I'm just as tired of writing post titles about spammers as you are, guys. Oof.

The new problems: Registration has been shut off all week (automatic registration, that is; if people want to register, they have to email me to manually set up an account.) These new fellas are subverting the registration block somehow - tech guru Al is looking into it. We're not quite sure what to make of it. Movable Type is working with us on an anti-spam plugin (progress!), and Al is planning on talking to SixApart on this very serious, very annoying issue.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: we can only track down IP addresses when someone leaves a comment. We sadly cannot ban the IP addresses of all the recent spammers, 'cause they've only left blog posts, no comments.

I like these tech recommendations a lot. We'll certainly see what we can do - the basic problem with that specific suggestion is that we don't operate on WordPress, we're on Movable Type.

Continue:
-emailing me directly (versha@talkingpointsmemo.com) - I'll definitely see direct emails SOONER than any emails sent to talk@ or help@.
-when a spammer has 25 or more posts, you don't have to take the time to send me individual post links - just send me the link to the spammer's profile, or the spammer's profile name. Either one works.

As always, thank you!

As some of you (here's looking at you, Aunt Sam - and also Jon and LisB!) have flagged nonstop today, we've had a pretty relentless attack of spammers. We've done our best to reply to all your emails and disable each post as quickly as we can - we don't have just one person dedicated to this activity (it's impossible!), so I know that sometimes it takes longer than you'd like. But I just wanted to give you a heads up that we've turned automatic registration off for the night and hopefully that will curb any new spammers. We may turn this into a nightly thing, where we turn it off when we leave at night and turn it back on when we get in in the morning. Thanks for your patience.

Just wanted to once again address the attacks of spam that have been hitting Cafe unfortunately hard over the weekends.

As we've all witnessed, the spam problems get especially bad on Saturday and Sunday, when there's no one officially policing the system - we understand that people are miffed, and we're looking at a few possibilities to recruit readers to help us (as some of you have already volunteered to do), but the current software isn't really set up for it.

What we're doing is looking at a broader solution to solve the problems at Cafe. Nothing is set in stone yet, but I just wanted to acknowledge that we hear you, we see what's going on, we want to keep you happy here, and I promise that we're working on it.

We've shut off automatic registrations quite a few times in the past couple of months in order to fight the spam; this seems to work as a temporary solution, even though it's not ideal, as new TPM readers then have to wait for a staffer/intern to be available and reply to their manual account registration requests. We've also discussed altering the system so that new users can only start blogging after having their account and commenting for a week, like at DailyKos or Fark.

Until we find the best solution, your best bet is to flag spam as abuse and email me directly (versha @ talkingpointsmemo . com) whenever you see something fishy. Please include links in your email when possible.

And be on the lookout for this new form of spam that appeared here over the weekend - new users copying and pasting AP articles (or poetry, etc.) wholesale from other sources with no attribution or formatting, etc. Not every one of those posts is necessarily spam, but it's certainly okay to flag it. The sneaky new spammers seem to have devised a system wherein they're hiding tons of links within the posts in order to try and fool Google and up their pageranks - h/t to the genius Al for figuring it out and showing it to me. See below.

Seemingly normal (if randomly creative) post:

This is what the page source looks like, with all the hidden links:

Don't worry, you can't accidentally click on it and get malware or anything - but it's still annoying. So flag it and email me!

Thanks, as always, for your patience.

Today I stumbled across a post from Amanda Hess at the DC alt-weekly Washington City Paper that takes on the Huffington Post for its sexist entertainment section.

The money line:
"People--even progressive, conservative-hating, liberal-minded people--will click on nipple slip slideshows and boob jobs guessing games, and that's a big part of the Huffington Post's model."

Arianna did an interview a little while ago where she mentioned that more than half of the site's traffic comes from non-political stories, a figure I was a little surprised to hear - perhaps because I personally don't really go to HuffPo for entertainment news, or at least I didn't that much before (normally, if I was in the mood for celebrity gossip or similar 'news,' I'd check out ONTD or Best Week Ever or even, ack, Perez Hilton). Now that I'm thinking about it, though, I realize that most of my clicks at HuffPo nowadays are related to entertainment, and I never visit those celeb gossip sites anymore (also a factor: I know most of the day's political news anyway - and much more in depth, may I say - given how closely I read TPM everyday). Is it HuffPo that's changed, or me, or a combination of the two?

The point being - sex sells, we all know it, the Huffington Post certainly knows it, and I'm a progressive guilty of clicking on some of those shameful links. That's not to say I don't shake my head at the headlines and nature of it as I do it - the focus and amount of the coverage has alarmed me as of late - and Hess's post and other writings certainly give me pause. She has other good stuff, including "sexism on a liberal website is still sexism" and "Huffington Post continues nipple parade."

An interesting sidenote to all this: someone at HuffPo read Hess's posts and decided to scold the Washington City Paper for linking to their site (!), though Arianna asserts it wasn't really scolding. The hullabaloo even caught the attention of David Carr at the New York Times, prompting him to post "HuffPo gets huffy over parody," where the term 'peekabo sexism' comes from. I think it describes it well, and though Carr focused more on the exchanges that went on between the two websites, my hope is that more traffic is driven to the sexism write-ups - if they get a tenth of the traffic that Rihanna's nipple slips get, we could have some good meta media discussion instead.

Lebanon goes to the polls tomorrow, and even though Obama didn't mention the election in his big address in Cairo on Thursday, the outcome is rather important.

This is a chat with my good friend Nadine, a young political activist whose family is from Lebanon. It provides some valuable insight into tomorrow's elections - and hopefully we'll be hearing more from her soon over the next day and half, as I've urged her to write into TPM as a reader and maybe even start a reader blog!

*edit - Nadine has posted here. Excellent read!*

Nadine: elections tomorrow!!! you would NOT believe how crazy it is over here!!!
me: oh man!! tell me all about it!!
i was thinking about you the other day, you know everyone's talking about the middle east now bc of obama's big speech in cairo
what did you think of it??
Nadine: it was great, although a little weak on women's rights
i mean, women are being stoned and genitally mutilated and all he mentions is the right to a hijab? ehhh
me: yeah
good point
Nadine: but it was very well-received here
me: awesomeeee
glad to hear it!!
Nadine: but seriously things are CRAZY here
me: so tell me about the elections...who are you supporting and what's the public feeling like?
crazy in a good way??
Nadine: there are basically two coalitions
me: right, i remember you telling me about him
so tayyar al-mustaqba is the name of the party or that means something, like 'go mustaqba'? haha
Nadine: there is the March 14th coalition and the March 8th coalition
tayyar means flag, it's how they refer to the parties here
the March 8th coalition is hezbollah and its allies
me: right, i was just about to ask if this was accurate: 'Lebanon goes to the polls on Sunday with the main choices a Hezbollah-backed alliance or the U.S-backed coalition to lead their government.'
Nadine: everyone is afraid that hezbollah will cause problems
yes that is correct
me: so i guess the march 14th is the US-backed one?
Nadine: here they are referred to as March 14th (US backed) and March 8th (hezbollah)
yes that's true
me: got it
Nadine: there are a lot of people who are afraid to go into beirut and vote tomorrow
you should see the streets
right now
there are soldiers EVERYWHERE
me: oh god
that is scary!
your parents get to vote, right?
where are you exactly, are you in beirut?
Nadine: we just saw six tanks filled with soldiers go up the street next to us, and we're in the mountains right now!
me: omg
geez
:( be careful :( how likely is it to erupt into violence??
Nadine: my parents get to vote too, but i have to wait until i am twenty one until i get to vote here!!! lammmme
me: 21! damn
Nadine: and there are political parades everywhere too, just a bunch of young people taping political flags to every surface of their vehicle as they sit with their bodies halfway outside the window (or even on top of the car!) and honk horns and yell and stuff, there was already a car crash earlier from someone who was going too fast (right outside the house!)
me: oh dear
Nadine: there are political ads all over the tv
and all over billboards and the radio and people are saying that if
hezbollah wins, lebanon will become another iran! basically right now
it comes down to the christian vote: lebanon is 33% sunni muslim, 33%
shiite muslim, and 33% christian.. the sunnis are mostly all for the
progressive democratic Future party and the shiites are
mostly all for hezbollah, and the christians are split.
me: it sounds exciting and a little terrifying, haha!
Nadine: well nobody knows
me: oh man
Nadine: what will happen
me: the christians
i think i just read about a christian leader who's backing the march 8th guys?
Nadine: if hezbollah loses they might just try to take over again like they did may 7th
me: :(
Nadine: yeah that would be the general aoun
me: ugh
frustrating
how long are you going to be there, until the end of the summer?
Nadine: he was a general in the civil war, and he is absolutely desperate to be president
he would do and say anything to be it
me: you should totally get a TPM account and post a blog there nadine. everyone would be fascinated
Nadine: i am staying until june 30th
you think so?
me: YES, definitely

The rest of the chat is just technical stuff about emailing TPM and getting a blog here - but I thought I would share the above. I know I'm interested, even though the Obama administration thus far is literally staying away from Lebanon - thought you all might be too.

Liz Cheney is on Andrea Mitchell's show on MSNBC right now doing her best to tear down Obama's impressive address in Cairo today.

Among the many things she finds "troubling" - Obama's comment that women who choose (keyword - choose!) to wear hijabs are exercising their right to equality. In a rather rambling criticism, Cheney says that "'if you looked at the audience [at Cairo University], you could tell many of the women who weren't covering their heads were Christian."

Really, Liz? And how can you tell that by looking at someone? Was it the lack of a hijab, even though not all Muslim women wear one, or are you alluding to something else?

Argh. As Ashley, another TPM intern put it: She must be able to tell by her "Jesus love radar."

CNN has had experts in Muslim-American relations and the heads of key Muslim organizations and councils on all day to give their response to Obama's speech - so far, MSNBC has had Liz Cheney on. Twice.

(To be fair, they've also had Richard Haass on twice, the author featured in next week's book club...but the amount of Cheney still frustrates me.)

**UPDATE** 10:38 PM

Al has responded to your queries here.

Also, I've spent the last few hours reviewing all TPM abuse emails for the month of May - double-checking ones I've already been over - just to make sure. You may be pleased to know that I was able to ban 11 IP addresses of seriously-repeat offenders!

Again, thanks for keeping us on our toes, and keep reporting spam as abuse. We'll stay on top of it.

----

Hi all,

I originally posted the comment below here on barefooted's blog in response to the issue of spam on TPM and TPMCafe. I thought it might be useful or of interest to some while I work on getting the ever-busy Al and Andrew to post something more detailed of their own!

--

I'm Versha, the Cafe intern. I don't have quite the coding or web
knowledge that Al or Andrew do but I can tell you that one of my daily
tasks is to kill all the spam I find - or Al finds, or Andrew finds,
etc. Unfortunately, it pops up almost as quickly as I delete it.

The other problem is that we can only ban IP addresses when the
user/spammer leaves a comment. With the current system we have, we
cannot track or ban IP address via blog posts. Please do trust me when
I say we're working to come up with something!

And yes, staff is low on the weekends, I'm sorry to say!

---

Thanks everyone. Keep keeping us on our toes. :)

After everything from the war in Iraq to Hurricane Katrina, I'm not sure why I even allow myself to be surprised by any hypocritical information about Bush administration cronies.

And yet.

I studied John Yoo's unitary executive theory at college for my constitutional law classes...I've known for a while now that, despite all his Ivy League schooling, he does not seem to have a comprehensive understanding of the U.S. Constitution (or, even worse, he does and he just chooses to ignore it).  I haven't been surprised to see his name come out as one of the primary authors of the torture memos.

And yet.

Mr. Yoo blatantly flouted the Constitution to get more powers for President Bush, for a war based on lies, and buried what essentially boiled down to a 'torture can be legal, sometimes, as long as it's not done on Americans' argument underneath mountains of legalese, justifying the types of torture for which we executed Japanese soldiers after WWII. So I'm pretty damn surprised to find out that the same Mr. Yoo once argued that President Clinton was subverting the Constitution in order to stop an investigation into the Lewinsky scandal. Whether Clinton was or not is irrelevant: it's the fact that in March 1998, Yoo was outraged about "a privileged executive" in this Wall Street Journal article, and just a few years later, he was arguing for an unprecedented expansion of presidential powers and disregard of national and international laws.

Or, as the authors of this glorious post write, "Notably, while Yoo has argued that he and President Bush has the right to violate as many 200 year old liberties as they please without answering to the American people, he has vocally and publicly argued the exact opposite in regards to Bill Clinton getting a beej."

Nonetheless, Clinton opponents and supporters alike must question the president's decision to risk the authority and prestige of the presidency on such weak claims, which will only undermine the ability of future chief executives to act secretly when the national interest demands it.

Reading this, maybe he honestly believes that everything he did during the Bush administration was for the sake of national security. It's a bit of a stretch, seeing as how most people knew Colin Powell's now-infamous dramatic speech to the U.N. building the case for the war in Iraq was full of falsified/exaggerated evidence at the time...and considering how apparent the lack of WMDs became soon after the March 2003 invasion...and given that certain detainees were waterboarded 266 times without yielding useful information...okay, actually, nevermind, I have no idea how he could honestly believe he was acting in the name of national security.

And then there's this:

A decision to invoke executive privilege in this case would be yet another example of the Clinton administration's failure to understand the distinction between the office of the president and the person who happens to be the president. In democracies, we distinguish between a public office and the person who holds that office; people for whom the office and the person are one and the same are called kings.

Clinton had an imperial presidency? That's Bush's legacy. Cheney himself (albeit in 1987) called the invocation of executive privilege a "monarchical notion." But somehow, Yoo criticized Clinton and deemed it fit to justify Bush/Cheney's many unconstitutional actions. (Not just torture, but warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention without trial.)

Words fail me. But the Dickipedia entry on Yoo does make me feel a little better.