I’ll be on Countdown later discussing local criticism of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s handling of the oil spill. One line of that criticism — anger that Jindal vetoed legislation that would have opened all of the state’s records of how it handled the spill. The governor argued that the legislation would have weakened the state’s position in future liability claims. State Sen. Robert Adley, a Republican who sponsored the bill in the Senate, called that “disingenuous and ludicrous.”

“It’s absurd,” he said. “People can eventually issue subpoenas and get these records. All he’s doing is preventing the people of Louisiana from seeing the records, while BP will get to see them.”

Adley, who endorsed Jindal in 2007, called the BP transparency veto the latest example of Jindal making “one ethics rule for himself and another from everyone else.” Rep. Wayne Waddell, another Republican and the supporter of the transparency legislation in the House, took that further.

“He wants to preach that he’s brought to the state more transparency and ethics than any other governor,” said Waddell. “At the levels below the governor’s office, he has. But the governor should represent the gold standard, and right now it’s just gold-plated.”

Neither pol argued that Jindal had been negligent at any level in his handling of the BP crisis. The problem, they said, was with how difficult that question was to answer. Questions about whether the National Guard members Jindal asked for have been fully deployed have been basically blown off with spokesmen criticizing the federal government.

“I don’t know if anything is being done incorrectly,” said Adley. “I just want it to be done in public.”

“We don’t really know if anything’s gone wrong,” said Waddell. “Unless you open up the records how do you know? Unless you’re open about how the National Guard is being used, or how the money BP owes is being used, how do you know? Is the money going to be used to plug a hole in the budget?”

Waddell hoped that more media exposure of the transparency issue would get Jindal to think about his own “national ambitions” and revisit it. Adley just wanted to get it right.

“When I leave the legislature,” he said, “on each and every issue I want to find myself on the right side of history, if possible.”

The would-be GOP candidate in AL-02 has unleashed his third viral* video: a tavern chat with George Washington and Abraham Lincoln followed by… look, just watch it.

I talked to Barber today, who happily defended his evocation of slavery and his use of World War II iconography — which includes images of the Holocaust.

“Somebody has to say this,” said Barber. “When Hitler took power, no one wanted to think that the Holocaust, the murder of 6 million Jewish people, was possible. I’m saying that you have to recognize and name tyranny when you see it. And I think people are finding out that I’m the candidate who’s willing to speak clearly and not be afraid of sounding politically incorrect, and my opponent isn’t that candidate.”

*by the way, what is the point when we can call things viral? 250,000 views? A chat thread at the Politico Arena?

Keeping up my theme of responding to Matthew Yglesias’s blog posts, I’ve often wondered how a President Al Gore–i.e., an Al Gore who won over an extra 600 Ralph Nader voters in Florida, or who got a statewide recount, or, or, or–would have governed. I think the recollections of ex-Clinton administration officials have given us a lot of clues.

Gore, who would have had razor-thin GOP majorities in the House and Senate to work with (the Senate being 51-49 after Connecticut Gov. John Rowland replaced Vice President Lieberman with a Republican), would have governed as Clinton Mark II. Larry Summers would have stayed on as Secretary of the Treasury. Madeline Albright would have stayed on at State. Ron Klain would have become Chief of Staff. Their agenda: Passing a stimulus package to dig out of the shallow recession. Republicans would have watered it down with tax cuts, but I think we keep balanced budgets unless and until there’s a 9/11-type attack.

The 9/11-type attack is crucial to the hypothetical scenario. If it doesn’t happen–ironically, if the Gore administration succeeds–I think Gore governs a nation that’s increasingly grouchy about Democratic rule. Republicans gain seats in 2002; in 2004, either George W. Bush or John McCain wins the presidency. (Neither man will have Dick Cheney on the ticket.) What sort of GOP takes over? It’s hard to say. Losing in 2000 might have done for the GOP what losing in 1988 did for the Democrats, and forced a dramatic rethinking of the party’s agenda. But I think such a rethinking would have resulted in the party moving to the right. On the other hand, Mark Green defeats Michael Bloomberg and is elected mayor of New York City.

If there is a 9/11-type attack, I think the country rallies around President Gore, and he shoehorns some more of his agenda through Congress. A carbon tax, it turns out, is patriotic! I don’t think Gore goes to war with Iraq, because as much as liberals like to rant about TNR et al, the “war with Iraq” crowd would have been opposed by most of the Gore administration. Gore beats some Republican sucker in 2004–you doing anything, Tommy Thompson?–although I’ve got to think, because Gore’s economic team lets the mortgage crisis happen, the Republicans surge back in 2008.

Well, this is amusing. Some time yesterday, a friendly person created a Wikipedia bio page for me. Some time after that, it was deleted. I was agnostic on the matter, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it was like having my telepathy blocked by government satellites — I didn’t even know I had it, but it sucked to lose it.

Should I have a Wikipedia bio page? I know a bunch of folks who do. A short list of “people on Wikipedia with whom I have lived or worked or had brunch” — Chris Beam, Kerry Howley, Megan McArdle, Julian Sanchez, Will Wilkinson. But -should- I have it? I have no earthly idea. Arguments con:

- I have not written a book (although I’m trying).

- I do not write a column currently for a major American newspaper or magazine.

- I have not won any major journalism awards.

- I did not star in “Couples Retreat.”

Arguments pro:

- I am responsible, by pure accident, for two of the strange memes of our time – “birthers” and “teabaggers.” Recognize the photo at the top of this page?

- I have written for a whole bunch of magazines, and am the only person I know to have contributed to The Nation and The American Spectator.

- I’ve been on TV and radio to discuss my reporting, most notably MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and NPR’s Fresh Air.

- I’ve been profiled, as a bit player in much larger profiles, in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.

- I’ve got stories. Go back and check the names of the three Ralph Nader electors for Delaware in the 2000 election. Recognize one of the names? I edited a conservative newspaper and college and was funded by, and friendly with, a conservative organization which spooks the hell out of the left. I have been paid, indirectly, by John Mackey, George Soros, and David Koch.

- I’ve worked with Lulu and four other people.

Is this the life and work of a notable person, or just another person who works (hard!) in D.C.? That’s up to the internet, and so far the internet is going with that latter, sadder option.

Act One: September 25, 2008

This year, for the first time in U.S. history, both major party nominees for president are sitting senators. The winner may be the one who can convince some portion of the electorate that he’s less “senatorial,” and more “presidential,” than the other.

That’s why McCain’s action Wednesday–announcing he would come back to Washington to try to broker a deal to save our financial system–could prove so important. The rescue package that was so poorly crafted and defended by the Bush administration seemed to be sliding toward defeat. The presidential candidates were on the sidelines, carping and opining and commenting. But one of them, John McCain, intervened suddenly and boldly, taking a risk in order to change the situation, and to rearrange the landscape.

Act Two: November 4, 2008

Barack Hussein Obama was elected the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday, sweeping away the last racial barrier in American politics with ease as the country chose him as its first black chief executive.

Act Three: July 3, 2009

If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It’s an enormous gamble – but it could be a shrewd one.

I return to this blog, on a slow-ish day beset by laptop errors, to defend the honor of Michael Calderone. He reported that Matthew Cooper had a “new gig” writing for The Atlantic’s political page. Cooper responded that he was “still @tpmmedia” and FishbowlDC reported that Cooper was “pulling double duty” at both news orgs.

Well, whatever. I really loved Cooper’s output for Portfolio, but his “duty” at TPM, as “editor-at-large,” has produced… what, exactly? At TPMDC, where reporters Brian Beutler and Eric Kleefeld churn out thousands of words every day, Cooper has produced a total of 103 posts since January 19. By contrast, Beutler and Kleefeld wrote 13 posts today. Cooper slowed down dramatically after March 5, and his latest post, on “The Old Pulitzers,” went up on April 20. If writing one post for The Atlantic and none for TPM is “double duty,” I think we’re out of the recession.

Barack Obama makes an average of one gaffe every two months. Time for impeachment?

That’s my snark, folks, although I am tempted to add that if admitting you buy arugula (which I ate last night!) is equivilent to accidentally insulting the mentally disabled, then “gaffe” has no meaning.

Let’s get Confucian here and correct the language. A “flub” is a fuck-up, like getting someone’s name wrong, or getting the city you’re in wrong. A “gaffe” is any offensive statement. And a “Kinsley gaffe” is a statement that reflects what one things but it politically unpalatable. To break down the Trib list.

“Special Olympics” = gaffe
“Nancy Reagan” = gaffe
“clinging” = Kinsley gaffe
“typical white person” = Kinsley gaffe
“likeable enough” = Kinsley gaffe
“arugula”= fucking meaningless, grow up
“Sunshine” = flub
“Sioux Falls” = flub

I love watching the Beltway Boys on Fox – because no one else is watching, Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke say absolutely brain-dead shit. To wit, I just heard Kondracke pronounce Nancy Pelosi once of the “losers” of the week because the stimulus bill included an “earmark” for an “$8 million train from Las Vegas to Disneyland.”

OK. First, it was $8 billion, not million. Second the earmark didn’t make it in. Third, Anaheim is not just “Disneyland.” It’s a city of 350,000 people, bigger than Cincinatti or Pittsburgh, and its location in the sprawling Los Angeles metro area connects it to 19.5 million more people of whom at least a few would like to head to Las Vegas.

Like all Americans, I think Joe Lieberman is a whiny, runny skin-bag of rhino shit. But this is actually funny!

I don’t want to pollute the WIndy with his nonsense, but as a way of explaining: I called Hawaii back in November when I started writing longer pieces about the Obama Birthers. They pointed me to this 10/31 statement:

Therefore, I as Director of Health for the State of Hawai‘i, along with the Registrar of Vital Statistics who has statutory authority to oversee and maintain these type of vital records, have personally seen and verified that the Hawai‘i State Department of Health has Sen. Obama’s original birth certificate on record in accordance with state policies and procedures.

Literate people read this as “we have Barack Obama’s birth certificate.” Lonewacko/Chris Kelly/24Ahead reads this as “we have a document that MAY INDEED SAY THAT OBAMA WAS BORN IN KENYA.” It’s the stupidest argument I’ve dealt with in my mini-career in the Obama Birtherverse, and I’ve dealt with some high-grade stupid shit. Lonewacko/24Ahead’s evidence that… uh, that Hawaiian bureaucrats don’t mean “birth certificate” when they say “birth certificate,” and instead mean “certification of live birth in foreign country,” is that one of the bureaucrats blew him off. Hell, who wouldn’t blow him off?

Why won’t Hawaii say more? I don’t know? Why don’t I call them again? Because they answered my question already!

Oh, Lonewacko: Those people you keep e-mailing about this? They’re laughing at you.

You were right about the political acumen of the Ron Paul activists, though.