Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1115

Matthew Keys Needs to Stop Talking

It's fairly safe to say that Matthew Keys won some sympathy in the days after his indictment for hacking charges. But after staying relatively silent, the Reuters social media editor is starting to talk publicly about this case. This feels like a bad idea.

On Wednesday evening, Keys took to Facebook to make the case for his innocence. The 26-year-old denied the charges in an itemized fashion, adding scare quotes where appropriate. Having done that he wrote, "My attorneys have said much of the same over the past few days, but I feel it might mean more coming from me directly." It's the most substantive thing Keys has said since his indictment last Thursday, and national media organizations pounced on the update like kittens chasing yarn. The headlines may as well read, "Matthew Keys Is Innocent, Says Matthew Keys." But hey, there's nothing wrong with arguing for your innocence in the face of serious federal charges, right? Some might say that argument is best made by lawyers in a courtroom, but we'll get back to that.

The tricky thing is that Keys is saying a lot of other stuff, too. Most of his tweets and Facebook updates are only tangentially related to his court case. There are lots of "I'm fine" posts and normal banter between cyberfriends, and that's generally okay. Keys has also, for lack of a more relevant phrase, been doing a little bit of trolling.

That verb is mostly relevant since, in the days after the indictment, a series of reports emerged about Keys' somewhat shadowy past on the Internet. BuzzFeed's Ryan Broderick connected Keys to a number of old blogs and concluded that the he was an "infamous LiveJournal troll." Gawker's Adrien Chen added additional details to that narrative based in part on his interactions with Keys back in 2010, when Keys publicly infiltrated the upper tiers of Anonymous and the alleged hacking incident took place. To our knowledge, Keys hasn't responded to these trolling allegations, aside of trolling Gawker founder Nick Denton. He has responded to at least one news report from The New York Observer. Contesting a small detail about his current employment status, Keys sneers at the story's author about what she "bothered to read" before writing her post and added, "Don't let a little thing like accuracy stand in the way of a good story." That's hardly condemning and arguably irrelevant in terms of Keys' court case, but it's not a nice way to react.

Recent history offers some tough lessons about chatty hackers facing federal charges. Just two days ago, a federal judge convicted Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer for violating the same law that Keys is accused of breaking. Pending appeal, Weev will now spend the next three or so years in jail and must pay a $75,000 fine for lifting 114,000 email addresses from an AT&T database. While some find the hacking charges somewhat dubious — Weev didn't necessarily "hack" into AT&T's server as much he did sneak in the back door — the punishment is very real. And believe it or not, the prosecution used what Weev had said on Reddit the night before the sentencing as reason to believe he would offend again. (Pro tip: Don't refer to what you're going to do "next time," when you're about to be sentenced for doing that thing.)

This is all to say that Matthew Keys is on thin ice. He seems to have won the support for a large number of people online who believe that U.S. hacker laws need updating, and that's good. For the alleged Anonymous assist, an elementary-level hack that basically amounts to cyber graffiti, Keys faces up to 25 years in prison and half a million dollars in fines. That's pretty crazy! However, federal prosecutors don't seem intimidated by the Internet's disapproval of their tactics. They just sent Weev to jail and effectively rubbed his face in his last minute attempt to empathize with peers on Reddit. There's not telling how closely they'll scrutinize the growing list of statements Keys has made across various platforms since his indictment. Keys does have lawyers, good ones, and it's probably best to let them do the talking at this point.

It's almost impossible to think about this situation without hearing the Miranda rights in your head. "You have the right to remain silent," we all know the words. "Anything you say can and will be held against you in a court of law…" Those words are deeply embedded in our cultural and political memory. Keys was apparently never arrested or detained, so it's unclear* if anyone ever read him his rights. Matthew Keys, these are your rights. So long as you understand what you're doing, carry on. But tread softly, because you tread on your dreams.

* - We asked him, but Keys didn't respond in time for this post.

The Fort Hood Shooter Can't Dodge the Death Penalty

An Army judge in Texas just made a somewhat unconventional ruling in the trial of Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Hasan: She refused to let him plead guilty. Why? It would enable him to avoid execution. Apparently, the Army would not be satisfied to see this alleged mass murderer simply go to jail for a few decades. It appears the prosecution is out for blood.

The situation is a little bit dicey, when you think about it. After Hasan's lawyers made it very clear that Hasan would plead guilty in order to avoid the death penalty, Col. Tara Osborn made it very clear that that wasn't going to happen on Wednesday when she ruled out any guilty pleas. Since it's against Army rules to plead guilty to a capital offense, the defense abandoned its original plan of pleading guilty to 13 counts of premeditated murder and instead asked the court to allow Hasan to plead guilty to 13 counts of unpremeditated murder, a charge that does not carry the death penalty. On Wednesday, the judge said no way since that "would be the functional equivalent of pleading guilty to a capital offense." Ditto to pleading guilty to the 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. That would complicate a not guilty plea to the murder charges.

This is a real "no mercy" sort of situation isn't it? However, the general public probably has little doubt whether Hasan was the one who ran around Fort Hood, Texas in 2009 shooting his fellow soldiers and screaming "Allah Akbar." Hasan is suspected of killing 13 people and 32 others, and it's become glaringly apparent that the Army is not going to give him a break in court. This lastest move is an especially powerful one on the judge's part. The United States military hasn't executed a prison since 1961, so one might say this is the trial of a generation. The Army intends to do it right.

Israel Is a 'Fortress Nation,' Says Once-Kidnapped War Correspondent

A lot of people like to talk about how Israel's becoming a prison. But when it comes from a veteran war correspondent who was recently taken prisoner in Syria, the analogy is somehow more lucid. The journalist in question is none other than Richard Engel, NBC News's chief foreign correspondent who was kidnapped last year and spent nearly a week in the custody of Assad loyalists in Syria.

Engel just published a dispatch from Israel, undoubtedly pegged to President Obama's first visit to the Middle Eastern country in years. Under the bold headline, "Israel becomes a fortress nation as it walls itself off from the Arab Spring," Engel describes the many ways that Israel is has literally walled itself off from the region. You can't even pass between the country and the Gaza Striip without going through some bizarrely thorough screening process. It's straight out of the movie Gattaca (starring Ethan Hawke and Jude Law). Engel explains:

The tunnel is above ground, fenced in on both sides, and with a wire roof. It runs along the ground like a metal snake. It's about 20 feet wide and stretches for about a mile with a dog-leg turn in the middle. There are cement blocks in the tunnel so you can't drive a car through it. You have to walk, dragging your bags. It feels like you're passing through a wormhole from a beach community into a prison. 

So Israel is a little bit protective. So what? Well, they have every right to be. Israel is a sovereign nation that's concerned, as any nation would be, about its security. It's also smack dab in the middle of chaos these days, as the Arab Spring becomes a recent memory and the messy cleanup becomes even messier. Sure, they're going to take some extra precautions.

But Israel has changed, Engel insists, and he's not the only one that thinks that. For years, scholars and journalists alike have been calling Israel a "garrison state." But a fortress and a garrison are not exactly synonyms. If we're to believe Engel, who's been covering the region for about two decades,  the proposition is different now, somehow more dangerous. Israel's leadership knows it. Everyday Israelis are trying to remain oblivious, even if it takes tossing a few rock-throwing Palestinian children in jail.

FBI Data Reveals America Is Buying Guns More Than Ever Since Newtown

Since the school shooting massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary, America has gone on an unprecedented gun-buying binge, the numbers of which are staggering. Nine of the ten days with the most daily requested FBI background checks in history have occurred since Newtown — including the day of the tragedy itself. And the home of the tragedy has seen gun permits more than double.

Background checks are one of the best ways to gauge gun sales, since federal law mandates gun stores conduct one for each purchase. It's more unclear than ever how many gun purchases get a check, but the number of background checks is far higher now than in previous years. 2011 and 2012 were both significantly above the 1998 - 2010 monthly average; 2013 was higher still.

But here's what it looks like in raw numbers, each month since the FBI started tracking background checks in late 1998.

In the intervening 5,224 days since the FBI started recording background check data, nine of the ten days with the most requests have come since the day after last Thanksgiving.

Days with the highest number of checks since 1998

Fri., Dec. 21, 2012, 177,170 checks Thu., Dec. 20, 2012, 159,604 checks Fri., Nov. 23, 2012, 154,873 checks Sat., Dec. 22, 2012, 153,697 checks Wed., Dec. 19, 2012, 153,672 checks Tue., Dec. 18, 2012, 134,691 checks Fri., Nov. 25, 2011, 129,166 checks Sat., Dec. 15, 2012, 128,823 checks Fri., Dec. 14, 2012, 113,022 checks Fri., Feb. 15, 2013, 112,650 checks

And in the intervening 746 weeks since November 1998, the ten weeks with the most checks have all happened since the Newtown shooting. The highest week of all time was the one immediately following the tragedy; the week of the tragedy itself ranks fifth, even though the massacre occurred on Friday.

Weeks with the highest number of checks since 1998

12/17/2012 – 12/23/2012, 953,613 checks 01/14/2013 – 01/20/2013, 641,501 checks 02/11/2013 – 02/17/2013, 618,361 checks 01/07/2013 – 01/13/2013, 603,882 checks 12/10/2012 – 12/16/2012, 602,003 checks 02/04/2013 – 02/10/2013, 592,542 checks 02/25/2013 – 03/03/2013, 565,699 checks 02/18/2013 – 02/24/2013, 543,259 checks 01/21/2013 – 01/27/2013, 541,822 checks 12/03/2012 – 12/09/2012, 527,095 checks

The Sandy Hook massacre lit a fuse — and even at the site of the tragedy itself sales have spiked. Gun shops in Newtown are seeing sales at a rate at least double normal.

CBS Connecticut talked to the Newtown police.

Newtown in recent years has issued about 130 gun permits annually. Police say the town received 79 permit applications in the three months since the Dec. 14 massacre, well over double the normal pace.

Gun applicants traditionally involved hunters, target shooters and business owners, but now police are seeing a wider variety of applicants, [Robert Berkins, records manager for Newtown police] said. Some said they never thought about getting a gun but heard their right to have one is going to be taken away, he said.

Newtown's spike mirrors the state of Connecticut, which also saw an increase, though at a slower rate than the rest of the country. Below are the last 14 months of checks for the U.S. and Connecticut; note the dip for Connecticut in December.

Meaning that, if anything, a doubling of the number of requests in Newtown could be a slower pace than the rest of the country. Newtown's gun sales are increasing because Newtown is in America. And America is buying guns at a rate that we've never seen before.

Books are Becoming Less and Less Emotional

Discovered: the emotional content of books is declining; men dominate in the post-recession economy; olive oil wards off Alzheimer's; sleep helps us retain 'competing' memories.

The emotional content of books is declining. Remember the end of Middlemarch? ("That things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.") There's a reason you don't read such passages anymore. Using a special algorithm that identifies the emotional content of certain words and sentence structures, a team of British researchers discovered that, throughout the 20th century, books employed less and less emotional language. In the same study, the researchers found that British English became less emotional than American English. Their theory: "In the USA, baby boomers grew up in the greatest period of economic prosperity of the century, whereas the British baby boomers grew up in a post-war recovery period so perhaps 'emotionalism' was a luxury of economic growth." [PLOS ONE]

Men dominate the post-recession economy. We may indeed be headed toward a society in which women hold the most important positions in business. But we're not there yet, says a University of California-San Diego professor who studied the gender balance at each rung of the economic ladder. "Women are well-represented, at times even over-represented, in the low-paying service jobs," her report found, "but men continue to dominate in the highest paid and most highly regarded careers." Noting recent efforts to combat the trend — such as Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg's book, Lean In — the author concluded that the gender disparity in prestigious, high-paying jobs results from structural issues (e.g., cognitive biases) rather than the individual effort of women. [Center for Research on Gender in the Professions]

Olive oil wards off Alzheimer's. We've known for awhile that extra virgin olive oil can help combat the onset of Alzheimer's — but not exactly how it does so. Research performed by a scientist at the University of Lousiana at Monroe, however, "[suggests] that the ... protective agent might be a substance called oleocanthal, which has effects that protect nerve cells from the kind of damage that occurs in [Alzheimer's disease]." The effect, which was first hypothesized when scientists determined that Alzheimer's affects fewer people in Mediterranean countries, had previously been attributed to monounsaturated fats found in olive oil. [ACS Chemical Neuroscience]

Sleep helps us retain 'competing' memories. It can be difficult to remember memories which interfere with each other — things in similar locations, or similar words. Sleep, a group of scientists at the University of Chicago found, helps the brain sort through those memories and help you retain both of them. Using two dozen starlings in a series of experiments, the scientists determined that getting sleep increased their performance while being trained to remember two different songs. "Starlings provide an excellent model for studying memory because of fundamental biological similarities between avian and mammalian brains," the scientists noted. Something to think about when you're staying up late tonight. [Psychological Science]

Conservatives Worry Latinos Aren't Worth Pandering To

If Latinos won't reward Republicans, why should Republicans do anything to help Latinos? While Republicans have been pretty open about pursuing immigration reform as a tactic to fix their electoral problem of not getting non-white votes, there are some skeptics to that strategy. "It is worth remembering that Republicans led the fight for civil rights for black Americans, and voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act in greater proportions than their Democratic counterparts," Breitbart News' Joel Pollak writes. "Yet Republicans barely capture any of the black vote today." Latinos would be similarly ungrateful, he predicts: "Hispanics voted for Obama, and the enactment of immigration reform would be seen as a result of that vote, not the result of Republican cooperation." Ann Coulter and Donald Trump both made this argument at the Conservative Political Action Conference last week. "If amnesty goes through, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win another national election," Coulter said. It was a "suicidal" policy, she said. Why help these immigrants if they're just going to vote for Democrats? 

It sounds awfully cynical. But we can't really blame them. Leading Republicans have been advancing the argument that the party is too white to win the White House for months. "This is the first election where demographics were more important than performance," said Sen. Lindsey Graham right after the election. The Republican National Committee is applying the exact same cynical calculation, it just thinks it'll get different results. In its analysis of what went wrong in 2012, the RNC laid our these cold hard demographic facts:

By 2050, the Hispanic share of the U.S. population could be as high as 29 percent, up from17 percent now. The African American proportion of the population is projected to rise slightly to 14.7 percent, while the Asian share is projected to increase to approximately 9 percent from its current 5.1 percent. Non-Hispanic whites, 63 percent of the current population, will decreaseto half or slightly less than half of the population by 2050.

How to capture that vote? The RNC says:

In essence, Hispanic voters tell us our Party’s position on immigration has become a litmus test, measuring whether we are meeting them with a welcome mat or a closed door.

The RNC thinks it should pass immigration reform not because it's the best thing for the most people, or even because more immigration helps the economy. It simply thinks immigration = votes. 

'CSI' Is Never Going Off the Air

Because why stop now, CBS has renewed its snazzy crime solving show CSI. That means Ted Danson will be employed for another year, which is always a good thing. Not that he'd be hurting if he was put out, considering he makes $200,000 an episode. Two hundred thousand dollars for a week of work! Sure, the hours are long, but what's he really doing? Standing in the desert holding a flashlight or walking around a spaceport or wherever they work? That's not very hard. I mean it's not $200,000 a week hard. Sheesh. Waiters get paid like three bucks an hour plus tips and that is a hard job. Ah well, whatever. It's all relative I guess. Are you excited for season forty-three of CSI??? Yeah, me neither. [Deadline]

First, director Lynne Ramsay drops out of Jane Got a Gun by just not showing up on the first day, and now actor Jude Law has quit. Apparently he left the film because he was only there to work with Ramsay. The new man at the helm, Warrior director Gavin O'Connor, just didn't cut it for Jude, I guess. So now they need to replace a major actor. And the funny thing is, Jude Law was a replacement himself. He was filling in for Michael Fassbender, who had to drop out because of X-Men scheduling. Man, this movie has had some problems! Will it get made? Who knows. In the meantime everyone's stuck in Santa Fe wondering what the hell is going on. Which, I guess there are worse places to be stuck. Could be Michigan! [Deadline]

Christina Applegate is in talks to be the new Beverly D'Angelo in the Vacation reboot. Well, see, Ed Helms is playing a grownup Rusty Griswold and Applegate would be his wife. So she's technically Beverly D'Angelo's daughter-in-law, but she's really just Beverly D'Angelo. So that's fun! I mean, who doesn't like Christina Applegate? She's always game. Plus it'd be a nice consolation prize for her after the complete and terrible collapse of Up All Night. Now we just gotta figure out who's playing Rusty Jr. and Audrey 2. Louis and Harry! Louis and Harry! [The Hollywood Reporter]

Vera Farmiga, the formidable (farmigable?) actress who just debuted on Bates Motel, has been cast opposite Robert Downey Jr. in a dramedy (ugh) called The Judge. The movie is about "a successful attorney who returns to his hometown for his mother's funeral only to discover that his estranged father (Robert Duvall), the town's judge, is the suspect of a murder. The man sets out to discover the truth and along the way reconnects with the family he walked away from years before." Which... where's the comedy there? Doesn't sound very funny. Anyway, Farmiga will play a waitress who never left town and has a past with Downey Jr. It's always a waitress, isn't it? Just waiting around until the guy comes back. Sigh. [The Hollywood Reporter]

The first episode of ABC's plot to kill Louie Anderson, Splash, did surprisingly well in the ratings. It earned a 2.6 in the 18-49 demo, the biggest reality debut since The X Factor. So that is unexpected! I guess people really want to see Louie Anderson die. Who knows what he did to them, but they really have it out for him. Sorry, Louie. It's a weird world. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Here is a video of Game of Thrones cast members singing the theme song. It is far more enjoyable than it has any business being.

Get More: MTV Shows

 

What's the Price of Free in Google Keep?

Google has finally announced its note-taking "Evernote" killer, Google Keep, which looks great and useful from this little video preview, but there is a lingering worry that like other beloved products (ahem: Reader) Google might go ahead and kill this one off someday, too. Asides from their maker, the two services don't have much to do with one another: one is a note-taking service that stores information, while the other is for making it easier to consume media. But with G-Reader's impending death still smarting, RSS fans can't help but think of the time they fell in love with a Google service only for the evil Internet giant to take it away. "You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t rush to embrace Google’s latest, greatest app," writes BetaBeat's Kelly Faircloth. But, it's not just poor timing, Reader's death is a very good reason not sign up for a free Google service: It could very well die one day by virtue of its freeness.

It's kind of a silly fear to have in general: Any beloved service, paid or free, could shut down forever one day, right? But, the death of Reader has suggested the beginning of the end of free things (that don't make money on their own or with advertising). Like Google Drive, Keep has no visible revenue streams. One could imagine Google running ads against Keep notes the same way it does against messages in Gmail. And others have suggested that, with some social feature additions, it might one day work more like Pinterest, which has the not-quite-yet-realized massive potential to make a lucrative connection with the shopping world. But, as of right now, it's just a zero-cost idea storage service. And as we've learned with Reader and Instagram and Facebook and every free software service out there: Free isn't really free. It either finds another uncomfortable way to make money or charges a subscription fee. As of now, Keep does none of that. 

But the adventurous types out there not feeling too suspicious of Google's dissolution of a free thing might want to try Keep, which is only available right now on Android and looks like a great way to store digital notes. Gizmodo has already dubbed it "wonderful." Keep alternative, Everynote, by the way, is also free, but provides a "premium" option for $45 per year. 

Sarah Silverman May Go to Work for Seth MacFarlane

Today in show business news: Sarah Silverman might be in Seth MacFarlane's new movie, the new season of American Horror Story will feature witches, and Nick Jonas is going to be a movie star.

Comedienne and actress (see her in Take This Waltz; she is definitely an actress) Sarah Silverman is in talks to jump aboard Seth MacFarlane's Wild West train A Million Ways to Die. MacFarlane's second film, in which he will actually physically play the lead, is a Western comedy about a guy (MacFarlane) who publicly wusses out and loses his girl (Amanda Seyfried) because of it, and then meets a sexy new stranger woman (Charlize Theron) who teaches him how to be tough. Then Liam Neeson comes to town because Charlize Theron is his girl, so they have to fight each other. Amidst all this feminist theorizing, Sarah Silverman would play a prostitute. A prostitute who hilariously doesn't put out for her husband (Giovanni Ribisi) because she's a Christian and thinks they should wait until marriage. So... Yeah. Look, Sarah Silverman is great and smart and funny and everything, so I'm sure she'll be brilliant in this, but here's hoping a sexy new stranger woman rides into town and teaches Seth MacFarlane how to write things about women sometime soon, yeah? [The Hollywood Reporter]

Television creator/destroyer Ryan Murphy revealed at a PaleyFest event (as far as I can tell, PaleyFest is happening 24 hours a day, 365 days a year) this weekend that the next season of American Horror Story will be called American Horror Story: Coven, meaning we're dealing with witches, bitches. So we'll likely get to see Jessica Lange, Taisa Farmiga, Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Lily Rabe, and others doing wicked black magicks. Plus Evan Peters as Thackery Binx, a handsome boy turned into a mangy feline by the cruel crones. Until a young virgin named Max (also played by Evan Peters) saves the day. Sigh. Let's just watch Hocus Pocus. We don't really need another American Horror Story do we? After that muck of a second season? I don't know. Hocus Pocus is so good. Let's just think about Hocus Pocus for a while. [Vulture]

Huh. Nick Jonas, the youngest Jonas brother and arguably the biggest heartthrob of the group (I mean, Joe has his fans and Kevin has... that wife person, but I think Nick is the most widely beloved), has just been cast as the lead in a feature film. He will star in the indie thriller Careful What You Wish For. In the film he'll play a young buck who "starts having an affair with Lena (Isabel Lucas), the young wife of an investment banker renting the lake house next door for the summer. The husband’s suspicious death reveals a substantial life insurance policy and everyone is a suspect." Uh ohhh! Thrillah chillah with some sexy stuff. I mean, that's what "having an affair" means, right? It's not having an affair if it's just hugging and kissing and saying nice things into each other's eyes. "Having an affair" means boy parts and girl parts commingling while this song plays. So: oOOoOooOoOooo. Baby Jonas is all grown up! (Bonus Jonas is not grown up. He is only 12.) Now he's doing sexy thrillers and everything. Time moves forward, I suppose. Meanwhile, Kevin Jonas is staring sullenly out the window, the new gardener trimming the hedges, and thinking about switching the title of his reality show Married to Jonas to Careful What You Wish For. [Deadline]

Ken Watanabe has joined the cast of the new Godzilla movie, because it's just not a Godzilla movie without at least one Japanese person. (I mean, it used to be that Godzilla movies were all Japanese people, made as responses to the nuclear horrors of WWII, but whatever.) Watanabe joins a seriously strange cast, which also includes Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Elizabeth Olsen, Juliette Binoche (yup), David Strathairn (sure), and Bryan Cranston (why not). Principal photography started on the movie today, so Watanabe has been brought in at the last minute. The film is being directed by Gareth Edwards, who made the interesting indie monster picture Monsters, so there's a chance this could actually be good. I mean, that's an eclectic cast for sure, but they're all talented and likable, so that's something. Plus the script is partly written by Frank Darabont and this cute guy, so that can't hurt. I dunno. I'm oddly looking forward to this. It can't be worse than the one with Matthew Broderick and poor Maria Pitillo, can it? I don't think anything could be worse than that. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Here is a preview of the new season of MTV's oddly charming teen sitcom Awkward., which is returning on April 16. I missed the last half of the second season (was probably too busy crying at old Degrassi episodes or going to therapy) so imagine my surprise at some of these changes! The annoying friend is dating the guy's blond friend! Matty and Awkward are back together! Not Jenna Elfman is still employed! So many crazy things must have happened. Gotta catch up, I guess. Or, I dunno, just start watching the third season because how much could I really have missed? I mean, it's Awkward. We're not talking about Top of the Lake here. (Which premieres tonight, btw!) See you in April, all you yelling teens.

 

Michael Steele Picks a Fight with Reince Priebus — and Basic Arithmetic

Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, appears to be on a self-promotional tour focused on insulting current RNC chair Reince Priebus. Today on MSNBC, he argued that "I won, and he didn't." Which, okay, sure, except Michael Steele had nothing to do with the election he won.

Over the weekend, Priebus offered a vision for how he intended to rebuild the party after a rout in the 2012 elections. His focus was on message and demographics, which led others to suggest that he was misreading the problem. Phyllis Schlafly criticized the candidates, which led Steele to tweet:

Ask Reince. RT @byronyorkSchlafly at CPAC: 'Why is it that the establishment has given us this bunch of losers?'

— Michael Steele (@Steele_Michael) March 16, 2013

Earlier today, Steele continued the attack on MSNBC.

Casting occasional sideways glances at the camera, Steele said:

I won, and he didn't. We laid down a ground game, national fifty state strategy. We didn't have to go through the hoopla of press conferences. We just did the heavy work of rebuilding the party, coming off of massive losses of 2006 and 2008.

To which Priebus could offer a two-word response. Or one word, if you spell "bullshit" without the space.

Michael Steele's reasons are not the reasons why Michael Steele's Republican party won in 2010. He "won" because he had a much more favorable electorate — the sort of demographic shift which even a robust voter turnout operation, which Steele didn't have, couldn't have created.

Looking at the exit polls for 2010 and 2012, the shift is immediately obvious.

The blue lines are turnout percentages in 2010; the red, 2012. If a blue line is taller than the red one, it means more of that demographic turned out in 2010. Or, to put it another way, here's the change in turnout percentage between 2010 and 2012.

The differences: Men, Republicans, whites, older people, conservatives. Think that helps explain the margin of victory?

You might rightly ask if those differences were a function of Steele's wicked awesome turnout tool. Those familiar with campaign "ground games" would recognize that you're not going to do 22 percentage points better with voters over 65 no matter how excellent your field work might be. Doing five points better would be a miracle.

But the argument is actually simpler than that. Here's the ideological breakdown applied to the total voter pool (2010 data, 2012) in each year.

The GOP lost in 2012 because far more liberals and moderates (who voted for Obama) came to the polls. But so did more conservatives! Some 6.2 million more conservatives voted last year than two years prior. In other words: Priebus' Republican party did a better job getting people to the polls.

No one should be surprised that Steele's 2010 election went better than Priebus's did in 2012. (Priebus took the chairmanship in January 2011.) As Michael McDonald indicates in the white paper, "Voter Turnout in the 2010 Midterm Election," midterm elections have seen significantly lower turnout for almost 180 years. And lower turnout these days favors older, whiter voters.

It's understandable that Steele would want to repair his legacy. Before now, he was best known for leaving the party $23 million in debt at the time he left his position. Between that and today's faulty argument, perhaps we've put our finger on the root of the problem: Michael Steele isn't very good at math.