[Guest post by DRJ]

Yahoo notes that Michael Jackson’s album Thriller is 25-years-old this week and asks if it was the “Best Album Ever”:

“Thiller had just nine songs on it. Of those nine songs, seven reached the top 10. If you break down those seven top 10 tracks, five entered the top five, two of which even hit number one. Talk about getting your money’s worth.”

I’ll defer to our musically-inclined host but I think it might be.

– DRJ

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Music is, of course, a matter of taste, and people will have different reactions to the question: “Is Thriller the Best Album Ever?”

That said, the correct answer is “no.”

UPDATE BY DRJ: Heh. I knew you’d say that.

Posted by WLS:

 Well, I sort of give away the post in the caption. Last night on hardball over at MSDNC, Chrissy Matthews decided that David Shyster would be a one man “Truth Squad” on claims made in the CNN YouTube Debate:

Plus, HARDBALL‘s David Shuster will “truth squad” the debates.  Who was telling the truth and who was telling some tall tales? 

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Posted by WLS:

United States District Judge Vaughn Walker, a long-time judicial curiosity, has issued a judgment in favor of an aggrieved landowner in the amount of $36.8 million dollars, and against the City of Half Moon Bay.

That’s the City of Half Moon Bay, population 12,300.

ANNUAL municipal operating budget of $10.2 million.

Amount needed to pay judgment — $3000 for every man, woman, and child living in Half Moon Bay.

I suspect there may be a few less than 12,300 living there in the days and weeks ahead. 

The City’s conduct:  apparently its design of a drainage system caused the landowners property to be classified as “wetlands” under California’s environmental laws, meaning that he was precluded from developing condos.

Yeah – the land he acquired for $1 million.

The City of Half Moon Bay and its taxpayers must now pay him $36.8 million for that same land. 

Oh yeah — the Hon. Vaughn Walker called the city’s expert witnesses “uninformed” and their opinions on topography and drainage “baseless.”

I’m sure his A.B. degree from the Univ. of Mich. was in civil engineering.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Note: An earlier post on this subject is here.

Last week, a one-post now a two-post blog called Investigate the Media claimed that the San Francisco Chronicle “activated a devious system by which it deceives commenters on its website, SFGate.com.” It also claimed commenters (apparently referring to conservative commenters) are “silenced for ideological reasons” or “because they strike too close to home — pointing out flaws in the article’s reporting or writing itself, or ethical or moral misdeeds on the part of the Chronicle editors or management.”

These are serious claims and, to the Chronicle’s credit, an online editor for the Chronicle responded promptly. Scroll down and click *More* for the full text of the response from Eve Batey, Deputy Manager-Online for the San Francisco Chronicle. (Ms. Batey was also interviewed here.) My summary of the main points from Ms. Batey’s response are set forth in the indented and bolded sections below, with additional thoughts following each summary:

The Chronicle’s website has easily accessible Terms and Conditions and a short-hand version called the Comments Policy that govern the terms of use for all comments. Commenters agree to these terms when they register at the website.

The Terms and Conditions provide that the Chronicle owns all right, title and interest to the website content. The Privacy Policy states that information disclosed by users “becomes public information.”

The Chronicle’s online editors do not moderate every comment. Instead, they rely on commenters to report abusive comments.

It makes sense that the editors can’t moderate every comment – the website would lose its interactive quality if that happened – but this may be part of the problem. San Franciscans voted 85% for Kerry and 15% for Bush in the 2004 election. If most SFGate users are liberal, there is a greater likelihood that the users will object to conservative comments and flag them as offensive.

For instance, if there are 8 liberal commenters for every 2 conservative commenters, theoretically there are 4 times as many chances that someone will flag the conservative comment as offensive. Of course, the liberal commenters may flag other liberal comments or the 2 conservative commenters may flag all 8 liberal comments as offensive, but the odds don’t support either option happening on a regular basis.

Thus, the pool of flagged comments the moderators actually look at are more likely to be conservative and, as a result, conservative comments are more likely to be subject to deletion. Think of it as the online equivalent of profiling.

The online editors do not discourage diverse views and do not want to, either from a philosophical or from a business perspective.

I agree it doesn’t make sense to eliminate controversy if you’re in the newspaper business. In fact, the editors probably want diverse views because conflict drives up interest. However, even though it’s good business to encourage controversy, there is a flip side. The Chronicle may not want to irritate its mostly-liberal readers with too many conservative comments. However, until we can see the deleted comments, I accept the Chronicle’s statement that it handles comments in a fair manner.

The commenter who blogs at Investigate the Media was banned and/or had comments deleted because he “ran afoul” of the Chronicle’s Terms and Conditions.

To follow up on this, we requested copies of the deleted comments from the Chronicle and the blogger who posted on this at Investigate the Media. The blogger has not responded at his/her website. And despite the SFGate website’s Terms and Conditions that grant exclusive ownership of the contents to the Chronicle, the Chronicle has refused to provide copies of the deleted comments without permission from the commenter. However, Ms. Batey has reached out to this blogger at his/her website and asked permission to share the comments. The blogger maintains the “Chronicle admits to deceptive comment-deletion policy, offers bizarre excuse, then lies again.”

So what do we know? The Chronicle acknowledges that the SFGate commenter (jimjams) who posted Investigate the Media is a registered commenter. At his/her blog, jimjams provided one example where a comment was deleted by SFGate. That comment was apparently deleted because jimjams called the Chronicle staff writer an “idiot.” Does every commenter who calls someone an “idiot” (or similar terms) get banned at the Chronicle or does this only apply to comments about a Chronicle staff writer? Was the deletion related to the critical tone of the comment or to a pattern of inappropriate comments?

It’s hard to tell without access to the deleted comments. I hope the parties will provide copies of the comments … and, in the meantime, I have to wonder why they won’t.

Update 11/30/2007 @ 5:20 PM PST: Ms. Batey corrects my statement regarding the single comment posted by jimjams: “[T]he comment you see on ITM referring to a Chronicle reporter as an idiot wasn’t a deleted comment. Jimjams had actually been blocked for some time before that day, and the “idiot” comment was one of his/her non-Terms violating comments that was also hidden from view by the use of the tool. That, right there, is why using the “block user” function was the wrong decision.” Thanks for bringing this correction to my attention and I’ve noted the correction by striking through two sentences, above.

The Chronicle requested but the software vendor was unable to provide a feature that specifically noted when and why comments were deleted.

Ms. Batey provided a lengthy explanation of the technology issues, and I encourage you to click *More* and read her complete response. In short, the Chronicle previously used a “block user” function that “blocks all comments made by a user from view by anyone but themselves (upon login), and replaces those comments with a deletion message, in a way that simply deleting a single comment would not.” She asserts that this function has been used sparingly and only with commenters who, in the moderators’ view, repeatedly violated the rules. The “block user” function was chosen in an effort to promote transparency because it gave some indication that a comment had been deleted or blocked. In practice, however, this function did not seem transparent. Ms. Batey apologized for that and noted the Chronicle editors have stopped using the “block user” function.

I appreciate Ms. Batey’s discussion of things that work and don’t work in moderating comments. There is a learning curve in blogging – at least there has been for me – and I’m impressed with her willingness to acknowledge a lesson learned and to make changes as a result.

– DRJ

Click *More* for the full text of the email from Eve Batey, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Deputy Managing Editor – Online.

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[Guest post by DRJ]

Courtesy of US News’ Washington Whispers column, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explained why he doesn’t ask questions during oral argument:

“There’s a reason why Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas doesn’t talk much from the bench: He thinks judges should be seen and not heard. “My colleagues should shut up!” he says. In a rare scolding of his fellow judges, Thomas Wednesday night took off after those who ask questions and debate cases out loud during oral arguments while defending his own, oft-criticized, silent treatment.

Asked at an event honoring Winston Churchill sponsored by independent Michigan school Hillsdale College if he would talk more from the bench to “give us relief” from the other chatty judges, Thomas said, “I don’t think it’s my job to give you relief.” Thomas noted that through history, most top judges rarely asked questions. “What’s changed? Have the laws changed? What’s changed? And why are all these questions necessary? That should be the question,” he demanded of the near epidemic level of judicial questioning at Supreme Court hearings.

He later characterized his “shut up” comment as simply “shock value,” but then dug deeper into the issue. “I think that they should ask questions, but I don’t think that for judging, and for what we are doing, all those questions are necessary,” he said. “You don’t have to ask all those questions to judge properly.”

Justice Thomas compared judging to surgery … and Perry Mason:

“Thomas compared judging to another profession where debate isn’t aired in public. “Suppose you’re undergoing something very serious like surgery and the doctors started a practice of conducting seminars while in the operating room, debating each other about certain procedures and whether or not this procedure is this way or that way. You really didn’t go in there to have a debate about gallbladder surgery. You actually went in to have a procedure done.

We are judges. This is the last court in a long line in our system. We are there to decide cases, not to engage in seminar discussions. Now, each of us has a different way of thinking about things. Some people like to talk it out. Some people enjoy the questioning and the back and forth. Some people think that if they listen deeply and hear the people who are presenting their arguments, they might hear something that’s not already in several hundred pages of records.”

Thomas said that once the cases get to the Supreme Court, there are no surprises left.“This is not Perry Mason.”

A law blog actually waded through a year of transcripts (I thought I spent time blogging) to compile a list of all the questions asked and by whom. The total number of questions by all Justices was 2,244. Justice Thomas was the only Justice who did not ask any questions. He practices what he preaches.

– DRJ

Poste By WLS:

I fully understand and expect there to be partisanship in opinion columns written by advocates on both sides of the political arena.  And while I find E.J. Dionne consistently wrong, I don’t generally find his writing to be wilfully deceptive.  His column today is an exception.

He finds little to cheer in the GOP candidates responses to the debate “questions” Wednesday night — though he has a few kind words for Huckabee and McCain.  But he makes a point of scolding Romney and Giuliani for “pandering”, while at the same time tarring the entire GOP with having a “growing anti-immigrant feeling.”  

But it was on immigration that Giuliani and Romney demonstrated for all to see that winning matters more to them than anything else.

Giuliani in particular had been warmly inclined toward immigrants, including undocumented immigrants, when he was mayor of liberal and diverse New York…. 

But on Wednesday, Giuliani played right into the feelings he once condemned and played down his past — even if he couldn’t fully deny it. After Romney assailed Giuliani for turning New York into a “sanctuary city,” Giuliani said that Romney had employed illegal immigrants to do work on his Massachusetts home, transforming it into a “sanctuary mansion.”

Romney, in turn, asked Giuliani if he was saying that a person who hired a company for home improvement work should be expected to ask someone in the work crew who had “a funny accent” to prove he was here legally. The exchange made both men look very small.

These paraphrases are as close as Dionne gets to actually quoting what either one of them said during the debate that he regarded a “anti-immigrant”  – remember, its their debate performance he is criticizing.  Near the end of his piece he encapsulates Romney and Giuliani’s comments on the immigration questions as leaving

“the odor of nativist compost being spread around the stage”  

using that line as part of a passage in such a way that an careless reader might attribute that phrase to John McCain when speaking about his GOP rivals.

So, what did Giuliani and Romney say that was so “nativist” during the debate?  Don’t bother looking for it in Dionne’s column, because there’s nothing there. 

After the jump, I’ve posted nearly all the passages from the debate transcript by Romney and Giuliani concerning immigration. 

After reading through them, I went back to re-read Dionne’s column again, just to verify that the column he typed had used the following letters from the alphabet:

a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, v,  and y.

I did so because I thought maybe had had been typing on a defective keyboard, one which was missing the letters necessary to include this sentence in his column:

 ”Hillary Clinton pandered to the nativist tendencies of the Democrat party by reversing her position on issuing drivers’ licenses to illegal aliens after being blasted on the subject following the MSNBC debate.”

But, I found that he had used all those letters on his keyboard in his column, so I’m at a loss to explain his failure to mention Hillary’s odor – of nativist compost I mean.  I’ve never been close enough to her to know if she has any other. 

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