reason to come to the aid of the party.

Right, see, "man of reason?" That's another disqualification, perhaps for running for office in America entirely.

It's actually too bad that Stiehm doesn't highlight some of the things that Republicans might find appealing about Bloomberg, such as his wholesale selling off of New York City to rich developers.

But even then, the GOP could probably find someone to do that sort of thing who wasn't simultaneously given to strident support of gun control. That might have been worth noting, actually: Bloomberg's position on guns leaves him well outside the GOP base's range of acceptable candidates.

Before you write a column about why a political party should draft someone as their presidential candidate, is it important to be remotely familiar with that political party and its current political leanings? Some editors would apparently say, "Whatever, just wing it for six hundred words. Who cares?"

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below:

Also on HuffPost:

We now know that the alleged gunman in Friday's shooting spree in Colorado Springs said "no more baby parts" upon his arrest. That's inconvenient for Twitter conservatives, who spent a portion of Friday desperately hoping that a shooting at a Planned Parenthood had nothing to do with Planned Parenthood or opposition to legal abortion.

Initially, it was legitimately difficult to know for sure what was happening and why. It wasn't fully clear whether the shooter was at the clinic or merely near it. A lot still needed to be sorted out. But not everyone was particularly charitable about it:

Although it's fine to caution the media to refrain from speculating in haste, it's another thing entirely to accuse journalists of attempting to enforce a specific, slanted narrative. But some did just that readily.

To be fair, some early news reports definitely suggested that Planned Parenthood was not the target of the attack:

But the notion that the gunman was specifically motivated by the existence of Planned Parenthood was far from idle speculation. Colorado Springs has long been a hotbed for anti-abortion rights activists, including their more violent varietals, and Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains has historically been a target of anti-abortion militants. Concluding that there was a link between the gunman and the anti-abortion movement may have been premature, but it was near the blade of Occam's razor.

At some point, the tenor of anti-abortion conservatives' stance shifted from "the media should not speculate" to "the media's speculation needs to conform to our specific needs and wants and insecurities."

 Twitter's armchair media critics had moments they'd go on to regret:

Some seemed taken in by initial reports that the shooting was happening at a nearby bank:

Others experienced a range of disposable emotions:

Others insisted that we remember the real victims:

Some owned up to their mistakes and apologized:

Investigators have so far been oddly reluctant to make a connection between the shooter's "baby parts" comment and anti-abortion motives. But at least one anti-abortion rights organization is eager to dispel any suggestion that its rhetoric could have inspired the attack:

David Daleiden, who produced the shocking videos showing Planned Parenthood abortion clinics selling aborted babies and their body parts, strongly condemned the shooting.

 

“The Center for Medical Progress does not support vigilante violence against abortion providers. There are people at Planned Parenthood who I still consider friends and my thoughts and prayers are with them at this time for no one to be injured.”

 

“We only visited the Denver clinic in Colorado. PPRM CEO Vicki Cowart says Planned Parenthood still doesn’t know the full details of what is going on in Colorado Springs.”

Maybe this would be a good time to dust off that old Department of Homeland Security report, "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment."

So, that happened: Black Friday, once the day retailers celebrated finally being "in the black," has for a long while been known for something much worse -- an annual post-Thanksgiving retail Bacchanal of "doorbuster" mayhem and instant YouTube shaming in which big-box retailers throw caution and good sense to the wind and stoke a stampede of desperate shoppers to run rampant through their aisles. More recently, this awful tradition has bullied its way up the calendar, interrupting the quiet Thanksgiving holiday with its nonsense.

However, have things finally gone too far? A growing backlash, stoked by retailers like outdoor sporting goods emporium REI, has taken root in the popular consciousness. And as more customers recoil from the chaotic scenes and go online to shop, the economics of staying open on Thursday are starting to make less sense. On this week's podcast, we explore the possibility that Black Friday might finally be in retreat.

Meanwhile, it's becoming more and more clear that Donald Trump intends to make angry, racist lying the centerpiece of his campaign. Now, a group of Republicans have ordered the Code Red, forming one of those shady dark money organizations just to stop Trump. But what if Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus' worst fear is realized and Trump runs as a third-party candidate? 

It wouldn't be Thanksgiving without having a few fun guests around the table with us. This week, two of our favorites return. Here to talk about his biennial budgeting reform proposal is Rep. Reid Ribble (R-Wis.). And giving us her best advice on getting along with everyone at your holiday meals is Daily Beast and New York Times contributor Ana Marie Cox, the host of The Brouhaha podcast.

"So, That Happened" hosts Jason Linkins, Zach Carter and Arthur Delaney are joined this week by HuffPost reporter Dave Jamieson.

This podcast was produced, edited and engineered by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with assistance from Christine Conetta.

To listen to this podcast later, download our show on iTunes. While you're there, please subscribe, rate and review our show. You can check out other HuffPost podcasts here.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience: sothathappened@huffingtonpost.com. 

HBO's "Last Week Tonight," having concluded its second season on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, will be off the air until February. That's a long, cold winter of being on our own, without John Oliver's rapier wit at today's malefactors. What to do? Let's celebrate the show at its best, why not?

In the second season, we watched Oliver and his merry band of writer-researchers aim their comic barbs at North Dakota frackers, predatory televangelists, Big Tobacco, and bad FIFA. And you've seen the headlines: Oliver eviscerated, or dismembered, or plundered the once and future hopes of all of them. But a keen-eyed viewer may have noticed that no target bore more of Oliver's fury than the most detestable collection of people that ever lived: the people from stock photography.

In the video above, relive the moments when Oliver totally brought a world of hurt to Kendall, Braden, Brenda, Darren, Aunt Sheryl, and -- especially -- Gerald. 

You know what you did, Gerald.

"Last Week Tonight" has been renewed for at least two more seasons. The third season begins in February.

Evan Osnos' new profile of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is titled "The Opportunist," which makes it sound like a rough ride is in store for the young Republican presidential aspirant. And as it happens, the piece paints Rubio at times as a little green, and at times, a little grasping.

All the same, Rubio's camp is going to be pretty happy for having participated in the piece. By the time its first eight paragraphs conclude, Rubio has been humanized as colorfully as any campaign manager could possibly desire. All in all, it's a pretty good read.

But we have got to talk about the Drake shoutout, you guys. What the hell is this?

Rubio’s inclusiveness can invite caricature. He considers himself a Catholic, but he attends two churches — an evangelical Protestant service on Saturdays and a Roman Catholic Mass on Sundays. He used to proclaim his love of nineties-era hip-hop — particularly Tupac Shakur — but recently he has also taken to praising cross-genre artists, such as Drake and the Weeknd, who blend electronic dance music with hip-hop, rap, and R. & B. “It’s a twenty-first-century ability to take music and use it in a way that motivates people,” he said last month on CNN, mirroring his campaign rhetoric. “Some of it is blended with other sounds that are sampled from recordings that others have had in the past, and you see traditional artists being brought in and their voices used on an electronic soundtrack.

Leaving aside Rubio's ecclesiastical chameleon act, how on earth is it a caricature to have loved '90s-era hip-hop at one point and to have praised Drake and The Weeknd at another? There are literally thousands of people who have made this same journey in terms of music taste. One big reason is that first, there were a bunch of people who made '90s-era hip-hop back in this time we call "the '90s," and then a decade later, Drake and The Weeknd released some albums and a lot of people said, "Hey, this is good music too."

Is there anyone at the New Yorker with experience listening to contemporary music? Because it would have been useful to have someone to say, "Hey, let's not make something very typical in music fandom sound like a character indictment."

Of course, I did kind of laugh at Rubio's quote, which makes him sound a little aggressively normcore about listening to today's music. In his defense, however, I'll point out that he was talking to CNN -- the cable news equivalent of running with scissors -- and you have to explain everything to them like that. That's just fact.

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below:

On this week's edition of "So, That Happened": Last week's terror attacks in Paris were horrific and senseless, but for the perpetrators -- the death-cultists of the self-described Islamic State -- they served a specific purpose: to eliminate the "gray zone of coexistence" between Muslims living in the West and their non-Muslim neighbors.

The refugees fleeing Syria make it more than crystal clear that the Islamic State is not creating any kind of haven for Islam. But if you want a more relatable face of the "gray zone of coexistence" -- a success story you've definitely heard of -- consider some of your favorite international pop stars. The terror group despises Muslims of all stripes who reject their bankrupt ideology and look to the West for hope. They're counting on us making the mistake of rejecting these Muslims.

Meanwhile, as our political leaders mull what is to be done in response to the Paris attacks, Congress is being asked to reconsider taking up responsibilities that they've long dodged -- passing the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that explicitly pertains to the battle against the Islamic State. Finally, while the world's been watching Paris, your Congresscritters have moved a law through the House of Representatives that would make it easier for auto dealers to practice racial discrimination in the issuance of car loans. And guess what? This passed with massive bipartisan support.

"So, That Happened" hosts Jason Linkins, Zach Carter and Arthur Delaney are joined this week by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), as well as HuffPost reporters Akbar Ahmed and Jessica Schulberg.

This podcast was produced, edited and engineered by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with assistance from Christine Conetta.

To listen to this podcast later, download our show on iTunes. While you're there, please subscribe, rate and review our show. You can check out other HuffPost podcasts here.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience: sothathappened@huffingtonpost.com. 

Ken Vogel, who muckrakes the world of the idle-rich weirdos who run our political system like none other, returns Wednesday with the latest inside dope on the famous Brothers Koch, last seen in these pages describing how they'd been "dragged ... kicking and screaming" into politics only to become so terribly disillusioned about all the "character assassination" they found therein.

So what's going on with these pure-hearted sons of the soil who just want a polite political discourse to flourish in America? Oh, no big deal, they're just plowing all kinds of cash into a "secretive operation that conducts surveillance and intelligence gathering on its liberal opponents," you know, as one does. Per Vogel:

The competitive intelligence team has a staff of 25, including one former CIA analyst, and operates from one of the non-descript Koch network offices clustered near the Courthouse metro stop in suburban Arlington, Va. It has provided network officials with documents detailing confidential voter-mobilization plans by major Democrat-aligned groups. It also sends regular “intelligence briefing” emails tracking the canvassing, phone-banking and voter-registration efforts of labor unions, environmental groups and their allies, according to documents reviewed by POLITICO and interviews with a half-dozen sources with knowledge of the group.

The whole angry capoeira that these politically inclined idiot billionaires are combat-dancing with one another is actually pretty amusing. See, as Vogel tells it, there's this one group of uber-wealthy liberal donors called the Democracy Alliance, who aren't anywhere near the Koch brothers' level of wealth, but who unnerve the Koch brothers greatly. Consequently, these two organizations are basically perpetually engaged in a grand game of subterfuge and slap-and-tickle -- tracking each others' movements, fundraising in the dark market, meeting in secrecy, and every once in a while pilfering some intelligence that's been puzzlingly left lying around to be found.

The Kochs are of the mind that their operation got outfoxed in the last presidential election, so this time out, they're looking the escalate their monetary advantage by building out their intelligence-gathering operation. And the guy they've picked to run their "competitive intelligence" team is a man named Mike Roman, a true artist working in the paranoid style in American politics who has "worked to keep himself and his activity low-profile even within the discreet Koch operation." According to Vogel's sources, this team nurtures its neuroses to the extent that even "when people were summoned to meetings" at their offices, they typically "had trouble finding the suite."

“They told people that’s the way they liked it,” the official recalled. “They act all cloak and dagger – like the CIA. There was a joke about how hardly anyone ever met Mike Roman. It was like, if you wanted to find him, he’d be in a trench coat on the National Mall,” said the former official.

Sounds pretty efficient!

If you're wondering where you may have heard the name Mike Roman before, you might remember him as the guy who created the "Election Journal" website, which purported to hunt down the many instances of voter fraud that keep not happening, but mainly contributed only one thing to American life -- the enduring conspiracy theory of the nightstick-wielding "New Black Panthers" that were spotted outside a Philadelphia polling place supposedly intimidating voters. No actual voters came forward to testify to being intimidated, but maybe that just goes to show how effective those nightsticks really were! At any rate, Roman really, really, really doesn't like the New Black Panthers.

And as Vogel reports, he's apparently "scared to death of moles" as well. So much so that his group sees them everywhere:

One former network executive remembers an email containing a photo of a man identified as an operative with the environmental group Greenpeace who allegedly had been spotted taking his own photos outside the network’s cluster of offices in the Courthouse neighborhood of Arlington.

Connor Gibson, a Greenpeace researcher who focuses on the Koch network, said he visits its component groups’ offices once a year to pick up their tax filings, and he speculated he could have been the operative photographed by the competitive intelligence unit. While he said he’s never sought to conceal his identity during such visits, he added “If the Kochs consider me an opponent, I’m flattered.”

Of course, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you. This crack squad did manage to ferret out an "IT contractor" who'd been posting anonymous accounts to Reddit about how he "worked for the Koch brothers but despised their stances." And that's the incredibly true story about how the Kochs stopped some Reddit thread from permanently tipping the balance of political power to the Democracy Alliance!

To be honest, one of the more amusing things about this clash of gilded elites is that there is absolutely nothing at stake -- at least for all the ridiculous plutocrats involved, anyway. These people all live easy, carefree lives of luxury and there is no plausible electoral outcome in this or any election that will ever alter their upward trajectory to greater and greater levels of comfort and extravagance. All of this miserable paranoia and high anxiety is happening in the clouds, a million miles above the real world, in a clash between rival members of America's perma-fortunate class, locked in a death struggle over what amounts to marginal scraps of wealth. Theirs is a battle that will have no losers, just winners with varying levels of wounded pride.

The bad news is that our dumb, corrupt political system shows no sign of changing for the better anytime soon. The good news is that if you want to mess with the Koch brothers, just come to Arlington's Courthouse neighborhood dressed up like a member of the New Black Panthers!

READ THE WHOLE THING:
The Koch Intelligence Agency [Politico]

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below:

At this week's Republican primary debate in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Neil Cavuto went there with his first question:

Candidates, as we gather tonight in this very august theater, just outside and across the country, picketers are gathering as well. They’re demanding an immediate hike in the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Just a few hours ago, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo proposed doing the same for all state workers, the first governor to do so.

For the "Fight for $15" movement, it was a big moment -- their ongoing activism had landed them, if not on the debate stage, then in the primetime spotlight, with Cavuto bringing the issue of working-class economics to the fore before the evening's opening pomp had fully burnt off and pressing the candidates on whether they were "sympathetic to the protesters' cause." 

As it turned out, this assemblage was not amenable to the idea of raising the minimum wage, preferring instead to enunciate their common fears over the potential for job losses. This is not an unreasonable premise, economically speaking, but because the GOP candidates were so uniform in their responses, a wider discussion on the trade-offs between wage increases and employment never took off.

But during Saturday's Democratic debate, that could be a different story. On this week's "So That Happened," reporters Arthur Delaney and Jessica Schulberg help discuss this hot-button issue ahead of the Democratic candidates' second meeting. (Discussion begins at 45:18 in the recording below.)

As you might expect, the remaining Democratic candidates -- former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) -- all favor an increase in the minimum wage. But as to the extent to which they'd provide a boost in take-home pay, there is just enough divergence to make the discussion more interesting, and the stakes much higher.

The Fight For $15 activists know that Sanders is fully in their corner: He took to the streets with them this past week, and perhaps more importantly has put his name to a bill that would raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

O'Malley, too, has come out in favor of a $15 minimum, touting his successful effort as the governor of Maryland to raise the state minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 an hour.

It will fall then to Clinton to wade into the weeds and explain why her backing of a $12 minimum wage is what's best. In a way, Clinton has already begun erecting the conceptual framework for her argument, having announced herself as a "progressive who likes to get things done" -- contrasting Sanders' revolutionary zeal with her own skill at working within institutions and knowing where the limits are. Her case: The "more ambitious proposal of $15 wouldn't be realistic on Capitol Hill."

The irony, of course, is that successfully making this argument might take considerably more ambition and effort than just enunciating support for the protest movement.

The minimum wage is just one key issue for Democrats that has bloomed with new salience in the days ahead of the debate. This week, the Senate once again threw barriers in the way of closing the Guantanamo Bay internment camp -- one of President Barack Obama's oldest unfulfilled campaign promises. This means there's a good chance that the three Democrats on the stage Saturday night might have this problem passed on to them.

This podcast was produced, edited and engineered by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with assistance from Christine Conetta.

To listen to this podcast later, download our show on iTunes. While you're there, please subscribe, rate and review our show. You can check out other HuffPost podcasts here.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience: sothathappened@huffingtonpost.com. 

So, that happened. Students at the University of Missouri, angry about the school's indifference to numerous instances of flamboyant racial hate, this week forced the resignation of the anthropomorphic shrug emoticon that had managed to become the university's president. But now, it's time to shape the school's future.

It's a role into which the students who wrought change will need to grow. But this is a teachable moment for the outside world as well, as many people would do well to understand the particular perils of their campus and the media environment that students have had to surmount in the past weeks. As Tressie McMillam Cottom writes, these "students are still very much in danger for doing something important."  

Meanwhile, the GOP candidates met in Milwaukee for their fourth debate and, well, it didn't end in tears and angry remonstrations like the last debate -- but was there anyone who clearly excelled? And with the Democrats meeting on Saturday to debate, hot-button issues are emerging in timely fashion. Who will have the best answer on Congress' reluctance to close Guantanamo Bay? Who will make the best case on raising the minimum wage? 

"So, That Happened" hosts Jason Linkins, Zach Carter and Arthur Delaney are joined this week by Jamelle Bouie, Slate's chief political correspondent, as well as HuffPost reporters Marina Fang, Jessica Schulberg and Lauren Weber.

This podcast was produced, edited and engineered by Adriana Usero and Peter James Callahan, with assistance from Christine Conetta.

To listen to this podcast later, download our show on iTunes. While you're there, please subscribe, rate and review our show. You can check out other HuffPost podcasts here.

Have a story you'd like to hear discussed on "So, That Happened"? Email us at your convenience: sothathappened@huffingtonpost.com. 

As we've noted before, Ben Carson's turn as the GOP frontrunner has led the media to shine a spotlight on some of his quirkier viewpoints and tall tales from his biography.

But most recently, the abundance of this sort of coverage has inspired something of a backlash, fueled in part by Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, who complained on "Meet The Press" this weekend that the focus should be on Carson's proposals as a candidate. "I know it's a crazy idea," said Sanders, "but maybe we focus on the issues impacting the American people and what candidates are saying, rather than just spending so much time exploring their lives of 30 or 40 years ago.”

Many in the media share Sanders' viewpoint. As my colleague, Igor Bobic, wrote just yesterday, "What has gotten a little lost in the hoopla over whether [Carson] misrepresented certain details of his biography -- for instance, claims that he was offered a place at West Point and that he stabbed someone in his youth -- is what he would actually do as president."

But, as Bobic says, "The problem with moving on and focusing on his policy platform, which Carson urged on Sunday, is that he barely has one."

He's not alone in noting this. Amy Walter, national editor of The Cook Political Report, tweeted:

I understand where this is coming from, but I'd like to offer a counterpoint: To learn what Carson would actually do as president, we should pay more attention to his odd beliefs and biographical exaggerations. Why? Because it's clear that what Carson is promising to do is take America on a series of wild and zany adventures, and turn our lives into a phantasmagoric roller coaster ride of adrenaline-pumping action and experiences that would stagger the imaginations of our nation's founders.

This is the beauty that I see in Ben Carson, and I want everyone to be able to see it! With Ben Carson as a presidential candidate, we are at a crossroads. One path leads to the enunciation of boring policy plans, the rigamarole of delegate-collecting and nomination-winning and convention-having, and then the anti-climax of an election in which voters choose someone who'll either fail to deliver on promises or restrict their promises to a pitifully mediocre array of offerings. Then, we'll just go on, feeling hollow inside and waiting for the sweet relief of death's embrace.

Or. OR! Ben Carson will be elected, and we will set off on a fantastic thrill ride beyond the senses, limited only by our dreams and desires, each new day dawning into a magical kaleidoscope of mind-bending possibilities. 

As a candidate, Ben Carson is just on another level entirely. It's high time we start judging the rest of the field by the standards he sets, instead of insisting that Carson dial back everything that makes him so incredible so that he more closely resembles the more earthbound GOP candidates for president.

To listen to the way the media covers Carson, you'd think that he's alone in being a "lunatic" or saying things that have "no basis in fact." But look at Marco Rubio's tax plan! It is pure and unadulterated Willy Wonka nonsense. And yet, as horsecrap as Rubio's numbers are, what's really lacking is his vision. Rubio might promise "revenues" and "growth," but what part of Rubio's tax plan gets a scholarship to West Point? What part of Rubio's tax plan stops a bear attack? 

Nice tax plan, Rubio, but riddle me this, boy genius: If your tax plan is so great, how come I can't store any grain in it?

Gotcha, Marco. Check and mate.

Jeb Bush, meanwhile, says that he'd go back in time to kill baby Hitler:

“It could have a dangerous effect on everything else, but I’d do it -- I mean, Hitler,” Bush said with a shrug.

Leave it to low-energy Jeb to suck all of the enjoyment and excitement out of the precious gift that is the opportunity to travel back in time to murder a baby. Where did all the white-knuckle thrills in your life go to die, Jeb? Did you murder them, with your boringness?

You put this question to Ben Carson, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he'll come up with a plan that's exciting, challenging and completely unexpected. Going back in time to kill baby Hitler? That's for normal candidates. An extraordinary man like Ben Carson wouldn't merely go back in time to kill Hitler -- he'd go back in time to convert Hitler to Seventh-day Adventism and make him walk a righteous path. Carson would be the metaphoric belt buckle preventing Hitler from stabbing the Jewish people of Europe by turning Hitler's violence aside and making him run to the bathroom of his soul, to read a magical issue of Psychology Today and seek the wisdom necessary to become a better human being. (And then, with the help of time-traveling Michele Bachmann, they'd convert the Jewish people of Europe to Christianity, too.)

Look. It's true that Ben Carson doesn't have much in the way of conventional policy propositions. After the last debate, he was lampooned for not knowing the rate at which his own tax plan would tax people. But this is actually one of the things that makes Carson a strong candidate: his total disinterest in mere "plans" and "policies." There's a lot more to life than what can be slowly ground through the House Appropriations Committee. What I'd say to everyone who harps on Carson's lack of policy acumen as a reason to treat him as if he's not ready for primetime is: You are not looking at the Big Picture.

Because if you look at the Big Picture, you know what you would see? You would see Jesus, up in the corner, offering his smiling approval of Ben Carson. What other candidate can claim to have this kind of backing? This is a painting bombing from the Son of God Himself! But the so-called "mainstream media" wants you to believe that earning the endorsement of Sen. Cory Gardner is a big deal.

Don't you want to feel inspired again? This election is about your life. When the picture of your life is painted and mounted on a wall in your home, do you really want to see Cory Gardner in the background?

Come on, now.

The rest of the GOP field treats American exceptionalism as if it's some tatty museum exhibit -- some antiquity for academics to enclose in a glass box and leave inside some dusty, wood-paneled room, occasionally visited by wisdom-seekers who part from the experience feeling more diminished for having done so. Ben Carson is the only candidate who is loudly advocating for us to push beyond these self-imposed limits and start wielding the concept of American exceptionalism in the way that only a man who literally believes man and dinosaurs walked the earth together can.

Even Donald Trump, for all his big talk and gold leaf, can't compete with Carson in this regard. Trump wants to build a wall and get Mexico to pay for it? Carson would get Mexico to build it. And it would be armed with lasers, garlanded with wise and kindly dragons and inscribed with words of such surpassing wisdom that anyone who travels to the wall wouldn't need to cross the border of a nation to find opportunity waiting -- they'd instead come away armed with the knowledge necessary to cross the most important border of all: the border to personal greatness.

Who, then, would truly "make America great again?" The answer seems clear to me. But if we foolishly demand a pivot to Carson's "policies," we run the risk of missing the real promise of his candidacy -- the opportunity for this entire country to undertake a series of improbable and implausible thrill rides that push us beyond the boundaries of our mortal bodies and into the great wide yawning universe of experiences beyond perception.

This is the Dream Archipelago from which Carson has come into our lives, and to which he promises to take us. We need only to open our minds to him, and allow him to leave a sponge inside our minds.

A sponge soaked in LSD.

~~~~~

Jason Linkins edits "Eat The Press" for The Huffington Post, and co-hosts the HuffPost politics podcast, "So, That Happened." Listen to the latest episode below: