Andrew Sullivan, writing in “The Daily Dish” on July 18, thinks he has found a devastating “gotcha” on his arch nemesis and current pathological obsession, Howell Raines of the New York Times, a “gotcha” Sullivan picked up by way of a piece about stock options and the media written by his hero, Howard “Howie” Kurtz of the Washington Post.

Here’s the bitter Brit’s take:

“[Kurtz] also reveals that -- oh joy! -- the Times has practised [sic] exactly the same stock options maneuver that it has so piously attacked others for. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the mega-rich kid who finances Howell Raines’ [sic] diatribes against corporate executives, has almost $2 million worth of stock options that are not counted as expenses and Times president Russell Lewis says the Times has no plans to alter its policies. Don’t you think the Times should practise [sic] what it preaches in this respect?”

Sounds sharp. Wounding. A possible high-fiver.

Too bad he has it all wrong.

Let’s walk through this slowly.

The New York Times is a newspaper.

The New York Times has an editorial board and a group of editorial writers that draft the paper’s editorials, which appear on the penultimate verso of the first section of the paper. The editorialists are free to write about whatever they would like.

The New York Times has columnists whose essays appear on the page opposite the editorial page (on the last recto of the first section). The columnists are free to write about whatever they would like.

The New York Times Co., however, is a publicly traded corporation.

The assets of the New York Times Co. (hereafter NYT) include: the New York Times; the Boston Globe; the Worcester (Mass.) Telegram & Gazette; a one-half interest in the International Herald Tribune; 15 other newspapers in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina and South Carolina; eight TV stations and two radio stations; newspaper distributors in the New York and Boston metropolitan areas; and minority interests in a Canadian newsprint company.

So, you see there’s more to NYT than just the New York Times and certainly much more than the dreaded Howell Raines.

Compensation of executives

The compensation of NYT executives, including Sulzberger, is established by the compensation committee of the corporation’s board of directors. The compensation committee is comprised of five non-employee (or “outside”) members of the board. It is currently chaired by Brenda C. Barnes, and also includes John F. Akers, David E. Liddle, Henry B. Schacht, and Donald M. Stewart.

This committee, not the editorial board nor the editors of the New York Times, establishes the compensation of both Sulzberger and Lewis, and that compensation includes a base salary, annual at-risk bonuses, and stock option grants based on the performance of NYT.

Accounting for stock options

Not even the compensation committee decides the accounting treatment of stock options, nor does the editorial board of the New York Times, nor the paper’s editors.

The accounting treatment of stock options is determined as part of a larger endeavor called corporate finance that encompasses the corporation’s accounting procedures and practices, financial reporting policies, budgeting, forecasting, tax strategies, and so forth.

These policies are established by the corporation’s top executives, including Sulzberger (chairman of the board), Lewis (chief executive officer and president), Leonard Forman (chief financial officer), James Lessersohn (vice president of finance and corporate development), Stuart Stoller (vice president and corporate controller), and R. Anthony Benton (treasurer).

Normally this is done with at least some consultation with the firm’s auditor, in this case Deloitte & Touche L.L.P., and the board of directors, most notably with the audit committee. At NYT, the audit committee is chaired by Ellen R. Marram and includes Raul E. Cesan, Charles H. Price II, and the aforementioned Liddle.

The separation of powers

So, you see, there is the New York Times, the newspaper, and there is the New York Times, the corporation. As has become customary in the American publishing business, albeit gradually, over the past century, the editorial and business operations of newspapers and magazines have become separated, and such is the case here. (This is why one rarely finds an individual holding the titles of both editor and publisher at a single publication. Martin Peretz, while allowing for a publisher on the masthead, may have misled Sullivan on this point.)

The editors and editorial writers and columnists at the Times can hold and express whatever opinions they would like with respect to the various methods of corporate accounting for employee stock options or any other matter whatsoever.

Ultimately, decisions regarding accounting policies and the preparation of financial statements reside in the business or corporate side of the operation. And their decisions are made, appropriately, in the interest of the corporation and its shareholders, i.e., the owners, and to a lesser degree the employees, and to a de minimus extent, outside “critics.”

As a result, the New York Times, the newspaper, the collection of editors and reporters, cannot “practice what it preaches” because the task of practicing is not in its hands.

[Republished from Saturday, July 20, 2002.]

The Site Meter service we use to monitor visitor traffic sometimes reveals the web site from which the visitor jumped to arrive at The Rittenhouse Review

Most often visitors arrive on their own (in which case we don’t know where they last stopped), while others come from weblogs that either have written something about the Review or have a permalink to our site on theirs.

The more interesting visitors are those who arrive here after performing a Google search.

Usually the Google searchers are on the right course, but occasionally we find a lost soul horribly misdirected by even the world’s best search engine.

Such was the case late yesterday when someone went to Google and entered:

women in Oregon who want to date and have sex in Albany

We admire the specificity, but there’s nothing like that here. Thanks for stopping by, fella’.

Jeff Danziger nails rhymes-with-witch Ann Coulter for kicking a rhymes-with-witch.

Thanks to conservative Republican Barbara Bush for the euphemism.

As we’ve noted before, one of Ann Coulter’s favorite strategies for deflecting criticism during her media appearances is to whine that she isn’t being given the opportunity to talk about her new book, the autobiographically entitled Slander.

She pulled the same stunt during her July 18 appearance on “Donahue,” the new MSNBC program hosted by Phil Donahue.

The preliminary transcript reveals Coulter employed various forms of the dodge eight times in twenty minutes.

COULTER: No, I didn’t, but that’s the last book. Can we talk about this book?

COULTER: No, that is utterly preposterous. But I love that there are so many rumors about me out there, and that people want to talk about crazy things like this, rather than discuss my book.

COULTER: Are we really going to keep talking about the last book?

COULTER: And, as I wrote in my last book -- we will get to this book in a moment, right?

COULTER: I thought we were going to talk about my book.

COULTER: I’m just trying to talk about my book.

COULTER: Actually, you’re the one who wants to keep talking about Clinton. I’m the one who wants to talk about my book.

COULTER: I don’t mind Enron as much as I mind you losing the entire viewing audience when I’m trying to sell a book, by going through these tedious charges. [Emphasis added.]

Michelle Cottle is a welcome addition to the Washington weeklies, though it’s a shame her talents are being wasted at the New Republic, a magazine that, in our opinion, hasn’t been all that interesting since Michael Kinsley left some 15 years ago.

Cottle’s latest piece, “Funny Business,” about the purported business acumen of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, is without question worth your time. The fundamental premise of the essay is sound and wisely argued, and Cottle throws in some great lines like these:

“In reality, both Bush and Cheney were lousy businessmen. Their rise through the corporate ranks had nothing to do with financial or management acumen -- and everything to do with cronyism and a gift for exploiting their insider status.”

“[I]n recent years, with the New Economy making millionaires of us all, corporate executives have been regarded with an awe once reserved for gods and rock stars. (All hail Jack Welch!) Anyone with even weak ties to the business world could convince us of their inherent genius. Even now, we keep hearing about how Bush is ‘our first MBA president.’ Oooo, really? An MBA! How special for all of us.”

We’re tempted to republish the final paragraph of Cottle’s article, but we won’t. Fix yourself a drink, put up your feet, and read the essay at your leisure in its entirety.

It’s probably time for readers to pay another visit to |||trr|||, our sibling web site featuring the lighter side of The Rittenhouse Review.

Now playing . . .

“Mad Kane: Funny Woman”

“Six Feet Out of It”

“Winnie ille Pu”

“Pretty Woman”

“Graydon Carter: Hot Under the Collar”

“Someone Must Be Held Accountable”

“Dutch Boy Paints”

“J.P. Morgan: Not Particularly Fond of Coins”

“Awesome Ann Coulter Anagrams”

And much more!

It wasn’t too long ago that wide swathes of the media were treating Martha Stewart’s sale of a few thousand shares of ImClone Systems Inc. almost as if it were the greatest threat to the entire world financial system.

Well, we’ve heard next to nothing about the Stewart matter in the past two weeks. And what we have heard has little, if anything, to do with Stewart herself. We’ve learned that six ImClone officials have been charged with insider trading and that Stewart’s broker, Peter Bacanovic, has given his telephone records to Congressional investigators.

The lack of attention devoted to Stewart is due in part to the greater and clearly more politically significant questions that surround the financial investments and business deals of President George W. Bush and Vice President Richard Cheney.

We’ve had much to say about the Stewart “controversy,” and eagerly await relevant new developments. Until then, we are content to enjoy the latest column by Michelangelo Signorile, “Buy Martha, Sell Cheney,” which provides an excellent take on the whole matter.

The article begins with this enticing paragraph:

“Okay, are we done frying Martha Stewart yet? If these fantastic financial scandals are indeed a sizzling summer media barbecue in the making . . . then isn’t Stewart a measly marshmallow while Vice President Dick Cheney is the fat side of beef we should now be hauling into the flaming pit?”

Enjoy.

In the New Republic, associate editor Ryan Lizza offers up an extensive account of the lengths to which President George W. Bush is going to assist the re-election effort of his brother, Gov. Jeb Bush (R-Fla.).

The article, “How You Can Help the President Help His Brother,” would be considered devastating if it had anything to do with President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), but the Bush family’s remarkable ability to dodge even the slightest scrutiny likely means Lizza’s findings, which are thoroughly documented, will be ignored.

A few quick takes from this must-read:

“It is difficult to overestimate the importance the Bush administration places on Florida. It is the largest swing state in the country, the ground on which Bush won his contested victory in 2000, and a cornerstone of the White House’s reelection strategy in 2004. . . .

“No matter what else happens at the ballot box this fall, if Jeb loses to the eventual Democratic nominee -- either Janet Reno or Bill McBride -- it will be seen as a humiliating defeat for the president and a vote of no confidence for his administration.

“As a result, it seems that no federal grant, no business loan, no tinkering with federal policy that might give Jeb a political leg up is too small to merit White House attention. . . .

“Almost every week brings another example of federal policy being altered to Florida’s -- and specifically Jeb’s -- benefit. . . .

“One might imagine Jeb Bush would downplay the extent to which federal policy and taxpayer dollars are being driven by his electoral needs. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.”

This is how journalism is supposed to work. Where did it go? And will it ever come back?

Look who has an op-ed piece in the New York Times today.

If you love dogs as much as I do, and if you have a strong stomach and do not cry easily, stop by reading & writing for a story, two links, and a photograph that have left me clenching my teeth and wiping my eyes for the last 20 minutes. (R&W credits the bitter shack of resentment for raising the subject.)

R&W alerted me to Daisy, a Sharpei-mix puppy who was burned -- set on fire, actually -- by some low-life piece of crap in Texas who, fortunately, has been apprehended by local authorities.

Some thoughts:

If you can’t properly take care of your pet, take it to someone or someplace that can.

Spay or neuter your pet, particularly strays and mixed breeds.

Do not breed your pet unless you are willing to agree, in writing, to take back any progeny you have sold, no questions asked.

If you see or suspect animal abuse or neglect, contact the proper authorities.

Send a donation to the Humane Society or the ASPCA, now and regularly, or with Daisy in mind, to the North Texas Humane Society, the organization that is nursing Daisy back to health at considerable expense.

Pray for Daisy. And pray for a better world.

And if you own a pet, give him or her some extra love and attention (and snacks) tonight. I think Daisy would like that. I know Mildred will.

-- J.M.C.

Andrew Sullivan of “The Daily Dish” today directed readers to this site with a cryptic notation, “Spectacular propaganda for the Palestinians here.”

We presume Sullivan was being snide, given his longstanding disdain for anything Arab or Islamic.

And yet, in his own weird way, Sullivan actually got this one right.

Reading through the responses to the original post on the Sullivan-approved site, a post intended to mock the Palestinians, we were sickened, literally, by the visceral hatred of Palestinians and Arabs expressed by Israel’s supporters. The page drips with their demented venom.

We wonder how many Americans are aware of the deep-seated prejudices of so many of our relentless warmongers -- inside and outside the government -- a thuggish gang that has virtually no respect whatsoever for Arab culture and is completely unable to view Arabs as fellow human beings.

And we can’t help thinking that the more people read this disgusting bile, or otherwise become aware of the real sentiments and motives of these hooligans, the more they will question our dangerously unbalanced foreign policy in the Middle East.

So, that sounds to us like good news for the Palestinians after all.

President George W. Bush today expressed confidence in Vice President Richard B. Cheney, telling reporters, “I’ve got great confidence in the vice president. He’s doing a heck of a good job. When I picked him, I knew he was a fine business leader and a fine, experienced man, and he’s doing a great job.” (“Bush Says SEC Probe Will Clear Cheney,” by Tom Raum, Associated Press.) [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

A fine business leader? That’s certainly debatable. Vice President Cheney’s record at Halliburton Co., where he was chief executive officer from 1998 to August 2000, can best be characterized as mediocre, and the more we learn the more he appears to have been on a par with TheGlobe.com founders Todd Krizelman and Stephan Paternot.

In a remarkable piece in yesterday’s Washington Post by Dana Milbank, “For Cheney, Tarnish From Halliburton,” the general outlines of Cheney’s unimpressive tenure are laid bare.

“When Cheney left Halliburton in August 2000 to be Bush’s running mate, the oil services firm was swelling with profits and approaching a two-year high in its stock price. Investors and the public (and possibly Cheney himself) did not know how sick the company really was, as became evident in the months after Cheney left.

“Whether through serendipity or shrewdness, Cheney made an $18.5 million profit selling his shares for more than $52 each in August 2000; 60 days later, the company surprised investors with a warning that its engineering and construction business was doing much worse than expected, driving shares down 11 percent in a day. About the same time, it announced it was under a grand jury investigation for overbilling the government.

“In the months that followed, it became clear that Halliburton’s liability for asbestos claims, stemming from a company Cheney acquired in 1998 [Ed.: Dresser Industries Inc.], were far greater than Halliburton realized. Then, in May of this year, the company announced it was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for controversial accounting under Cheney’s leadership that inflated profits. . . .

“There has been no serious allegation of wrongdoing by the vice president himself in all of this. But the highflying company Cheney hailed as a ‘great success story’ during the 2000 campaign is now a troubled behemoth fighting for its life. The humbling of Halliburton raises doubts about Cheney’s stewardship there and, by extension, his reputation as a smart executive bringing a businessman’s acumen to the White House.

“The developments at Halliburton since Cheney’s departure leave two possibilities: Either the vice president did not know of the magnitude of problems at the oilfield services company he ran for five years, or he sold his shares in August 2000 knowing the company was likely headed for a fall.” [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

Readers are free to take their pick from among the two scenarios Millbank offers: Either Cheney was a clueless CEO or Cheney was a crooked CEO. Neither is particularly comforting.

And what did Wall Street think of Cheney, the vaunted businessman who was said to counterbalance the utter failure at the top of the Republicans’ 2000 ticket? “Overall, financial analysts say Cheney was an unremarkable executive. ‘He came in at a time when any okay manager could ride the cyclical wave,’ said James Wicklund, an analyst with Banc of America Securities who has followed Halliburton for years,” reports Milbank. “‘He did okay. He did not blow anybody’s doors off.’”

The asbestos disaster

Halliburton faces potential disaster as a result of its $8 billion acquisition of Dresser Industries in 1998, a deal that Wall Street analysts and others tie directly to Cheney. The culprit: asbestos injuries by former employees of a Dresser subsidiary.

In the last quarterly report filed with the SEC before Cheney left Halliburton in August 2000, the firm said it had set aside $24 million of reserves to deal with asbestos-related legal claims, saying “we believe that the pending asbestos claims will be resolved without material effect on our financial position.”

Halliburton maintained an optimistic outlook for another 10 months when the company revealed Harbison-Walker Refractories, a 1992 Dresser spin-off, would be unable to pay asbestos-related claims filed against the firm, and that as a result, the claimants would turn to Halliburton for restitution. Only then (June 2001) did Halliburton increase its asbestos claims reserves to $125 million and it wasn’t until earlier this year that the company conceded “it has no idea what its asbestos liabilities may be and that its reserves ‘may not be sufficient,’” according to Milbank. “Investors . . . are betting the liability is $8 billion to $9 billion.”

Granted, legal liabilities can be very difficult to estimate, but asbestos claims have been discussed, argued, litigated, negotiated, and legislated this way and that, east coast to west, for at least 20 years now. As such, we find it very difficult to believe that Halliburton would so drastically underestimate its potential obligations by sheer accident.

This is a mess that cannot be ignored, that cannot be swept under the rug, and that cannot be dismissed with a flick of the wrist. The Cheney/Hallibuton issue will not go away quickly and we believe the odds favor more bad news and more embarrassing details emerging in the days ahead.

This just in . . .

The Associated Press reports the U.S. Postal Service is taking a pass on the Bush administration's planned Operation TIPS. (Why does everything have to be an "operation"?)

TIPS, by the way, stands for Terrorism Information and Prevention System, and would be managed primarily by the Justice Department.

"'The Postal Service had been approached by homeland security regarding Operation TIPS; however, it was decided that the Postal Service and its letter carriers would not be participating in the program at this time,' the agency said in a statement issued Wednesday," according to A.P.'s report.

Can they get away with that? Isn't it, um, disloyal? Will this be the ultimate argument in favor of privatizing the Postal Service?

We really have to start reading the New York Post more often than we already do, at least on the days the paper publishes John Podhoretz.

As if the “Destroy Iraq” chorus weren’t already singing loudly enough, Podhoretz the Lesser, writing in yesterday’s Post, calls for an “October Surprise,” that being, of course, the eagerly anticipated war against Saddam Hussein that President Bush now needs so badly to divert attention from financial scandals and an invisible domestic agenda.

“Go on, Mr. President: Wag the dog,” Podhoretz urges. “It would be good for the world, it would be good for America and it would be good politics as well.”

“You’re in some domestic political trouble, Mr. President,” he continues. “You need to change the subject. You have the biggest subject-changer of all at your disposal. Use it.”

We’re not making this up. And it gets worse: “There’s a luscious double trap in starting the war as soon as possible, Mr. President. Your enemies are delirious with excitement about the corporate-greed scandals and the effect they might have on your popularity and the GOP’s standing in November. . . . Your enemies will hurl ugly accusations at you, Mr. President. And at least one of them will be true -- the accusation that you began the war when you did for political reasons.”

And Podhoretz, who is neither an experienced military strategist nor a war veteran, is absolutely certain this war will be fought and won flawlessly. “[The accusation] won’t matter. It won’t matter to the American people, and it won’t matter as far as history is concerned. History will record that you and the U.S. military brought an end to a barbaric regime on its way to threatening the world.”

Would the world be better off without Saddam Hussein? Absolutely. But is going to war with Iraq really a good idea? We’re far from convinced. Could such a conflict grow dangerously out of control? Possibly. Would we face years of dangerous and deadly after-effects such as escalated terrorism here and abroad? We think so.

Presumably the right people in the administration are analyzing the matter far more thoroughly than we -- or Podhoretz -- could ever hope to. On its face, that’s a good thing. But this administration is populated with far too many people that share the Podhoretz mindset (he calls the prospect of war “delicious”) that we are inclined to believe the internal debate about this impending conflict is dangerously one-sided.

“Yeah, Ayn Rand and Evelyn Waugh. They were a coupla’ great guys.”

Joe Kernen, CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” July 17, 2002.

Maybe you had to be there. To explain the context of this quote would take too long, but it really was pretty funny.

As President George W. Bush quietly and secretly prepares for what appears to be an inevitable war on Iraq, we thought we would dust off a copy of the Constitution, just for a “refresher course” in which branch of the government has the power to do what when it comes to conflicts with other nations.

Here is the relevant text:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; . . . To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; To provide and maintain a navy; To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; . . . To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.

The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States; he may require the opinion, in writing, of the principal officer in each of the executive departments, upon any subject relating to the duties of their respective offices, and he shall have power to grant reprieves and pardons for offenses against the United States, except in cases of impeachment.

Yes, we know there are conflicting interpretations of this language and we’re fully aware of the War Powers Act as well. But can we at least express our hope that before Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, uh, we mean the Bush administration, approve an invasion of Iraq, the relevant officials at least consult Congress?

Oh, and in case there were any confusion, U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair is not the U.S. Congress. Nor is Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Wait just a minute!

Doxagora is one of the most intelligent and thoughtful conservative weblogs we have encountered recently, though, for our part, we would like to see more posts about 16th-century Florentine political philosophy -- and in the original Italian, please.

But is Doxagora muscling in on the Horowitz Watch territory we claimed -- and staked out -- yesterday?

Probably not, but he/she/they could do a damn good job of it.

Today Doxagora (Answer: We have no idea.) appropriately takes former red-diaper baby and current conservative crybaby David Horowitz to task for his fawning praise of white-supremacist and rabid anti-Semite Jared Taylor of American Renaissance.

Nice job.

Yes, Miss Coulter, there are intelligent conservatives. You’re just not one of them.

Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan went to Capitol Hill today to present his semi-annual report on monetary policy. His testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, which will be repeated in front of the House Financial Services Committee tomorrow, was quite impressive and covered considerable ground. Greenspan clearly knows more -- or at least can say more -- about the state of the economy and the decline in corporate ethics and responsibility than anyone else in Washington.

Nonetheless, we would have preferred stronger and more specific language with respect to punishing those responsible for the recent spate of corporate malfeasance that has undermined investor and, more recently, consumer confidence. And a few comments on corporate tax evasion -- Bermuda, among the many offshore tax havens, comes to mind -- would have been appreciated.

Our point at the moment, however, deals with Greenspan’s remarks about the federal budget deficit. CNBC and CNN have been running virtually all day here -- that’s how our editor makes his living: by watching TV -- and we were struck by how little attention this subject received from among the many commentators appearing on those networks.

Granted, Greenspan didn’t spend a great deal of time discussing fiscal policy, but the comments he did make are worthy of serious consideration. We provide them below, noting that all emphases are our own and that we added several paragraphs to facilitate on screen reading.

“Our ability to attract foreign capital in coming years will help facilitate the increases in investment that will promote continued gains in productivity and standards of living. But policymakers should also recognize the important role that prudent fiscal policy can play in promoting national saving and maintaining conditions conducive to investment and continued strong growth of productivity.

“Beginning in the late 1980s, impressive progress was made in reining in federal expenditures and restoring a better balance between spending and revenues. The lower federal deficits and, for a time, the realization of surpluses contributed significantly to improved national saving and thereby put downward pressure on real interest rates. This, in turn, enhanced the incentives of businesses to invest in productive plant and equipment.

“Recently, however, some of those gains have been given up. To a degree, the return to budget deficits has been a result of temporary factors, especially the falloff in revenues and the increase in outlays associated with the economic downturn.

“Those influences should tend to reverse over the next year or two, other things equal, although the decline in revenues reflecting the drop in capital gains realizations, including those on options, is unlikely to be fully reversed. And the necessary rise in expenditures related to the war on terrorism and enhanced homeland security has also played a role, as have the tax reductions legislated last year.

“Unfortunately, there are also signs that the underlying disciplinary mechanisms that formed the framework for federal budget decisions over most of the past fifteen years have eroded. The Administration and the Congress can make a valuable contribution to the prospects for the growth of the economy by taking measures to restore this discipline and return the federal budget over time to a posture that is supportive of long-term economic growth.”

As is always the case when lawmakers are involved, there is plenty of blame to go around. An intelligent person would not blame exclusively Republicans or Democrats for the current disastrous state of federal fiscal policy, but that doesn’t mean that nobody is responsible.

It has become painfully clear that the promised benefits of the 2001 tax cuts have not materialized and, indeed, cannot materialize because they were based on misinformation, myths, and, in some cases, lies.

For decades Republicans have chastised the long-since-buried former President Lyndon B. Johnson for his failure to raise taxes to support the Great Society programs and the Vietnam War. Actually, they usually criticize Johnson for failing to fund the Great Society specifically, ignoring the war (apparently a self-funding endeavor) and forgetting, at least for a moment, that money is a fungible asset.

And now, facing an expensive war on terrorism of indefinite, perhaps permanent, duration, not only will no one raise the verboten issue of tax increases, no one will consider the idea of rolling back even the most reckless elements of the tax cuts enacted last year -- namely the eventual repeal of the estate tax. (Surely the 10,000 families benefitting from the repeal could be asked to sacrifice just a little.)

Last week’s rosy projections from the Office of Management and Budget were a joke. We have only begun to see the decimation these tax cuts will cause in the years to come. With Washington now becoming a little more serious about corporate fraud, perhaps a more sober approach to fiscal policy, one that doesn’t reflect the drunken abandon of corporate board rooms and executive offices at the turn of the century, will move up on the agenda.

(Hey, we said perhaps.)

Yesterday we thanked a kind and generous benefactor who bought the BlogSpot ad that previously appeared at the top of this page.

Today we learned that another reader did exactly the same thing, on or around the same date.

So first, we would like to express our gratitude and appreciation for the gentleman who contacted us today about his purchase of the ad. He asked that he remain anonymous, but we have been permitted to mention that he is one of the best attorneys in Boston.

Meanwhile, either he or Tim Francis-Wright, or both, is owed a refund from Pyra. We’re working on it.

Because there can be a considerable delay between the date on which the ad is bought and the date it is removed from the site, this could happen to other bloggers and their readers.

We urge readers who buy the ads let the blogger know they have done so as soon as possible -- even if they would like to remain anonymous -- since Pyra apparently does not resolve such double payments on its own.

We offer very belated but no less sincere thanks to Tim Francis-Wright of Bear-Left.com for buying out that annoying BlogSpot banner ad that used to sit at the top of this page.

This gesture of appreciation and respect, or perhaps just impatience -- Who likes to wait for an ad to load? -- is greatly appreciated.

Actually, when T.F.W. bought out the BlogSpot ad we had no idea that was something that could be done. Since then, however, we have bought about half a dozen BlogSpot ads as gestures of goodwill and support.

We urge other bloggers and blog readers to do the same for sites they visit regularly and that they wish to support. Having a reader or fellow blogger buy your BlogSpot banner is a great compliment. It’s only $12.00. Give it some thought.

Laura Ingraham’s weekly e-mail came around today. The subject was the possibility of terrorists poisoning our water supplies. And do you know what? It was actually fairly informative, interesting, and not particularly inflammatory.

Needless to say, we were quite pleasantly surprised.

Now, we’re assuming all of you who receive Ingraham’s missives already have read her latest message and therefore have learned your new word for the week.

But for those who aren’t on the punditress’s mailing list, we’ll clue you in -- only because we want you to sound both erudite and well connected at your next cocktail party. “Oh, it’s a great word, isn’t it? I learned it from Laura Ingraham.”

The “Word of the Week” Ingraham offers readers in her latest note is . . . Quiet everyone! . . . >>>We feel like we’re playing “Password” with Allen Ludden<<< . . . >>>Shh!<<< . . . >>>No help from the studio audience, please!<<< . . . Homiletic.

As Ingraham explains:

“Homiletic, adj. Of the nature of a sermon; having the intention of edifying morally.

“As in--

“President Bush had hoped that his speech on corporate responsibility would be considered a homiletic message to the bad apples in corporate America.”

Thanks, Laura.

If you have a few moments, stop by |||trr|||, our sibling web site, which features the lighter side of The Rittenhouse Review.

Now playing . . .

“Play the Ann Coulter Anagram Game!”

“The Worst TV Shows of All Time”

“Too Many Bad TV Movies”

“Not the St. Paul I Know”

“Banned in Malaysia”

And much more.

Purported stalker (As if!) and confirmed blogger Scoobie Davis has published his July 11 telephone interview with Slander-specialist Ann Coulter.

The interview is classic Coulter:

“I’ve just written a book with 35 pages of footnotes, um, with probably thousands of facts and quotes.”

“Um, it’s in my book. Do you have my book? Aren’t we talking about my book?”

It’s not to be missed.

Remember back in grade school, there was that really annoying kid, the loud-mouthed know-it-all with the obnoxious parents who were always shoving Stalinist pamphlets in your parents’ mailbox and trying to unionize the cafeteria ladies?

You know, the kid who was always spouting a bunch of crap about the Rosenbergs and Rosa Luxem-something when all you wanted to do was play a friggin’ game of stickball?

Well, he’s still around.

Only now he has his own weblog.

We call first dibs on “HorowitzWatch.”

There truly has to be a special place in hell for people like Chicago residents Cynarae Colbert and Chris Rodriguez.

Their transgression?

According to a report in today’s Chicago Tribune, Colbert and Rodriguez for two years kept a seven-year-old boy who was not their child out of school and living in disgraceful squalor.

The boy, who may or may not be related to Colbert, jumped from a second-story window Wednesday after having been locked in a pantry for two days in order to escape what the Tribune called an “apartment strewn with garbage and feces.”

The child hadn’t been to school in two years and was rarely if ever seen by neighbors. His name was not released by authorities and in fact could not readily be determined.

Colbert and Rodriguez were charged Thursday with several misdemeanor counts of child neglect and child endangerment. The boy will be placed with foster parents after he is released from Cook County Hospital, according to the Tribune.

It took Angel Resto and three others hired by the apartment manager hours to clean up the mess inside the apartment. “Wearing filtered masks, rubber gloves and disposable bodysuits, Resto and his co-workers carried snow shovels into the apartment to begin clearing out the mounds of trash,” the Tribune reports.

“When you first walk in the front door you have to push hard to open it past all the garbage and debris. You make a left into the living room and all over the place there is garbage stacked as tall as me,” Resto told the Tribune”

The details of the story are astonishing. Not only that the boy was so badly mistreated but that he fell so far between the cracks. It doesn’t take a bleeding heart to wonder, at the very least, why such horrible things happen in this country.

If you aren’t reading Scoobie Davis Online on a daily basis you’re missing some of the best writing on the web today.

We only recently encountered his site, which is a shame, but thank God for archives. And entertaining and enlightening archives these truly are.

Once you get to his site, we believe you will find Scoobie Davis to be smart, witty, observant, and when necessary, mercilessly critical. He’s truly our kind of guy.

We are particularly eager to read the transcript of his recent abruptly terminated telephone interview with the factually challenged Ann Coulter.

Below we have republished an excerpt from the daily e-mail blast sent this morning by the Jewish World Review.

[ T O D A Y I N H I S T O R Y ]

On this day in . . .

* 2000, peace talks between the “Palestinians” and the Israelis opened at Camp David, Md.

<^><^><^><^><^><^><^><^><^>

What’s with the scare quotes around the word Palestinians?

To us, they are evidence that the rightward shift of large numbers of Jewish Americans, particularly those of the soi-disant intellectual variety, has moved beyond political expediency to xenophobic fanaticism.

No, no, no, they insist, there is no such thing as the “Palestinian people.” They are the mythical creation of vengeful Arabs, or of the U.N., or of Parisian anti-Semites, or of the New York Times, or some other such ridiculous delusion.

It’s “little” things like this that make us wonder whether right-wing American Jews have any intention of supporting -- rather than sabotaging -- a meaningful effort toward establishing peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

This refusal even to acknowledge the existence of the Palestinians is not only despicable, it is dangerous.

We see evidence of this every day in the degrading and dehumanizing policies of the present Israeli government toward its own citizens (at least those who aren’t Jewish) and neighbors, policies that all too many American writers and politicians demand we support -- politically, financially, and emotionally -- without question or criticism.

We do not equate Zionism with racism, and the suicide attacks and other assaults on innocent Israelis are appalling, but things are starting to take on a familiar, and noxious, odor among certain quarters of the American right wing.

What’s up with those Massachusetts liberals? Yesterday the state House of Representatives voted 114 to 32 to allow most convicted felons to buy and carry guns: handguns with the approval of the local police chief; other firearms, including rifles and shotguns, without further review.

Rep. Timothy J. Toomey, the measure’s sponsor and a Democrat from Cambridge (Huh? We thought all those guys were soft-on-crime bleeding-hearts.), complained existing laws prevented residents who committed felonies during their carefree youth from arming themselves as law-abiding citizens, according to a report in today’s Boston Globe.

“There are too many people who were convicted of a simple assault or battery. It could have happened 20 or 30 years ago,” Toomey said. “They have since served their country and are good citizens.”

We’re not exactly sure what Toomey means by that, but apparently he believes his proposed measure does nothing more dangerous than rectifying a horribly misguided denial of gun-owning privileges to bar-brawling war veterans.

As it now stands, Massachusetts law forbids anyone convicted of a felony or a violent misdemeanor from buying a gun. “[T]he House bill would eliminate the lifetime ban [but] keeps the ban in place for domestic violence offenders,” according to the Globe.

Toomey’s bill, if enacted, would allow ex-cons to apply for gun permits seven years after completing their sentences. Applications for licenses to carry handguns would require approval from the local police chief. However, the Globe reports, “those seeking permits to buy and possess rifles and shotguns would not be subject to any other review.”

Forgive us if the distinction is lost on us.

The bill, which passed the House on a fast track, is expected to encounter greater opposition in the Senate and Attorney General Thomas Reilly opposes the measure. The Globe did not report the position of Gov. Jane Swift (R) or the candidates seeking their respective parties’ gubernatorial nominations in this year’s election.

The liberal media are at it again, attacking books written by conservatives who have been virtually silenced by a conspiracy hatched by the left-wing ideologues that control this country’s television and cable networks, major daily newspapers (particularly those in the Northeast), newsweeklies, radio stations, and publishing houses.

The victim this time? Ann Coulter. And this despite the fact -- the footnote-able fact -- that Coulter’s book sits on top of the bestsellers lists.

Oh . . . wait a minute. Scratch that. We got it wrong.

How wrong? Well, the Philadelphia Inquirer, its books section providing still more evidence of its precipitous decline, today reviews Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right, the satirical (or at least we thought so at first) send-up of liberals and the media by Coulter, perhaps the most famous female talking stick-figure on the scene today.

And the review, “Attack on Liberal Media Bitter, Never Dull,” penned by someone named Beth Gillin, is, well, absolutely fawning in its praise.

Here’s Gillin: “[Coulter’s] attack on the American media, by turns caustic, witty, and maddening (but never for a moment dull) goes for the jugular, from Chapter 1 (‘Liberals Unhinged’) to concluding sentence: ‘Liberals don’t have to emerge from the hot tub and start attending NASCAR races or -- God forbid -- church, but it would be nice if they’d stop lying all the time.’” [Ed.: “They’d”? Yes, we know it’s a valid contraction, but any editor worth his salt or salary would have defaced it with a bright red pen.]

Of course, the review isn’t all sweetness and light. Gillin for a moment puts the gloves on and sends Coulter to the mat with lines like this one: “Perhaps she goes too far in calling America’s sweetheart Katie Couric ‘the affable Eva Braun of morning TV.’” And this one: “Conservative diva Ann Coulter is no fan of nuance.”

Whoa . . . Them’s fightin’ words!

But Gillin’s most egregious fault, and one for which she should be ashamed to show her face at 400 N. Broad St., is her acceptance, at face value, of a pair of Coulter’s most ridiculous assertions:

“[H]er book is useful when it forces readers to question such long-held assumptions as the alleged brilliance of Al Gore and the purported existence of an entity called The Religious Right.

“Both concepts, Coulter insists, are media creations that, by sheer force of repetition, have become part of the conventional wisdom. Similarly, Coulter says, the liberal media concocted the myth of Ronald Reagan as airhead and George W. Bush as amiable dunce.

“In Coulter’s view, the religious right does not exist except as an invented scapegoat, ‘a totemic symbol, a permanent terrorizing influence on the brainwashed masses.’”

To this wholly unsubstantiated drivel, Gillen responds:

“Indeed, the religious right has never been quantified or precisely defined. Does the term refer to followers of Jerry Falwell or Pat Robertson? How does it differ from the vast majority of Americans, who define themselves as Christians?

“When 90 percent of respondents to a recent poll disagreed with a federal court decision declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because it mentions God, perhaps it is time to reconsider which viewpoint is mainstream and which is out of step.”

What on earth is Gillin saying here? What planet is she on? Which Washington liberals are cheering the pledge ruling by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit? If God-hating liberals are so powerful, why do they only constitute 10 percent of the cited survey’s sample?

Gillin also falls for -- indeed, embellishes -- Coulter’s absurd observations of the comparative intellectual capacities of President George W. Bush and former Vice President Al Gore:

“Similarly, Coulter attacks as a media fabrication the idea that Al Gore is cerebral. . . . Here, Coulter notes, are the facts: Gore, after an undistinguished academic career at Harvard, flunked out of divinity school, failing five out of eight classes. He then dropped out of law school at Vanderbilt University. Bush, on the other hand, while no genius at Yale, never pretended to be, and went on to earn his MBA from Harvard.

“And yet, as Coulter observes, it was candidate Bush who was mercilessly pounded by the media for gaffes, mispronunciations and lack of syntax, while Gore was given a pass for such outright whoppers as claiming to have invented the Internet, saying he discovered pollution at Love Canal, citing himself as the inspiration for the stoic hero of the novel Love Story, and describing a childhood spent ‘cleaning out hog waste’ and ‘plowing hillsides with a team of mules,’ when in truth he grew up in a penthouse apartment in Washington’s Fairfax Hotel.”

One can scarcely believe Gillin wrote this without giggling behind her editor’s back. It was no surprise that Coulter’s publisher, Crown, didn’t hire a decent team of fact-checkers -- Imagine the budget that would have required! -- but it’s a disgrace that the Inquirer, widely regarded as one of this country’s best newspapers, let this collection of half-truths and misleading assertions -- most of them already demolished by astute bloggers and traditional media outlets -- stand unchallenged.

For our part, may we ask, Ms. Gillin: Have seen the President’s report card from Yale? Are you not familiar with the term “legacy” as it is used in the admissions offices of the Ivy League? Can you point to a single academic, professional, or political accomplishment of the current President that cannot be traced to his family’s connections? Can you name any aspect of his military career to which he could point with genuine pride?

Gillin’s review does approach its conclusion with a touch of gentle criticism, but on the whole, the final paragraph is one with which Coulter must be well pleased: “Slander is a polemic, not a fair and balanced news report. In blaming reports of a vast right wing conspiracy on media conspirators of the left, it doesn’t exactly elevate political debate,” Gillin writes. “Occasionally strident, often deliciously catty, never less than provocative, it is, at the very least, a fast-paced and entertaining read.”

Of course, Coulter & Co. will find some way to turn this paean into a vicious attack from “the Eastern establishment,” or if a tinge of anti-Semitism is thought fitting, from “the media elites of New York and Hollywood.” And the wing-nuts will believe every word of it.

“Can a Bush -- born on third base but thinking he hit a triple -- ever really understand the problems of the guys in the bleachers?”

Maureen Dowd, the New York Times, July 10, 2002.

[Ed.: Dowd's quote comes by way of former Texas governor Ann Richards. But hey, it's still funny. (Added: July 13, 2002. Thanks to several readers for the clarification.)]

I returned home this afternoon, Tuesday, mentally, physically, and emotionally exhausted following the funeral and family gathering mentioned in the previous post.

I arrived home to a large stack of mail, mostly magazines that I receive either at no cost or at absurd discounts due to my “regular job,” and a stack of books ordered from Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com, Powell’s, and Buy.com.

After that, I went to the kennel to pick up Mildred, the world’s greatest bulldog, who apparently made fast friends there with a gray-haired miniature poodle named Mitzi.

It sounds like they had a blast together, which is all well and good, though Mildred already has informed me that she will need rides to Sunday-afternoon Mah Jongg tournaments at Mitzi’s condo.

I turned on the PC and opened Outlook to find more than 300 messages, many of them expressions of condolences from our readers, and others from writers, columnists, authors, and pundits, most of them allies and new-found friends, some virtual strangers, and even a few from those with whom we mutually have traded less than kind words. Needless to say, I was overwhelmed.

No matter the source of the messages, I greatly appreciate all of the kind thoughts and offers of prayers received both before and after my recent trip. You have made a difficult week more bearable. I thank you for your support and encouragement.

J.M.C.

One of the most remarkable women I have ever known passed away last week, on July 3, 2002. It wasn’t a surprise. After all, she was 82 years old, and had been in failing health for several years. And I learned on July 2 that she had been given the last rites on July 1.

The final days were not entirely pleasant, for her, her family, or her friends. But I know she is at peace. I know she is in a better place. And I know she is abiding in a joy we cannot fathom.

And yet I grieve. I mourn. I cry. And there is more.

I am proud. Proud to have known her. Proud of her exceptional service to our country during World War II, the details of which no one can ever know. Proud to have relayed her life’s accomplishments with friends. And proud to call her family.

I am grateful. Grateful for her generosity. Grateful for her encouragement. Grateful for her gentle kindness. And grateful for her love.

I am honored. Honored by her interest in me. Honored by her admiration. Honored by her devotion and care. And honored to have led the family’s last prayers before her funeral.

I am blessed. Blessed to have witnessed the devotion of her husband during her final years. Blessed to have grown up with her beautiful and accomplished children nearby. Blessed to watch her grandchildren begin to take their place in this world. And blessed to see her at peace at last.

And I am pleased. Pleased to have made her laugh. Pleased to have made her proud. Pleased to know her life was full. And pleased to know that she has gloriously passed into eternal life.

Yesterday, in addition to leading the recitation of the Rosary, I read four traditional Irish prayers -- one each in an acknowledgement of the Irish shamrock and in honor of Nora’s four surviving sisters, Marion, Patt, Terry, and Connie, -- including the Prayer to the Virgin Mary, Our Lady of Knock, a selection from the writings of St. Brigid, a prayer to St. Dymphna, and St. Patrick’s Breastplate, the last three in veneration of Ireland’s most revered saints.

For those not familiar with these prayers, I would like to share them with you here today.

Prayer to Our Lady of Knock
Our Lady of Knock, Queen of Ireland, you gave hope to our people in a time of distress and comforted them in sorrow. You have inspired countless pilgrims to pray with confidence to your divine Son, remembering His promise: “Ask and you shall receive, Seek and you shall find.” Help me to remember that we are all pilgrims on the road to heaven. Fill me with love and concern for my brothers and sisters in Christ, especially those who live with me. Comfort me when I am sick or lonely or depressed. Teach me how to take part ever more reverently in the holy Mass. Pray for me now, and at the hour of my death. Amen.

A Reading from the Works of St. Brigid
I would like the angels of heaven to be among us. I would like an abundance of peace. I would like full vessels of charity. I would like rich treasures of mercy. I would like cheerfulness to preside over all. I would like Jesus to be present. I would like the three Marys of illustrious renown to be with us. I would like the friends of heaven to be gathered around us from all parts. I would like myself to be a rent payer to the Lord; that I should suffer distress, that he would bestow a good blessing upon me. I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings. I would like to be watching heaven’s family drinking it through all eternity. Amen.

A Prayer to St. Dymphna
Lord, our God, you graciously chose St. Dymphna as patroness of those afflicted with mental and nervous disorders. She is thus an inspiration and a symbol of charity to the thousands who ask her intercession. Please grant, Lord, through the prayers of this pure youthful martyr, relief and consolation to all suffering such trials, and especially those for whom we pray. We beg you, Lord, to hear the prayers of St. Dymphna on our behalf. Grant all those for whom we pray patience in their sufferings and resignation to your divine will. Please fill them with hope, and grant them the relief and cure they so much desire. We ask this through Christ our Lord who suffered agony in the garden. Amen.

St. Patrick’s Breastplate
May the strength of God guide me this day, and his power preserve me. May the wisdom of God instruct me; the eye of God watch over me; the ear of God hear me; the word of God give sweetness to my speech; the hand of God defend me; and may I follow the way of God. Christ be with me, Christ before me, Christ be after me, Christ within me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ at my right hand, Christ at my left, Christ in the fort, Christ in the chariot, Christ in the ship, Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me, Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks to me. Christ in every eye that sees me. Christ in every ear that hears me. Amen.

J.M.C.

Über journalist Peter R. Kann is loosening the stranglehold he has over the operations of financial publishing company Dow Jones & Co.

Until today, Kann was chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and chief operating officer of Dow Jones, as well as publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and editorial director of all Dow Jones publications, including Barron’s and the Dow Jones News Wires.

Dow Jones today announced that Kann will be giving up two of those titles, namely, chief operating officer and publisher of the Journal.

Taking over the position of chief operating officer is Richard F. Zannino, who previously had been chief financial officer of Dow Jones.

Zannino joined Dow Jones in 2001 after a career at Liz Claiborne Inc., including executive vice president, finance and administration.

Assuming the role of publisher of all print editions of the Journal is Karen Elliot House, previously president of the company’s international group.

House joined the Journal as a reporter in 1974 and, including the promotion announcement today, has been elevated at least six times since then. House was promoted to diplomatic correspondent in 1978, assistant foreign editor in 1983, foreign editor in 1984, vice president of the international group in 1989, and was named president of the unit in 1995.

Joining Kann, Zannino, and House on the newly formed seven-member executive committee, which will help Kann run the company, are Peter G. Skinner, executive vice president and general counsel; L. Gordon Crovitz, senior vice president, electronic publishing; James H. Ottaway Jr., senior vice president and CEO of the shrinking Ottaway Newspapers subsidiary; and Paul E. Steiger, managing editor of the Journal.

The executive changes at Dow Jones -- including the promotion of Christopher W. Vieth, most recently vice president of finance and comptroller, to the CFO slot -- were approved by the corporation’s board of directors last month.

The Dow Jones board of directors

For the record, as we say, the board of directors at Dow Jones is perhaps the quintessential example of the governance by the “old boys’ club.”

In addition to the aforementioned Kann and Ottaway, the board includes: Rand Araskog, former chairman of ITT Corp.; Harvey Golub, former chairman and chief executive officer of American Express Co.; Irvine O. Hockaway Jr., former president and chief executive officer of Hallmark Cards Inc.; William C. Steere Jr., chairman emeritus of Pfizer Inc.; Frank H. Newman, chairman emeritus of Bankers Trust Co.; David K.P. Li, chairman and chief executive office of Bank of East Asia Ltd.; Dieter von Holtzbrink, chairman of Verlagsgruppe George von Holtzbrink GmbH; Vernon E. Jordan, senior managing director at Lazard Frères & Co.; Roy A. Hammer, partner at Henneway & Barnes; and M. Peter McPherson, president of Michigan State University.

The board also includes three members of the Bancroft family, which owns a majority stake in Dow Jones: Christopher Bancroft, Leslie Hill, and Elizabeth Steele.

Exactly how independent this board is from management is open to debate. Many of these gentlemen have been palling around for years and some of them have so many other commitments that the amount of time they could possibly devote to the affairs of Dow Jones is questionable. Li serves on the boards of nine other corporations, Jordan sits on eight other boards, Hockaway on four, Steere on three, and Golub on two. Again, these are directorships these men hold in addition to their seats on the Dow Jones board.

Draw your own conclusions

Oh, and by the way, Peter Kann and Karen House are husband and wife.

For official documentation of this relationship, see the most recent proxy statement filed at the Securities and Exchange Commission by Dow Jones. For a less than flattering look at the relationship of Kann and House and its effect on operations at the paper and the rest of the company, read The Power and the Money: Inside the Wall Street Journal, by Francis X. Dealy Jr., which while out of print is available used. And for a review of Dealey’s book see Chris Welles’s piece in the July/August 1998 edition of the Columbia Journalism Review.

How about that? It turns out Rosie O’Donnell is just another mediocre potty-mouthed comedian, and a cranky one at that.

That’s the conclusion at which we arrived after reading Village Voice columnist Michael Musto’s write-up of the party celebrating the newly expanded Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn.

“It turns out [O’Donnell] loathes Sharon Stone (pretentious), Michael Jackson (‘a pedophile’), Joan Rivers (‘does not look human’), [former President Bill] Clinton (a big liar who ‘really [expletives deleted] me off ’), and Anne Heche [unprintable],” reports Musto, whose name apparently didn’t crop up among O’Donnell’s many objects of scorn, at least this time.

Jokes about President Clinton, Jackson, Rivers, and Heche? This is mid-2002, for crying out loud. O’Donnell, who has made no secret of the fact that she watches an inordinate amount of lousy television, ought to be a little more up-to-date than this. And, according to Musto, O’Donnell worked herself up into such a frenzy of rage that a member of the audience yelled out, “Jealous!” To that O’Donnell offered this hilarious retort: “I have better people to be jealous of than Sharon Stone.”

She gets paid for this stuff?

Rosie, the magazine

And then, of course, there’s Rosie, the magazine, perhaps the most insipid collection of glossy pages this side of Cosmopolitan (recent headline: “Get Filthy on the Fourth”).

MediaWeek, in a piece by Lisa Granatstein published today, reports the obvious: “Rosie: My Mag Is Not Riveting.” (We can only hope, for her own sake, that O’Donnell didn’t pay a consultant to arrive at that earth-shattering conclusion.)

Turmoil in the upper ranks -- editor Catherine Cavender and publisher Sharon Summer both have been shown the door within the past seven months -- together with declining news stand sales, uneven ad pages, and repetitive covers, have left some in the magazine publishing business wondering about the magazine’s mission.

O’Donnell “is clearly disappointed with the year-old magazine’s editorial direction, and with its cover choices in particular,” writes Granatstein. The magazine’s namesake says she would prefer to appear on just one cover each year, a goal toward which even the most casual observer cannot fail to have noticed O’Donnell is falling far short.

Although O’Donnell was pleased with the first few issues, Granatstein reports, the comedian observes, “Then we just took a left down the safety zone. And I don’t want to live there. It’s boring. It’s not what I do.”

Really? Since when? “The Rosie O’Donnell Show” was the very definition of “the safety zone.” We recall O’Donnell once telling her audience she would never publicly criticize a Broadway show because that wouldn’t be nice, and the actors and crew worked so hard, and it would be a shame if people didn’t go see the performance. If O’Donnell can’t even stick her neck out with respect to some lame Broadway musical (ah, but we’re being redundant), what risks would she take?

Coming out

O’Donnell maintains that her much ballyhooed and thoroughly predictable “coming out” has had no effect on the magazine’s performance.

“I think if I came out and said, ‘Look, I got my nipples pierced and I’m joining a separatist movement and all men should rot in hell,’ it might have come across a little different,” O’Donnell remarked in an observation that, try as we might, has us unable to stop thinking about cyber scribbler Andrew Sullivan, at least with regard to her comments about the piercings and the Republican Party, uh, we mean the separatist movement.

“I never want to be on another cover. . . . Having me on the cover is against the manifest [sic] of what I'm about. I didn’t make my fame and fortune by selling me. I made it by observing and celebrating other people.”

Celebrating other people? Including President Clinton, Michael Jackson, Joan Rivers, Sharon Stone, and Anne Heche?

Just seconds ago we received a News Alert from the New York Times: “Airliner and Another Plane Collide Over Germany,” reads the e-mail’s subject line.

Inside:

“A Boeing airliner and another plane collided over southern Germany, a state official said early Tuesday. There was no immediate word on casualties.”

We’re willing to be there were at least a few.

Jeff Jacoby, not known as a voice of reason or restraint when it comes to matters respecting, well, anything, went all out in his Friday column, “Prerequisite to Mid-East Peace,” in which he advocates subjecting the Palestinians to “pulverizing defeat . . ., occupation[,] and transformation.”

The essay, which begins with the obligatory quote from George Orwell and ends with thoroughly unwarranted self-satisfaction, seethes with contempt -- hate, even -- toward the Palestinians, a condescending smugness, and a patronizing tone of unabashed imperialism.

He writes:

“As a prerequisite to peace, Palestinian culture must be drastically reformed. The venom of the Arafat era must be drained. Persons implicated in terrorism must be punished and ostracized; democratic norms must be instilled; the virtue of tolerance must be learned. There is only one way to effect such wholesale changes: The Palestinian Authority has to be dealt a devastating military defeat, one that will crush Arafat and his junta and shatter forever the Palestinian fantasy of ‘liberating’ Israel and driving the Jews into the sea.

“Then the Palestinian territories must be reoccupied, the terror chieftains executed, and the putrescence of Arafat and Hamas flushed away. That will make it possible to rebuild the structures of civil society -- the legislature, the courts, the police, the media, and, above all, the schools -- from the ground up. The Palestinian polity can become a true liberal democracy, one committed to pluralism, civil rights, competitive elections, and the marketplace of ideas. When that happens, peace with Israel will be a given, and no one will fear a Palestinian state.”

Although we find Jacoby’s remarks highly disturbing, we hope his newfound appreciation for the ability of the Palestinians to create and sustain a genuinely democratic polity -- the first in the entire region -- will take hold among the chauvinistic, ethnocentric, and xenophobic neoconservatives with whom he has so often made common cause.

Jacoby’s model for this dramatic and, for Israel at least, painless transformation: the post-World War II U.S. occupation of Japan. Yes, Palestine is the new Japan. Of course, no matter that Japan at the end of the war was an isolated island nation with a well-educated and homogenous population and a pre-war history of considerable relative prosperity, whose nearest neighbors, particularly those with reason to take a suspicious view of Japan, China and North Korea come to mind, were economically devastated and spent decades in self-imposed hibernation.

Jacoby concedes “there are differences, of course,” the most notable of which he asserts is that “no one proposes to drop an A-bomb on Gaza,” implying, we think, that it should be easier for the Palestinians to recover from their decimation at the hands of the Israelis than it was for the Japanese to rebuild their country after the war. Oddly, however, Jacoby neglects to mention that the unidentified “no one” in his observation has the capacity to attack its soon-to-be colony with nuclear weapons should it choose to do so.

“Pulverizing defeat followed by occupation and transformation,” Jacoby concludes, apparently with a straight face. “It would be a blessing to all the peoples of the Middle East -- to the Palestinians above all.”

We wonder how many Palestinians will have to die during Jacoby’s proposed devastation and occupation before they grow to appreciate the blessings he has in store for them.

From: Joshua Galen
Sent: Sunday, June 30, 2002 2:06 PM
To: RittenReview@earthlink.net
Subject: Confused

Dear Mr. Capozzola (or whomever [sic] else is reading this),

I just read your site for the first time, and was confused immediately by one of the recent postings, the June 27 “Self-Parody Watch: Andrew Sullivan: Dispeptic, Diasporic Brit Hits a New Low.” In that posting, you say that Sullivan’s analysis “is simplistic, faulty, illogical, and plainly wrong.” How so? It seems to me that since the polls are showing that a majority of Americans support the words “Under God” in the pledge, and see this as liberal San Francisco judges meddling again where they shouldn’t, how is Sullivan wrong?

I am not trying to attack your site, I just don’t understand. You say that Sullivan is wrong, but his analysis seems like the obvious analysis to me -- and you have offered no reasons why his analysis is wrong or why an alternate analysis would be correct.

Sincerely, Joshua Galen

James Capozzola, editor of The Rittenhouse Review, responds:

Dear Mr. Galen:

Thank you for visiting The Rittenhouse Review and for taking the time to write.

I certainly understand your confusion. Shifting from the shallow, ill-considered, off-the-cuff observations all too often on display at the “The Daily Dish” to the rigorous analysis that characterizes The Rittenhouse Review has proved disorienting to several readers weaned on Andrew Sullivan’s lactations. The explanation, however, is really quite simple.

We wrote on June 27 that Sullivan’s observation that the June 26 decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit analysis is “God’s gift to Republicans” was “simplistic, faulty, illogical, and plainly wrong.” In so doing, it is true that, in your words, we did not fully explain “why his analysis is wrong or why an alternate analysis would be correct.”

This is why.

Once upon a time Sullivan was interesting, thoughtful, original, and provocative. However, in recent months, and particularly since the horrific events of Sept. 11, Sullivan has become tiresome, careless, and thoroughly predictable. And more often than not, at “The Daily Dish” assertion is a sufficient substitute for argument. Thus, our terse response to Sullivan’s tract, in which the word “analysis” was used in jest, was intended in the spirit of imitation, the sincerest form of flattery.

Sullivan offered no explanation for his observation that the three-judge panel’s decision was “God’s gift to Republicans.” In making this statement, Sullivan overlooked or disregarded abundant evidence, most of which could have been surmised or predicted, that it will prove extremely difficult for Republicans to deploy the decision for political gain.

Yes, polls show that a majority of Americans support keeping the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance. But even a cursory examination of recent media reports demonstrates that congressional Democrats are nearly unanimous in their support for keeping the pledge as it stands.

Perhaps Sullivan didn’t notice that the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 in favor of a resolution, sponsored by leaders of both parties, expressing their support for the pledge’s reference to God and instructing the Senate’s counsel to intervene in the case.

Perhaps Sullivan didn’t see the photographs of House members from both parties gathered on the west side of the Capitol for a public recitation of the pledge of allegiance, “under God” and all.

Perhaps Sullivan overlooked criticism of the panel’s decision from Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.), Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), and so many others, in language no less hostile than that used by Republicans.

Perhaps Sullivan missed the June 27 report in the Washington Post in which one of Justice Antonin Scalia’s former clerks said the panel’s decision was not only defensible but the logical outcome of decisions previously issued by the conservative-dominated Supreme Court.

With the reaction of Democratic lawmakers virtually matching that of their counterparts across the aisle, it strikes me that anyone who asserts the issue is “God’s gift to Republicans” has just one thing on his mind: demagoguery.

In the absence of further explanation from Sullivan, I can only conclude that he joyfully anticipates a campaign season characterized by Republicans accusing their Democratic opponents of atheism and disloyalty to our flag and our country, debates in which Republicans demand their opponents say the pledge for any and all to hear, or the spectacle of Republicans insisting their Democratic opponents sign promises to employ any means necessary to keep the pledge in its current form.

I hope you will forgive me if I thought we had all outgrown the juvenilia that President George H.W. Bush and his advisers injected into the 1988 presidential campaign.

Yours truly,
James M. Capozzola, Editor
The Rittenhouse Review

Apparently, rumors of the demise of AnnCoulter.org were exaggerated.

The ultra-vanity site (IMAGES!) of right-wing “manly woman” Ann Coulter was only temporarily offline this afternoon.

We’re pleased, believe it or not.

Why should the Democratic Party be deprived of its best weapon during the upcoming mid-term elections?

Our favorite Coulterisms from this week’s promotional activities:

I thought I was here to talk about my book.

I thought I was here to talk about my book.

I thought I was here to talk about my book.

I thought I was here to talk about my book.

My book has 35 pages of footnotes!

Is that your question? . . . What is your question? . . . Are you finished with your question? . . . Do you have a question? . . . Can I answer your question? . . . Are you going to ask me a question? . . . Can I make up a question? . . .

AnnCoulter.org is either dead or wounded.

“A Slander on France,” François Bujon de l’Estang, the Washington Post, June 22.
“Affirmative Action Reaction,” Eric Alterman, The Nation, July 1.
“Arafat is Only Interested in Saving Himself,” Edward Said, The Independent, June 20.
“Bad for Business,” William Greider, The Nation, July 1.
“City's Culture Brings Talent, Then Companies,” Neil Irwin, the Washington Post, June 27.
“Doonesburied,” Jesse Walker, Reason, July 2002.
“Fighting the Gay Right,” Richard Goldstein, The Nation, July 1.
“George W.’s Bloody Folly,” Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, June 26.
“Give Us Answers -- Not Make-Up,” Yoel Marcus, Ha’aretz Daily, June 29.
“Is Andy Card an Idiot?”, Timothy Noah, Slate, June 6.
“Mrs. Hughes Takes Her Leave,” Ron Suskind, Esquire, July 2002.
“One-Sided Offer That Will Change Nothing,” Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, June 25.
“Right-Wing Black List,” Sam Tanenhaus, Slate, June 20.
“Should Estate Tax Repeal Be a Top Priority?”, Gene Sperling, Bloomberg News, June 29.
“The Inherited Wealth Lobby,” E.J. Dionne Jr., the Washington Post, June 14.
“The White Van: Were Israelis Detained on Sept. 11?”, Chris Isham, John Miller, Glenn Silber, and Chris Vlasto, ABC News, June 21.
“True Confessions,” Jane Mayer, the New York Review of Books, June 27.
“U.S. Probes 350 Reported Bias Crimes,” Christopher Newton, the Washington Post, June 25.
“What About Bob?”, by Jason Zengerle, the New Republic Online, June 17.
“Who’s Afraid of Cornel West,” Eric Alterman, The Nation, July 15.
“You Must Be a Fag,” Mark Morford, SF Gate, June 14.

Look, we’re normally not in the habit of comparing measurements, but as Andrew Sullivan brought it up today by whipping out the tape measure to brag about his “32-inch waist,” we thought we would add, for purposes of further elevating political discourse in this country, that our editor’s waist measures 28 inches.

And, since Sullivan’s physician is our editor’s former physician, he can check.

Oh . . . and so, frankly, can we.

Was that the final straw we just saw over at “The Daily Dish”?

We republish:

“GOD’S GIFT TO REPUBLICANS: The pledge ruling won’t last. But it’s a great political issue for Republicans. Notice how the most liberal judges are the oldest. Notice also how [Sen.] Tom Daschle [D-S.D.] immediately ran for cover. This is the issue [President George W.] Bush’s dad rode to the White House. His son must be loving it.”

The only word for Andrew Sullivan’s latest outburst is sad.

Not only is this paragraph brazenly partisan, revealing Sullivan for the Bush administration toady he claims not to be, but the analysis upon which it relies is simplistic, faulty, illogical, and plainly wrong.

One can only wonder about a man who watches with glee as both patriotism and religious faith are debased to serve the aims of not just one thoroughly inadequate president, but two.

Perhaps the greatest victory won by American conservatives in the past 20 years has been to make the Big Lie stick. The Big Lie we’re referring to is that which holds that this country’s media is defined by a persistent and pervasive liberal bias. Frankly, we have difficulty imagining the wing nuts actually believe their rants about this purported injustice, as the premise is laughable on its face.

Even more amusing is when some thoroughly uninteresting scribbler -- let’s say, oh, Norah Vincent -- complains that conservatives have no voice in the American media and proceeds to write those words not in an obscure, small-circulation outlet like Human Events or Southern Partisan, but during a regular appearance in the Los Angeles Times, the country’s fourth-largest newspaper. Vincent, we can only suppose, is pursuing the time-honored strategy of “boring from within.”

Bernard Goldberg has turned the media’s alleged “liberal bias” into a veritable cottage industry. And Ann Coulter, who apparently labors down a rabbit hole, has written an entire book on the delusion -- a volume we can’t wait to get our hands on, in a revolting kind of way. [Ed.: In the meantime, Scoobie Davis has written a devastating critique of Coulter’s self-referentially entitled Slander that readers may peruse at their leisure.]

But moving on the higher forms of life . . . Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today has an essay in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram [Ed.: No, we don’t know how it ended up there either.] that speaks the truth to the Big Lie currently being peddled by Vincent, Coulter, Goldberg, and the rest of hallucinating right wing.

Sanders’s essay, “Corporations Have Chokehold on U.S. Media,” makes several important points that rarely find an outlet beyond a few “little magazines” of the American left. His language is a bit more Nation-esque than what we would use, but Sanders’s arguments are persuasive nonetheless.

“One of our best-kept secrets is the degree to which a handful of huge corporations control the flow of information in the United States,” he begins. “Whether it is television, radio, newspapers, magazines, books or the Internet, a few giant conglomerates are determining what we see, hear and read.”

Beyond the concentration of ownership of media outlets in the hands of a shrinking (sometimes foreign) few, Sanders rightly laments the narrow fare offered to American audiences.

“The essential problem with television is not just a right-wing bias in news and programming, or the transformation of politics and government into entertainment and sensationalism,” he writes. “It’s that the most important issues facing the middle-class and working people of our country are rarely discussed. The average American does not see his or her reality reflected on the television screen.”

And radio? Forget it.

“If television largely ignores the reality of life for the majority of Americans, corporate radio is just plain overt in its right-wing bias,” Sanders observes in a breathtaking understatement. He adds:

“In a nation that cast a few million more votes for Al Gore and Ralph Nader than for George W. Bush and Pat Buchanan, there are dozens of right-wing talk show programs.

“Rush Limbaugh, G. Gordon Liddy, Bob Grant, Sean Hannity, Alan Keyes, Armstrong Williams, Howie Carr, Oliver North, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan, Pat Robertson, Laura Schlessinger -- these are only a few of the voices that day after day pound a right-wing drumbeat into the heartland of this country. And from a leftish perspective there is -- well, no one.”

Conservatives get away with the Big Lie because it hangs in the air unchallenged: Who among the dirty dozen cited in the previous paragraph would allow Sanders to make his argument -- uninterrupted and treated with respect and civility -- on his or her program? Who among the dirty dozen could present a coherent argument -- rather than a collection of shouted shopworn slogans -- that would refute Sanders?

We’re waiting.

Armed with her latest tome, ironically entitled Slander, Ann Coulter is hitting the airwaves this week with her one-woman crusade against the omnipotent and omnipresent “liberal media.”

We hope Coulter has recovered from yesterday’s verbal fisticuffs with left-wing revolutionary Katie Couric because she will need all the strength she can muster to withstand the vicious assaults she’s sure to receive from the tough gang of mostly super hostile, bleeding-heart radio and television personalities she’s scheduled to face today:

1:00 p.m.: The Dennis Prager Show

3:00 p.m.: The Howie Carr Show, WRKO, Boston, Mass.

5:00 p.m.: The Big Story with John Gibson, Fox News

7:30 p.m.: CNN Crossfire with James Carville and Tucker Carlson

Check Local Listings: The Laura Ingraham Show

Yesterday we made the observation that coverage of the insider trading allegations in the stock of ImClone Systems Inc. had devoted far more attention to Martha Stewart than to Sam Waksal, the biotechnology firm’s founder and former chief executive officer, who was arrested June 12 on federal securities charges for tipping off family members and friends about an impending adverse decision by the Food and Drug Administration.

Now we come to find that prosecutors are taking the same tack.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Charles Gasparino and Jerry Markon report federal prosecutors have expanded their investigation of Stewart “beyond insider trading to include possible obstruction of justice and making false statements.” [Ed.: Link requires registration and/or subscription.]

The latest controversy concerns whether Stewart, or her broker, Peter Bacanovic of Merrill Lynch & Co., or his assistant, Douglas Faneuil, or all three, lied to investigators about the much-discussed purported prior agreement between Stewart and Bacanovic that Stewart’s ImClone holdings be sold when the price of the stock fell below $60, an event that occurred on Dec. 27, the day before the FDA’s decision was made public.

But here’s the surprising -- and disturbing -- twist to the story: “[F]ederal prosecutors are now boring in on Ms. Stewart . . . and Mr. Bacanovic . . . so intently that the broader investigation of Mr. Waksal and his family members who sold stock is on hold.” [Ed.: Emphasis added.]

This is strange.

Waksal has been arrested and his daughter, Aliza Waksal, and father, Jack Waksal, reportedly took in several million dollars by dumping shares of ImClone stock after getting the heads up from the former CEO that the FDA would soon announce its rejection of ImClone’s cancer treatment Erbitux, which the agency did on Dec. 28.

But instead of investigating the Waksals, and who knows how many other people they might have contacted before Dec. 28, prosecutors have assigned a higher priority to going after Stewart in an effort to determine whether or not the notorious “control freak” allowed a standing order to sell 4,000 shares sit in a computer at Merrill Lynch ready to fire automatically if the price of the stock fell below $60, even if she were on vacation.

As we have said from the beginning, we could be completely misguided in our interpretation of events. But we have emphasized that our comments are simply that, an interpretation, one that offers an alternative scenario to that which so much of the media has adopted as gospel truth in this matter.

Nonetheless, it strikes us as odd that an obstruction charge based on little more than the word of a 26-year-old sales assistant with limited experience working with his broker’s clientele would take priority over one of the most flagrant violations of insider trading laws in recent memory.

Waksal, after all, not only sought to sell some of his own shares of ImClone, but when objections to that maneuver were raised by the firm’s attorneys, he attempted to transfer the shares to his daughter so that she could complete the transaction on his behalf. And Waksal provided material non-public information not only this daughter, but his other daughter and his father, and an as yet undetermined number of relatives and friends -- a list of which should be fairly easy to reconstruct by taking a look at his telephone records and some brokerage order tickets.

Faneuil changes his story

The widened probe apparently was sparked by statements Faneuil made to prosecutors this week According to the Journal, Faneuil, who has worked at Merrill Lynch for less than a year, has retracted his previous account of the Stewart transaction. (By our reading of today’s article, it’s clear that Faneuil or his attorney is the source for the story.)

Faneuil now says he misled lawyers at Merrill Lynch and the Securities and Exchange Commission when he supported Stewart and Bacanovic’s account of the trigger for the sale of ImClone stock. Faneuil, according to the Journal, told Merrill Lynch attorneys that he was not aware of such an arrangement. That statement is not in and of itself damaging, but Faneuil also reportedly said “he concocted his initial account after being pressured by Mr. Bacanovic.”

That could prove to be a major blow to Stewart if it is proved to be true -- what we know of his story now cannot be corroborated by anyone -- and if it can be determined that Bacanovic and Stewart came up with their stories in collusion with each other. On the other hand, if Stewart and Bacanovic can produce the notes they each claim to have about a prior agreement (their accounts of the notes vary as to the time of the conversation) it would suggest that Bacanovic simply didn’t tell his assistant about the agreement but later sought support that would back him up.

In today’s Journal, Gasparino casts doubt on the ability of Bacanovic and Stewart to depend on a verbal agreement to protect themselves. “Merrill [Lynch] officials say they believe Mr. Faneuil would have known about the arrangement if one had existed,” Gasparino reports. By way of explanation, Gasparino offers, “[V]erbal stop-loss agreements are uncommon on Wall Street to avoid confusion; most brokers officially log such arrangements into the firm’s computer system to keep a detailed record of the trade.”

However, Gasparino, appearing this morning on CNBC’s “Morning Call,” equivocated on this very point, calling verbal agreements “a gray area” in the securities trading business.

Faneuil is to meet with prosecutors again, possibly today, to discuss the matter, according to the Journal.

It’s in Bacanovic’s hands

In order to charge Stewart with insider trading, prosecutors would have to show that Stewart’s sale was sparked by knowledge of specific details regarding the FDA’s unannounced adverse decision, rather than rumors in the market, vague comments from her broker, or the observations of the biotechnology analyst at Merrill Lynch.

The only person who can provide that information is Peter Bacanovic. He and Stewart reportedly spoke on the phone for 11 minutes on the morning of Dec. 27. We have not heard nor been given reason to believe the conversation was recorded, but notes may have been taken by either or both parties.

Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic

Summing up, then, that call is the crux of the matter. The conversation could have taken any number of directions:

Bacanovic told Stewart ImClone shares looked like they might decline and he sought confirmation that she wished to sell at the predetermined trigger of $60.

Bacanovic told Stewart he thought ImClone shares were about to fall because there already were large sell orders in the market.

Bacanovic told Stewart ImClone shares were about to fall because there were large sell orders in the market including a large block from Aliza Waksal.

Bacanovic told Stewart he thought ImClone shares were about to fall because Sam and/or Aliza Waksal told him the FDA was preparing to reject the firm’s application for Erbitux.

The common link between all of these scenarios is that the determination of Stewart’s guilt or innocence depends largely on Bacanovic’s account of the conversation.

Two things of note happened after the call. First, Bacanovic directed Faneuil to place the order to sell Stewart’s shares, mentioning or not mentioning the prior agreement with his client. Second, Stewart called Sam Waksal, leaving a message, “Something’s going on at ImClone and I want to know what it is.” Waksal did not return the call.

We may be placing far too much emphasis on that remark, but if Stewart were seeking Waksal’s advice why did she call him after she gave the go-ahead for the transaction? And if she had been tipped off to the FDA’s decision, why would she ask Waksal what was happening at ImClone?

Call us confused.

Appearing yesterday on the CBS program “The Early Show,” Stewart said she believes the entire matter will be resolved “very soon” and added that she expects to be “exonerated of any ridiculousness.”

In her inimitable manner, Stewart, while determinedly chopping cabbage with a very large knife, deflected continued attention to the subject by saying, “I want to focus on my salad.” Until we read or hear something more substantial than that which has been presented so far, we suggest prosecutors and reporters do the same.

Now that we’ve learned the former managers of WorldCom Inc. engaged in what may turn out to be the largest case of accounting fraud in history, placing the future of the firm in jeopardy, we thought it would be interesting to take a look at the board of directors, the illustrious group of men and women elected by shareholders to oversee management’s performance.

Our quick take on the board: A disaster in the making.

The board includes far too many WorldCom insiders and executives of firms acquired under the direction of former chief executive officer Bernard J. (Bernie) Ebbers.

The independent directors included a law professor, a former hotel-industry executive, two investors of some sort, and Gordon Macklin, a former president of the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. (NASD) and former chairman of Hambrecht & Quist.

According to the company’s latest proxy statement, the board includes:

James C. Allen, a director of WorldCom since March 1998. Allen is currently an investment director and member of the general partner of Meritage Private Equity Fund, a venture capital fund. Allen was vice chairman and chief executive officer of Brooks Fiber Properties from 1993 to 1998, when it was acquired by WorldCom, and president and chief operating officer of Brooks Telecommunications Corp. from April 1993 until it merged with Brooks Fiber Properties in 1996.

Judith Areen, a director of WorldCom since September 1998. Areen has served as executive vice president for law center affairs and dean of the Georgetown University Law Center since 1989. She has been a law professor at Georgetown since 1976.

Carl J. Aycock, a director of WorldCom since 1983. Aycock was secretary of WorldCom from 1987 to 1995 and was secretary and chief financial officer of Master Corp., a motel management and ownership company, from 1989 until 1992. Since 1992 Aycock has been self employed as a financial administrator.

Max E. Bobbitt, a director of WorldCom since 1992. Bobbitt has been a telecommunications consultant from 1998 to the present. Bobbitt was president and CEO of Metromedia China Corp. from 1997 to 1998 and president and CEO of Asian American Telecommunications Corp. from 1996 to 1997, when it was acquired by Metromedia China.

Francesco Galesi, a director of WorldCom since 1992. Galesi is chairman and CEO of the Galesi Group, which includes companies engaged in real estate, telecommunications, and oil and gas exploration and production.

Stiles A. Kellett, a director of WorldCom since 1981. Kellett has been chairman of Kellett Investment Corp. since 1995.

Gordon S. Macklin, a director of WorldCom since September 1998. Macklin has been a corporate financial advisor since 1992. From 1987 through 1992, he was chairman of Hambrecht & Quist Group, an investment banking and venture capital firm. Before that, Macklin was president of the National Association of Securities Dealers Inc. from 1970 to 1987. He was also chairman of the National Clearing Corp. from 1970 to 1975 and was a partner and member of the executive committee of McDonald & Co. Securities Inc., where he was employed from 1950 to 1970.

Bert C. Roberts, chairman of the board and a director of WorldCom since September 1998. Roberts was chairman of the board of MCI Communications Corp. from 1992 to 1998, CEO of MCI from 1991 to November 1996, president and chief operating officer of MCI from 1985 to 1992, president of MCI Telecommunications Corp., a subsidiary of MCI, from 1983 to 1992.

John W. Sidgmore, vice chairman of the board and a director of WorldCom since late 1996. Sidgmore was chief operations officer of WorldCom from 1996 to 1998 and previously held executive positions with MFS Communications Co. and UUNet Technologies Inc. He is currently CEO of WorldCom.

Also on the board of directors of WorldCom, until they were separately fired this year:

Bernard J. Ebbers, a director of WorldCom since 1983. Ebbers was president and CEO of WorldCom from 1985 to 2002.

Scott D. Sullivan, a director of WorldCom since 1996. Sullivan was chief financial officer, treasurer, and secretary of WorldCom from 1994 to 2002.

Although we haven’t pulled out the tape measure, it’s a safe bet the column inches devoted to Martha Stewart’s December trades in the common stock of ImClone Systems Inc. have exceeded by a factor of at least five those given to the actions of company founder and former chief executive officer Sam Waksal.

And Waksal has been arrested on federal insider trading charges involving ImClone!

As we wrote yesterday, we believe the facts so far presented in the media, some of which have come from investigators in the House of Representatives, regarding the Dec. 27 sale of ImClone stock by Stewart, chairman and chief executive officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., will amount to nothing.

But, having made so a fuss, diving into the “story” with furious overkill, the media last night found itself moving into “maintenance mode,” the period just after a non-story peaks during which reporters, seeking to save face, attempt to keep the issue alive by reporting and exaggerating even the most inconsequential news.

Today’s reports in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, to name just a few offenders, clearly fall into this category. And yesterday’s piece in the Post by histrionics-prone Christopher Byron, author of the monumentally unsuccessful Martha Inc., bordered on hysteria. That Byron stands to gain financially -- despite his book’s failure -- from any controversy surrounding Stewart is a fact the paper’s editors either failed to notice or thought readers need not be made aware.

Appearing today on the CBS television program “The Early Show,” Stewart said she hopes the controversy surrounding her sale of just under 4,000 shares of ImClone Systems will be resolved “very soon,” adding the she fully expects to be “exonerated of any ridiculousness.” Stewart has maintained her innocence since the matter first reached the media earlier this month.

Hays grasps at straws

Constance Hays, writing in today’s Times (“Panel Focuses on Martha Stewart Call”), quotes Ken Johnson, a spokesman for the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which is investigating several trades in ImClone Systems stock, as stating that the committee “is focusing on a call made to Martha Stewart by her stockbroker on Dec. 27…in which the broker left a message saying that the price of ImClone was about to fall.”

An assistant in Stewart’s New York office, according to Hays, noted the call in Stewart’s phone log. It reportedly reads, “Peter Bacanovic thinks ImClone is going to start trading downward.” The time of the call from Bacanovic was not written down, but Stewart’s lawyers said it was between 10:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m., Hays reports. As has been reported, Bacanovic counts not only Stewart among his clients but also Waksal and his two daughters.

Bacanovic and his sales assistant Douglas Faneuil were placed on paid suspension by Merrill Lynch & Co. following an internal investigation that found discrepancies related to “factual issues regarding a client transaction.”

Citing “a person close to the investigation,” the Times reports that the transaction in question is Stewart’s sale of ImClone shares, not those of the Waksal family members. Moreover, the source maintains, Merrill’s “findings seem to contradict” Stewart’s assertion that she had a standing order with Bacanovic to sell ImClone if it fell below $60, which it did on Dec. 27, the day before ImClone announced that the Food and Drug Administration rejected its application for approval of Erbitux, a treatment for certain forms of cancer.

Hays and the investigators appear to be reaching rather hard with the following:

“The wording of the message could raise further doubt on whether Ms. Stewart and her broker had agreed in advance to sell her ImClone shares when the stock hit $60….The message from Mr. Bacanovic did not refer to the stock hitting Ms. Stewart’s target but rather that the broker felt it was going down, something it had already been doing for weeks. Moreover, if the call from Mr. Bacanovic came between 10 and 11 a.m., it would have been soon after Dr. Waksal’s daughter Aliza had sold all her shares, according to the criminal complaint filed against Dr. Waksal by the United States attorney in New York.”

Hays quotes Johnson as saying, “It’s another strange coincidence in a story filled with strange coincidences.”

Speculation is a one-way street

So again we have speculation headed exclusively in one direction, against Stewart, a conclusion completely un- warranted by the facts at hand. Bacanovic, who has a fiduciary relationship toward Stewart, attempts to reach his client to inform her that one of her stocks may be headed into a decline, and Hays leaps to the assumption that Bacanovic’s intention was to tell Stewart that his call was prompted by material non-public information, i.e., from a member of the Waksal family. This despite no supporting evidence whatsoever, and even less evidence that Stewart would have acted on this kind of advice had Bacanovic provided it to her.

Peter Bacanovic

Now, it’s fair to assume that Bacanovic was fairly busy on Dec. 27, what with the Waksals badgering him to sell their stock and, presumably, fielding calls from any number of other clients and colleagues who -- watching the stock sag on heavier-than-normal volume -- knew that the Waksals were Bacanovic’s clients and that he had worked for ImClone for two years in the 1990s.

Thus, it’s a safe bet that Bacanovic didn’t feel he had a great deal of time to chat with Stewart’s assistant. Moreover, the topic under discussion was obviously a personal financial matter, suggesting an element of discretion was appropriate.

In addition, Bacanovic certainly knew as well as anyone that Stewart is difficult to reach on the phone given the tight schedule she maintains even when not working. There is no reason to believe Bacanovic expected to reach Stewart immediately. By the time the two did talk, several hours later based on the time line provided, the stock had declined precipitously on Dec. 27, sparked in large part by Aliza Waksal having dumped her shares and aided by cautious remarks about ImClone from Merrill Lynch’s own biotechnology industry analyst.

Hays seems to think she is onto something when she points out that ImClone’s stock had been declining “for weeks.” Yes, it had, and Stewart may already have been aware of this, and may already have conveyed her concerns to Bacanovic, who as we know has said he and Stewart spoke in mid-December, the time period upon which Hays puts so much attention.

In her own report Hays says Congressional investigators expect to meet with Bacanovic later this week, but adds, “It is unclear whether he will do so.” Why Hays declined to speculate on this aspect of the story -- the logical direction being fairly obvious in our minds (Hint: It has something to do with the Fifth Amendment.) -- we cannot explain.

“YESTERDAY’S speech left much to be desired. Mr. Bush does not seem to expect anything immediately from the Israelis, and he appeared to rule out much improvement in the lives of Palestinians until Yasir Arafat is ousted….

“[M]aking Mr. Arafat’s fate the be-all and end-all of the Mideast peace process makes him look far too significant, and makes it all the harder for the Palestinians themselves to show him the door….Mr. Bush seemed to be telling Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he is free to reoccupy the entire West Bank until a new, democratic Palestine emerges. How the Palestinians can be expected to carry out elections or reform themselves while in a total lockdown by the Israeli military remains something of a mystery.

“In broad terms, Mr. Bush told Israel the right things….But the president set no timetable. This means that settler leaders and military hard-liners, including those in the government, may take this waiting period to grab all they can and establish ‘facts on the ground.’” -- Editorial, New York Times

“AFTER months of fits and starts, President Bush yesterday distilled his Middle East policy to a simple proposition: Peace depends almost entirely on the Palestinians.

“Bush made no mention of an international conference. He did not repeat his demand for an immediate withdrawal of Israeli forces, which shortly before Bush spoke announced they were headed into Gaza….

“[W]hile Bush suggested a three-year timetable for the establishment of a Palestinian state, the clock doesn’t start ticking until Palestinians elect new leaders and build new political, economic and security institutions. And Bush made the creation of a Palestinian state conditional to a series of tough yardsticks that could be impossible to achieve….

“[I]n other ways, the speech represented a purposeful abandonment of neutrality by the administration, which now has largely adopted the stance of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Arafat is no longer relevant to the peace process, and that security and political reform must precede negotiations about a Palestinian state….

“[B]y writing Arafat out of the picture, Bush may have left Arafat no incentive to cooperate -- and Bush has yet to explain whom the United States or Israel would negotiate with in the coming months. Currently, there is no functioning Palestinian government that can stop the terrorist attacks or replace the Israeli army, and there is no leadership that has the authority or respect to negotiate with Israel.” -- Glenn Kessler, Washington Post

“BEYOND Washington’s focus on the removal of Mr. Arafat, the U.S. president’s vision went no further last night than a vague promise of a provisional Palestinian state, to be redeemed within three years -- by which time Mr. Bush may no longer be in the White House.

“He held out no details on the borders of the state that will emerge three years from now, the location of its capital, or the future of millions of Palestinian refugees -- all vital concerns for the people of the West Bank and Gaza.

“Mr. Bush also freed Mr. Sharon of his few remaining constraints. While Israel does not yet have licence to expel Mr. Arafat -- as Mr. Sharon’s hardline allies demand -- after last night’s speech that day may not be far off.

“In addition, Mr. Sharon was handed additional pretexts to delay a withdrawal from Palestinian lands, or the reopening of negotiations with the Palestinians. As Mr Bush made clear, Mr. Sharon is now within his rights to demand not only an end to Palestinian violence, but a total overhaul of the judiciary in the West Bank or Gaza, before embarking on peace talks.” -- Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian

“GEORGE BUSH finally gave his long-awaited speech on the Israel-Palestinian conflict last night. The document had created acrimonious divisions between the administration’s hawks and the State Department. The hawks won.

“There was little in the speech that looked like a remedy to a conflict that has claimed more than 2,000 lives, and appears to be getting steadily worse….

“There was little to suggest this speech will make much difference to the nightmare on the ground. Mr. Bush talked of the need for Israel to withdraw to the positions before the start of the intifada in late September. But the withdrawal should be made ‘as we make progress toward security.’ One suicide bomber attack would allow Israel to argue that progress has not been made.

“Israeli settlement activity in the occupied territories must end but this should be ‘consistent with the recommendations of the Mitchell report,’ he said. This, too, ensures that Israel can stall -- as it long ago re-cast the recommendations to include a timeline….

“Exactly where the new leaders will come from is not clear. Elections today would deliver a strong showing for Hamas, classed by the U.S. as terrorist.” -- Phil Reeves, The Independent

“TRANSLATION: Yasser Arafat and his blood-drenched henchmen must go. Indeed, Bush's speech was a barely camouflaged call for a coup d’etat against the PLO leader [sic], and his replacement by a leadership ‘not compromised by terror.’

“Which likely also explains Israel’s new, aggressive campaign to destroy the Hamas infrastructure and its latest military offensive, which has once again penned Arafat in his compound -- and which Bush endorsed.” -- Editorial, New York Post

One of the biggest stories of the past two weeks has Martha Stewart, invariably termed “the doyenne of domesticity” or some other such nonsense, embroiled in an insider trading scandal at ImClone Systems Inc., a biotechnology firm that was headed by her friend Sam Waksal until he was arrested on insider trading charges on June 12.

This is the stuff tabloid editors dream of, and true to form, the New York Post and the Daily News (New York), among others, have been reporting even the most minor bits of new information while tracking and tailing Stewart’s every move. The Wall Street Journal also have been actively covering the story, albeit with considerable restraint. Stewart has strongly denied any wrongdoing.

There is scant evidence so far that would lead a reasonable person to reach the conclusion that Stewart’s sale of fewer than 5,000 shares of ImClone Systems on Dec. 27, 2001, was based on material non-public information, that being the basic definition of insider trading.

The facts so far

Let’s look at what we know. According to published reports, Stewart purchased 4,910 shares of ImClone on the open market at some unknown date “several years ago,” in a transaction that may represent a goodwill gesture (toward her friend Waksal) as much as it did an investment in the true sense of the term.

Stewart pared her holdings in ImClone in late October 2001 -- two months before the date in question -- when Bristol Myers-Squibb Co. conducted a tender offer for 20 percent of the outstanding shares of ImClone, a firm with which the beleaguered pharmaceutical company had signed a strategic agreement.

Stewart’s participation in the tender offer establishes an intent to sell that clearly precedes any exchange of information, by anyone, about the Food and Drug Administration’s pending decision regarding Erbitux, ImClone’s as yet unapproved cancer treatment.

Because the tender offer was oversubscribed, Stewart, like every other ImClone investor involved in the transaction, was able to sell only 20 percent of her stake in ImClone, or roughly 982 shares. Thereafter, in November according to Stewart, or in mid-December according to Peter Bacanovic, her broker at Merrill Lynch & Co., and never according to the Journal’s account of Bacanovic’s assistant Douglas Faneuil, Stewart placed a “stop-loss” order, apparently informally (that is, not in writing), directing that her shares be sold when the price of ImClone dropped below $60.

And indeed, Stewart’s remaining 3,928 shares were sold on Dec. 27, the first day on which the price of ImClone dipped below $60 since Nov. 12. (Both Bacanovic and Faneuil have been placed on leave from Merrill Lynch.)

We do not know, yet at least, the price at which Stewart purchased the shares of ImClone. However, Stewart tendered her shares to Bristol Myers at $70, implying that this price represented, to Stewart, an acceptable return on her initial investment. Thus, it doesn’t require too great a leap to conclude that four to six weeks later Stewart came to the conclusion that $60 also provided an acceptable return, taking into account the potential gain sacrificed when the volatile stock traded above that price and its recent decline.

Stewart’s reported proceeds from the December transaction totaled $227,824 before taxes. This is not an inconsequential sum of money, but we find it extremely difficult to believe that this is an amount for which Stewart would risk her career and her company, though certainly other people of similar means have done similar things.

A reasonable explanation

So what happened? We know only what is in the public record, which we note is growing by the day. However, we think there are many perfectly reasonable scenarios that could account for Stewart’s trade, though one could be forgiven for not knowing this given the newspaper coverage of the matter so far.

We outline one such scenario below:

After the Bristol Myers tender offer, during which she was unable to sell all of her ImClone shares as desired, Stewart instructed Bacanovic to sell her remaining holdings when the stock dropped below $60.

This apparently was not done in writing (though Stewart says she has written notes to this effect), nor was it in some way entered into Merrill Lynch’s records so that the trade would be made in Bacanovic’s absence or in the event he wasn’t watching the stock carefully. This would suggest that the directive from Stewart was issued in an off-hand way, as in, “Well, Peter, I think we should sell the stock if it drops below $60.” The $60 price target being almost 15 percent below what Stewart anticipated getting for all of her shares in the tender offer. To us, that represents a perfectly reasonable strategy for Stewart to employ for downside protection.

On the first day the stock dipped below $60, Bacanovic saw the trade or had his attention directed to it by an automated alert system, by Faneuil, or by someone else, possibly a member of the Waksal family. (Waksal and his daughter Aliza Waksal are among Bacanovic’s clients and Bacanovic previously worked for ImClone.)

Shortly thereafter, Bacanovic called Stewart to confirm that she wished to sell the shares, a call that would appear to confirm that the stop-loss order was not in writing or otherwise on file at Merrill Lynch. It would also demonstrate responsibility on Bacanovic’s part in the event that Stewart’s directive was in fact issued in an offhand manner.

After receiving confirmation from Stewart, Bacanovic placed the order to sell Stewart’s shares. Stewart, traveling in Texas at the time, subsequently called Waksal, and left a message saying, “Something’s going on at ImClone,” or words to that effect.

To us this is an entirely plausible chain of events, particularly if we consider what Bacanovic may have said to Stewart during their telephone conversation. Keep in mind that the dialogue below is entirely fictional and hypothetical, Noonanesque if you will.

Bacanovic: “Martha, I’m glad you called. ImClone has dropped below 60. You asked me to sell your shares when it crossed that level. I just wanted to confirm that you still would like to do that.”

Stewart: “Oh, it did? Well, what do you think? I noticed the stock has been declining for the past three weeks.”

Bacanovic: “Yes, it has. Down from 75 to 65. But the stock really has been sinking like a stone today. And on very heavy volume.”

Stewart: “Is there any news out on ImClone?”

Bacanovic: “Nothing on the wire so far.” (Or, alternatively, “Nothing on the wire so far, but the FDA’s decision on Erbitux could be announced at any time.” Or, alternatively, but we think unlikely, “Nothing on the wire but I heard from a source at ImClone that the FDA is going to reject the Erbitux application.”)

Stewart: “What does your analyst say?”

Bacanovic: “Eric Hecht says there’s speculation in the market that the FDA won’t approve Erbitux. The stock’s performance in the last few weeks seems to be signaling that.”

Stewart: “Any signs buyers are coming in to support the stock?”

Bacanovic: “No. The spread points to more weakness.”

Stewart: “Okay. Well…Let’s dump it.”

Even if we assume the stop-loss order is an invention at which both Stewart and Bacanovic independently arrived, one could just as easily presume -- and we emphasize this is not an accusation, only a hypothesis -- that Bacanovic, a scheming parvenu (at least according to the papers), sought to place himself in Stewart’s good graces by getting her out of ImClone in front of disastrous news about which he previously had been informed. If so, Stewart’s only offense was being taken by a less than entirely honest stockbroker, a type hardly unknown in the industry.

The call to Waksal

Stewart’s Dec. 27 telephone call to Waksal is telling. First, we note that Stewart called Waksal at 1:41 p.m., after giving Bacanovic the order to sell the stock. We have to assume this is true as Stewart surely is aware that the timing of events could readily be established through phone records, thereby eliminating any reason to lie.

Second, Stewart was telling Waksal something was going on at ImClone, not vice versa. This strikes us as the type of exchange two friendly CEOs might have with each other. Again, Noonanesquely entering Stewart’s brain, we hear: “Hmm. I wonder what’s going on at ImClone. I should call Sam. I’m sure he’s aware the stock is tanking. Maybe he could use some support. I’ve probably panicked. I hope he doesn’t take this personally.”

Much has been made of the fact that Waksal didn’t take Stewart’s call since he was in the office -- “writing letters” -- that day, the suggestion being that Stewart’s account of an unanswered phone call is implausible. Hardly. Waksal may have alerted others to the adverse decision coming from the FDA, and yes, it’s conceivable that he told Stewart this on Dec. 27 (or to Bacanovic who told Stewart). But it is at least equally plausible that Waksal, not knowing Stewart already had sold her shares, declined to take the call from his friend for fear of drawing her into the sordid mess he had created.

We are also confused by the unwillingness or inability of some commentators to recall that Stewart once worked as a stockbroker at the now departed Paine Webber, a position at which she presumably would have picked up the basic underpinnings of what constitutes insider trading.

Moreover, Stewart’s firm, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia Inc., is a publicly traded corporation listed on the New York Stock Exchange. In exchange for her services, Stewart earned nearly $3 million last year, and Stewart owns 63 percent of the firm’s outstanding Class A shares and 100 percent of its Class B shares, giving her not only substantial paper wealth but 94 percent of the voting power concerning company affairs.

The notion that Stewart, having created this company and attained this position, was either unaware of securities law on this matter or willfully disregarded such law -- thereby jeopardizing herself and her eponymous firm -- is difficult for us to accept.

We emphasize that we have outlined only one of many alternative scenarios in the Stewart-ImClone matter and we concur that there many more that could be written casting Stewart in a bad light. Moreover, we concede that we may be thoroughly misguided in our hypothesis. Our point here is to demonstrate that rushing to judgment about Stewart’s actions in this matter is pointless and unfair, not least of all because insider trading, when it does occur, is extremely difficult to prove.

Until we see or hear more convincing evidence, we’re behind Stewart.

For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me. (Job 3:25, KJV)

Ann Coulter has launched her long-awaited eponymous vanity web site, AnnCoulter.org. It’s worth a look and is certain to get the middle-aged frat boys of right-wing talk radio salivating, perspiring, breathing heavily, and who knows what else. (Readers may wish to stick with FM today.)

Coulter’s timing is fortuitous and not a matter of happenstance: Her second book is due out tomorrow. This week, then, we will be treated to the bizarre sight of yet another conservative pundit ranting and raving about the media’s egregious “liberal bias,” all the while appearing as a guest of same, and laughing all the way to the bank.

As one would expect, the home page at AnnCoulter.org has her latest column, something about President Bush and his fetishes, as best we could make out, though, to be honest, we weren’t really paying that much attention.

But the good stuff, or the “goods,” as it were, is on the inside. Coulter’s hard-core fans will be delighted to find not one, but two photo galleries, “images” she unselfconsciously calls them, photographs certain to disprove, once and for all, that Coulter’s success as a right-wing pundit (she prefers the term “public intellectual”) has anything to due with her carefully cultivated “babe” image.

More interesting, though, is that Coulter carries the fetish theme she tackled on the home page into her galleries.

See Ann model black vinyl!

See Ann in pumps!

See Ann shoot!

See Ann work the dunes at dusk!

See Ann get drunk!

See Ann battle anorexia! (Noteworthy: The dress in this photograph appears to have a stain on it.)

Naturally, the site is blatantly promotional.

“[B]uy Ann’s new book”!

“Read the book jacket”!

See and hear Ann take on the “liberal media” (beginning with the home-field advantage): “Sean Hannity”! “Hannity & Colmes”! “Politically Incorrect”! With the obligatory “Today Show” appearance and promises of “more events to be added.”

God help us, every one.

Forbes last week published the magazine’s annual Celebrity Top 100, a list that purportedly “combines earnings with media exposure to calculate the relative status of a vast array of stars.”

In the number-one spot, Britney Spears, a woman who until today we couldn’t pick from a lineup if our lives depended on it.

We’re “out of it,” as they say. We’ve lost our touch with the popular culture.

But, no matter, we’re content to leave the really important and complicated stuff like that to Lloyd Grove.

Be sure to stop by Washington Life for a classic shot of sartorially challenged Washington Post gossip columnist Lloyd Grove sporting his finest at the National Gallery of Art’s Summer Celebration last September. (Or just look at it here.)

Lloyd Grove and Amy Holmes

Donations to Grove’s painfully deficient necktie collection may be sent to:

Mr. Lloyd Grove
Washington Post Co.
1150 15th St., N.W.
Washington, D.C., 20071

You could qualify for a tax deduction. Please consult your tax adviser.