Author: Loquitur Veritatem

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A Logic Puzzle from the Left

TBogg takes issue with InstaPundit, who characterizes Kerry’s private discussions with the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong in 1971 as secret. First, TBogg quotes InstaPundit:

September 22, 2004

OUCH: “It would be like an American today meeting with the heads of al Qaeda.”

UPDATE: Heck, even Chris Matthews saw this one coming.

ANOTHER UPDATE: But it wasn’t secret — well, it may have been when it happened, but not later.

TBogg next quotes from the WaPo article linked in InstaPundit‘s “Another Update”:

The meeting, however, was not a secret. Kerry, a leading antiwar activist at the time, mentioned it in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of that year. “I have been to Paris,” he testified. “I have talked with both delegations at the peace talks, that is to say the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and Provisional Revolutionary Government,” the latter a South Vietnamese communist group with ties to the Viet Cong.

TBogg then does a silly riff on what an 11-year old InstaPundit might have been asking his mother about the whereabouts of John Kerry in 1971.

But TBogg fails to get the point, which the WaPo article clearly establishes: Kerry’a private discussions with the North Vietnamese were secret at the time he conducted them. He told Congress about the negotiations after the fact. Not only that, but the discussions may have been illegal. According to the same WaPo article, the Kerry campaign has come close to admitting it:

Kerry’s campaign said earlier this year that he met on the trip with Nguyen Thi Binh, then foreign minister of the PRG and a top negotiator at the talks. Kerry acknowledged in that testimony that even going to the peace talks as a private citizen was at the “borderline” of what was permissible under U.S. law, which forbids citizens from negotiating treaties with foreign governments. But his campaign said he never engaged in negotiations or attended any formal sessions of the talks.

No, he just went to Paris to practice his French.

Why Don’t They Do Something Challenging?

“The Hon. Dick Thornburgh and Louis D. Boccardi to Comprise Independent Review Panel Examining CBS News ’60 Minutes’ Wednesday Report.” Are they that hard up for something to do? That job ought to take them a day, including meal breaks and a gala farewell for Dan Rather. They ought to take on a challenging project, like getting the name of Peter Jennings’s hair colorist.

Saving the Electoral College

Gail Heriot of The Right Coast has been posting on the subject “Does the Electoral College Makes Sense?” She is trying to make the case for abolishing the Electoral College. Her latest post is here. I think she has yet to address a very good argument for keeping the Electoral College, which comes from Glenn C. Altschuler, writing at The New York Observer in a review of Why the Electoral College Is Bad for America, by George C. Edwards III:

[T]o avoid the possibility of electing a President who has only a plurality in a crowded field, advocates of direct election provide for a runoff if no candidate gets 40 percent of the vote. The runoff, Mr. Edwards acknowledges, “has some potential to fragment the party system.” He argues, strenuously, that runoffs would be rare and would not destabilize the political system. The provision, however, is fraught with danger. Third-, fourth- and fifth-party candidates — let’s call them Ralph, Ross and Lyndon LaRouche — could enter the first round. Without a winner-take-all in each state, voters might be less likely to think they were wasting their votes on them. These reforms might weaken the already fragile two-party system — which, for all its flaws, has served this country well — and put fringe parties in the driver’s seat, à la Israel. It doesn’t seem worth the risk. Maybe, after all, the Founders were right.

Yep, just maybe.

DeLay, a Headliner in Austin

“Grand jury indicts DeLay lieutenants,” according to the Austin Statesman-American. The Statesman plays up the DeLay angle because (1) it’s a Democrat mouthpiece and (2) it harbors special ill-will toward DeLay, who is the Darth Vader of Texas politics, according to the left.

Go below the headline and you read this:

Following the Republican sweep of the 2002 elections [for State-wide offices], [Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a Democrat], began investigating allegations that Republicans and their business allies used unprecedented amounts of corporate cash to affect the elections.

State law generally prohibits using corporate or labor union money for political purposes except to pay for the administrative expenses of a political action committee.

There are two things going on here: a political vendetta and the suppression of political speech. The latter is just as bad in Texas as it is in D.C., thanks to decades of Democrat control of the Texas legislature.

Outrageous Headline du Jour

We learn this from BBC News:

US in shock over hostage deaths

America has woken up in shock to the news that both the US hostages being held by militants in Iraq have been killed by their captors….

Unfortunately, Americans aren’t shocked. Shock is “the feeling of distress and disbelief that you have when something bad happens accidentally.” Americans, by and large, were expecting the hostages to be beheaded. There was nothing sudden or accidental about the beheadings.

“Outraged” is the right word, BBC. Get a dictionary.

Tit-for-Tat on the Left

Don’t you love the logic of moments like this:

Johnny: Teacher, Sue’s a big liar. She wasn’t sick yesterday, her Mom took her to the mall.

Sue: Teacher, Johnny’s a big liar, too, he wasn’t sick last week, his Dad took him to a ball game.

Sue is trying to justify her lie by pointing out that Johnny also lies. What we know is that both of them probably have lied.

Well, that’s what we get from lefty blogs that are still trying to minimize the import of Rather’s lies about Bush’s National Guard records. Here’s Gene Lyons, quoted at Eschaton:

I saw pundit Andrew Sullivan on CNN clucking over CBS’ mistakes. In 1994, when Sullivan edited The New Republic, it ran a cover story accusing Bill Clinton of corruptly enriching his wife’s law firm by changing Arkansas usury laws as governor. In fact, the deed was done by public referendum under Clinton’s Republican predecessor.

On Dec. 19, 1995, ABC News’ “Nightline” aired a deceptively edited video clip of a Hillary Clinton press conference about Whitewater. It accused her of lying about the very information electronically deleted from her remarks. No consequences followed.

On May 4, 1996, The New York Times published an article with a deceptive Associated Press byline stating that an FBI agent’s trial testimony described a $50,000 windfall to Whitewater from an illegal loan. As the actual AP article stipulated, the agent gave no such testimony. Many accusatory editorials and columns followed, helping Kenneth Starr to prolong his fruitless investigation of Bill Clinton’s finances for years. The Times has never acknowledged its blunder.

Of course, there’s nothing there about all the misleading if not downright lying things that ABC, NYT, and many other media outlets have published about Republicans and conservatives over the years. Desperation, thy name is “Lefty”.

That’s It, Exactly

Why is it that many economists (epitomized by Paul Krugman) seem not to understand the principles of economics? That is, why do they consistently favor government intervention in economic affairs (e.g., heavy handed regulation of the drug industry, government as the single payer in a universal health insurance plan)? Here’s why, according to Arnold Kling, writing at Tech Central Station:

My sense is that even for the best students, mathematical constructs in economics tend to go into short-term memory. The really important lessons of economics can be forgotten, if they are even learned in the first place, in a class where students are graded on their ability to manipulate diagrams as opposed to their ability to apply economic reasoning.

Some economists seem completely lost without their mathematical tool kit. Unable to explain economics in plain English, they stoop to the novice level, or even lower. I put Paul Krugman in this category….

Many economists are considered “good” economists because of their command of mathematics and statistics — not because they truly understand the principles of economics.

Creeping Euthanasia

Guardian Unlimited posts this:

Revealed: full scale of euthanasia in Britain

Fury as number of ‘assisted deaths’ claimed to be 18,000

Jamie Doward, social affairs editor

Sunday September 19, 2004

The Observer

British doctors help nearly 20,000 people a year to die, according to one of the UK’s leading authorities on euthanasia. The claim, the first public attempt by a credible expert to put a figure on ‘assisted dying’ rates, will reignite the emotive debate over the practice.

Dr Hazel Biggs, director of medical law at the University of Kent and author of Euthanasia: Death with Dignity and the Law, calculates that at least 18,000 people a year are helped to die by doctors who are treating them for terminal illnesses.

Biggs, who has submitted evidence to the House of Lords select committee which is examining Lord Joffe’s private member’s bill on Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill, makes the claim in an article submitted to the European Journal for Health Law.

Her figures will place renewed focus on the doctor-patient relationship, which pro-euthanasia campaigners want changed so that medical staff can help conscious, terminally ill patients in pain to shorten their lives.

Biggs’s figures are based on data from countries such as the Netherlands and Australia, which have published research into assisted dying rates, as well as evidence taken from British doctors.

‘If you extrapolate from countries that have published data, you’re looking at quite a large number of patients who may have had their end hastened, not necessarily with their consent,’ she said [emphasis mine: ED]….

An ageing population has meant that an increasing number of doctors are taking private decisions to aid the early demise of terminally ill patients, usually by increasing drug doses.

Deborah Annetts, chief executive of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, said there was an urgent need to clarify regulations governing assisted dying: ‘We need to shine a spotlight on this. The medical profession doesn’t want the public to realise they are making these decisions. It shows the need to make the patient the decision-maker. When it’s left to the doctor, there is always the risk of abuse.‘[emphasis mine: ED]…

Well said. And I wonder how often doctors respond to pressure from family members.

It happens here, too. After all, if it’s okay to abort defenseless babies, it’s okay to kill persons who are too old or ill to defend themselves. Don’t tell me that there’s no such thing as a slippery slope. Look what has happened to the share of the economy controlled by taxation and regulation since the reigns of Theodore Rex and his cousin Franklin.

Where will the descent down the slippery slope of state-condoned murder come to an end? With government screening programs to determine whether a person is “fit” to live? That’s what we’ll have if we don’t get a grip on ourselves and deal with abortion and involuntary euthanasia.

(Thanks to my daughter-in-law for the tip.)

Reassessing the Man from Ohio

Two new books are refurbishing U.S. Grant’s reputation, according to a review by Jonathan Yardley in The Washington Post. The books are Ulysses S. Grant, by Josiah Bunting III, and Ulysses S. Grant: The Unlikely Hero, by Michael Korda. Yardley quotes Bunting on Grant:

He was hugely but modestly self-reliant; he was accustomed to making do with what he was given, without asking for more; he defined himself in action, not talk; he was dutiful, intensely loyal to superiors and friends, brave in the way that Tacitus called Agricola brave: unconsciously so.

And Korda:

Grant had that rare quality among professional soldiers, even at the very beginning of his career, of feeling deeply for the wounded and dead of both sides. It was not weakness — it was that he spared himself nothing. Grant saw what happened in war, swallowed his revulsion, pity and disgust, and went on.

A general for all seasons.

Yardley reminds us that Grant’s heroism extended beyond the battlefield:

The end of Grant’s life was both sad and noble. An investment firm to which he had foolishly committed such fortune as he had was undone by its founder’s dishonesty, and Grant was bankrupt. At about the same time he learned that he had terminal throat cancer. Desperate to assure [his wife] Julia’s financial security after his death, he overcame his qualms and agreed to write his memoirs. He completed them barely hours before his death, his final bequest to the country he had served so nobly: a literary masterpiece, two volumes in which the stamp of his greatness is on every page.

Isn’t Chicago a "Liberal" Stronghold?

Not according to this story at NYTimes.com:

Chicago Moving to ‘Smart’ Surveillance Cameras

By STEPHEN KINZER
Published: September 21, 2004

CHICAGO, Sept. 20 – A highly advanced system of video surveillance that Chicago officials plan to install by 2006 will make people here some of the most closely observed in the world. Mayor Richard M. Daley [a Democrat] says it will also make them much safer….

Police specialists here can already monitor live footage from about 2,000 surveillance cameras around the city, so the addition of 250 cameras under the mayor’s new plan is not a great jump. The way these cameras will be used, however, is an extraordinary technological leap.

Sophisticated new computer programs will immediately alert the police whenever anyone viewed by any of the cameras placed at buildings and other structures considered terrorist targets wanders aimlessly in circles, lingers outside a public building, pulls a car onto the shoulder of a highway, or leaves a package and walks away from it. Images of those people will be highlighted in color at the city’s central monitoring station, allowing dispatchers to send police officers to the scene immediately….

Many cities have installed large numbers of surveillance cameras along streets and near important buildings, but as the number of these cameras has grown, it has become impossible to monitor all of them. The software that will be central to Chicago’s surveillance system is designed to direct specialists to screens that show anything unusual happening….

When the system is in place,…video images will be instantly available to dispatchers at the city’s 911 emergency center, which receives about 18,000 calls each day. Dispatchers will be able to tilt or zoom the cameras, some of which magnify images up to 400 times, in order to watch suspicious people and follow them from one camera’s range to another’s.

A spokesman for the Illinois chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Edwin C. Yohnka, said the new system was “really a huge expansion of the city’s surveillance program.”

“With the aggressive way these types of surveillance equipment are being marketed and implemented,” Mr. Yohnka said, “it really does raise questions about what kind of society do we ultimately want, and how intrusive we want law enforcement officials to be in all of our lives.”…

One community organizer who works in a high-crime neighborhood, Ernest R. Jenkins, chairman of the West Side Association for Community Action, said the 2,000 cameras now in place had reduced crime and were “having an impact, no if’s, and’s or but’s about it.” Nonetheless, Mr. Jenkins said, some people in Chicago believed the city was trying to “infiltrate people’s privacy in the name of terrorist attacks.”

“I just personally think that it’s an invasion of people’s privacy,” Mr. Jenkins said of the new video surveillance project. “A large increase in the utilization of these cameras would oversaturate the market.”

City officials counter that the cameras will monitor only public spaces. Rather than curb the system’s future expansion, they have raised the possibility of placing cameras in commuter and rapid transit cars and on the city’s street-sweeping vehicles.

“We’re not inside your home or your business,” Mayor Daley said. “The city owns the sidewalks. We own the streets and we own the alleys.”

You may have noticed that that the local ACLU outlet seems to be taking it rather calmly. Must be they trust Democrats more than Republicans. Not that they should, they just do.

I’m inclined to give Mayor Daley the benefit of the doubt. Not that I think that his surveillance system will do that much good. It sort of defeats the purpose to publicize it. But as long as it only monitors public places, I’m not going to get all excited about it.

Why Class Warfare Is Bad for Everyone

Let’s say the economy consists of two persons: A, who makes bread, and B, who invents things. A pays B in bread whenever B invents something that A wants.

B’s first invention is the toaster. A likes it a lot, so he and B agree on a price for the toaster: B gets a loaf of bread a week for as long as the toaster works. So far, so good?

Now suppose that B invents TV. A really likes that invention, so he offers to pay B five loaves of bread for every week the TV works. B makes a counter offer of 10 loaves of bread per week. A doesn’t think it’s “fair” to pay that much for TV, so he forces B at gunpoint to accept five loaves a week. (Get the not-so-subtle dig at the coercive power of the state?)

Now B says to himself, “If that’s the way it’s going to be, I’m not going to the trouble of inventing anything else as complex as TV. I’ll stick to simple stuff like toasters.” So B keeps on inventing things, but they’re not things that A would be willing to pay a lot of bread for.

Here’s the quiz: Who’s worse off because the “state” (A’s pistol) intervened on behalf of the laborer (A) who envied the entrepreneur (B) — A or B? Answer: Both are worse off. A doesn’t get to enjoy the things B would have invented if the state hadn’t removed B’s incentive to invent them. And B doesn’t earn as much bread as he could have earned for inventing things that would make A happier.

So, when you think of progressive taxation and other methods of redistributing income, think of A and B and the parable of the loaves.

Austin’s "Humor" Columnist at Work

UPDATED BELOW

The Austin American-Statesman carries the brainwaves of one John Kelso, the paper’s alleged humor columnist. In a recent column, “Hey old man, step away from the camera,” Kelso pokes fun at an incident in which a 71-year old amateur photographer and Austin resident was questioned by police for photographing the city’s tallest building, the Frost Bank Tower. Here’s some of what passes for “humor” in Kelso’s mind:

Something tells me Bill W… wouldn’t have gotten off so easy if he’d been wearing Arab garb and hollering “God is great” out the car window when he took photos of the Frost Bank Tower.

“I just hope Congress doesn’t pass a law making it illegal to own a camera,” the Austin retiree wrote in an e-mail about the situation. But he adds that the Austin cop who questioned him to see if he was a terrorist taking pictures of the Austin skyline was nice about it.

Bill looks at the situation as a sign of our unreasonably edgy times.

“He was very polite, and I think he was kind of embarrassed,” said Bill, 71, an amateur photographer who lives in Northwest Austin. “I didn’t fault him at all ’cause I know they have to respond to any calls that they get along those lines. I guess it’s just an indication of the public mind-set, to see a terrorist behind every shadow.”

[H]e decided to try out his new toy — a set of Meade binoculars equipped with a built-in digital camera.

“That Frost Bank Tower is a real challenge to take a picture of. It dominates the skyline.”…

Bill’s stepson had told him about a great place to shoot a photo of the Austin skyline — on the northbound frontage road of Interstate 35, a block or two south of Riverside Drive. So that’s where Bill headed. He parked in an office building parking lot. Then he got out the binoculars/camera, rolled down the driver’s side window, and started shooting out the window.

Moments later, here came the law. He’d only had time to fire off four or five shots before the cop pulled up and started asking questions.

“What he told me was that somebody had called in and reported somebody was taking pictures of downtown, and he wanted to know if that was what I was doing,” Bill recalled. “And I was very cooperative, and said yes.”

I figure if Bill had been an architect and had had a set of building plans on the front seat, he’d be in an orange jumpsuit.

“He saw that I was a senior citizen, and I didn’t fit the profile of a young, suicidal terrorist or anything like that.” But he says the cop did take down some information on him, including his driver’s license number.

“I’m probably on some database, don’t you think?” Bill asked.

Yes, Bill, you’ll be taking off your shoes at the airport for the rest of your life.

Kevin Buchman, an Austin police spokesman, says there’s no set policy on dealing with people taking photos of such things as the Frost Bank Tower. But he says the cops are glad to get calls from folks when they see suspicious activity.

“We encourage that from the community,” he said. “They’re our eyes and ears.”

Then again, what’s suspicious? I’ll betcha right now tourists from, say, Abilene, are taking snapshots of the Capitol. I wonder if I should turn them in?

Questions I asked myself when I finished reading Kelso’s “humor” column: (1) Funny, right? (2) Shouldn’t citizens ignore stuff like that, what’s suspicious about it? (3) Shouldn’t cops refuse to respond? (4) Shouldn’t cops take notes about stuff they respond to? (5) Isn’t it stupid to be edgy about terrorists?

Answers: (1) Not funny…just lame…too stupid to laugh at…didn’t even crack a smile. (2) Someone who parks on a frontage road a good distance from a building seems furtive, unlike a group of tourists from Abilene who stand in front of a building when they they photograph it. Citizens should “ignore” furtive activity the same way the passengers on United flight 93 “ignored” the hijackers and forced them to fly the plane into the ground. (3) Cops should respond to stuff like that because you never know when it’s the real thing. Who’s to know it’s a self-important 71-year old who thinks that cops are supposed to know that he’s not a terrorist even before they’ve laid eyes on him? (4) And, as a matter of prudence, it’s just as well to let him know that his presence has been noted. (5) Taking note of suspicious activity isn’t being edgy, it’s being prudent, and it doesn’t mean that everyone is walking around all day with a case of nerves. A lot of us can walk, chew gum, tell a joke, and keep our eyes open all at the same time. But maybe all of that’s too hard for Kelso.

Bonus observation: Kelso obviously dislikes profiling; check his lede. But if he dislikes profiling why should he object when the furtive behavior of a 71-year old white man is questioned? Oh, I forgot, in the liberal mindset terrorists aren’t a threat until they’ve actually struck. But you can bet that Kelso would be on the Austin cops’ case in a heartbeat if they had questioned and turned loose a suspicious character who then drove a truck bomb into the lobby of the Frost Bank Tower.

UPDATE
Kelso’s most recent column displays his knee-jerk dislike of Austin’s once-dominant high-tech types:

It must be rutting season for the species Yuppius North Austintatious. Like a mother bear separated from her cubs, these critters become upset by waits in the doughnut drive-through line.

Though rarely known to lock horns, the males, when even slightly inconvenienced, are known to screech like a peacock and stamp their tasseled loafers….

The trouble started when a guy driving a silver sedan got his Dockers in a wad because a guy in front of him in a white Jeep Cherokee was taking too much time ordering his doughnuts. “I could have sworn I heard the guy order, then change his mind, then order something again, then change his mind and then ask for a recommendation,” Christy [a tipster] recalled….

“They’re both out of the car, but they never leave the opening of the car on the driver’s side,” Christy said. “So they’re pointing at each other. But they don’t even take a step towards each other. They’re pretty chicken.”

The squabble ended with the guy in the silver sedan, still in full huff, getting in his car, slamming the door and peeling out — still with no doughnuts. “He’s still yelling while he’s sitting,” Christy said. She figures the whole thing occurred because the two males were members of a subspecies known as Internetus downsizerooni.

“It’s those crazy high-tech people — introverted, full of rage,” she theorized. “They’re angry that their stock options are under water.”

Wasn’t that another uproariously funny column?

I’m not crazy about yuppies myself — but what I don’t like about them is the way they drive. How much they make and how they make it is their business. And I don’t gloat at their misfortune. But then I’m not into class warfare like old John Kelso, who’s sort of a watered-down Michael Moore:

Say goodbye to the nice folks, John. I’m not going to bore them with any more of your carping crap — unless it’s especially outrageous.

I Wish It Were Thus

An article (“How religion divides the Democrats”) at The Boston Globe site, boston.com, includes this statement:

Libertarians and social conservatives are locked in a do-or-die battle for the soul of the Republican Party.

Sadly untrue. Most libertarians, being too pure of mind for the likes of Republicans, have gone off into their own never-never land, crying “peace at any price” and having no influence whatever on anything.

Instead of trying to shape Republicanism from within — which is my long-standing advice to the Libertarian Party — the party goes off on its own and nominates kooks like Michael Badnarik. The Libertarian Party would make a lot more progress toward its goals if it were to align itself with the Republican Party. It wouldn’t get them a half-loaf of bread — more like a slice. But a slice of bread is still better than no bread at all.

Hard-core, card-carrying, upper-case Libertarians won’t do that. Well, it’s their money, let ’em waste it. That’s my neolibertarianism speaking.

Kerry Does It Again

Via AP and Yahoo! News:

Kerry Says He Wouldn’t Have Ousted Saddam

By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer

NEW YORK – Staking out new ground on Iraq, Sen. John Kerry said Monday he would not have overthrown Saddam Hussein had he been in the White House, and he accused President Bush of “stubborn incompetence,” dishonesty and colossal failures of judgment. Bush said Kerry was flip-flopping.

Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said the president had misused that power by rushing to war without the backing of allies, a post-war plan or proper equipment for U.S. troops. “None of which I would have done,” Kerry said….

Flip-flopping is an understatement for what Kerry does. He surrounds an issue and then proceeds to attack it from all sides. You know what happens to a 360-degree firing squad.

The Great Divide Is a Great Thing

The Austin American Statesman, that great proponent of civic morality, has been running an occasional series called “The Great Divide.” It’s about the supposed polarization of American politics and American society. A sample from today’s installment (registration required, not worth the trouble):

In stories published this year, the Statesman has reported that since the late 1970s, Democrats and Republicans have been segregating, as people sift themselves into more politically homogeneous communities.

“We keep all the shrimp away from all the mussels,” Republican strategist Bill Greener says of the nature of American politics. “We keep all the mussels away from the oysters. And we keep all the oysters away from all the lobsters.”

By 2000, about half of the nation’s voters lived in counties where one party or another won the presidential election by 20 percentage points or more. Churches have become among the country’s most politically homogeneous institutions. And Congress has grown more partisan and uncompromising than at any time since World War II.

People are less likely to live and vote among those with different political leanings, and the nation’s politics have grown bitter as a result. “Things get ugly when you have this kind of divergence,” California Institute of Technology political scientist Jonathan Katz says. “Each side thinks the other is wrong.”

Of course “each side thinks the other is wrong,” as the idiot from CalTech so pompously observes. (He probably analyzed a lot of data for a lot of years to figure that out.) It’s always been that way and always will be that way. That’s why the nation’s politics are so “ugly” and “bitter”. Actually they’re no more ugly and bitter than they’ve ever been, we’re just more aware of the ugliness and bitterness because (1) there are more screaming heads on TV and the internet than there used to be and (2) Democrats no longer rule the roost as they used to, which has caused them to scream louder than ever.

All this business with screaming heads just confirms one fact of life: Face-to-face political argument seldom ever changes a person’s mind, it usually hardens it.

So why should people with opposing views live near each other if they’re going to wind up fighting about politics? How many family dinners have been ruined by Uncle Joe called his nephew Fred a pinko, commie, hippie freeloader or a right-wing, fascist, capitalist exploiter of the working classes? Now, if you don’t like your family’s politics you move to where your family ain’t — and to where your can enjoy a peaceful meal with like-minded friends, chuckling over the idiocy of John Kerry or George Bush, as you prefer, without an Uncle Joe to spoil the fun.

Pity Poor Dan Rather

REVISED, RE-TITLED, AND RE-DATED

As The New York Times tells it:

CBS News Concludes It Was Misled on National Guard Memos, Network Officials Say

By JIM RUTENBERG

Published: September 20, 2004

After days of expressing confidence about the documents used in a “60 Minutes” report that raised new questions about President Bush’s National Guard service, CBS News officials have grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night.

The officials, who asked not to be identified, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents’ origins. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from, and people at the network said it was now possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air.

Misled? Misled? A reporter is supposed to cross-check sources. It didn’t happen in this case because CBS News — Dan Rather, in particular — wanted the memos to be real. As the Times story says a few grafs later:

Mr. Rather and others at the network are said to still believe that the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian’s feelings but that the documents’ authenticity was now in grave doubt.

Great reporting Dan. Why don’t you quit pretending to be a reporter and just start editorializing? I forgot, you’ve been doing that for years — without labeling your “news” stories as editorials.

Now, here’s Dan himself (according to Drudge):

EXCLUSIVE // Mon Sep 20 2004 11:58:02 ET

STATEMENT FROM DAN RATHER:

Last week, amid increasing questions about the authenticity of documents used in support of a 60 MINUTES WEDNESDAY story about President Bush’s time in the Texas Air National Guard, CBS News vowed to re-examine the documents in question — and their source — vigorously. And we promised that we would let the American public know what this examination turned up, whatever the outcome.

Now, after extensive additional interviews, I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where -— if I knew then what I know now —- I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question.

But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.

Please know that nothing is more important to us than people’s trust in our ability and our commitment to report fairly and truthfully.

Nice try, Dan. At least you didn’t say that “the sentiment in the memos accurately reflected Mr. Killian’s feelings.” (Perhaps you will, in your memoirs.) But I still ask this: How in the hell could you — and the others at CBS News involved creating the story — have been misled? There’s one plausible answer: All of you wanted the story to be true.

Now tell us your source — your real source, not that poor schnook Bill Burkett. Or would that revelation embarrass your friends in the Democrat Party?

What Are These People Thinking?

Have these people no sense at all, whatsoever? It’s okay to do this in private, but why do it in public? It just encourages the enemy and demoralizes the troops. What am I talking about? This, from Reuters via Yahoo! News:

Republicans Criticize Bush ‘Mistakes’ on Iraq

Sun Sep 19, 1:11 PM ET

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Leading members of President Bush’s Republican Party on Sunday criticized mistakes and “incompetence” in his Iraq policy and called for an urgent ground offensive to retake insurgent sanctuaries….

“The fact is, we’re in deep trouble in Iraq … and I think we’re going to have to look at some recalibration of policy,” Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“We made serious mistakes,” said Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has campaigned at Bush’s side this year after patching up a bitter rivalry….

McCain said Bush had been “perhaps not as straight as maybe we’d like to see.”…

Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also criticized the administration’s handling of Iraq’s reconstruction….

Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, speaking on ABC, accused the administration of delaying an offensive out of concern it would hurt Bush’s bid to win reelection on Nov. 2.

“The only thing I can figure as to why they’re not doing it with a sense of urgency is that they don’t want to do it before the election and they want to make it seem like everything is status quo,” Biden said….

Biden said disappointment with Bush’s policies was bipartisan. “Dick Lugar, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, John McCain — we are all on the same page….This has been incompetence so far,” he said.

There’s useful dissent and there’s stupidity. That kind of talk is stupidity, pure and simple. But what do you expect from the preening denizens of the U.S. Senate? After all, John Kerry and John Edwards are members of the club.

A Cool Find

Thanks to a post by Joe Gandelman, guest-blogging at Dean’s World, I found Viral Videos Channel (no, it doesn’t transmit computer viruses), a compendium of film and video clips on subjects ranging from politics to beauty queens. My favorite, thus far, is a 3:52 film clip of the Hot Club of France, featuring Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli. Great listening.

Here’s a link to the Hot Club’s discography, replete with about three dozen RealAudio tracks. More great listening.

Neolibertarians are Happier

Gene Healy — a traditional libertarian — points to a depression test. I took it and scored 5 (low is good), which means:

You show absolutely no signs of depression. Indeed, you seem like one of the happiest people around. This is most likely a result of a positive attitude, high self-esteem and well-developed coping skills and strategies. Wonderful! Keep your spirits up!

Gene scored well, also, with a 15. But 5 is a lot better than 15. It must be because I’m a neolibertarian.

More Suppression of Dissent

We expect CBS to be a bit touchy about criticism of Dan Rather. Apparently the touchiness is rolling downhill to CBS affiliates, according to this AP story:

Host Says Rather Criticism Got Him Fired

Sat Sep 18, 9:33 PM ET

By PEGGY ANDERSEN, Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE – A radio talk-show host said Saturday he has been fired for criticizing CBS newsman Dan Rather’s handling of challenges to the authenticity of memos about President Bush (news – web sites)’s National Guard service.

“On the talk show that I host, or hosted, I said I felt Rather should either retire or be forced out over this,” said Brian Maloney, whose weekly “The Brian Maloney Show” aired for three years on KIRO-AM Radio, a CBS affiliate here.

Maloney says he made that statement on his Sept. 12 program. He was fired Friday, he said.

“What they have expressed is essentially that my show went in a direction they’re not comfortable with,” Maloney said….

Only in John Ashcroft’s America.

P.S. I posted this immediately after I read the AP story and before I saw InstaPundit‘s almost-identical post.