There were hugs, kisses and praise galore for Representative Gabrielle Giffords as she left Congress. The only thing missing from the sendoff was any recognition that Congress owed it to her to act at least to prohibit the sale of high-capacity ammunition magazines that enabled her attacker to spew bullets right and left in the assault that wounded her and 18 others.

The assailant, Jared Lee Lee Loughner, was attempting to reload his weapon when onlookers brought him down. As Senator Frank Lautenberg said at the time, “The only reason to have 33 bullets loaded in a handgun is to kill a lot of people very quickly. These high-capacity clips simply should not be on the market.”

In a fit of temporary sanity from 1994 to 2004 Congress actually banned the clips. Lautenberg has been unsuccessful in getting Congress to reinstate the ban. Unebelievably, the Tucson massacre, which included a federal judge among the victims, has not produced a single measure to prevent a repetition.
Outlawing high-capacity ammunition magazines is the bare minimum congress should do.

Congress did though produce a pile of nauseatingly pious statements about Giffords. House leader Eric Cantor’s was typical: “We are inspired, hopeful and blessed…Gabby’s courage. strength and her downright fortitude are an inspiration to all of us and all Americans.”

Just not inspiration enough to put spine in Congress at least to-reenact the ban on murderous magazine clips. Perhaps it will require a crazed gunman shooting up both houses of Congress to accomplish that.

By all accounts Newt Gingrich’s debating performance had a lot to do with his big win in South Carolina‘s presidential primary. That’s unfortunate because debating has nothing to do with governing. When was the last time an incumbent president engaged in an actual non-electoral debate with anyone?

But now that debates have taken on added importance, there doubtless will be pressure for more of them. Gingrich, in fact, in his victory speech in South Carolina, made the grandstanding promise that if he is the GOP’s nominee he would challenge President Obama to seven three-hour debates.

Skilled debaters are glib, fast on their feet and adept at snappy comebacks. The best presidents are thoughtful and deliberative. They consult before opening their mouths. In other words, the attributes and practices valued in the Oval Office are nowhere in evidence when candidates debate. Yet the press ballyhoos debates and without challenge goes along with the assumption that they are a reasonable test of fitness to be president.

Gingrich is a smooth and fast talker, qualities usually associated with con men. It may be no coincidence that Gingrich has been described as a con man.

The country faces serious problems that deserve serious attention. Presidential debates are contests in which half-truths figure prominently. The object of the game more often than not is to score debating points, not to enlighten the public. They amount to a form of show-biz.

The country has more than enough of entertainment.

Gingrich’s proposal for seven debates is ludicrous. The president has much more serious business to occupy his attention than rehearsing for the jousting contests euphemistically known as televised debates. It may be in the public’s interest to compare presidential candidates in a sensible format on a few occasions, but the White House should not allow itself to be goaded by Gingrich or anyone else into more than that.

You have to hand it to Mitt Romney. He’s no time-waster. No sooner had he vanquished his Republican rivals in New Hampshire, than he put bigger game in his sights. Romney’s victory speech made it clear that he won’t be distracted by minor nuisances like Iraq when there’s more potent enemies to contend with: Europe!!

According to Romney, Barack Obama threatens the very soul of America because he wants “to fundamentally transfom” the country by turning it into “a European-style entitlement society.” Romney says Obama “takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe.” In a final insult, Romney said he wanted Americans “to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become.”

Romney’s attack on Europe is astounding. Do his speechwriters have such short memories they have forgotten how we fought shoulder to shoulder with Europe to defeat the Nazis in World War II? Or doesn’t anyone proof-read Romney’s speeches before he delivers them?

A dash of xenophobia now and then may be considered smart politics. Still, Romney’s gratuitous slurs at a whole continent of close allies is jarring, if not plain stupid. Romney managed to mar his victory in New Hampshire with remarks that call into question both his judgment and his grasp of what it takes to be a world leader.

The winner of the Republican presidential nominating battle is unknown at this writing. It’s not too soon, though, to declare the loser: the English language. When, in politician-speak “moderate” becomes an epithet or President Obama morphs into a “socialist,” language has lost its moorings and meaning.

At one time “moderate” had entirely favorable connotations. It even meant “reasonable.” In the service of Newt Gingrich, “moderate” is evil incarnate, as in Mitt Romney the “Massachusetts moderate,” no compliment intended.

Socialism is a system in which ownership of production and distribution belongs to the government. That doesn’t even begin to describe Barack Obama’s political and economic views. So when Rick Perry said recently that “we have a president who is a socialist.” that’s laughably absurd.

Politicians are fond of calling for English to be made the country’s official language. Why, then, do they so often debase it?

The press will occasionally fact-check politicians. They also ought to language-check them. Proper use of language is vital to political discourse. Politicians who engage in language-abuse should be held to account in the same way those who falsify facts have the record set straight.

Obama a socialist? Romney a far-out moderate? Enough already.

I got an email from my nephew Daniel Sussman the screenwriter. He has been living in Greece for a while and thus has a calm, detached perspective on what’s going on in American politics. He wrote:

Okay, maybe this is naive, but…

Just about every sane person is (or a significant number of people are) appalled by the field of candidates vying for the Republican nomination. I would like to know two things:

1. Who are the Republican politicians who are better qualified? Who are the statesmen? These people must exist. And if they don’t, make them up. Maybe they’re not in Congress. Maybe they’re in corporate America.

2. Why didn’t they run? Maybe it’s time to rethink who should run. Based on these candidates, I’d say it is.

Why not contact a bunch of people and ask them to make a list of people who they wish were running, with perhaps a few words as to why? Might be really interesting.

My own thinking is, polling people to find candidates wouldn’t work either. First on the list would be Sarah Palin, I’m afraid – so why bother? The one good thing is, Donald Trump wouldn’t make the list at all…but that wouldn’t shut him up anyway, at least not for long.

As for Daniel’s suggestion that maybe there may be qualified candidates in corporate America – of course there are. Problem is, they can be in charge without the bother of seeking office.

I asked Daniel if I could run his email, with my comments. He said I could. He also said that in asking people to suggest Republican candidates, he meant ones “apart from the obvious choice of Palin, whose decision not to run is the first good decision she’s made.” He also pushed me a little on corporate America:

“If these other folks exist, the ones who are secretly in charge, or discreetly in charge, then who are they? I would love to know. Who are the 25 most powerful, unelected people in America? That would be a column that I’d read, and could be revisited annually, or it could just be a list of people that other people think should be in the 25. Not a definitive list, but a list of suggestions of who should be included.”

So who’s in that list? I’d like to know, too.

DES MOINES – A friend in California asked about the ballyhooed Iowa Republican caucuses:

“What do Democrats do on Tuesday?” A reasonable question.

My answer:

At my precinct more than 300 Democrats showed up for voting in the 2008 caucuses. In 2010 as I remember it, about a dozen were there, including several kids getting credit for a high school civics class.

The turnout Tuesday will be much, much closer to the dozen. We’ll hear greetings from Sen. Tom Harkin and our U.S. Representative, pass the hat for $$ contributions to the party, likely hear from people from Obama For America, elect a couple of delegates to the county Democratic convention on March 10 and approve various proposals for the party platform. That’s about it. Should take an hour or so.

Most earnest among those attending will be folks hoping to get on the delegate list for the national convention in Charlotte, NC, the first week of September. Those who don’t get automatic delegate status — like Iowa party officials and major office holders — almost have to start at the precinct level to make the team.

For their part, Republicans in my precinct will do much the same after their first major order of business, voting. They vote right away so the news media can get the results out. The GOP folks will get greetings from Sen. Chuck Grassley and, likely, from the GOP congressman (who, by redistricting, has been tossed into the same district as the Democratic incumbent) and elect delegates and act on the party platform. At the GOP gathering a lot of people who show up to vote for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich will go home after the vote. They will leave the platform business to the persistent evangelicals, who will again shape an extremist, no-moderates-need-apply platform.”

As for the outcome of the voting, the top three likely now will be U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, Romney and Rick Santorum. Even if he finishes fourth, Santorum will be considered a winner because he was given little hope of a top five finish as recently as a month ago. How far that will carry him in the campaign is another question.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s campaign ends in disarray. The chair of her state campaign, Iowa State Sen. Kent Sorenson, jumped ship to endorse Paul — a bizarre event to wrap up the bizarre Iowa caucus.

Mark Shields and David Brooks agreed the other evening on the PBS Newshour that the country was indebted to well-educated Iowans for their splendid show of citizenship in conscientiously attending campaign events and subjecting candidates to informed questioning. Shields and Brooks didn’t happen to wonder where these wonderful, public spirited, Iowans are when the caucuses actually are conducted.

In the past, the vast majority of registered voters managed to absent themselves from their precinct caucuses. It’s not unusual for eight out of 10 registered party members to be no-shows on caucus night.

I don’t fault them. Precinct caucuses are an obstacle course for voters. Unlike presidential primaries, such as the upcoming one in New Hampshire, where polls are open all day and citizens can drop in to vote at their convenience, caucuses are conducted for just a few hours and you must be present at a particular time to cast a presidential preference ballot. You can’t make it to a caucus site? Too bad; no absentee voting allowed.

Why not make voting more convenient at Iowa’s caucuses? Party bigwigs dare not. If they did, they could be accused of staging an event too similar to a primary and thereby endanger the state’s “first-in-the nation” status. Iowa is allowed by the powers that be to beat out New Hampshire in the presidential preference sweepstakes because it argued successfully that it’s a non-primary state. Being first is regarded by Iowa politicians as precious beyond imagining. The perverse consequence of the obsession over being first is that Iowa voters are saddled with the caucus system and seriously disadvantaged by it.

The spotlight on Iowa’s caucuses every four years seldom includes attention to the downside for voters by caucuses as they are conducted in Iowa. Witness the unstinting praise for Iowans by Shields and Brooks. Instead of focusing on civic-minded Iowans, the press ought to be paying attention to the unfair system under which they labor.

Two names come to mind when one considers who will win and who will lose in the Iowa GOP caucuses Tuesday, Jan. 3. That’s when Republican party faithful will gather at 1,744 precincts across the state, ending the three or four years of political maneuvering that lead to the kickoff of the 2012 presidential campaign.

Predictions of the caucus turnout range from 15 to 23 percent of the 613,000 registered Republicans in Iowa.

Regardless of turnout, the outcome of the caucuses is often in the hands of the press and political pundits who take a look at the caucus results and pronounce who did better than expected — those are the winner(s) — and who fell short — the losers.

But it is difficult not to list Democratic President Barack Obama among the winners and the Iowa GOP among the losers, even though neither is on the ballot.

Obama’s re-election prospects have been helped by GOP in-fighting and by the extremist positions his wannabe rivals have taken to cater to the evangelical right wing that dominates the Iowa GOP.

Sadly for the Iowa GOP, the Republican candidates who have spent the most time in Iowa and contributed much money to the state party coffers appear to be those who will fall short of expectations. That is hardly an incentive for future candidates to view Iowa as important or to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Iowa GOP.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann forked over $214,000 to the Iowa GOP and — barring a loaves and fishes miracle on caucus night — about the only person she will finish ahead of is Jon Huntsman, who spent almost no time in the state and gave the Iowa GOP zilch. (Former Minnesota Gov. Tom Pawlenty almost lived in Iowa before a third-place finish in the Iowa Straw poll ended his candidacy last summer; former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum also was omnipresent with little apparent payoff for his campaign.)

So, Obama wins; the Iowa GOP loses. What about those on the ballot aside from Bachmann?

In terms of expectations, where does one set the bar for Newt Gingrich — all but written off three months ago and then viewed as a frontrunner two weeks ago? And given the existence of an ABM (Anybody But Mitt) brigade in Iowa, what are the expectations for Mitt Romney? Both, I expect, will be unscathed and not helped much by the caucus vote and both will advance to the New Hampshire primary on Jan. 10. Gov. Rick Perry will join them with enough campaign funds to overcome a likely Iowa disappointment.

The votes of the Christian zealots in the Iowa GOP will be split mostly between Bachmann and Santorum. That’s no surprise, not with Herman Cain withdrawing from the race and Pawlenty’s early out.

Right-wing preachers and congregants vow to give either Bachmann or Santorum a boost in Iowa — much as they did for the Rev. Pat Robertson back in 1988, when he finished second, behind Sen. Bob Dole and ahead of Vice President George H.W. Bush. But Bachmann and Santorum may have outstayed their welcome among the general electorate.

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul?

Oh, him! He is likely to be the top vote getter at the Iowa GOP caucuses, but given how the press has all but dismissed his candidacy he likely will gain stature as the oldest person (76) ever to be considered for vice president.

For the real winner, my money is on Obama, who won the 2008 Democratic caucuses, and will get boost from the 2012 GOP follies. As for the Iowa GOP and those who say the road to the White House goes through Iowa, they have a lot of repair work to do.

As night follows day, Iowa’s precinct caucuses bring in their wake a raft of features about hard-working productive Iowa and its salt-of-the-earth citizens who welcome candidates into their homes with perceptive questions and thoughtful comments about affairs of the day. Perhaps as an antidote to such pap, University of Iowa journalism professor Stephen Bloom recently presented in the Atlantic a contrasting picture of Iowa that earned him death threats, a rebuke from the university’s president and from four of his journalism school colleagues. The latter lectured Bloom on what constitutes “good journalism.”

University of Iowa president Sally Mason said she was “offended” by Bloom’s piece and assured Iowans that “he does not speak for the University of Iowa.” The journalism profs distanced themselves from any work, presumably Bloom’s, “riddled with inaccuracies and factual errors and based on sweeping generalizations and superficial stereotypes.”

The educators cited journalists they admired and implied that Bloom failed to measure up to the standards they followed. Among the exemplary journalists cited by Bloom’s academic critics was “Walter Rideau” in his “prize-winning chronicles from the heart of the Angola prison.” Rideau’s name is “Wilbert,” not Walter,” but that error is no more consequential than the one Bloom made when he said, to much ridicule, that Iowans hunt turkeys with rifles when he should have written shotguns.

The journalism educators included in their critique of Bloom’s work a passage so ambiguous it was hard to tell whether they were praising Bloom or dumping on him. In any event, as a six-decade transplant to Iowa, I read Bloom’s take on the Hawkeye state with more than casual interest. On initial reading, I thought that he presented a too-bleak picture of Iowa. In the wake of the bellyaching, I re-read the article ; the second time around it still seemed overly negative, but well within the bounds of fair comment.

Journalism is art, not science. Subjective judgments are unavoidable. If I had written the Atlantic piece, I would have included material about Iowa Bloom chose to omit. The folks who are giving Bloom such a hard time should be less harsh and more understanding of the limits of journalism.

After all, his article basically did no harm, except perhaps to the feelings of Iowans grown accustomed to uncritical praise. The press is capable of inflicting real and lasting damage; witness the sycophantic way journalists helped pave the way for the Iraq war. Now, that’s journalism to be outraged about.

Yesterday, I sent an email to Politifact editor Bill Adair, expressing my horror over his group’s decision to designate “Republicans voted to kill Medicare” as the “lie of the year.” (See, for an exegesis of that misbegotten choice, Steve Benen, Paul Krugman, Jamison Foser, Charles Pierce, Jason Linkins, et. al.)

“Take it back quickly and explain the (probably self-inflicted) pressures you were under, and perhaps you can rehabilitate yourselves. Perhaps,” I wrote in my email. “This really makes me sick at heart. You have taken a wonderful idea — and a lot of good work — and perverted it beyond belief.”

I haven’t heard back.

So today, I’m sending him a draft of what I imagine his explanation should look like (purely based on my conjectures about what happened). It goes like this:

To our readers,

We owe everyone an enormous apology for choosing what is, ultimately, a true statement as our “lie of the year”. As hard as it may be to believe, our intentions were good. What happened was that we made a series of poor decisions, largely based on how we wanted to be perceived, and lost track of our core mission.

In the hopes that this can be a learning experience for everyone — as well as an opportunity for us to rededicate ourselves to the business of actually checking facts and calling out lies — I’d like to explain what happened. Because I’m afraid we’re not alone in making this sort of mistake.

At Politifact, we take what we do seriously. We think it’s important. We think that calling out lies is an essential journalistic function, necessary to limit their spread  and to create a political downside to their use. We don’t see enough of it out there, and we want to inject more into the political discourse. This is not a partisan position.

So it’s really frustrating when we get written off as liberal.

We see our jobs as being the referees, not taking sides. But as anyone who is paying attention knows, there are an awful lot of really big Republican whoppers out there. So whenever a significant Democratic statement comes along that we can find fault with, we do. And so do our brethren in the fact-checking business.

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