Just A Song, Before I Go...

It's been a busy weekend, such that blogging has been non-existent.  Gwendolyn, whom I miss very much right now, is on a bachelorette weekend with her sister, leaving me in charge of the three little jesters.  My parents have come up for a visit, providing much appreciated assistance.  Nonetheless, it hasn't been possible to perform sufficient cogitation to blog effectively.

Return to normalcy is not likely until early next week.  I can report, however, that the new Kim Possible vehicle, So The Drama, is a big hit with the little jesters.

On the other hand, you may elect to, and I did, read this critique of Power Line presented in much the same style as they would critique the MSM.  Or you could read their defense, which is also well presented.  The Power Line defense (by the way, like the new site very much - I never knew whether to refer to 'Hindrocket' or Hinderaker) is that they may well have made a mistake, but they owned up to it when the information proved them wrong.  That, however, does not mean that other writers, in this case the Washington Post reporters, did not also make errors.  Their complaint is that the WaPo has failed to own up to theirs.

It should be remembered that it is always possible to have 20-20 hindsight.  If the facts available are insufficient to narrow the possibilities there'll certainly be errors.  How you handle them when they occur is a good way to take the measure of both sides.  For instance, I notice only a little satisfaction, with very little gloating, and few if any profane epithets by those who turn out to be more right on the Valerie Plame episode. (first segment)

So where's the outrage from Josh Marshall, former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, David Corn and the others who on Joe Wilson's say-so worked themselves up into such a lather a year and a half ago, over the "unpatriotic" administration officials who had "jeopardized national security" by "outing" a "secret agent"? These guys have all gone silent--though sadly, only on this subject.

UPDATE: Another point worth making is that there are many on the left who insist that this memo was a Republican leadership directive from which all the Republicans were working, despite an absence of facts to support that contention.  While it was obviously purely speculative to surmise that it was a Democratic trick memo, it is similarly speculative to believe it is more than it currently seems - a shoddily-prepared and ill-advised memo from a freshman senator's legal staff.

The 20-20 hindsight thing has application to medicine and medical malpractice cases.  Plaintiff's attorneys ask the jury to look at the outcome and then work backwards to determine that the physician should have known the undesirable outcome was likely, and avoided it.  But the undesirable outcome that spawns the lawsuit is

• often a known risk that is low or very low probablility at the time the decisions are being made
• the result of a decision process that has determined, with the knowledge of the patient, that the null hypothesis, doing nothing, is worse for the patient, even if the risk of complication is relatively high

One of my partners was sued recently (the case was just dismissed) by a woman who had received inadequate care for a complex elbow injury many years ago in a foreign country.  She had a very unstable elbow resulting in a virtually unusable arm.  He tried to help her, and did as she now has a usable hand, but she ended up with a stiff elbow and sued.  Fortunately the AAOS has new guidelines on expert testimony.  As a result the attorney for the plaintiff could not find an expert to testify that this constituted negligence.

Would it have been negligence if the AAOS had not changed it's guidelines, and a willing "expert" had been found?  No, because living with her useless arm was worse, and a known complication of such complex reconstructive surgery is stiffness.  But she sued anyway.