A number of people are pointing to David Frum’s seeming come-to-Jeebus realization that Conservatives should beware of picking incompetent hacks in the guise of political loyalty.

Here’s the lesson to learn: It’s always important to respect the values and principles of the voters. But politicians who want to deliver effective government and positive results have to care about more than values — and have to do more than check their guts. They need to study the problem, master the evidence, and face criticism.

It’s not only conservatives who succumb to gimmicks of course. The left still feels a lingering attachment to socialism, the most disastrous gimmick of them all. Tough-minded conservatives slashed that illusion to pieces decades ago. But since then, we have begun to go a little easy on ourselves. And over the past half dozen years, the consequences of our militant anti-elitism has come home to roost.

If elitism means snobbishness, then of course it is a vicious thing. If it means being impressed by credentials instead of evidence, then again: good riddance. But if it is elitist to expect politicians to be able to see through glaringly false and stupid ideas — well in that case, call me elitist.

But few note where Frum’s criticism is directed: to those who support Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul.

The currently front-running candidate in Iowa, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, has built his campaign on a plan to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax.

Economists and tax experts virtually unanimously agree that the plan is beyond unworkable — that it is downright absurd. (It does not help that it was originally drafted by the Church of Scientology.)

[snip]

Just a little lower down in the polls is a libertarian candidate named Ron Paul. Paul is best known for his vehemently isolationist foreign policy views. But his core supporters also thrill to his self-taught monetary views, which amount to a rejection of everything taught by modern economists from Alfred Marshall to Milton Friedman.

Mind you, I’m not here to defend the competence of Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul. But I can’t help but notice that Frum’s rant happened to target two guys who happen not to believe in corporatism. So while I’m all in favor of Republicans considering competence in their selection of politicians and candidates, I’m not convinced Frum is looking any further than a person’s adherence to his own (Frum’s) ideology as a measure for competence. If you’re going to talk about economic failures, after all, why not talk about Alan "Bubbles" Greenspan, who talked up ARMs so he could sustain an unsustainable housing bubble, and who is the man most responsible (among thousands of responsible men and women, no doubt) for the housing crash that is devastating our nation’s economy.

Mind you, now that Bubbles is advocating bailing out big shitpile, maybe Frum will begin to find him "incompetent" too. But for the moment, Frum’s call for competence is nothing more than a call for ideological purity.

I am really overdue to give you all an update on the Geoffrey Fieger case, where the government mobilized 80 FBI agents (presumably pulling them off terrorism investigations) to go sniff into Trial Lawyer Geoffrey Fieger’s donations to John Edwards. The government has been trying to convince the judge in the case that there was nothing improper about their investigation in a series of ex parte meetings. But when Fieger’s team pointed out how, um, unusual all these secret meetings were, the government decided to take it all back, and ask the judge to pretend he never saw any of the explanations the government had already offered.

I’ll come back and update you on that in the next few days (particularly if my trip to Philly continues to be postponed). In the meantime, let me confess that I was really remiss in that I didn’t go to the hearing in Detroit on Friday. Which looks like a damn shame, because every time the government shows up at a hearing, they dig the hole they’re in deeper and deeper. In particular, they keep changing their story about whether this case was started when an ex-Fieger employee waltzed into the FBI a year and a half after the fact and complained about being pressured to donate to John Edwards, or whether the case started from somewhere else. From this report on Friday’s hearing, it sounds like they changed their story again on Friday, to say they simultaneously started investigations in Detroit and in the Noel Hillman led Public Integrity section. (Btw, if Noel Hillman received a subpoena in the woods and nobody heard it, would he really have received a subponea?)

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lynn Helland said Friday he made a mistake by not consulting with U.S. Department of Justice headquarters before opening the investigation, as required by departmental rules.

Helland acknowledged he was unaware of the guideline. But he said the mistake was inconsequential because the Justice Department‘s public integrity section was independently opening its own investigation.

Borman also expressed concerns after Helland confirmed claims by Fieger’s lawyers that witnesses called before the grand jury for the case were asked for whom they voted in certain elections, the newspaper reported.

"That again seems to be a highly invasive probing by the government" Borman said.

Helland said such questions are relevant in campaign finance cases.

"Was it invasive?" Helland asked. "Yes. Was it improper? I don’t think so."

Borman said he might allow some pretrial exploration of Fieger’s claims that he was maliciously singled out for prosecution because of his politics. The Justice Department denies that claim.

Nice to see that the principle of secret vote is not yet dead in this country.

In other news, they’ve moved the trial to March so as not to start on the same day as Michigan’s ill-fated "primary" in which John Edwards is not on the ballot. Perhaps in the interim 2 months we’ll have some interesting discovery about the curious genesis of this investigation.

For all his faults, Michael Isikoff is certainly a reliable journalist through whom people can launder leaks. Take his story (with Hosenball) today (h/t bmaz). Note the grammar of these first two paragraphs:

In the summer of 2005, then CIA director Porter Goss met with then national intelligence director John Negroponte to discuss a highly sensitive matter: what to do about the existence of videotapes documenting the use of controversial interrogation methods, apparently includ­ing waterboarding, on two key Al Qaeda suspects. The tapes were eventually de­stroyed, and congressional investigators are now trying to piece together an extensive paper trail documenting how and why it happened.

One crucial document they’ll surely want to examine: a memo written after the meeting between Goss and Negroponte, which records that Negroponte strongly advised against destroying the tapes, according to two people close to the investigation, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter. The memo is so far the only known documentation that a senior intel official warned that the tapes should not be destroyed. Spokespeople for the CIA and the intel czar’s office declined to comment, citing ongoing investigations. [my emphasis]

This article is framed in terms of what Congressional investigators want, not in terms of what the DOJ investigation is finding. Indeed, the leak about the Negroponte memo appears to come from two people involved in the investigation in some manner–whatever that investigation may be–who want to make sure news of this memo comes out and who seem to have little faith that news of Negroponte’s clear instructions to Goss will come out otherwise.

Also, note the curious no comment in this paragraph. "Spokespeople for the CIA and the intel czar’s office." You might assume, forgetting the last year of jostling within the Bush Administration, that it means that Isikoff called Negroponte’s office and got a no comment. But while Negroponte was "intel czar" when he wrote this memo, he’s not now; he’s at State running things for Condi. So unless Isikoff forgot all these details, I’d suggest this article only appears to record a "no comment" from Negroponte, and it certainly doesn’t exclude a pretty big comment from him. As in, "Mikey, I’d like you to write about this memo I wrote to Porter, because I’m afraid it’s getting buried in the DOJ investigation."

There’s another candidate to be one of Isikoff’s sources. The article also includes a clear signal from the masterful press manipulator, Bob Bennett, that he intends to advise his client John Jose Rodriguez to plead the Fifth.

Bennett told NEWSWEEK that his client had been "a dedicated and loy­al public servant for 31 years" and "has done nothing wrong." But he warned that Rodriguez may refuse to cooperate with investigators if he concludes that the probes are a "witch hunt." "I don’t want him to become a scapegoat."

In case you missed it, Bennett uses the same phrase Monica Goodling’s lawyer, John Dowd, used, "witch hunts," just before he snookered Congress into offering her immunity for a bunch of stuff that Congress already had evidence she was doing. As a reminder, Monica said almost nothing that incriminated Rove or Harriet and only sort of incriminated AGAG. But she managed to get herself immunity for "crossing the line" and politicizing DOJ’s hiring practices. Bennett’s use of precisely same language as Monica’s lawyer may be no accident.

Now, as I said, Bennett is clearly sending a message that Rodriguez will invoke the Fifth pretty readily. Is it possible, though, that Rodriguez knows about this memo, too? That is, is it possible that Bennett (who has been using leaks as a primary legal tool since at least Iran-Contra) is trying to trade the Negroponte memo–or at least a description of it–for immunity for his client?

Which is, frankly, about the only reason Michael Mukasey is correct in asking the House Intelligence Committee to back off. Crazy Pete Hoekstra is pretty close to Porter Goss, who appears to know more about the destruction of the torture tapes than he is letting on. And I could see Hoekstra doing the same favors–of impeding an investigation by manipulating the less than crafty chair of the House Intelligence Committee–that Dick Cheney did when he was in the same position during Iran-Contra. In other words, I’m not sure we can trust Crazy Pete to want to get to the bottom of this, and if HPSCI starts offering immunity as incautiously as they did with Monica, then I worry their investigation will stall any real investigation by DOJ–if it exists.

Update: Rodriguez’ first name corrected per rxbusa. 

The Rocky Mountain News has a good summary of the issues the Tenth Circuit will consider this week in Joseph Nacchio’s appeal. It’s worth reading the whole thing to get an idea of all the issues. But I’m most interested in the representation the RMN makes of the government’s claim regarding Nacchio’s claim that he lost business because he refused to wiretap Americans.

The judge should have let Nacchio present his classified, national security defense. Previous filings indicate Nottingham ruled the defense was irrelevant.

Defense argument

The CEO was optimistic about Qwest in early 2001 because he knew the company was in line to receive top-secret government contracts. Redacted court documents suggest Nacchio planned to argue that Qwest didn’t get the contracts because he refused to participate in a phone spying program.

Prosecution argument

Nacchio’s version of events was "a lie," said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Cliff Stricklin, lead prosecutor on the case, while speaking at a Denver luncheon in October. He said prosecutors were ready to discredit the defense if Nacchio presented it.

Now compare that to what a government source told the NYT for last night’s article.

A government official said the N.S.A. intended to single out only foreigners on Qwest’s network, and added that the agency believed Joseph Nacchio, then the chief executive of Qwest, and other company officials misunderstood the agency’s proposal. Bob Toevs, a Qwest spokesman, said the company did not comment on matters of national security.

One source is saying Nacchio’s lying, the other is saying Nacchio just misunderstood the ask.

Of course, these sources aren’t exactly commenting on the same thing. I presume Stricklin is claiming Nacchio is lying about his expectation that Qwest would get lots of NSA business. Whereas, given the NYT report that Nacchio was asked to give the government access to the local Qwest network (and therefore to traffic that was undoubtedly in the US), the anonymous government source is likely addressing that issue–saying that Nacchio misunderstood which circuits the government was after.

Furthermore, it’s not like the distinction matters for the case. Nacchio can’t very well call "that guy who was an anonymous source for James Risen" to testify that he was asked to do something, even if he misunderstood what that ask was for.

But I am struck by the seeming admission, on the part of a government source, that Nacchio was indeed asked to do something, but there was just a big misunderstanding about what he was asked to do. Because that kind of misunderstanding (real or imaginary) is the kind of thing that might make a government contractor lose business.

Because they’re leaking–and leaking big–to James Risen, Eric Lichtblau (and Scott Shane) again. Almost two years to the day since their first big scoop.

For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime. The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure.

To detect narcotics trafficking, for example, the government has been collecting the phone records of thousands of Americans and others inside the United States who call people in Latin America, according to several government officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the program remains classified. But in 2004, one major phone carrier balked at turning over its customers’ records. Worried about possible privacy violations or public relations problems, company executives declined to help the operation, which has not been previously disclosed.

In a separate N.S.A. project, executives at a Denver phone carrier, Qwest, refused in early 2001 to give the agency access to their most localized communications switches, which primarily carry domestic calls, according to people aware of the request, which has not been previously reported. They say the arrangement could have permitted neighborhood-by-neighborhood surveillance of phone traffic without a court order, which alarmed them.

I need to go hang at FDL for the book salon thread (come meet Bob Drogin!). Afterwards, I’ll come back and fill this thread out some.

One comment though: this story says the change came bc everyone went on fiber. David Kris has shown pretty persuasively that’s not true–the wire/air split wasn’t that different in 1978 when FISA was written. The difference, I suspect, is that now everything is digital. 

I’m supposed to be in Philly right now. Me and mr. emptywheel and McCaffrey the MilleniaLab were supposed to pile into the new Honda Fit and drive to Philly for an early Christmas celebration with the family. Only, for a variety of reasons, it didn’t happen. And the fallback plan–to leave tomorrow and drive without mr. emptywheel–well, that’s forecast to get buried under 10 inches of snow tonight.

But in preparation for this mythical trip to Philly, I recruited someone to post for me on my driving days. It was a pretty easy decision, really. When I meet TNH/emptywheel people in person, they tend to rave about bmaz. So I thought I’d give him the keys to the front page while I’m gone.

And no way to get him up to speed on the controls of this thing then to have him do the new official weekly Football Trash Talk thread–since bmaz can trash talk with the best of them. Except for maybe Brett Favre.

So look for bmaz to post that in the next couple of hours (he keeps telling me there’s a game this evening on some "NFL Network" that I’ve never heard of). I’ll be around for trash talk today and (if the snow does come as expected) tomorrow. But be nice to bmaz while I’m gone. Well, at least as nice as you would be anyway.

Apparently, in addition to sending out a chain letter stating "butt out" to five or six members of Congress yesterday, DOJ also sent a letter to Judge Henry Kennedy, telling him not to get involved in the torture tape question (h/t Scarecrow).

The Bush administration told a federal judge it was not obligated to preserve videotapes of CIA interrogations of suspected terrorists and urged the court not to look into the tapes’ destruction.

In court documents filed Friday night, government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy that demanding information about the tapes would interfere with current investigations by Congress and the Justice Department.

Now, BushCo is apparently claiming–to Kennedy, at least–that the CIA was free to destroy the torture tapes since the tapes didn’t come from Gitmo.

Kennedy ordered the administration in June 2005 to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

Government lawyers told Kennedy the tapes were not covered by his court order because Zubaydah and al-Nashiri were not at the Guantanamo military prison in Cuba. The men were being held overseas in a network of secret CIA prisons. By the time President Bush acknowledged the existence of those prisons and the prisoners were transferred to Guantanamo, the tapes had been destroyed.

Of course, such sophistry won’t work for Leonie Brinkema–whose questions about interrogation tapes would seem to have included the Abu Zubaydah tapes. Nor should they cover the FOIA court battle in Alvin Hellerstein’s court, which pertain to all detainees held abroad.

When word of mistreatment of detainees surfaced, the ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request targeting the CIA and others on October 7, 2003 and May 25, 2004, seeking records concerning the treatment of all detainees apprehended after September 11, 2001 and held in U.S. custody abroad. This, of course, would mean not only in Guantanamo but in the secret prisons in Eastern Europe operated by the CIA.

That is, either Kennedy’s order or Hellerstein’s order must have applied to those tapes when they were destroyed.

But apparently, DOJ is going to tell every other branch the same thing: interviewing people from the CIA might complicate the joint DOJ/CIA investigation of the torture tape destruction.

Funny. Less than a decade ago, I seem to remember, we had three full and independent branches of government.

Michael Mukasey has engaged in a remarkable bit of sophistry with his refusal to clue Congress in on the joint DOJ/CIA IG investigation into the destruction of the torture tapes. He explains his decision as an attempt to avoid "any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence."

As to your remaining questions, the Department has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters. This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence. Accordingly, I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter, but appreciate the Committee’s interests in this matter. At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice. Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied.

Of course, the "political influence" Mukasey was asked to address during his nomination hearings was the kind exerted when a Senator or a Congresswoman called the Attorney General privately to demand that a USA either accelerate the prosecution of a political figure or be fired. In this matter, Mukasey has been asked to respond to what is an almost unparalleled degree of bipartisan support for an open inquiry into a matter that just stinks, already, of a cover-up. Leahy and Specter (and Reyes and Hoekstra and Durbin and Biden and more) called for a procedure that had oversight built in.

And Mukasey said no.

Now, part of me would like to give Mukasey the benefit of the doubt, to believe he’s just going to great lengths to avoid the kind of politicization that occurred under Gonzales. Except that his response to the House Intelligence Committee suggests he’s trying to avoid all oversight into this matter.

Additionally, lawmakers from both parties accused the Justice Department of obstructing a House Intelligence Committee inquiry by advising the CIA against cooperating with it.

"Earlier today, our staff was notified that the Department of Justice has advised CIA not cooperate with our investigation," House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, and the panel’s top Republican, Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, said in a joint statement Friday.

"We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation," Reyes and Hoekstra said. "Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work. … It’s clear that there’s more to this story than we have been told, and it is unfortunate that we are being prevented from learning the facts. The executive branch can’t be trusted to oversee itself."

In a letter Thursday to CIA Director Michael Hayden, the House panel asked the CIA to hand over by Friday all documents and cables regarding the interrogation tapes and their destruction. But the Justice Department since has advised the CIA to refuse the request, a committee official said Friday on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak for the committee.

However imperfectly they exercise oversight, it is the duty of the two intelligence committees to exercise such oversight. And preliminary accounts suggest that, while members of the Gang of Four didn’t object to the torture itself (with the exception of Jane Harman), they did object to the destruction of the torture tapes. Therefore, in addition to expressing contempt regarding multiple court orders, the destruction of the torture tapes also reflects contempt of Congress. Yet Mukasey wants to investigate it himself.

Now, Mukasey suggests there’s no whiff of impropriety in all this.

Finally, with regard to the suggestion that I appoint a special counsel, I am aware of no facts at present to suggest that Department attorneys cannot conduct this inquiry in an impartial manner. If I become aware of information that leads me to a different conclusion, I will act on it.

Yet this statement comes from the guy who signed the material witness warrant for Jose Padilla back in 2002, a warrant that almost certainly relied on the testimony of Abu Zubaydah. Thus, even Mukasey himself has improper conflicts, to say nothing of lawyers (Stephen Bradbury, I’m looking at you) who may have given opinions authorizing the destruction of the tapes.

John Dean seems to think the ACLU’s motion to hold the CIA in contempt may be the best means from discovering what really went on.

There are three court orders that may have been violated, but one in particular strikes me as a very serious problem for the CIA. Accordingly, we may well be in the unique situation in which a pending civil lawsuit might flush out some answers, and the federal judiciary might thus embarrass the other branches into actually taking meaningful action. I say "might" because the Bush Administration thinks nothing of stiffing federal court judges who seek information, and they probably figure they can tap-dance for the federal judiciary – along with all the other inquiries — until they are out of Washington on January 20, 2009.

Nevertheless, the situation in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, as a result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the American Civil Liberties Union, could well force the Bush Administration’s hand. An order holding the CIA in contempt of court might get the Administration’s attention.

Let’s hope so, because it looks increasingly unlikely that the Administration will be exposed to any more oversight under Mukasey than it was under Gonzales.

It’s bad enough that the United States, a country that has provided election funds for its favored candidates in other countries for over fifty years (including, notably, Argentina and Venezuela), is now criminalizing the purported $800,000 donation from Hugo Chávez to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina. It’s bad enough that it stinks of yet another silly anti-Chávez campaign.

But the criminal complaint just doesn’t make any sense.

Here’s the Miami Herald’s description of the purported crime.

Their mission from the Chávez government, prosecutors say: to hush up a local Venezuelan man who was caught in August with a suitcase full of campaign cash as he arrived at a Buenos Aires airport with a high-ranking Argentine official. They pressured him not to reveal the source of the cash or its recipient.

And here are excerpts from some of the conversations between the accused and Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, the guy caught carrying the $800,000 in Argentina.

At that meeting, FRANKLIN DURAN revealed to Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson the identity of the candidate in the Argentine Republic presidential campaign who was intended to receive the approximately $800,000 which had been confiscated at Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires, Argentina. FRANKLIN DURAN further advised Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson that he (Duran) had spoken with a very high ranking official of DISIP, and a very high ranking official of the Justice Ministry of Venezuela, concerning the aborted donation.

[snip]

FRANKLIN DURAN identified the individual who had taken the seized cash on board the aircraft as the assistant to the Chief Executive of PDVSA.

[snip]

MOISES MAIONICA spoke on the telephone with Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson and advised Antonini that his (MAIONICA’s) involvement in this matter began with a three way telephone call between the Office of the Vice President of Venezuela, DISIP and himself (MAIONICA) in which MAIONICA was given the mission.

[snip]

MOISES MAIONICA informed Guido Alejandro Anonini Wilson that a very high ranking official of DISIP, using the name "Arvelo," would be calling Atonini.

You see the problem? The whole reason these guys were purportedly threatening Antonini is that they didn’t want him to tell anyone where the money came from and who was the intended recipient. So the very first thing they told him was … wait for it … where the money came from and who was the intended recipient. Which suggests that the accused believed that Antonini didn’t know where the money came from and who was the intended recipient, yet in a conversation designed to make sure he didn’t tell anyone where the money came from and who was the intended recipient, they proceeded to tell him where the money purportedly came from and who was the intended recipient.

All the while making sure they named increasingly senior members of Chávez’s government.

Now perhaps these guys are the most colossally bad spooks in creation (after the US spooks who left cell phone records of their extraordinary rendition of Abu Omar, perhaps), or this is an elaborate set-up that should be transparent to the FBI.

This op-ed on citizen journalism is a lot less offensive than I thought it’d be from reading The Opinionator’s take on it. While Professor Hazinski suffers from the same ignorance about how "citizen journalism" gets vetted that most professional journalists do …

Education, skill and standards are really what make people into trusted professionals. Information without journalistic standards is called gossip.

And while he also suffers from a misguided belief that journalism’s existing ethics–the ones that are failing us badly as a society, like so-called "objectivity" created by on-the-one-side-on-the-other-side-but-no-truth Joe Klein style of journalism–ought to be adopted by "citizen journalists" …

Journalism schools such as mine at the University of Georgia should create mini-courses to certify citizen journalists in proper ethics and procedures, much as volunteer teachers, paramedics and sheriff’s auxiliaries are trained and certified.

But at its heart, Hazinski’s op-ed calls for something that the Press has been fighting against for over two hundred years–real enforcement of professional journalism’s so-called ethics.

The news industry should find some way to monitor and regulate this new trend.

[snip]

There is no licensing, testing, mandatory education or boards of review. Most other professions do a poor job of self-regulation, but at least they have mechanisms to regulate themselves. Journalists do not.

[snip]

They should clarify and reinforce their own standards and work through trade organizations to enforce national standards so they have real meaning.

While his calls for "regulation" would almost certainly violate the Constitution, I do appreciate his recognition that journalism needs to put its own house in order before its planned demolition of ours.

But I couldn’t help by laugh at this line, which suggests Professor Helzinski should be putting his very own house in order before he even starts looking at his colleagues’ houses.

False Internet rumors about Sen. Barack Obama attending a radical Muslim school became so widespread that CNN and other news agencies did stories debunking the rumors.

While it’s true that CNN debunked the Washington Times story (not an internet rumor) that Obama went to a madrassa, in general, I think this latest champion of standards in journalism doesn’t really have a clear idea of what the word "debunk" means. Because last I checked, "other news agencies" were actually propagating that unfounded claim, presenting it as hard-hitting reporting.

Update: William Ockham adds:

I know that what I’m about to say is really picky, but when a journalism prof takes it upon himself to lecture us about the perils of citizen journalism, he’s leaving himself open. Associate Professor Hazinski needs to consider hiring a copy editor or proofreader. Principles are not principals. While I have known many ethical principals, I certainly don’t think that “adhering to the principals” should be made mandatory under any circumstances. That would lead to any number of sticky situations in the public schools and elsewhere.

I suppose he’s talking about this:

There are commonly accepted ethical principals — two source confirmation of controversial information or the balanced reporting of both sides of a story, for example, but adhering to the principals is voluntary.