New ThoughtPicks

Take a gander to the right and you'll note we refreshed our favorite products under the ThoughtPicks header.

We'd do this more frequently if Amazon.com made it less of a pain to do so.

A few notes on the picks:

Seinfeld Season 4 - This was my favorite season of the show, which contained my favorite episode, "The Contest". It's the Master of its Domain, you might say.

Lawrence of Arabia - Probably the greatest epic film ever made.

HP Photosmart 8150 Printer - The best all-in-one photo printer I've found. Prints straight from Compact Flash, Memory Stick, Microdrive, Memory Card, Secure Digital, SmartMedia, xD-Picture Card, and PictBridge. Built-in LCD means you can layout and print photos without being connected to a computer. When connected to a computer, printer works just like any other printer, while images can be uploaded and downloaded to cards or camera. Picture quality is excellent, in my estimation.

Fidel: Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant - A much-needed expose of the MSM's infatuation with the fascist-in-fatigues himself, Fidel Castro.

Marvel Masterworks: The Golden Age Captain America Volume 1 - I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough of seeing Adolf Hitler get punched in the face by a burly American wearing the Stars and Stripes.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Quite possibly the greatest work of history ever conceived. Sir Winston Churchill learned to write magisterial prose by reading Gibbon's masterpiece as a young officer. As in so many things, Churchill's reckoning was sound.

'Allo 'Allo Series DVD - Listen carefully---I shall say this only once: "'Allo 'Allo" is the funniest Britcom ever. It manages to make fun of the Germans, the French, and the Brits while simultaneously skewering the obsession with WWII. If "Hogan's Heroes" had been funny, this is what it might have been like.

Mitch Hedberg "Strategic Grill Locations" CD - I'm picky about my stand-up, and it's rare for me to endorse the audio output of any comic. Mitch Hedberg, who recently died, was a worthy successor to the absurdist one-liner school of comedy perfected by Steven Wright. This is his first CD and a good example of his style.

VH-1 Presents The Corrs: Live in Dublin CD - Well, Europeans can't be wrong all the time. The Irish folk-rock band The Corrs is fantastic. And I'm not just saying that because lead singer Andrea Corr is frickin' hot.

"If I Didn't Know Aslan, I Would Be Afraid of Them"

Several years ago, I thought I knew what "God" was, in the conceptual sense. I bought into the Unitarian, New Age, George Lucas brand of religion -- that there was a Higher Force, we just all called it something different and worshiped it in different ways. Why else would there be so many religions, right?

I noted several ubiquitous characteristics in all major religions; concentration on inevitable human error, sacrifice to put right that error, seeking the true will of the Deity, and uncertainty as to what that was. Worship seemed to be marked by constant tension between "right" and "wrong". And if you could find a mechanism that achieved "enlightenment" (a.k.a., freedom from lust, greed, fury, jealousy, pride, etc.) then that was a perk, too.

But the Deity was impersonal, vague, fickle, mutable, tenuous. Adherents were never certain what was actually going on. And "God" was envisioned as either a fuzzy sleeping grandfather or a wrathful taskmaster bent on bloody punishment. Both conceptions came complete with endless lists of tricks and prayers meant to appease. Still, it was never guaranteed that these remedies would work.

I hated Christians; stupid, mindless, hypocritical, Pollyannas, the whole lot of them. Not one had ever impressed me. Not one had ever brought me anything remotely like Truth upon which to chew. The only thing I ever saw them actively engaged in was condemnation and snobbery. I had never studied the Bible but was under the impression, thanks to my university education, that it was a laundry list of "don't's" along with tricks and prayers meant to appease God.

Instead I filled my time reading about Taoism, Buddhism, Native American religions, Hinduism, whatever I could get my hands on. The "survey course" material available in various bookstores made these systems look much more enlightened than any brand of Christianity I had ever encountered. I had my astrological charts drawn up; I cast druidic runes for answers to perplexing questions; I carried crystals around in my pockets; I observed the Cherokee practice of replacing anything I picked up in the outdoors with sunflower seeds; I studied yoga. It didn't all make sense, but there was a certain practicality in it.

Yet something was missing. There was a hole. Morality was largely a subjectivity; a loose and free concept that had no consequence outside one's own conscience. And there was no way to conquer injustice, error, and evil (though I dared not call it that). No remedy; other than tapping into the "power within."

But I wanted to know God, not just about Him. (Yes, even after I minored in Women's Studies, I still understood God in the masculine.) I wasn't getting what I needed. I was adrift, wondering where Truth was, if it existed at all. No one seemed to be able to help me or answer my questions.

Finally someone crossed my path who contemplated and debated like a mystic. A Christian mystic. What? Well, this had to stop. I was determined I must convince this simpleton the error of his ways. He had to be woken up from his stupor into enlightenment.

So in our discussions, I spit out the rhetoric I had been taught. Yet I was constantly rebutted with Scripture, which of course I had never heard. I could wax on critical interpretations of the Bible from feminist, Marxist, and Freudian points of view. But since no firsthand knowledge existed in me from which to draw, I was at an impasse. At this point, I was issued a challenge, "If you want to know what the Bible says, read it." How very Tolstoy.

I'm sorry, what? *Snort* That's preposterous. Please. Read the Bible... Pah! It's beneath me. What would I want with that outdated drivel?

But never one to back down from a challenge, (and being perfectly sure that once I read and decoded the text I could bring this fool down, hair by hair) I popped into the closest Christian bookstore for a little purchase. And the most uncomfortable shopping trip of my life.

I was sure everyone was looking at me, and that some alarm would sound as soon as I walked in the door. Lights would flash and a bullhorn would threaten me to put the book down and back away. Lockdown would be enforced and the police would be called. For I was an imposter, not one of them. To my surprise I purchased the book without incident, being sure to save the receipt. I didn't look through it until later that night.

I don't remember what I read first, but it was something that hacked me off. Something about condemnation and moral law that made me want to throw the book across the room. But I pressed on until I stumbled into Ecclesiastes. Whoa, meaty. I got this. And it struck me like a thunderbolt.

This man, this king, the wisest and wealthiest in history, could not reconcile the Secret of the Ages. The Wind of Whom he spoke could not be contained or explained, determined or understood. But still, the wise king followed Him. His tortures were no different than mine. His questions, longings and modes, no different. Solomon had reached across the chasm of time and mortality and spoken directly to me. And I knew.

I knew this book was the truest thing I'd ever read; that I had been wrong; that what I held in my hand was what I had been seeking all along. I knelt and prayed to the Father for forgiveness, and for my life, so that I might come home. It was the quietest prayer I'd ever prayed, the strangest breath I'd ever breathed, the most silent breaking I'd ever felt.

By the time I really met Jesus (in the way only one of His children can), I was in love with this God Man. He wasn't impersonal, vague, fickle, mutable or tenuous. Nothing of the sort. He lived and breathed and cried; He sang and danced and told jokes; He cared about people; He healed those with no hope; He rebuked the proud; He stood up for justice; He shielded even the smallest and lamest of His lambs; and He died so that I might partake of His life. He finished what I -- what all of humanity -- could not; Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim or Hindu. There was no more work to be done. No more peace to reach for. He had done it. He had brought it to us.

Even now, the notion brings a tearful swelling to my heart. What a man. What a God. I couldn't love anyone else with such desperation. My heart, like Peter's, is sick with the longing to see Him. Someone I've only read about in stories. But Someone that I know lives inside me, helping every breath along, making every beat possible; going with me on every thought journey, every hard path, every joyous endeavor.

But you know what happened next... I latched on to my new church with a fierceness. The quietness gave way to shouting. These people knew what was going on. This was where it was at! I happily surrendered anything in my habits, books, art, television viewing, relationships, and personality that did not conform. I wanted so much to be a part of "God's family" that I didn't ask what my flotsam cost.

And don't misunderstand, there were grave things to be dealt with. I certainly needed to burn certain books on the pyre. But when spiritual leadership drew no line between wicked and normal, I eventually came to see myself and everything God made me as Other. I was a vessel to be purged and flogged. I had no worth, I was merely smiling hands and feet.

My mantras: Be good. Don't question. If you have a question, suppress it. Squash it. Drown it out with praise music. That's wrong. And it will land you in hell. I was reduced to watching nothing but Fox News and reading only my Bible. Those were the only "safe" things. I threw away most of my secular CD's, almost all my movies, cut ties with friends and quit my band.

Then, after 4 years of trying to be perfect, I burned out. I burned out, I sought help within my church and was told I was what I had feared all along -- I was weak. My church duties came first. My mother (who had just had knee replacement and could not get out of bed unassisted) would have to fend for herself.

But that's just a symptom. They did me an immeasurable favor by forcing me to choose.

The problem was that I felt as if everyone else were praying to a different God than I. And I don't mean in a hedonistic sort of way. I mean... the God I had known these last long years was tender and merciful. He showed me things and reproved me, bending me into who He wanted me to be. He was quiet and sweet but with a warrior's strength. I knew firsthand the God I had cried with, sang to, and under Whom I learned. Their fiery mountain God was foreign to me. The wrathful God they prayed to demanded blood, conformity, and blind obedience. In my quest to "belong" I became a stupid, mindless, hypocritical, Pollyanna; most actively engaged in condemnation and snobbery.

*Sigh*

Deprogramming is still in progress. And I'm enjoying it -- for the most part.

What are my biggest complaints? Glad you asked:

The saturation of "Christian culture" that demands we all be squeaky clean, smiling, cardboard cutouts of each other, not varying in size, shape or appearance. The unspoken dogma goes something like this:

"Every word should be quiet and sweet, every action helpful and soothing. Don't disagree. Don't make waves. For heaven's sake, don't raise your voice or laugh too loudly. And ladies! Remember, pearls and skirts on Sunday. We aren't allowed to read, watch, discuss or agree with anything that has not been approved by Billy Graham, Focus on the Family, The 700 Club or another governing body. We are too stupid to possibly know what's good for us. We must surrender to their authority. Don't like it? Then you're a heathen destined for Hell. You might as well cuss, attend a yoga class, read mythology, and hang out with sinners while drinking a glass of wine. SUCCUBUS!"

Various problems:
I am not a cardboard cutout of anyone, thank you. And if you try to shove me in that box again, you're going to lose an appendage, pal. I'm not afraid to go to yoga class. Bikram Yoga is cool (... well, for a humid 108 degrees). Greek mythology has helped me to better understand Christ. "Sinners" can't hurt me -- anymore than I can hurt myself.

So this is my disclaimer (because some blogs are under the impression that I'm trying to teach here, which I'm not): I'm trying NOT to become one of those Christians I hated before I was one. I'm trying to figure out how to lose myself to Christ and regain the self He intended for me before I gummed up the works. In the process, I'm going to be moody, unpleasant, searching, seeking, floored, impressed, dazzled, and disillusioned. I might even cuss.

But one thing I will not be, is a clone of anyone other than the Me Christ intended.

What Did You Do in the War, Mommy?

Does the President even care about the women-in-combat issue?

The San Diego congressman deserves kudos for resisting the military's accelerating political correctness. Since George Bush hasn't shown any real interest in this problem (he passively said in January that "as far as I'm concerned," "no women in combat," which makes it sound as if the matter is out of his hands even though he is the commander-in-chief of the military), and Donald Rumsfeld doesn't appear to care either (his spokesman told the Washington Times that women in forward support companies "is not an issue he has delved into a lot"), Hunter's legislation is critical.

One would think that George Bush might feel alarm, or even a little embarrassment, at the sight of his Army officials this week joining forces with Democratic feminists like Loretta Sanchez (D-Cal.) to oppose Hunter's legislation. His Army's condemnation of it sounded like something Hillary Clinton could have crafted. "The proposed amendment will cause confusion in the ranks and will send the wrong signal to the brave young men and women fighting the global war on terrorism," wrote General Richard A. Cody, the Army vice chief of staff, in "a letter of protest for use by Rep. Ike Skelton, Missouri Democrat," reports the Washington Times.

One of Bush's improbable legacies may end up being a military more feminized than Bill Clinton's. As of this spring, 17,000 female soldiers had been dispatched to Iraq and Afghanistan, many of them serving in de facto combat roles, thanks to his military's fudging of the line between combat and noncombat positions. Could the ban on women in combat be abolished altogether under a Republican president? Yes, and if it does, it will be one more irony of American history showing that momentous cultural transformations often take place under "conservative" presidents who lull their constituents into a sense of complacency.

Fact is, much of the Army's current top brass were products of Clinton's unprecedented politicization of the promotion process back in the 90s. One need not wonder why the Army's getting more feminized on their watch.

So why do Rummy and Dubya stand meekly for it?

Trump to Freedom Tower Architect: "You're Fired!"

Finally, some sanity regarding the WTC site rebuild:

Trump is proposing an 11th-hour scrapping of the plans for the World Trade Center site, specifically the much-maligned Freedom Tower, in favor of what he calls Twin Towers II. His idea is just what it sounds like -- a rebuilding of the original towers, a bit higher for good measure, with enhanced safety features. His timing is terribly late and his motives unclear, but his aim is true. Who would have thought that nearly four years after the attacks of September 11, Donald Trump would represent New York's last chance for a dignified redevelopment of Ground Zero?

Trump says that he wants to build "a taller, stronger, more beautiful version of the Twin Towers." He also says, more memorably, that the Freedom Tower is "the worst pile of crap architecture I've ever seen in my life." Given that Trump is an authority on crap, his assessment carries weight, but more importantly his view of the Freedom Tower is widely shared. Beyond its creator, the German architect Daniel Libeskind, few are in love with the monstrosity that is the Freedom Tower. Trump describes it aptly as a "skeleton," and it does have the appearance of a starved-out, postmodern pastiche of a skyscraper, or a sort of nightmare architectural vision of America conquered by the European Union. For those who point out that the original Twin Towers themselves were hardly an aesthetic ideal, the Freedom Tower reminds us of how much worse things can get.

I'd like to make that big antenna thicker, put a fingernail on it, and point it straight toward Osama bin Laden.

We Report. You Die. Pt III

Crappaquiddick continues.

Hugh Hewitt reflects on his remarkable radio interview with ABC News White House Correspondent Terry Moran:

Terry Moran joined me for a three-part, on-air interview yesterday, the transcript of which is posted here. Moran's view of the world is interesting: including Moran's candor on the subject of hatred for Bush among a few "big fish" White House correspondents, the voting pattern of White House correspondents, the state of John Kerry's political future, the newsworthiness of Kerry's pledge--broken again--to release his SF 180, and the hostility of the media to the military in general and Newsweek's sins in particular.

But more than anything else, listeners and emailers reacted negatively to the arrogance that seeped from almost every answer Moran gave and to the press corps's hostility to the president and to the idea that the president's spokesman could legitimately call upon--not order, but urge--Newsweek to do more to reverse the damage done by their story. Here's one small bit of Moran's view of the world:

I don't think the media should be immune from criticism. I think the elected leader of the United States has his or her hands full,

and plenty of things for the elected leader of the United States to do. I think media criticism is a great thing. I think what you do is a great thing. I do not think it's a great thing for the president's spokesperson to begin instructing the media how to go about its business.

The White House press corps often calls on the president to comment on--and criticize--everything under the sun, from Enron to the Saudis to the Israelis to you name it. But Moran's demand for immunity from White House cajoling, and the undeniable air of superiority Moran and most White House press types project is damning evidence that the elite media have gone from purveyors of news to Guardians of Truth.

Moran really thinks that the press ought not to be criticized by the president or his spokesmen. In making his demand for a special status above that of every American, Moran at least gave honest voice to the elite media's view of itself: above every citizen, above every elected official, above, well, everything.

How far ABC News has fallen since Brit Hume took off for FNC.

Myrna Blyth notes an unfortunate coincidence in Newsweek's story on George Washington's troops this week:

Odd, isn’t it, for Newsweek through this excerpt to look back at our soldiers in America’s past with respect and gratitude, while at the same time being so willing to believe “gotcha” stories that put our soldiers today in the worst possible light.

To be fair, Myrna, I'm sure the Iraq War heroes will get their due respect in Newsweek---sometime around 2235, I expect.

Our good friends at Ankle Biting Pundits illustrate that hostility to America's soldiers is not confined to Spiky Isikoff and the Newsweek crowd:

Appearing in St. Louis on Friday, Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley complained:

"What outrages me as a representative of journalists is that there’s not more outrage about the number, and the brutality, and the cavalier nature of the U.S. military toward the killing of journalists in Iraq.”

In case anyone missed the point, Foley restated her allegation:

"They target and kill journalists…uh, from other countries, particularly Arab countries like Al -, like Arab news services like Al-Jazeera, for example. They actually target them and blow up their studios with impunity…”

Foley's remarks, which were aired Wednesday night on Sinclair Broadcasting's "The Point," drew outrage from the program's host, Mark Hyman.

"These completely irresponsible remarks speak for themselves," Hyman told his viewers. "Foley should immediately deliver evidence that supports her horrible allegations or she should immediately resign as Newspaper Guild president."

The Sinclair host added: "Unfortunately, the damage may have already been done. Her remarks could lead to further bloodshed, including against Americans."

Ahh, those great patriots in the MSM strike yet again. And they wonder why they're so despised that they must watch "All the President's Men" all by their gin-soaked lonesome selves.

Michelle Malkin has more.

Longtime MoltenThinker Pat (of the legendary Kerry Haters and Brainster's blogs) has spot-on analysis as usual:

Well, according to some sources, even as Newsweek was officially disavowing the story, they were telling people around Washington that the story was good. And the lefty bloggers and the rest of the media have spent much of the week recirculating old stories about Korans in the crapper. So you can see why the administration might want Newsweek to be a little more emphatic in its renunciation of the story. But the press is taking this as an "us against them" situation.

Funny how those "competitive pressures" faux "media critics" like Howie Kurtz are always blaming for these scandals don't prevent these cutthroat rivals from banding together against the public they occasionally claim to serve. So much for "corporate media bias." No company I've ever worked for has willingly colluded with its rivals, no matter what. But perhaps those media companies are just so red-meat eating that they'll cover each other's backs in an embarassing scandal as part of a Byzantine plot to seize market share once the heat's off. They're much smarter than we are, you know.

The Hedgehog notes something a bit odd about MSM tolerance of Muslim "sensitivity" in this area.

La Shawn Barber links to a story about a Boston radio station which hasn't forgotten its patriotic roots---it's taken "Newsweek on Air" off its airwaves.

There will be more of this---I think America's finally fed up with the prissy little Bolsheviks who think our enemies in the War on Terror hold seats in the Bush Administration.

The Next Salvos in the Judicial Wars

Here's a glimmer of what's to come.

We Report. You Die. Pt II

Here's a roundup of the past couple of days' worth of punditry on Isiquiddick:

Newsweek retracts the story.

Kurtz kurtzes Newsweek's non-apology:

The report, in the issue dated May 9, said U.S. military investigators had found that American interrogators at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had flushed a copy of the Koran, the sacred Muslim text, down a toilet. A week later, when newspapers in Afghanistan and Pakistan picked up the item, it sparked anti-American demonstrations in the Afghan city of Jalalabad in which four protesters were killed and more than 60 injured. About a dozen more protesters were killed in the following days when the demonstrations spread across Afghanistan and to Pakistan and other countries.

"There had been previous reports about the Koran being defiled, but they always seemed to be rumors or allegations made by sources without evidence," Whitaker said, referring to reporting by British and Russian news agencies and by the Qatar-based satellite network al-Jazeera. The Washington Post, whose parent company owns Newsweek, reported a similar account in March 2003, attributing it to a group of former detainees. "The fact that a knowledgeable source within the U.S. government was telling us the government itself had knowledge of this was newsworthy," Whitaker said in an interview.

He said that a senior Pentagon official, for reasons that "are still a little mysterious to us," had declined to comment after Newsweek correspondent John Barry showed him a draft before the item was published and asked, "Is this accurate or not?" Whitaker added that the magazine would have held off had military spokesmen made such a request. That official "lacked detailed knowledge" of the investigative report, Newsweek now says. Whitaker said Pentagon officials raised no objection to the story for 11 days after it was published, until it was translated by some Arab media outlets and led to the rioting.

The item was principally reported by Michael Isikoff, Newsweek's veteran investigative reporter. "Obviously we all feel horrible about what flowed from this, but it's important to remember there was absolutely no lapse in journalistic standards here," he said. "We relied on sources we had every reason to trust and gave the Pentagon ample opportunity to comment. . . . We're going to continue to investigate what remains a very murky situation."

Well, if it's a good enough explanation for a "media critic", who are we to judge differently?

George Neumayr, not surprisingly, has a different take (and one worthy of the "media critic" moniker):

The mainstream media often denounce conservative criticism of Islam as "inflammatory." Then they make sure it is inflammatory by broadcasting the criticism in tabloid form to the ends of the earth so that Muslims will be properly inflamed. A few years ago, for example, Jerry Falwell's critique of Islam as a violent religion was beamed to the Muslim world by media outlets very deeply concerned about Muslim-Christian concord, and bloody riots followed. Falwell had provoked the riots, the media piously reported even as they happily stoked them.

The oh-so-irenic media seem to delight in inflaming Muslims by letting them know what America has said or done that should inflame them. The media express anger that George Bush has "alienated" the Muslim world while they simultaneously distort what Bush has done in the war on terrorism so as to guarantee that alienation.

This is a very cynical game, and it has caught up with at least one publication now, Newsweek. Its editors, expecting to spend this week castigating the Bush administration for causing discord in the Muslim world by permitting anti-Islamic abuse at its Guantanamo Bay detention facilities, had to admit that their false report about U.S. military interrogators' desecration of the Koran sparked rioting across the Middle East. But like Dan Rather, Newsweek is allowing itself an array of defenses it would never extend to the conservatives it covers.

Newsweek editor Evan Thomas, in his post-mortem on the debacle this week, "How a Fire Broke Out," dusts off a defense Dan Rather tried, which we can call the-subject-whom-we-were-smearing-didn't-correct-us defense. Remember Rather's crack research team assumed that the Bush White House's mute response to its preview of the forged National Guard documents was confirmation of their validity. Evan Thomas, using this new species of journalistic accuracy testing, writes a bit peevishly that Newsweek had "provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a Senior Defense official, asking, 'Is this accurate or not?'" Thomas writes that the official was "silent" on the portion of the item alleging that Guantanamo Bay interrogators had flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet. This is Newsweek's way of saying: hey, don't get mad at us, we showed due diligence.

See, this too can be blamed on the Bush administration. It turns out that the Bush administration does a very sloppy job of editing smear jobs of it that the media generously allow it to examine before publication. The Bush administration could have saved Rather from himself by saying, "Dan, you are going forward with a forgery." But it just callously let him use it. And now that the administration didn't save Newsweek from itself by editing its previewed Periscope item about how their interrogators flush the Koran down toilets at Guantanamo Bay it looks like this callousness has hardened into habit.

Rich Lowry isn't feeling the need to stick up for "Spiky" Isikoff either:

How many stories has Newsweek written about the Bush administration allegedly "skewing intelligence" by relying on raw, insufficiently sourced data? How many times has it lamented that these mistakes have hurt the U.S. abroad? Too many to count.


What would be funny if it weren't so tragic is that some of them were authored by reporters Michael Isikoff and John Barry, the very duo that has itself dealt the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan a blow by stretching poorly sourced information into a false report about the deliberate desecration of the Koran by U.S. interrogators.

Isikoff and Barry wrote in the May 9 edition: "Investigators probing interrogation abuses at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay have confirmed some infractions alleged in internal FBI e-mails that surfaced late last year. Among the previously unreported cases, sources tell Newsweek: interrogators, in an attempt to rattle suspects, flushed a Qur'an down a toilet." They continued that "these findings (are) expected in an upcoming report by the U.S. Southern Command [SouthCom] in Miami." Based on the report, destabilizing and deadly anti-U.S. riots broke out in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The report gave the impression that (1) FBI e-mails from Gitmo mentioned the Koran-flushing incident; (2) the incident had been confirmed; and (3) it was about to appear in a U.S. government report. All of these claims are, according to the Pentagon, false (which is not to say that nothing bad ever happened at Gitmo).

No one is perfect — not even the brilliant Mike Isikoff — but this is a telling error. One government official told Isikoff that he had seen the Koran-desecrating incident in the forthcoming Gitmo report. Newsweek tried to confirm this. But a spokesman for SouthCom refused comment because it is an ongoing investigation. Another Defense official attempted to correct one error unrelated to the Koran desecration, but didn't comment on the rest. With this solid nonconfirmation in hand, Newsweek ran with its explosive single-sourced item.

Once people started dying, Isikoff's original source said he couldn't be sure that he had read about the incident in the SouthCom report. Newsweek editor Mark Whitaker issued a weaselly statement saying that "we regret that we got any part of our story wrong," without detailing what the errors were. Nor did he forthrightly apologize — although Newsweek was part of the press pack demanding that President Bush acknowledge and apologize for his errors during last year's presidential campaign.

And of course they negotiated a sweetheart deal with the Kerry campaign to not let its embeds report until after the election.

Paul Marshall wonders how Newsweek could be so clueless:

Riots broke out throughout Afghanistan, mobs attacked government and aid-organization offices, and 15 people have died so far. Anti-American demonstrations have taken took place from north Africa to Indonesia.

Sheikh Sayed Tantawi, the head of Al-Azhar in Cairo, the major center of Sunni learning, called the purported desecration “a great crime,” while Egypt’s mufti, Sheikh Ali Gomaa, called it “an unforgivable crime” and “aggression” on Islam’s “sacred values.” The Gulf Cooperation Council, a set of American allies, called for the “harshest punishment” so that “the dignity of Muslims” could be preserved. Officials in Gaza and Iran also waded in.

This weekend, Abdul Fatah Fayeq, the senior judicial figure in Afghanistan’s Badakhshan Province, read out a statement from 300 Muslim clerics stating that President Bush should hand the culprits over to an Islamic country for punishment or else “we will launch a jihad against America.”

Meanwhile, in the face of Pentagon denials, Newsweek has begun backtracking. Newsweek seemed to have had doubts about the report from the beginning, since they ran it not as a straight news story but as a squiblet in the “Periscope” section. Now, in the May 23 issue, editor Mark Whitaker admits that their sourcing was suspect and stated “we regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst.” In the same issue, Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas is more forthright, asking “How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong?”

Equally disturbing is the fact that Newsweek reporters seemed to have little idea how explosive such a story would be. While noting that, to Muslims, desecrating the Koran “is especially heinous,” Thomas looks for explanations, including “extremist agitators,” of why protest and rioting spread throughout the world, and maintains that it was at Imram Khan’s press conference that “the spark was apparently lit.” He confesses that after “so many gruesome reports of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, the vehemence of feeling around this case came as something of a surprise.”

What planet do these people live on that they are surprised by something so entirely predictable? Anybody with a little knowledge could have told them it was likely that people would die as a result of the article. Remember Salman Rushdie?

James Dunnigan thinks it will happen again, inevitably:

Newsweek, like most American media, is known to have higher standards than al Qaeda propagandists. But not that high. Like al Qaeda and the Taliban, Newsweek needs appealing headlines to survive. With so much at stake, there’s a tendency to avoid scrutinizing a hot story too closely. In most cases, a bad call causes a little embarrassment, and is quickly forgotten. But in this case you have dead people and putting American troops at risk. Actually, the Koran desecration story had been mentioned twice before in major American media (the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal.) Nothing happened as a result, so maybe the Newsweek editor was confident that nothing bad would happen this time. But playing with fire will eventually lead to tragedy. The Newsweek story was picked up by a Pakistani politician, who made a lot of noise with it, that led to the deaths and unrest in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Taliban base their claim to power on religion. The Taliban is the defender of Islam, and the Newsweek story made Taliban recruiting easier. More guys with guns will now come out and join the groups of Taliban running around and fighting with American troops. It’s called “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.” It’s been a problem in every American war since the development of mass media (just before the American Civil War.) The media usually pleads ignorance to how these things play out. Often, this defense is valid. It’s possible that the Newsweek reporters and editors working on this story were not aware of the effort American interrogators had made to prevent al Qaeda and Taliban suspects from painting Americans as anti-Moslem. Prisoners in Guantanamo were given Korans, chaplains and every opportunity to practice their religion. Newsweek wrote about this. The mythical prudent journalist would wonder why, after all this effort to keep religion out of the interrogation process, someone could get away with desecrating a Koran. But prudent journalism doesn’t keep a newsmagazine in business. Even in wartime, some stories are too good to pass up, or scrutinize too closely. Survival is at stake. It’s business.

It will happen again, although, for the moment, Journalists will now take the pledge to sin no more. But it won’t last. It never does. Shown a big story, the temptation is always there to not look too closely, and just run with it. It’s made worse by the growing number of media outlets, and the growing influence of entrepreneurial web media, especially blogs. Many journalists do try and check out these hot, but suspicious, stories, beyond getting government officials (who are as often as clueless as the people questioning them) to vouch for something. StrategyPage writers are regularly called by journalists, to comment about the veracity of interesting, but suspect, stories. Many such stories are promptly shot down, usually on the basis of obvious (to a historian or someone familiar with how the military operates) reasons. Too often, those calls are not made. Sometimes it’s because of deadline pressures, sometimes because the journalist does not want to see the story get discredited too soon. For a lot of these stories, there’s a big upside, and not much of a downside. The news consumers don’t have much of a collective memory. Journalists know that. Make a mistake, count the cash, make an apology and move on.

Journalists also know that few stories make a lasting impression on a lot of people. How many people remember CNNs 1998 Tailwind story? This one asserted that American troops used nerve gas in Vietnam, to kill American soldiers who had defected to the enemy. CNN retracted the story when thousands of Vietnam veterans, journalists and military historians began to punch holes in it.

Tailwind was a different matter, as it was a major TV news production. That’s just asking for it, if you are wrong. Tailwind probably couldn’t happen today, the Internet allows too many people, knowledgeable people, to compare notes too quickly and instantly discredit something that doesn’t pass the smell test. But the temptation remains, despite all those bloggers and experts lying in wait on the net. The game may have gotten more dangerous for journalists, but it isn’t over, not if you want to remain employed as a journalist.

No, I actually think Newsweek will be hurt by this, and its circulation will take a solid hit. CNN never really recovered from Tailwind, which helped cement the rise of the Fox News Channel. Too many Americans still love America to let them go unpunished in the marketplace, and al Qaeda won't buy enough magazines to make up the loss.

William F. Buckley weighs in:

In the alleged matter of the Koran and the toilet, there was no immediate intervention by military authorities, quite the opposite. For one thing, stories of desecration of the Koran had been circulating for two years, and were apparently met with an appropriate skepticism. The same military that provides swaddling clothes to protect the Koran is not likely simultaneously to engage in a deliberate profanation of the sacred book. So much did this attitude prevail — that allegations of desecration were implausible — that when the Newsweek article appeared, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at first dismissed the suggestion that anti-American rioting in Pakistan and Afghanistan was traceable to reported U.S. practices at Guantanamo. It wasn't until the White House reacted to evidence that riots were being ascribed to the Newsweek article that a direct connection was made, and U.S. mortification set in. Scott McClellan of the White House adopted a shrewd line in his protest. It was that since such a desecration by U.S. military was unthinkable, therefore the reporting of it had to be false!

This then moved the camera’s eye back to Newsweek. For some very tense hours there, management attempted to be informed by, and to abide by, the resources of the English language, which assigns different meanings, sometimes only slightly different, to different words.

Newsweek began by reporting that an “error” had been made. An unnamed U.S. official had reported the desecration to investigative reporter Michael Isikoff. He, in collaboration with the magazine's national security correspondent, deemed the source reliable, and therefore produced the story, which the magazine printed. Subsequent investigation persuaded the editor, Mark Whitaker, that there were insufficient grounds for believing that the desecrations had been done. He therefore disavowed the story, regretting that it had been published.

But that wasn't enough for the critics, who now included dignitaries close to pro-U.S. chiefs of state in Afghanistan and Pakistan. They clamored for more than Newsweek's regret. They wanted a "retraction." Newsweek hesitated here, on the reasonable assumption that just as the magazine was wrong to proceed to publish the story without sufficient foundation, it would be wrong, without sufficient foundation, to take an Orwellian step into "retracting" it. But, understandably, the magazine yielded the point, even though the difference between regretting a story and retracting it is more than merely semantic. Newsweek was not being asked to take the position that because blasphemy is wrong, a report that it had taken place was derivatively wrong. The author of the story, Mr. Isikoff, might have been reminded of the skepticism with which he was met when, seven years ago, he said that the president of the United States was having sex with an intern.

That's the crux of the issue, isn't it?

When faced with strong credible evidence of a Democratic president's adultery with an intern, Isikoff and his magazine caught the vapors. But given the chance to lay gloves on a Republican president, in a time of war, despite the drubbing Dan Rather and his cohorts had taken just months before for going to press with a murkily-sourced story, Isikoff and his editors had no qualms this time.

I wonder why?

Besides the obvious Bush-hatred, Jonah Goldberg wonders about the anti-Americanism of Newsweek:

Goodness knows that when investigators were picking through the rubble at Ground Zero and the Pentagon, the American public joined their hands in hopeful prayer that this heinous crime had been perpetrated by radical factions of Up With People and the Birmingham Alabama Garden Club because none of us want to upset the delicate China dolls of the Arab world by suggesting that jihadists are more likely to murder innocents than outfits like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir or Ducks Unlimited.

Yes, yes, the irony is rich that for all the bleating from the blame-America crowd about how this war or that invasion will ignite the “street” in the Muslim world it ended up being a ten-line item in the “Periscope” section of Newsweek. But that’s life.

Call me crazy but if we’re talking about insults to Islam, I’d have a lot more respect for the “Muslim street” if there were just a few more riots against jihadists for equating beheadings, terrorist attacks, hosannas for the Holocaust, and random slaughter on the streets of Amsterdam with a faithful reading of the Koran.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a realist about some of this stuff. I don’t think the U.S. should go out of its way to offend Islam. Indeed, I do think we should, wherever possible or necessary, show as much respect as we can to ordinary Muslims everywhere. If there’s one lesson we can all take from the Newsweek scandal it’s that we live in a global media market which imperfectly and unevenly filters information across the globe. Small things can be made big by al Jazeera and Newsweek alike. But that doesn’t mean being “sensitive” is more important than winning. As Victor Davis Hanson has written many times, victory buys a lot more respect than condescension.

Which gets me to my real problem with Newsweek. At this point nobody disputes that Newsweek messed up. The only arguments are about the magnitude of their mistake and the motives behind it. I can’t know their motives, but my guess is that Michael Isikoff was more motivated by a reporter’s desire to break a story than by some Left-wing anti-Americanism.

But what on earth was gained by Newsweek’s decision to publish the story — whether it was true or not? Were we unaware that interrogators at Gitmo aren’t playing bean bag with detainees? To me the similarities with the Abu Ghraib are greatest not in terms of the abuse but in terms of the media’s unreflective willingness to undermine the war on terror. We saw the photos from Abu Ghraib on the nightly news and in the newspapers far, far more than we saw video of American leaping to their doom from the top of the Trade Towers. Why? Well, according to the Brahmins of the media, it would be irresponsible to stir American passions with such inflammatory images. But the relentless gray strobe light of images showing Arab men in dog collars and black hoods was necessary to inform the public — even though the abuses were already being investigated by the proper authorities. In other words, American passions are to be feared and tamped down on whenever possible, while there’s nothing too worrisome about inciting Arab and Muslim passions, even when that attitude plays perfectly into the hands of the people we’re fighting.

I just can’t help but think the media’s priorities are backward.

Given the beating Saddam's troops, the Taliban, and al Qaeda took, I'd be a lot more worried about ticking off Americans than "the Muslim street", my friends. Our armed forces have even found ways to kill people without the mess, to suit the weak sisters at Newsweek and their skirt-wetting compadres amidst the Hair Helmet Hamas.

Finally, Ann Coulter's worked her high dudgeon clear up to stratospheric dudgeon over this:

When ace reporter Michael Isikoff had the scoop of the decade, a thoroughly sourced story about the president of the United States having an affair with an intern and then pressuring her to lie about it under oath, Newsweek decided not to run the story. Matt Drudge scooped Newsweek, followed by The Washington Post.

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When Isikoff had a detailed account of Kathleen Willey's nasty sexual encounter with the president in the Oval Office, backed up with eyewitness and documentary evidence, Newsweek decided not to run it. Again, Matt Drudge got the story.

When Isikoff was the first with detailed reporting on Paula Jones' accusations against a sitting president, Isikoff's then-employer The Washington Post -- which owns Newsweek -- decided not to run it. The American Spectator got the story, followed by the Los Angeles Times.

So apparently it's possible for Michael Isikoff to have a story that actually is true, but for his editors not to run it.

Why no pause for reflection when Isikoff had a story about American interrogators at Guantanamo flushing the Quran down the toilet? Why not sit on this story for, say, even half as long as NBC News sat on Lisa Meyers' highly credible account of Bill Clinton raping Juanita Broaddrick?

Newsweek seems to have very different responses to the same reporter's scoops. Who's deciding which of Isikoff's stories to run and which to hold? I note that the ones that Matt Drudge runs have turned out to be more accurate -- and interesting! -- than the ones Newsweek runs. Maybe Newsweek should start running everything past Matt Drudge.

Somehow Newsweek missed the story a few weeks ago about Saudi Arabia arresting 40 Christians for "trying to spread their poisonous religious beliefs." But give the American media a story about American interrogators defacing the Quran, and journalists are so appalled there's no time for fact-checking -- before they dash off to see the latest exhibition of "Piss Christ."

Who knew H.L. Mencken would be reincarnated as a pie-dodging willowy blonde in heels?

Not That The Times Is Biased Or Anything

Yet another example of the media bias the Tinfoil Hat Brigade swears does not exist:

Executives at National Public Radio are increasingly at odds with the Bush appointees who lead the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In one of several points of conflict in recent months, the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which allocates federal funds for public radio and television, is considering a plan to monitor Middle East coverage on NPR news programs for evidence of bias, a corporation spokesman said on Friday.

The horror! Isn't The Times in favor of reinstating The Fairness Doctrine?

The corporation's board has told its staff that it should consider redirecting money away from national newscasts and toward music programs produced by NPR stations.

Couldn't be because the music broadcasts actually make money, could it?

Top officials at NPR and member stations are upset as well about the corporation's decision to appoint two ombudsmen to judge the content of programs for balance. And managers of public radio stations criticized the corporation in a resolution offered at their annual meeting two weeks ago urging it not to interfere in NPR editorial decisions.

If there's no smoke, why is NPR and The Times yelling "Fire!"?

The corporation's chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, has also blocked NPR from broadcasting its programs on a station in Berlin owned by the United States government.

Tomlinson flatly denies this, and has sent a letter to Bill Moyers demanding he retract this claim. Interesting that The Times doesn't identify Moyers as the source, isn't it?

Mr. Tomlinson denied several requests last week to discuss the relationship between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and NPR, but he issued a one-sentence statement saying that he looked forward to "working through any differences that may exist between our institutions." In a column last week in The Washington Times and in an appearance on Tucker Carlson's talk show on PBS, he repeated his belief that public broadcasting's reputation of being left-leaning was a problem.

Why is a "one-sentence statement" a bad thing? Because The Times can't Dowdify it?

Mr. Tomlinson has been waging a campaign to correct what he and other conservatives see as a liberal bias in public television programming. That effort has been criticized by leaders of public television who say it poses a threat to their editorial independence. At the request of two senior Democratic members of Congress, the inspector general at the corporation is examining whether Mr. Tomlinson's decision to monitor only one television program, "Now," with Bill Moyers, and his decision to retain a White House official who helped create guidelines for the two ombudsmen may have violated a law that is supposed to insulate public broadcasting from politics.

How exactly does the times know Tomlinson is a conservative? He is a Bush appointee, but God knows there are plenty of liberals in that pack. They offer no evidence at all. And notice how Tomlinson is labeled a conservative but Bill Moyers isn't labeled a liberal. That's classic media bias in labelling, folks. As for insulating public broadcasting from politics, I'd suggest the reason they're looking at "Now" is because Moyers has been violating that law for decades.

But the law also assigns the corporation the responsibility of ensuring balance and objectivity in programming, a function that Mr. Tomlinson says is of paramount importance for the sustained viability and political support of public broadcasting.

About a quarter of the corporation's $400 million budget goes to radio, with most of the rest to television. NPR recently received a huge bequest from the estate of Joan B. Kroc, the widow of the founder of McDonald's, and it gets only about 1 percent of its overall funds directly from the corporation. But its member stations are far more reliant on the corporation's money, and they use a significant part of that to buy programs produced by NPR and others.

Where does the Corporation get its dough? From taxpayers, of course. Why doesn't The Times mention this tidbit? Because 53 percent of those taxpayers voted for Bush?

Last month, the corporation's board, which is dominated by Republicans named by President Bush, told the staff at a meeting that it should prepare to redirect the relatively modest number of grants available for radio programs away from national news, officials at the corporation and NPR said.

And were those "officials" Democrats, by any chance? Wouldn't it be fair game to so note, if we're going to label the board members "dominating" the body Republicans?

"We heard sentiments from the board that they are interested in support of more music," said Vincent Curran, a senior vice president in charge of the radio division. He said that the board had made no final decisions on funds.

Wonder what his party affiliation is?

Participants in that meeting said there was a brief discussion by board members in which one of them, Gay Hart Gaines, talked about the need to change programming in light of a conversation she had had with a taxi driver about his listening habits. Ms. Gaines, a Republican fund-raiser and the head of the political action committee of Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, did not return a call to her office seeking comment.

Are they ever going to label a Democrat or liberal?

In recent years, the corporation has provided funds for NPR programs like "The Tavis Smiley Show" and "Day to Day." A third NPR program, "News and Notes," recently applied for money. Mr. Tomlinson has told some board members that the corporation would no longer provide funds for "Weekend America," a public affairs program produced by Minnesota Public Radio, people briefed on those discussions said.

Over the objections of senior NPR executives, the corporation decided in April to appoint the two ombudsmen to monitor radio and television content. At a meeting in February, Kevin Klose, NPR's president, was told by Mr. Tomlinson that the corporation would have a liberal ombudsman and a conservative one, participants in the meeting said. They said Mr. Klose told Mr. Tomlinson that this idea showed a fundamental misunderstanding of both journalism and the role of an ombudsman.

Clearly an ombudsman is present to keep conservative bias out of a media company's product, just like Daniel Okrent does for The Times.

NPR has had its own ombudsman for the last five years, and executives there say they are concerned that having two at the agency that provides funds for programs could lead to editorial interference.

Okay, then fire that guy and bring the conservative in. Problem solved.

The resolution from representatives of public radio stations that was presented at the recent meeting in Washington denounced the move, and called on the corporation to "refrain from interfering in constitutionally protected content decisions" and to act as a firewall to insulate public broadcasting from politics. The lack of a quorum prevented a vote on the resolution, but a poll of the more than 80 people there showed unanimous support for it.

Seems like somebody at The Times doesn't know what "quorum" means. I am suitably impressed that they can count to 40 or better---must have taken off their shoes.

Late last year, without notifying board members or NPR, Mr. Tomlinson contacted S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a research group, about conducting a study on whether NPR's Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis, Mr. Lichter said. He added that although there were follow-up conversations as recently as February, officials at the corporation had not moved ahead with the project.

How horrible that he wanted an outside agency to assess the balance of the broadcast.

A spokesman for the corporation, Eben Peck, said it had not decided how it would monitor coverage of the Middle East on NPR.

"We're still assessing and looking at various methodologies that would allow an assessment of NPR's Middle East coverage," Mr. Peck said.

Other officials said Mr. Tomlinson had heard complaints about the coverage from a board member, Cheryl Halpern, a former chairwoman of the Republican Jewish Coalition and leading party fund-raiser whose family has business interests in Israel. The corporation has also heard complaints from Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California.

Finally, a Democrat appears amongst all these nonpartisans!

Besides his role at the corporation, Mr. Tomlinson heads the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises most United States government broadcasts overseas, including those of the Voice of America. He has continued the policy of his predecessors on that board of blocking NPR from putting its programs on a Berlin station that the German government gave to the United States in the early 1990's after reunification. NPR, which has a significant presence overseas, has long sought to enter Berlin, the largest radio market in Western Europe.

Mr. Tomlinson has instead favored programming offered by a European business executive that includes newscasts produced by the Voice of America, which is restricted by law from broadcasting in English in most European countries. German regulators are considering the two options.

In a 2003 letter to Senator Richard G. Lugar, Republican of Indiana and chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Tomlinson suggested that it would further the national interest to use the station to broadcast programs by Voice of America rather than NPR.

At least VOA is occasionally pro-American.

Some NPR officials suggest that Mr. Tomlinson has a conflict of interest as the head of both the Broadcasting Board of Governors and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

"It certainly calls into question where his allegiance lies," said Tim Eby, chairman of NPR and manager of the public radio stations run by Ohio State University in Columbus.

Isn't it clear that his allegiance lies to America? A strange notion to be sure for the NPR crowd.

Mr. Peck, the corporation spokesman, said Mr. Tomlinson "does not think there is a conflict of interest."

In an interview last week, Mr. Eby said NPR executives had been particularly worried because they were not getting full information about what had been happening at the corporation.

"Everybody has been concerned in a lot of ways because there's been a real lack of transparency about what's been going on there," he said.

Well, given that these sissies run to The Times with every sniveling, whining, over-privileged, effete little complaint they can drum up, one can presume the Board's acting in its best interest.

To whom do these clowns owe THEIR allegiance, anyway? Isn't Al Jazeera hiring?

And speaking of transparency, oughtn't The Times come clean about its own bias toward the lefty crowd at PBS and NPR?

Maybe their ombudsman will take this up.

What's Going on in Uzbekistan?

Quite a bit, actually.

Send Them Donkeys to the Glue Factory

They're done:

FOR MANY YEARS DEMOCRATS dominated that game. But when their political agenda lost in the legislature, as it sometimes did, they turned to the courts -- often rightly, as with civil rights, but not always, as with abortion. Beginning in the 1960s, however, that combination of political and judicial "activism" gave rise to the conservative makeover of the Republican Party. Part of the Republican reaction, the libertarian part, stood against the Democrats' big-government agenda as such. But another part, the conservative part, largely accepted the New Deal's democratization of the Constitution, especially as the party started to gain politically. This part focused more narrowly on "activist" courts as impediments to a conservative political agenda.

That often uneasy Republican alliance eventually came to dominate politically, of course, first with Ronald Reagan, then with the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. As it did, Democrats were increasingly unable to achieve their agenda through the political branches, so they came to rely more and more on the courts. And that's why, especially after George W. Bush was elected in 2000 -- facilitated by the Supreme Court, ironically -- the battle for the courts has become so intense. Democrats have nowhere else to go.

Not surprisingly, then, they're fighting to the death. Barely a month after the Court decided Bush v. Gore, for example, 554 liberal professors from 120 law schools condemned the Court in a full-page ad in the New York Times. Many urged Democratic senators not to fill any Supreme Court vacancy, should one occur, until after the 2004 elections. Then, when control of the Senate switched to the Democrats after Jim Jeffords became an Independent in May 2001, the Democratic stall on appellate court nominees began. Of the 11 nominees Bush put forward that month (2 were Democratic holdovers), 8 still hadn't had even hearings, much less votes, by the time the 2002 elections rolled around. When the Democrats lost the Senate in that election, they turned to filibusters. And that's where we've stood ever since.

After the Democrats lose this battle, as they will, the focus will shift to the more civilized battle within the Republican Party and to the question whether the courts will give us the democratic constitution the New Deal Court invented, or the constitution of liberty the Founders set in motion. That will be one to watch.

Betcha al Qaeda Terrorists Sing Like Ethel Merman

Here's an interesting speculation on media "leaks" concerning captured terrorists' talking.

Trust Your Feelings---You Know It Sucks

A differing view on Star Wars: ROTS:

Well, that's a relief. This last of six films in the Star Wars saga, that monument of American myth-making, is finished — and it is good. There was danger that things would turn out differently, and the tale of these characters would have been eclipsed by the tale of their maker: a young man who started out brilliantly, then hesitated, then fumbled, and wound up being an object-lesson himself. Instead, the applause George Lucas receives for Revenge of the Sith will be genuine and sincere. That's got to be gratifying to him, and a relief to us.

I understand the action figures get better dialogue than the actors this time out.

And Air America Weeps...

The grenade tossed at President Bush was live.

I'm telling you once again:

Dubya had better watch his back when it comes to Putin. He had Yuschenko poisoned, and I doubt he'd scruple to have a toady toss a hand grenade at the leader of the free world during his freedom tour of the Soviet satellites.

Gorgeous George and the Case of the Stupid Senators

Here's a great blow-by-blow of Saddamite MP George Galloway's appearance in the Senate Oil-for-Food hearings this week:

For the British journalists present it was a wearily familiar experience. For years they (we) have been trying to trap Galloway; for years, the man known as the MP for “Baghdad Central” has found ways (helped by the libel laws) of slipping away just when he was thought to have been cornered.

Galloway, who has been accused of profiting from illegal commissions paid on as many as 20 million barrels of Iraqi oil, demanded his day in Washington last week after Coleman’s committee published a report showing Galloway’s name repeatedly appearing on contract agreements from the Iraqi oil ministry.

His spokesman indicated that he was coming to Washington to give the committee “both barrels — that’s guns, not oil,” and Galloway himself suggested that he was planning to take the “lickspittle” Republicans on the committee out to the woodshed there to administer a mightily merited thrashing. “You won’t want to miss this,” he promised.

Indeed we didn’t. This was vintage Galloway. Truculent, bombastic, eloquent, and willfully disingenuous. A performance of some power, hampered only by equal measures of self-importance, self-righteousness, and self-pity.

Galloway thinks himself a victim. He likes to make out that he was expelled from the Labor party for his opposition to the war (a claim repeated today, erroneously, by the New York Times and the Washington Post). In fact he was thrown out for supporting and inciting the jihadists in their work of murdering American and, in particular, British troops.

“Gorgeous George” — the nickname refers to the sharpness of his suits and the shine of his self-regard — was in his element on Tuesday, however. Nothing pleases Galloway so much as the opportunity for demagogic posing. Senator Coleman blundered in letting him appear.

Nothing was achieved at Tuesday’s hearing beyond pumping more air into Galloway’s ballooning sense of self-worth. No fresh information concerning his relationship with Saddam’s regime was revealed, no progress made in unraveling the tortuously tangled threads of the Oil-for-Food scandal.

As one friend from Scotland, and thus in the unfortunate position of being a long-time Galloway observer, lamented to me: “The guy is on his way to becoming a global celebrity thanks to the stupidity of his enemies in taking him seriously in the first place.”

Is it that he's so smart, or that our senators are so dumb?

Coleman seems a good sort, but why would you ask somebody like Galloway questions you yourself don't know the answer to?

The Myth of Democrat Civil Rights Support

True colors come shining through:

The black sharecropper's daughter, born in segregated Alabama, has been excoriated as a closet member of the Ku Klux Klan who, at least according to the Senate minority leader, would like nothing better than to return America to "Civil War days." Left-leaning political cartoonists depict her as an Aunt Jemima on steroids, complete with exaggerated physical features typically found only in the racist literature distributed by hate groups. She's been called insensitive to the rights of minorities, the plight of the poor, and the difficulties of the disabled. Her opponents warn that she is "the far right's dream judge" and that "(s)he embodies Clarence Thomas's ideological extremism and Antonin Scalia's abrasiveness and right-wing activism." And her opponents are plentiful, a who's who of Left-wing advocacy groups: Planned Parenthood, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, NAACP, NOW, People for the American Way, National Abortion Federation, Feminist Majority, and the American Association of University Women, just to name a few.

The revisionist history of the 60s now holds that it was the noble Democratic Party which drove the civil rights movement. What is not now acknowledged is it was the bigoted, racist Democratic Party which steadfastly opposed the civil rights movement. When Martin Luther King braved dogs and lynch mobs in the South, he wasn't facing Republicans (do kids today even know that the Republican Party was founded on the abolition of slavery, and that the first Republicans deemed "radical" by Democrats were so labeled for being too solicitous of the rights of black Americans? The Republicans who provided the crucial margin for civil rights legislation, despite serious reservations about the wisdom of LBJ's "Great Society", despite the fact that merely voting "no" would have afforded the greatest opportunity to break the Democrat stranglehold on the South, are the unsung heroes of the effort.

It's nice to see the Democrats show their true colors once more, in their hysterical and bigoted treatment of Janice Brown, Clarence Thomas, Condoleeza Rice, and any other black American who won't stay on the reservation the Democrats have so carefully walled in for them.

Bring on the nuclear option. Perhaps Klansman Senator Byrd will have his last hurrah inveighing against another black American who won't sit down and shut up when told to do so by white Democrats. Perhaps black Americans will return to the Republican fold to some small extent, and thus force the Democrat leadership to do more than take their votes for granted.

Either way, I enjoy seeing the Democrat facade on support for racial and ethnic minorities torn down whenever a hack politico smells fear.

Going To My Happy Place

It is Tuesday. I am not here. I am not mired in the middle of quags of paperwork. I am not scheduled for any meetings with representatives from anywhere.

I am gone. I am at the beach. My favorite beach. On the bay in a sea kayak, paddling out to the sandbars through the sawgrass. The wind is soft, the water perfect. There are few other boats. No wakes to dodge. The waves are lulling. I am floating. Bobbing on the salt water. Porpoises swim past and pelicans dive for their lunch. I am miles away...

Could some one get the blinking phone, please?! I am in the middle of a meeting!! *Dammit!*

Maybe if I close my eyes they'll go away.

We Report. You Die.

For razor-sharp focus on the Newsweak Blogswarm, check out Michelle Malkin and Powerline.

I'm frankly having difficulty working up steam on this one, as:

1. The MSM's anti-American, left-wing bias should be apparent to all after Rathergate, the treatment of the Swifties in the 2004 election, and Easongate.

2. The fact that "Spiky" Isikoff is a fully-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Party has been apparent since he attempted to kill his own scoop on Monicagate before Drudge got ahold of it.

3. The MSM has been running every single moonbat-sourced anti-Bush story it could get its hands on for the past 5 years.

What's news in this? It's not even news that they got caught. It's not even news that people were killed in the process.

Why on Earth do you think our brave soldiers despise the Hair Helmet Hamas?

Sure, I guess we should make a stink about this. It's certainly wrong. It's certainly borderline treason to spread enemy propaganda in wartime.

It's just that I wish more Americans would actually think about the harm these draft-dodging little Trotskyites have done to this country with their tireless campaign of hatred against conservatives.

Why run with such a destructive story with as little locked down as Isikoff had? Because he hates Bush, that's why.

In the MSM, one needs no other reason for running with a story.

Turkish Delight

For you Narnia fans (and you know who you are):

TURKISH DELIGHT
5 Tablespoons corn starch
1/2 cup cold water
1/2 cup hot water
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon rosewater (or lemon juice)
2 cup pistacios (or other nuts, if you like)
a bag of powdered sugar

Mix corn starch with cold water & set aside

Bring hot water, sugar, and OJ to a boil
Add corn starch
Simmer for 15 minutes
STIR OFTEN

Remove from heat, add lemon juice and flavoring (whatever you choose)

Stir in nuts
Pour into buttered pan

When cooled and thickened (be patient!) cut into 1 inch cubes with knife dipped in hot water

Roll in powdered sugar.

HT: Into The Wardrobe

Abu Ghraib and Guernica

Christopher Hitchens demolishes the latest Lefty analogy:

Abu Ghraib was by no means celebrated as an ancestral civic and cultural center before the year 2004. To the Iraqis, it was a name to be mentioned in whispers, if at all, as "the house of the end." It was a Dachau. Numberless people were consigned there and were never heard of again. Its execution shed worked overtime, as did its torturers, and we are still trying to discover how many Iraqis and Kurds died in its precincts. At one point, when it suffered even more than usual from chronic overcrowding, Saddam and his sons decided to execute a proportion of the inmates at random, just to cull the population. The warders then fanned out at night to visit the families of the prisoners, asking how much it would be worth to keep their son or brother or father off the list. The hands of prisoners were cut off, and the proceedings recorded on video for the delight of others. I myself became certain that Saddam had reached his fin de régime, or his Ceauşescu moment, when he celebrated his 100-percent win in the "referendum" of 2003 by releasing all the nonpolitical prisoners (the rapists and thieves and murderers who were his natural constituency) from Abu Ghraib. This sudden flood of ex-cons was a large factor in the horrific looting and mayhem that accompanied the fall of Baghdad.

I visited the jail a few months later, and I can tell you about everything but the stench, which you would have to smell for yourself. Layers of excrement and filth were being shoveled out; cells obviously designed for the vilest treatment of human beings made one recoil. In the huge, dank, cement gallery where the executions took place, a series of hooks and rings hung over a gruesome pit. Efforts were being made to repaint and disinfect the joint, and many of the new inmates were being held in encampments in the yard while this was being done, but I distinctly remember thinking that there was really no salvaging such a place and that it should either be torn down and ploughed over or turned into a museum.

Instead, it became an improvised center for anyone caught in the dragnet of the "insurgency" and was filled up with suspects as well as armed supporters of Baathism and Bin Ladenism. There's no need to restate what everyone now knows about what happened as a consequence. But I am not an apologist if I point out that there are no more hangings, random or systematic. The outrages committed by Pvt. England and her delightful boyfriend were first uncovered by their superiors. And seven of Saddam's amputees—those whose mutilations were filmed and distributed as a warning—have been flown to Houston, Texas—Texas, capital of redneck barbarism!—to be fitted with new prosthetic hands. A film about this latter episode, titled A Show of Hands, has been made by Don North and was, I believe, shown on the Al Hurra network. But I don't think that 1-in-100,000,000 people has seen it; certainly nobody in comparison with the universal dissemination of photographs of recreational sadism. Sr. Botero, who usually works with flab, has done some leaner and meaner paintings in this case. But they resemble less the metaphors of Picasso than the starkly literal efforts of Goya to represent the crumpled and twisted bodies of the second of May. And that is somehow appropriate, since Goya was divided in his own mind between Spanish patriotism and a covert sympathy for the Napoleonic forces, which, even at second hand, were bringing the principles of 1789 to his own benighted state.

The superficially clever thing to say today is that Lynddie England represents all of us, or at any rate all her superiors, and that the liberation of Iraq is thereby discredited. One odd effect of this smug view is to find her and her scummy friends—the actual inflicters of pain and humiliation—somehow innocent, while those senior officers who arrested them and put them on trial are somehow guilty. There is something faintly masochistic and indecent about that conclusion.

There's also something indecent about any comparison of this with the struggle of the Spanish Republic. If Fallujah is "Guernica," then the U.S. Marines are Herman Goering's Condor Legion. If Abu Ghraib is "Guernica," then the U.S. Army is a part of the original "Axis" between Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. I wonder if any sympathizer of this view would accept its apparent corollary: that the executions and tortures inflicted by the Spanish Communists—crimes now denied by nobody, though Picasso excused them at the time—axiomatically discredit the anti-fascist cause? And this distortion of the record is all the more extraordinary, since a much more natural analogy is close at hand. Gen. Franco's assault on the Spanish Republic—an assault that claimed to be, and was, a rebel "insurgency" against the elected government—consisted of an alliance of fascist parties, religious extremists, and Muslim fighters. It was led by the frightened former oligarchy, and its cause was preached from the pulpit, and its foot-soldiers were Moorish levies from North Africa and "volunteers" from Germany and Italy. How shady it is that our modern leftists and peaceniks can detect fascism absolutely everywhere except when it is actually staring them in the face. The next thing, of course, if we complete the historic analogy, would be for them to sign a pact with it. And this, some of them have already done.

Funny how quick the MSM is to parrot any analogy which employs American soldiers in Nazi jackboots. You never hear them compare us to Stalin's Red Army. Wonder why?

Of Customs Officials and Men

Mark Steyn on the Bolton nomination:

Sen. George Voinovich, one of those "maverick Republicans" the press goes goo-goo over, seems to believe, as Cliff May puts it, "that the problem is more American 'unilateralism' than U.N. corruption, immoralit