Question period.

Prime Ministers must regularly take hostile questions from their political opposition.

If the US can find some way to cram such an idea into their system, it would be a tremendous benefit. Personally, I think the State of the Union clause in the constitution leaves the door open for this. What if the Speaker, while presiding over a Joint session, with the president on the dais opened the floor to questions from Congress? The president is obligated to give congress the state of the union, and I think that means they should be able to question him, if they don't find his speech sufficiently informative as to its state. And it can be more than annually too, it just says "from time to time."

Clearly there is an appetite for such a thing, as I notice that appearances by cabinet secretaries to congressional committees generally attracts interest from the US public. People like to see political leaders fielding questions, and rather than relying on the media to do it, why not let the people elected to oppose the government do it?

Seriously, why the hell can't the president/vp take questions from congress? Stupidity like Cheney claiming he's not part of the executive branch would not survive such a hazing.

This, more than anything else keeps the spine in the media in Canada, Britain and Australia. It's much easier for a reporter to simply refer to the oppositions' probing questions than to try and broach uncomfortable subjects on their own.

It also serves to remind the nation that the chief political leader is just a person. This "respect the office" shit is an authoritarian anachronism of a bygone era where the President needed to be equal in stature to royalty and so forth. He's a civil servant and he deserves withering questioning.

(Though, I've already had breakfast)

It's obvious that a highly paid reporter/pundit would be beneath his station to do any "research" such as searching out the actual text of a bill already passed by a house of congress, it's not as if Congress publishes this stuff online or anything! Ha!

Even if they did, Mr. Klein's deep ponderings and contemplation take up the majority of his time, and such trifles as "reading" and "comprehension" are crass tasks for a mind such as his.

If only a large publication like Time could afford to pay a person whose job would be to check facts, they could even call this person a "fact-checker" and she or he could spend a few minutes checking the major claims as written by the shining lights of our Era like Mr. Klein.

Yes, but with the thin margins the media operates on, $20/hour for such a fact-checker is ludicrously unaffordable. Why, Time would have to close its doors over the expense.

And we would all be poorer for that.

Alas, may as well wish for a pony or a health care system that cares for everyone.

Most of us learn as children not to touch a hot oven -- I suspect that Joe could have a very successful life as a criminal, because by now his fingerprints must have been completely burned off.

I'm sure he didn't independently research the bill. Should he have? He's not a reporter. Is he a journalist? I doubt he's done much actual journalism in some time.

When I read editorials like Klein's, I take it with a few grains of salt. This is some guy's opinion, and it's not even his opinion, he got it from someone else.

I have heard, from all sides of the spectrum, people repeating things that are factually false.

I'm not just talking about people having different opinions. I'm talking about FACTUALLY FALSE. And completely distorted.

Its interesting to me how people can be made to believe absolutely anything. No matter how ridiculous.

No, this won't do. Let me offer some context here:

1) This isn't an isolated or even rare error on Klein's part, and is part of a pattern of getting it wrong, and worse, getting it wrong in favour of the republicans every time.

2) This isn't a minor error. Klein did not merely make a mistake in some tangetical detail, he is wrong at the core of the piece, his premise for writing the column is blatantly wrong.

3) That you "take it with a few grains of salt" is great and all, but can you speak for all of Time's 4 million readers? Klein is a key figure in those that look down at blogs for not having editors and fact checkers, yet does far worse in accuracy than the blogs he snidely dismisses do. This needs more than a dash of salt anyway, a horse-sized saltlick might suffice.

4) Yes yes, people on the left make mistakes too, except oops, Klein is supposed to be a liberal and he consistently gets his facts wrong in order to bash Democrats. Please cite a prominent conservative columnist making obvious factual errors in critiquing Republicans. Doesn't. Happen. This would be par for the course if it was a National Review columnist being this wrong, but because Klein is a liberal we will see his column used by Republicans to bash Democrats with statements like "even Joe Klein says that..." For more on this, look into why the blogosphere turned against Joe Lieberman and helped turf him from the Democratic party. Being stabbed in the back by a purported ally is more damaging than being hit in a frontal.

5) If you are claiming that traditional media figures make just as many factual errors supporting Democratic positions as they do supporting Republican positions, that would be news to many here, and I invite you to demonstrate that claim empirically. The mere existence of the Iraq war and Bush presidency instead of the Gore presidency are exhibits A and B in the case against this.