The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its decision (.pdf) in the ethics complaint against Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski.

The good news for Judge Kozinski is that the panel does not find any ethical violation in his handling of the Isaacs case. Nor does the panel specifically find any ethical violation in his handling of sexually explicit material on his server — although the judge does come in for some criticism for carelessness and embarrassing the judiciary.

The panel “admonishes” Kozinski for failing to take safeguards to prevent the sexually explicit material from being distributed publicly:

We join with the Special Committee in admonishing the Judge that his conduct exhibiting poor judgment with respect to this material created a public controversy that can reasonably be seen as having resulted in embarrassment to the institution of the federal judiciary.

Don’t be misled: this “admonishment” is not a finding of judicial misconduct. If the panel had made a specific finding of judicial misconduct, you would have seen language like “reprimand” or “censure” in the opinion — options available under 28 U.S.C. §§ 354(a)–(b). That is not what the panel does. Rather, the panel has chosen to conclude the proceeding without a finding of misconduct:

We determine that the Judge’s acknowledgment of responsibility together with other corrective action, his apology, and our admonishment, combined with the public dissemination of this opinion, properly conclude this proceeding.

Somehow I don’t think Cyrus Sanai will be pleased. I’m sure we’ll hear from him in short order.

The panel says that “the Judge’s possession of sexually explicit offensive material combined with his carelessness in failing to safeguard his sphere of privacy was judicially imprudent.” This seems fair. Nobody ever said it was prudent. As the judges note: “Some of the content of the stuff subdirectory — the sexually explicit material — is undoubtedly offensive to many.” This is true, as the judge himself has acknowledged. However, the material was kept for its humor or novelty value — something media reports from the L.A. Times failed to make clear at the time. See my posts for some examples.

The panel also makes it clear that the media did not take care to portray the matter accurately:

Some media reports in June 2008 suggested that the Judge maintained, and intended to maintain, a public website, as that term is commonly understood — a presentation of offensive sexually explicit material open for public browsing. This investigation has established, however, that such a characterization is incorrect. As explained in further detail, the computer files described in media reports in June 2008 constituted a small fraction of a vast aggregation of various items that the Judge had received by e-mail over many years and had retained in a folder, or “subdirectory,” on a personal computer in his home, which had been connected to the Internet using web server software.

Through a combination of improper security configuration and carelessness on the part of the Judge, the aggregation of retained files became accessible to the public.

It has always been quite clear to anyone following this controversy that Chief Judge Kozinski never intended that the general public be able to rummage through the contents of his server. This was not clear in the headline to the original L.A. Times article, which was titled 9th Circuit’s chief judge posted sexually explicit matter on his website.

This seems an appropriate resolution to the matter.

More at Above the Law and How Appealing.

The L.A. Times swallows whole the assertion that abolishing the death penalty “could” save the state “up to $1 billion over the next five years.” I don’t buy it.

I hope to analyze this article much more closely when I have more time. For now, let me note that in 2005, the paper claimed that “maintaining the California death penalty system costs taxpayers more than $114 million a year beyond the cost of simply keeping the convicts locked up for life.” In a detailed post, I showed how this claim was indisputably exaggerated. As I noted at the time:

the article relies upon the transparently absurd assumption that defendants sentenced to LWOP [life without the possibility of parole] would never appeal their convictions, thus allowing the state to save the full cost of appealing their convictions. The truth is exactly the opposite: virtually all defendants sentenced to LWOP appeal their convictions at state expense.

In addition, the 2005 article assigned no savings to the plea bargains that prosecutors sometimes obtain by taking the death penalty off the table. With a plea, there is no trial and no appeal. That saves money.

The 2005 article was one of the most shameless pieces of garbage I have ever read in this newspaper. That has not prevented its conclusions from being repeated uncritically by the ACLU (.pdf).

Even the L.A. Times’s exaggerated and inaccurate figure of $114 million a year yields only $570 million in alleged savings over five years. Where does the other $430 million come from?

The answers appear to lie somewhere inside this document (.pdf), which appears on its face to be a one-sided anti-death penalty (and anti-law enforcement) screed masquerading as an impartial study. The participation of former Los Angeles D.A. John Van de Kamp does not change this impression — look at page 112 to see the one-sided list of materials reviewed for this section of the report. The entire report seems to be an anti-law enforcement crusader’s wet dream, reduced to charts and figures. When I get time I’ll put a microscope to its claims, but for now, let’s just say I’m highly skeptical.

Today’s article is the newspaper’s attempt to seize upon the budget crisis to pursue the editors’ ideologically driven opposition to the death penalty. When ideology comes into play, the facts be damned.

I hope to return to this soon.

Take a look at this screenshot from the L.A. Times web page today. We have a news story titled Ex-wife Debbie Rowe expected to get custody of Jackson kids. Another titled Michael Jackson’s last rehearsal: ‘just beaming with gladness’. Another titled Fans worldwide grieve for Michael Jackson. Column One has a piece by music critic Robert Hilburn titled Michael Jackson: the wounds, the broken heart:

I’ll always regret that my last conversation with Michael Jackson ended with him angrily hanging up the phone — at least I’ve long thought of Michael’s mood that day more than a decade ago as angry. I realize now that a more accurate description would be “wounded.”

Michael was among the sweetest and most talented people I met during 35 years covering pop music for the Los Angeles Times.

Awww. Like many of the pieces, the fact that Jackson was a pedophile is relegated to a passing mention of accusations of child molestation — four words and move on. Some pieces don’t even have that much.

One of the few fairly legitimate stories: Jackson probe turns to prescription drugs.

Then the fluff and rubbernecking returns with a blog entry at L.A. Now titled Michael Jackson’s body released to family as funeral planning begins. We get to hear the 911 call.

There is a 104-picture photo gallery titled Fans Mourn Michael Jackson. A 10-picture photo gallery titled Hollywood Headlines: A crazy (and sad) week in review. A 14-picture photo gallery titled Michael Jackson and friends. A 10-photo picture gallery titled Michael Jackson discography: Major works from the King of Pop.

We have video titled Celebrating Michael Jackson’s legacy. A blog entry titled For Corey Feldman, the show — and music — goes on. [Corey Feldman? He was Michael Jackson's friend. It's about how he will deal with Jackson's death. -- Ed. Oh.]

That’s just the stuff listed on the front page. If that’s not enough for you, there’s this page collecting links on the site to Jackson-related items. I count no fewer than 15 articles and 15 blog posts related to Jackson. And you can leave your comments regarding your feelings on the Comments Blog.

And . . . oh yeah. If you look at the bottom of the image above, there’s something about the cap-and-trade bill, and something about Iran. Nothing important, really.

P.S. Oh, oh, oh — and my very favorite of all: Tim Rutten complaining about how Big Media is paying too much attention to Michael Jackson. His piece is titled Too much Michael Jackson?:

No reasonable editor or producer should ignore the kind of public interest we’re seeing. But surrendering utterly to it ultimately undercuts what’s genuinely valuable about serious news media.

Lucky thing your paper isn’t doing that, Tim!

Yesterday Jack Dunphy noted the arrest of yet another “former” gang member who may not be quite so “former” as advertised:

Alex Sanchez, described by the Los Angeles Times as a “nationally recognized anti-gang leader,” was arrested today by the FBI. Among the charges against him is conspiracy to commit murder.

I’m always very skeptical of anyone who claims to be a “former gang member.” This is just the latest justification for my skepticism.

Along those lines, I thought I would resurrect the words of noted sucker Tom Hayden from 2000, published in (of course) the Los Angeles Times. The title? We Need Peacemakers Like Alex Sanchez:

[I]t appears that the anti-gang war is directed even against former gang members working for peace on the streets.

Last Friday, Rampart CRASH officers arrested Alex Sanchez, 27, as he was getting into his car in the mid-Wilshire area of Los Angeles. Sanchez is a respected leader of Homies Unidos, an anti-violence organization formed in L.A. and El Salvador by former gang members who have turned their lives around. . . The U.S. government already pays for illegal aliens to stay in the country when they are undercover informants of use to law enforcement. Why not grant the same to a peacemaker in the hope of reducing gang violence?

You read that right. Hayden wanted to pay Sanchez to stay in this country.

The rumor I hear is that he very nearly got his wish. According to that rumor, Sanchez was on the verge of receiving $100,000 from the City of Los Angeles for gang prevention when he was arrested. (I can’t confirm the rumor, and neither can my very reliable source. Take it for what it’s worth, which isn’t much unless it’s confirmed.) He would hardly be the only such person; this blog has previously discussed how Hector Marroquin was illegally selling guns as he ran a city-funded gang intervention program called “No Guns.” (As I wrote at the time, this story was pushed by the L.A. Weekly, which ate the L.A. Times’s lunch on the story.)

Back in the days when Marc Cooper liked the L.A. Weekly, it published a naive piece about Sanchez which contained this gem of a quote:

[A]lthough Sanchez remains in INS custody, he also remains in the U.S. while supporters appeal to federal authorities for leniency.

Those supporters, including state Senator Tom Hayden, contend that Sanchez is just the sort of person the community needs — a reformed gang member who turned his life around and has dedicated himself to leading a new generation of street-wise youth away from gang violence.

The current version of the L.A. Weekly that Marc Cooper and James Rainey despise so much reminds us of some of the embarrassing connections Sanchez had with local politicians:

Sanchez has ties to powerful, local politicians who range from L.A. City Council President Eric Garcetti to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

“Homies Unidos is exactly the kind of community-based violence prevention and intervention program Los Angeles needs to help eliminate its gang problem,” reads a glowing statement from Garcetti, which has been posted on the Homies Unidos Web site. (Note: The Web site has now been taken down.)

Also on the non-profit’s Web site, a recent “Letter from the Executive Director” thanks Los Angeles City Councilmen Ed Reyes and Tony Cardenas for attending a November, 2008, banquet celebrating the 10th anniversary of Homies Unidos.

Sanchez also commends staff members who work for Reyes, Cardenas, and Villaraigosa. The city of Los Angeles, with the help of the mayor’s office, officially recognized Sanchez’s work with a resolution that was passed by the L.A. City Council.

“Silvia Beltran and George Magallanes from Councilman Ed Reyes office, Michael DelaRocha and Eduardo Hewitt from Councilman Tony Cardenas and Rafael Gonzales from the Mayor’s Office were instrumental in helping Los Angeles City Council pass a resolution for Homies Unidos 10 years of work in the city of Los Angeles,” Sanchez writes.

Nice work by Patrick Range McDonald, as always.

The public needs to wake up to the fact that there is a liberal cabal, consisting of folks like Tom Hayden and Eric Garcetti and the editors of the Los Angeles Times, who think it’s a good idea to give large sums of money to “former” gang members, who use that money to fund criminal activities.

Taxpayers are paying for crime. When will we demand that it stop?

I had been wary of this story until it was confirmed, even after seeing (and posting) the heart-wrenching video of her just after she was shot. As Allahpundit said last night: “The rumor — and it’s all rumor until some newspaper tracks down her family — is that she was 27 years old and a philosophy student.” Close: she was 26 and used to study philosophy. And a paper did track down her family. And — I’ll be damned! — the paper that did it was the L.A. Times. Credit where credit is due:

Her parents and others told her it would be dangerous to go to Saturday’s march, said Golshad. On Friday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had warned in his weekly prayer sermon that demonstrators would be responsible for any violence that broke out. Even Golshad stayed away. At 3:30 the two friends spoke.

“I told her, ‘Neda, don’t go,’ ” she recalled, heaving with sobs.

But she was as stubborn as she was honest, Golshad said, and she ended up going anyway.

“She said, ‘Don’t worry. It’s just one bullet and its over.’ ”

“She couldn’t stand the injustice of it all,” Panahi said. “All she wanted was the proper vote of the people to be counted.”

Ice-cream-eatin’ Obama is so outraged he plans to meet with the leaders of Iran and shake their bloody hands. Not literally (yet), but that’s the basic message being sent here:

President Barack Obama’s administration said earlier this month it would invite Iran to US embassy barbecues for the national holiday for the first time since the two nations severed relations following the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“There’s no thought to rescinding the invitations to Iranian diplomats,” State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters.

Certainly not. Why on Earth would you?

Remember that disgusting picture of him shaking Hugo Chavez’s hand?

You thought that grated? Just wait until he shakes the bloody hand of that grinning idiot Dinnerjacket.

Remember.

Remember.

James Rainey appears to have violated his newspaper’s policy on anonymous sources in his hit piece on Jill Stewart. The policy — which is violated whenever the editors feel like violating it — reads in relevant part:

When we use anonymous sources, it should be to convey important information to our readers. We should not use such sources to publish material that is trivial, obvious or self-serving.

Sources should never be permitted to use the shield of anonymity to voice speculation or to make ad hominem attacks.

Hmmm. Are anonymous ad feminem attacks OK?

Oh, I guess you could strain to argue that it wasn’t ad hominem when James Rainey quoted an anonymous source saying that Stewart pushes for “gotcha, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey journalism.” Why, it’s not an attack on her, the tut-tutting response would go, it’s an attack on her journalism.

Fine. But there is no question that this portrait of Stewart is self-serving for Rainey, whose methodology of quoting anonymous sources was questioned by Stewart’s L.A. Weekly. If Rainey can successfully portray Stewart-edited pieces as “gotcha” journalism, that assessment dilutes the impact of an article critical of some of Rainey’s practices.

I’d call that self-serving. And thus a violation of the paper’s policy on anonymous sources.

Worse, Rainey failed to disclose to readers that he had an ulterior motive to slam Stewart and the Weekly.

P.S. Stewart has used anonymous sources to slam the L.A. Times. I have used anonymous sources in various ways, probably including slamming the L.A. Times. Sometimes anonymous sources are useful, and the mere fact of their use is not an automatic problem.

But if you’re using them to serve a secret and personal agenda — that’s a problem. And that’s what we seem to have here.

As with my earlier posts, I am writing Rainey for his reaction. That’s more of a courtesy than he gave to Stewart.

L.A. Times media critic James Rainey today slams Jill Stewart and the L.A. Weekly, but neglects to tell you why he might be so upset — namely, they questioned his own journalism style a while back. In this post I explain why, show how Rainey contacted only anti-Stewart sources — and publish a reaction from a staff writer who works for Stewart and disagrees with Rainey.

Rainey labels my friend Jill “bombastic” and takes some shots at staff writer Patrick Range McDonald — although Rainey’s shots are sometimes fairly garbled. For example, Rainey tells us that a McDonald-penned piece on Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa “employed more semantic spin than Kobe Bryant puts on a jump shot.” Well, gee. I didn’t know Kobe put any semantic spin on a jump shot. I guess you learn something new every day.

I doubt it’s coincidence that Rainey contacted only sources who slam Stewart. Calling Jill “highly ideological” is the highly ideological Marc Cooper. An unnamed writer says Stewart supports “gotcha, pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey journalism.” (The writer doesn’t want to be quoted because — get this! — he still wants to be able to work for Jill! Will pin the tail on the donkey for cash!) Rainey also unsuccessfully tries to get a quote from Laurie Ochoa, who is thought to be anti-Stewart.

Who didn’t Rainey try to contact? I’ll tell you who: Jill Stewart or Patrick Range McDonald. As Jill says:

I wanted to tell my colleagues and friends in journalism and blogging that James Rainey of the Los Angeles Times did not contact me for his take-down attempt column about me today, published during the very same week in which news-side stories I assigned and edited blew the Times out of the water at the Los Angeles Press Club awards. These awards, announced five days ago, were judged entirely by journalists in other major cities around the nation to avoid local favoritism. And then yesterday, a young reporter who won a major award for a piece that I assigned and edited beat The New York Times and was in Washington, D.C., collecting his award.

It’s hard to imagine that James wrote this attack without being bothered by a piece we at the Weekly wrote about James and his frequent use of blind sources while covering his bosses. I am the editor who assigned and edited the piece about James Rainey by Luke Y. Thompson. Luke’s report on Jim was a classic Weekly story, assigned and edited by me, tough but factual, and filled with excellent sourcing.

There’s much more to Jill’s response, which she sent around this morning by e-mail (while I was still at work). It’s now up at the L.A. Weekly, so you should read the whole thing here.

I decided to add value by seeing if Rainey had tried to contact McDonald either. I had an idea that he hadn’t . . . and I was right. Here’s what McDonald sent me:

The Rainey/LA Times piece is unfortunate, especially the take down of Jill Stewart. I actually think the LA Times, Marc Cooper, and others have no idea what to make of the L.A. Weekly’s brand of journalism, which is very aggressive and distinctly non-ideological. In fact, Jill and I are always making sure we stay free of left or right-wing ideology…because we believe it can interfere with the search for some kind of larger truth.

For example, if you’re a left-wing, pro-union writer, you probably won’t write about how some union is screwing over its members. You’ll be afraid of making the labor movement as a whole look bad, and you’ll avoid telling the unvarnished truth, contribute to the bad treatment of those union members, and practice, in my book, bad journalism.

From Day One, in May, 2007, I came into this job thinking that ideology must be avoided in my writing. Jill never pushed that line of thought on me. And she has never pushed her own politics on me, and I’ve never pushed them on her–and I’m an out gay man with liberal sympathies.

Also, many of the stories I wrote did not come from Jill but from my own brain and interests. My Prop. 8 coverage, which won an honorable mention at the LA Press Club awards, started because the issue is important to me, and Jill let me run with it.

I had also been wanting to write a piece about Villaraigosa for months, especially because many reporters were vaguely writing about or hinting at the mayor’s poor work ethic, but no one actually checked it out for sure and nailed it down.

When I got his schedule, saw some amazing stuff that no one else had written about, and told Jill about it, she again let me run with it. That piece won a second place award from the LA Press Club. I was also only one of four LA-area journalists nominated for the LA Press Club “journalist of the year” award. And I know that a similar process takes place with Christine Pelisek, who won several first place awards from the LA Press Club.

I think the way these stories were developed also prove that Jill is not, in any way, pushing her own political agenda.

But we work hard, we rock the boat hard, and it was only a matter of time that someone pushed back. Comes with the territory. I’ll read Rainey’s piece again to see if I can learn anything from it, anything that may be valid and I need to be aware of. I didn’t see that on the first read, though.

In my mind, the fact that someone in the Times is writing that piece obviously shows we are making the right people nervous and doing the right kind of journalism. Despite the problems I have with the piece, the article is a weird kind of compliment.

Lastly, what’s very odd about the piece is that Rainey seemed to be trying to give us a taste of our own medicine, which is fine with me. But we always try to give people the opportunity to explain their sides of things. I met with Chief Bratton, for example, and talked with him for 45 minutes. I also talked and met with other high-ranking folks at the LAPD to understand what they were doing with their crime stats. With Villaraigosa, I tried to talk with mayor about his work schedule and only got as far as his spokesman, Matt Szabo. Rainey never contacted me, and, from what I understand, he never contacted Jill Stewart. Rainey, as a result, practiced the kind of “hit piece” journalism he so earnestly complains about.

McDonald added:

I’ve been a journalist since 1992. I’ve worked for a lot of different editors at a lot of different papers and magazines, including the Village Voice in the mid-1990s as a research intern, where I also had a couple of pieces published. Jill is tied with only one other person as the most supportive, dedicated, and intelligent editor I’ve ever worked with. It’s a pure delight to work for her.

I tried contacting Luke Thompson, who wrote the piece on Rainey for the Weekly. If he responds, I’ll publish what he has to say. He’s also a reader here, so you may end up seeing a comment from him. (Marc Cooper has been known to show up in the comments too.)

I’m sending an e-mail to Rainey as well, and I’ll publish any response of his here.

That’s how it’s done, by the way, Mr. Rainey. You give the other guy a chance to respond, and give his (or her) comments full and fair prominence. Heck, I know that — and I’m not even a “professional journalist”!

UPDATE: Stewart appears in the comments below, here. Marc Cooper also appears in the comments below.

UPDATE x2: Luke Y. Thompson replies here. I show how Rainey violated the paper’s policy on the use of anonymous sources here.

Compare and contrast L.A. Times coverage of the Iranian election with the information you can get on a blog like Hot Air. Here’s how the L.A. Times is covering the Iranian election this morning. In an article titled Iran election anger boils; Ahmadinejad defends results, we see a big picture of Dinnerjacket raising his hands in victory, a caption quoting him describing his “relection” (editors?) as “free and real” — and a description of him as “[v]igorous and assertive.”

It takes the paper until the 15th paragraph to let the reader know that the U.S. is skeptical:

In a television appearance today Vice President Joe Biden spoke skeptically about the election results.

“It sure looks like the way they’re suppressing speech, the way they’re suppressing crowds, the way in which people are being treated, that there’s some real doubt,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked if Ahmadinejad had won the vote.

You want better coverage than that? Yes, you do. So go to the Internet. Start at Hot Air, where the headline is: Senior U.S. official: Yes, the Iranian election was rigged. The very first sentence tells us: “The White House is playing it cool lest U.S. support for Mousavi discredit his supporters but U.S. analysts have little doubt. The fix is indeed in.” Further down we are told: “No one but no one is taking the election numbers seriously, which makes this a full-blown legitimacy crisis for a regime that’s never been very legitimate to begin with.”

DRJ also had an excellent post on the crisis last night, noting: “Text messaging, cell phones, universities, websites, and newspapers have been shut down, and the streets of Tehran have erupted in violence.” Sounds like a normal election to me. “Free and fair” indeed.

Mousavi’s Twitter feed is here. By checking Allahpundit’s friends feed one is able to discover a number of other valuable Twitter feeds with insight, including Yashar Khazdouzian, IranRiggedElect, TehranBureau, Jim Sciutto of ABC, Alireza, Iran Election 2009, Raymond Jahan, and Change_for_Iran. (You doubted the power of Twitter? You saw it as an escape from knowledge — a medium where people talk about what they’re having for lunch? Great. Get left behind while the rest of us use it.)

Meanwhile, we have this:

According to our private phone conversations with people in Tehran, hundreds of parents have gathered by a police station in Yousef Abad, now known as Seyyed Jamal Aldin Asad Abadi, with their hands raised to the sky saying “Obama, please help us, they are killing our young children.” They were gathering there because their kids are missing and they were trying to find out where they are.

The Iranian people are some of the most pro-U.S. people on the face of the planet. They marched in support of the American people after 9/11, in marked contrast to the celebrations in the Arab world. And now they’re forced to put their hopes in a clown like Obama, who has pledged to meet with Dinnerjacket without preconditions. Will that promise still hold in the face of an election that — despite the L.A. Times’s lack of clarity on the point — is a clear-cut case of fraud?

Why do I think the answer may be yes?

UPDATE: How could I forget Michael Totten?

Meanwhile, the people in Iran are calling for people to bring down Khamanei’s web site by linking a page that automatically reboots it every second. They claim victory in having brought down Dinnerjacket’s web site. The Iranian authorities themsleves shut down communications infrastructure in Iran to interfere with the elections . . . It’s a valid question to ask: why should they be treated any differently?

UPDATE x2: At the very least, for journalistic reasons, I plan to check in frequently at Ahmadinejad’s and Khamanei’s web sites, to see if this scheme is working.

Very frequently. Because of the journalism. (P.S. I am removing handwringing language from the post about whether DNS attacks are legal. What the Iranian government is doing isn’t legal.)

UPDATE x3: Lots of good stuff at the Huffington Post, here. Yes, it’s the Huffington Post — but it’s very good and being updated constantly.

UPDATE x4: More from Hot Air here. Dinnerjacket is refusing to guarantee Mousavi’s safety. He must feel very confident that Obama lacks the guts to do anything even if he assassinates the opposition.

And a photo from the protests, which looks to me like it has the potential to become iconic:

And the latest: a Twitter report that there are tanks in the streets of Tehran.

UPDATE x5: nk asks in comments: what are the links for Dinnerjacket’s and Khamanei’s sites? They are here: Khamanei and Dinnerjacket. Khamanei’s site still appears to be up, despite the entreaties (linked above) to take them down.

A good place to follow the Twitter updates on the election without having to sign up for a Twitter account: go to Twitterfall and click on #iranelection at the left. You’ll get a scrolling of Twitter updates relating to the election.

UPDATE x6: I just sent $50 to TehranBureau.com. I encourage others to do the same.

UPDATE x7: If you can’t access the Tehran Bureau web site to make a donation, you can PayPal the money to this e-mail address.

iowahawk has some fun with the whole L.A. Times “funemployment” story:

What most people would call unemployment, Smalley embraced as “funemployment.” What other people would dismiss as starvation, he whimsically terms a “starve-cation.”

“Economic Depression” once conjured images of tent cities and desperate job-seeking drifters, but for hordes of jobless Gen Xers, there is a silver lining in the new upbeat economic meltdown. These giddily carefree hipsters tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s, happily unencumbered by the obligations of parenthood or teeth.

Heh. Read it all.

The L.A. Times headline reads: Obama promises more than 600,000 stimulus jobs.

As the kids say on the Internet: ORLY?

So you’re telling me (I thought as I read the headline) that he’s abandoning that B.S. ass-covering “created or saved” language that allows him to claim victory in the teeth of failure?

So I read on, and the answer is: not hardly:

“As a result of this accelerated pace of activity, over 600,000 jobs are expected to be created or saved by the Recovery Act in the second 100 days – four times the number created or saved in the first 100 days,” the White House will say in a statement being released this morning..

By the way, for amusement purposes, compare the implicit boast here of 150,000 jobs “created or saved” with the actual numbers set forth in the article:

The promised boost in employment will not offset the job losses of recent months — with more than 1.6 million jobs shaved from the economy since Congress approved the stimulus plan in February. Unemployment last month reached 9.4 percent, the highest since 1983.

And we’re going to do four times that well?

Somebody pinch me.

Faye Fiore, the official gusher of the L.A. Times, gushes over Obama’s New York date night, in an article called First Couple’s date night a fascination and inspiration:

Awww!!

Let the adulation begin!

[T]he impossibly elegant Obamas — he was sleek and tie-less, she wore black — have only raised the bar with a third date night since Inauguration Day.

They flew to John F. Kennedy International Airport in a mini Air Force One, (who knew it came in mini?) helicoptered into Manhattan, ate organic in a chic Greenwich Village restaurant (known to elicit “ecstatic whispering about the quality of summer peas”) and saw a play that didn’t even have show tunes.

This opened a floodgate for detractors, mostly Republicans, who squawked that the First Couple’s motorcade had inconvenienced much of New York and blown a wad of taxpayer money just as General Motors was going belly up.

Damn squawking Republicans!

“Oh, please,” said Chaya Kennedy, a 31-year-old office manager who is divorced, but ever hopeful. “Would we rather he’d be like other politicians and spend it on a prostitute? At least he spent it on his wife.”

Sure, Barack Obama may have spent thousands on a frivolous date night in the midst of an economic crisis. But oh please! What are you going to do, criticize him?

After all, this isn’t a guy who tolerates a schlock affair. He will have his waygu steak. And he will set his thermostat high enough to grow orchids.

And if a car exec dares to fly in a private jet, he’ll have his head!

You got a problem with that? Faye Fiore says: oh, please!

Then again, Faye Fiore is the same person who gushed over Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Boxer: The editors knew exactly what they were doing when they assigned this “story” to her.

Tee hee! Date night is the greatest!!

What’s unemployment under Barack Obama? Funemployment!