Category: Media Matters & Reportage

A Black Bigot Speaks

If anything exemplifies Leftists’ condescenscion to blacks it’s this op-ed piece* in the L.A. Times by Erin Aubry Kaplan (right). The op-ed is about former White House staffer (and black Republican) Claude Allen, who recently was charged with theft. The most telling bits:

I don’t support conservatism in its current iteration, and I support black conservatives even less . . . .

Here is a man who, like most black conservatives, has had to do an awful lot of personal and political rationalizing to pay dues . . . .

In so many words, Allen and other black conservatives are too “dumb” to know that conservatism is bad for them. And/or they’re just power-seeking Uncle Toms and Aunt Jemimas who suck up to powerful whites in return for access to power and the perks of high office. Kaplan (like her compatriots on the Left) is unwilling to credit Allen and other black conservatives with having a principled attachment to conservatism.

Kaplan’s own blackness doesn’t excuse her profound bigotry. It merely underscores her status as a “house black” at the Left-wing L.A. Times, where she spouts the party line in the hope of keeping blacks “in line” — that is, voting for Democrats in order to perpetuate the regulatory-welfare state that has done so much, for so long, to undermine black families and stifle the initiative of young blacks.
__________
* Free registration required. Try latimes@fastchevy.com as a username and password as a password.

The Media . . . in the Beginning

AP/Reuters/NY Times News Service/Washington Post New Service/etc., etc.

SOMEWHERE IN SPACE-TIME – A massive explosion rocked the Universe earlier today. Gaseous matter, carried by intense shock waves, promptly began moving outward from the source of the explosion, quickly reaching the speed of light. This unparalleled phenomenon threatens to fill the void with mysterious and probably poisonous pollutants. Experts say that in a matter of days the Universe will be transformed unless the government takes immediate steps to locate those responsible for the explosion and negotiate a peaceful settlement of their grievances. A clamp-down on Big Bang emissions is also being considered.

Misdiagnosing the Problem

The usually clear-thinking Michael Barone goes astray:

Here is a map showing the location of riots protesting the Danish cartoons. And here’s a link to Thomas Barnett’s “nonintegrated gap.” Notice the similarity? Barnett, as faithful readers of this blog will know, argues that the major task before us in the “functioning core” (North America, much of South America, Europe, India, Japan, and East Asia) is to integrate the “nonintegrated gap” (the Muslim world from the Maghreb to Pakistan, Indonesia, as well as the Philippines and part of Andean Latin America) into the free-market, rule-of-law core. The riots occurring largely in the gap (and in Muslim communities in Europe) are just the latest symptoms of the problem.

How has a problem that’s endemic to the cultures of the “nonintegrated gap” become our problem? We don’t force their culture (and the resulting ignorance and poverty) on them, they do it to themselves. For more, read this.

Joel Stein’s "Logic"

For those few of you who haven’t read Joel Stein’s op-ed piece (“Warriors and Wusses“) in the L.A. Times — the one that begins “I don’t support our troops” — here’s the “logic” of the piece:

  • The U.S. has imperialistic ambitions (except when it doesn’t).
  • People who after 9/11 enlisted in the Army had noble motives (defense of the country) — but they really knew that they were signing up to advance the (sometimes) imperialistic ambitions of the U.S.
  • Those soldiers who knew that they were signing up to advance the (sometimes) imperialistic ambitions of the U.S. were “tricked” into signing up for the war in Iraq. (Okay, Stein, which is it?)
  • The war in Iraq is “immoral” (just because Stein asserts that it is).
  • Bush is to blame for the “immoral war” in Iraq (no mention of Congress, which authorized the war and still supports it).
  • But the soldiers who serve in Iraq really are to blame for the “immoral war” there because they refuse to lay down their arms. Why do they refuse? Because (according to Stein) they really enlisted either (a) to advance their country’s imperialistic ambitions or (b) because they were “tricked” into enlisting (by Bush, presumably) and persist in fighting even though (I’m reading between the lines here) they must by now be aware that they were “tricked.” Got that? (Stein never deigns to mention the possibility that the soldiers who serve in Iraq are executing a legal war in accordance with their contractual obligations, which they entered into because they chose to risk their lives in the defense of their country.)
  • Therefore — even though Stein is willing to concede that the U.S. should honor its contractual obligations to those “immoral” soldiers (e.g., health care and pensions) — it should not honor them with a parade because to do so would make traffic worse than it is already.
  • In sum, the price of “immorality” is to be denied a parade, but only because the resulting traffic jam would inconvenience Stein. Wow!

What a piece of work is Stein. Not a logical bone in his head or a patriotic bone in his body. He belongs with these people.

The Media’s Measurable Bias

REVISED, 10:30 AM

The University of California touts “A Measure of Media Bias” (Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 120, No. 4), by Tim Groseclose of UCLA and Jeffrey Milyo of the University of Missouri:

Abstract: We measure media bias by estimating ideological scores for several major media outlets. To compute this, we count the times that a particular media outlet cites various think tanks and policy groups, then compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same groups. Our results show a strong liberal bias: all of the news outlets we examine, except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times, received scores to the left of the average member of Congress. Consistent with claims made by conservative critics, CBS Evening News and the New York Times received scores far to the left of center. The most centrist media outlets were PBS NewsHour, CNN’s Newsnight, and ABC’s Good Morning America; among print outlets, USAToday was closest to the center. All of our findings refer strictly to news content; that is, we exclude editorials, letters, and the like. . . .

Our results show a strong liberal bias. All of the news outlets except Fox News’ Special Report and the Washington Times received a score to the left of the average member of Congress. And a few outlets, including the New York Times and CBS Evening News, were closer to the average Democrat in Congress than the center. These findings refer strictly to the news stories of the outlets. That is, we omitted editorials, book reviews, and letters to the editor from our sample. . . .

To compute our measure, we count the times that a media outlet cites various think tanks and other policy groups. We compare this with the times that members of Congress cite the same think tanks in their speeches on the floor of the House and Senate. By comparing the citation patterns we can construct an ADA score for each media outlet. . . .

Over this period [1995-99] the mean score of the Senate (after including phantom D.C. senators and weighting by state population) varied between 49.28 and 50.87. The mean of these means was 49.94. The similar figure for the House was 50.18. After rounding, we use the midpoint of these numbers, 50.1, as our estimate of the adjusted ADA score of the centrist United States voter. . . .

I would consider an ADA score below 40 to be unbiased, that is, anchored in a correct understanding of how the world works and ought to work. I base that criterion on the ADA scores of legislators who cite think tanks. Consider, from Table I of the Groseclose-Milyo paper, the following average ADA scores for legislators who cite nonsectarian conservative-libertarian think tanks: American Conservative Union 32.0; American Enterprise Institute, 36.6; Americans for Tax Reform, 18.7; Cato Institute 36.3; Citizens Against Government Waste, 36.3; Heritage Foundation, 20.0; Hoover Institution, 36.5; Hudson Institute, 25.3; National Federation of American Businesses, 26.8; National Taxpayers Union, 34.3.

The following table highlights ADA scores for selected legislators and gives the average ADA scores for Democrats and Republicans (in boldface). The average scores indicate that Congress’s polarization is as real as the media’s leftward bias.

TABLE II
Average Adjusted ADA Scores of Legislators

Legislator – Average score
Maxine Waters (D-CA) – 99.6
Ted Kennedy (D-MA) – 88.8
John Kerry (D-MA) – 87.6
average Democrat – 84.3
Tom Daschle (D-SD) – 80.9
Joe Lieberman (D-CT) – 74.2
Constance Morella (R-MD) – 68.2
Ernest Hollings (D-SC) – 63.7
John Breaux (D-LA) – 59.5
Christopher Shays (R-CT) – 54.6
Arlen Specter (R-PA) – 51.3
James Leach (R-IA) – 50.3
Howell Heflin (D-AL) – 49.7
Tom Campbell (R-CA) – 48.6
Sam Nunn (D-GA) – 48.0
Dave McCurdy (D-OK) – 46.9
Olympia Snowe (R-ME) – 43.0
Susan Collins (R-ME) – 39.3
Charlie Stenholm (D-TX) – 36.1
Rick Lazio (R-NY) – 35.8
Tom Ridge (R-PA) – 26.7
Nathan Deal (D-GA) – 21.5
Joe Scarborough (R-FL) – 17.7
average Republican – 16.1
John McCain (R-AZ) – 12.7
Bill Frist (R-TN) – 10.3
Tom Delay (R-TX) – 4.7

Now for the bottom line. Recall that the following scores are based on news content — not editorials, book reviews, or letters the editor — thus the seemingly anomalous results for the Drudge Report and Wall Street Journal.

TABLE IV
Rankings Based on Distance from Center

Rank – Media outlet – Estimated ADA score
1 – Newshour with Jim Lehrer – 55.8
2 – CNN NewsNight with Aaron Brown – 56.0
3 – ABC Good Morning America – 56.1
4 – Drudge Report – 60.4
5 – Fox News’ Special Report with Brit Hume – 39.7
6 – ABC World News Tonight – 61.0
7 – NBC Nightly News – 61.6
8 – USA Today – 63.4
9 – NBC Today Show – 64.0
10 – Washington Times – 35.4
11 – Time Magazine – 65.4
12 – U.S. News and World Report – 65.8
13 – NPR Morning Edition – 66.3
14 – Newsweek – 66.3
15 – CBS Early Show – 66.6
16 – Washington Post – 66.6
17 – LA Times – 70.0
18 – CBS Evening News – 73.7
19 – New York Times – 73.7
20 – Wall Street Journal – 85.1

Only the Washington Times and Fox News, with ADA scores below 40, meet my criterion for objectivity. The rest are biased to the left by varying degrees, but none of them comes close to objectivity. That is not news, of course. As Groseclose and Milyo note,

[s]urvey research has shown that an almost overwhelming fraction of journalists are liberal. For instance, Elaine Povich [1996] reports that only seven percent of all Washington correspondents voted for George H.W. Bush in 1992, compared to 37 percent of the American public. Lichter, Rothman and Lichter, [1986] and Weaver and Wilhoit [1996] report similar findings for earlier elections. More recently, the New York Times reported that only eight percent of Washington correspondents thought George W. Bush would be a better president than John Kerry. This compares to 51 percent of all American voters. David Brooks notes that for every journalist who contributed to George W. Bush’s campaign, another 93 contributed to Kerry’s campaign.

And it shows up in their reportage. So much for “objective journalism.”

Oh, *That* Liberal Media

Suspect Arrested in Wash. Mall Shootings. So says the headline on the AP story, which tells us that

The gunman came out of the Sam Goody music store without a gun and surrendered to the SWAT team. . . .

Suspect, my foot. That’s like saying Mohammed Atta was a suspect in the 9/11 attacks, or that Osama bin Laden is suspected of having ordered the attacks. The headline should read Gunman Arrested in Wash. Mall Shootings.

The press plays nice with known criminals, then uses its headlines and editorials news stories to convict its political opponents (i.e., conservatives) of evil motives, malfeasance, and incompetence. All in a day’s work.

Like a Fish in Water

A.O. Scott of The New York Times wants to prove that the myth of a liberal movie industry is dead. How? By citing two current box-office hits, Just Like Heaven and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and a few other recent films that are putatively conservative or libertarian in outlook. In “Reading Hollywood, from Left to Right” (Sept. 25, 2005), Scott asserts that

the studios themselves, especially after the stunning success of Mel Gibson’s independently financed “The Passion of the Christ,” have tried to strengthen their connection with religious and social conservatives, who represent not only a political constituency but a large and powerful segment of the market.

All this tells me is that Hollywood is interested in making money, which is fair enough. (Unlike Hollywood hypocrites who make big money with movies that criticize making big money, I don’t begrudge the money Hollywood makes.) But Scott’s assertion says nothing about the determinedly Leftish politics of most Hollywood stars and big-wigs.

Scott’s evidence for the demise of Leftism in Hollywood is the supposed pro-life stance of Just Like Heaven, which apparently has a slapstick finale; an appeal to open-mindedness about religion, which is evidently the message to be taken from The Exorcism. . . ; Mel Gibson’s surprisingly successful The Passion of the Christ, which I recall being anathema to Hollywood before it became a hit; and a rather dumb action-hero animation known as The Incredibles, which I found to be an inferior version of Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman comic books. And that’s about it, out of the hundreds of movies churned out by Hollywood and the so-called independent studios in the past few years.

Scott’s problem is that, like most liberals, he can’t see the liberalism that surrounds him because it’s his natural milieu. He’s like a fish in water who has been shocked by a small infusion of additional oxygen. It’s not enough to affect his environment significantly, but it causes a brief spasm of alarm.

The Problem with the News Biz

Here it is, in the words of a so-called journalist:

“That’s my job. I’m a newsman. That’s what I try to do, is make news. And you try to avoid news. That’s your job.”

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, to former president Bill Clinton. Clinton said Blitzer tried to get him to make news by saying the Iraq war was a mistake.

Well, at least he admits that he wants to “make news” rather (pun) than simply report news. Perhaps now he can begin the twelve-step program for recovering scandalmongers:

Step 1 — Admit to your liberal bias.

Steps 2-11 — Repeat Step 1 until you’ve convinced yourself that you really have a liberal bias.

Step 12 — Get an honest job.

Nicholas Kristof Is an Idiot

Nicholas D. Kristof, a Lefty columnist for The New York Times, today succumbs to budget-deficit hysteria. Here’s a sample:

[T]hree-fourths of our new debt is now being purchased by foreigners, with China the biggest buyer of all. That gives China leverage over us, and it undermines our national security.

Let’s see here: We have China’s money; the Chinese would like to get it back from us, with interest. Who has leverage over whom?

I wonder what Kristof would have to say about government debt if Clinton were still in the White House and the debt had been incurred to buy out America’s health-care system and give flying lessons to members of al Qaeda?

Kristof, like most debt-hysterics (or pseudo-hysterics) misunderstands the true significance of the central government’s debt. I summarized it here:

The debt really is a measure of the extent to which spending by the U.S. government has exceeded taxes collected by the U.S. government since 1789. In other words, the damage has already been done: first, by government spending, which on balance diverts resources from productive uses; second, by the inflationary effects of government spending, which deficits merely aggravate.

…and explained it more fully here:

Government spending, however it is financed, is a way of commandeering resources that otherwise would flow to private consumption and investment (i.e., capital formation). To the extent that government activities fail to pay their own way by yielding goods and services of equivalent value — and they don’t (a) — the resources used by government are simply wasted — thrown down a rat hole (b).

Government nevertheless goes through the charade of taxing and borrowing to finance its activities, instead of simply sending goon squads to impress those resources into government service. Thus the total amount of money in circulation remains more or less unaffected by government spending, while the total output of real goods and services (including capital assets) is reduced as government commandeers resources. The result, of course, is inflationary (c).

In particular, the injection of government bonds into financial markets, with the help of the Federal Reserve’s authority to create money, means that the total nominal value of financial assets is at least the same as it would have been in the absence of government borrowing, and probably higher (d). At the same time, government spending reduces the output of real assets, thus diluting the value of financial assets. Financial assets are fungible, so the holder of a government bond has the same claim on real assets as the holder of, say, a share of Berkshire Hathaway stock.

Think of it this way: Every time the government issues a new bond because it’s spending more money, your real share of stock in America’s economy becomes worth less, even if the nominal price of the stock rises. Depressing, isn’t it?
__________
a. An official estimate of the annual benefits flowing from federal regulations places the value of those benefits at less than $200 billion. But the annual cost of those regulations — including the hidden costs not included in the government estimate — is approaching or has exceeded $1 trillion, as discussed here, here, here, and here. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg that rammed into the American economy about 100 years ago, as I [have shown] in Part V [and the addendum to Part V] of “Practical Libertarianism for Americans.”

b. I exclude most expenditures on defense and justice from that indictment.

c. That is, government spending causes prices to be higher than they otherwise would be because total spending remains about the same as it would have been, whereas real output is reduced. Whether or not those nominal prices rise (the usual meaning of inflation) depends on the rate at which government spending grows relative to the growth of output of real consumer goods, services, and assets.

d. The total nominal value of financial assets is approximately unaffected by government borrowing, if you accept the crowding-out theory. The total nominal value of financial assets rises with government borrowing if you don’t, if you don’t accept the crowding-out theory. I don’t.

In the "So What?" Department

Slate‘s Timothy Noah thinks he’s onto something:

Here is what [Scott] Norvell[, London bureau chief for Fox News,] fessed up to in the May 20 Wall Street Journal Europe:

Even we at Fox News manage to get some lefties on the air occasionally, and often let them finish their sentences before we club them to death and feed the scraps to Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly. And those who hate us can take solace in the fact that they aren’t subsidizing Bill’s bombast; we payers of the BBC license fee don’t enjoy that peace of mind.

Fox News is, after all, a private channel and our presenters are quite open about where they stand on particular stories. That’s our appeal. People watch us because they know what they are getting. The Beeb’s institutionalized leftism would be easier to tolerate if the corporation was a little more honest about it.

Norvell never says the word “conservative” in describing “where [Fox’s anchorpeople] stand on particular stories,” or what Fox’s viewers “know … they are getting.” But in context, Norvell clearly is using the example of Fox News to argue that political bias is acceptable when it isn’t subsidized by the public (as his op-ed’s target, the leftish BBC, is), and when the bias is acknowledged. Norvell’s little joke about clubbing lefties to death should satisfy even the most literal-minded that the bias Norvell describes is a conservative one.

That’s news?

If ABC, CBS, CNN, NBC (in its various incarnations), PBS, and most of the “newspapers” and “news magazines” of America fessed up to liberal bias, that would be news.

I Dare Call It Treason

The New York Times today reports on a CIA cover operation. Winds of Change summarizes:

Today’s New York Times provides intimate detail on the charter flights used by the CIA to ferry prisoners across the globe. The names of the charter companies are disclosed. The types of aircraft flown are revealed. The points of departure and destinations of these flights are stated. There is even a picture of one of the charter craft, with the identification number of the aircraft in full display.

All of this is extremely valuable to al Qaeda members who may have an interest in rescuing, or if deemed appropriate, conducting a suicide attack against suspected extraction flights. A successful attack resulting from this story can endanger the lives of CIA, security and civilian personnel involved in these missions, as well as deprive the intelligence and military communities of valuable information that can be gained from interrogations….

What exactly is the purpose of the New York Times in reporting on sensitive issues such as these? Do they even care about the consequences of making such information pubic? It appears the editors of the New York Times feel that breaking a titillating story about sensitive CIA operations is much more important than national security and the lives of those fighting in the war. All to our detriment.

If the Times‘s reporting isn’t “aid and comfort” to the enemy, I don’t know what is. As I wrote here:

The preservation of life and liberty necessarily requires a willingness to compromise on what — in the comfortable world of abstraction — seem to be inviolable principles. For example:

  • The First Amendment doesn’t grant anyone the right to go on the air to compromise a military operation by American forces…

The NYT article about a CIA operation being conducted in support of an authorized war amounts to the same thing. The right to publish cannot be absolute and should not exempt anyone from a charge of treason.

The End of MSM as We Know It?

UPDATED BELOW, 05/15/05

Three blogging powerhouses — ArmedLiberal.com, RogerLSimon.com and LittleGreenFootballs.com — are spearheading the formation of a consortium of news bloggers, to be known as Pajamas Media (announcement here, followup here, signup form here).

Here’s the deal: For a long time, the MSM got away with editorializing disguised as reporting. The rise of conservative talk radio and FoxNews began to expose the MSM for what it is, namely, a propaganda machine for the brand of Leftism that is pretty much responsible for America’s economic, moral, and military decline. The rise of blogging has exposed the MSM’s biases in detail, and in something close to real time.

Bloggers aren’t unbiased, of course, and I don’t expect PJ Media to be unbiased. What I do expect is that PJ Media will serve as a viable blogging alternative to the MSM because it will be the equivalent of a news network, major daily paper, or weekly news magazine — one-stop shopping for news and views on a variety of subjects — with a news cycle of seconds or minutes instead of hours, days, or weeks.

Will PJ Media (and its inevitable imitators) hasten the decline of the MSM or force the MSM to clean up its act? Decline seems more likely than reform: Blogging news services will suck advertising dollars away from the MSM, which the MSM will try to recoup by playing to its strength, which is a Left-oriented sensationalism, for which there will always be a market. Then, too, the MSM may simply begin to use the blogosphere in the same way as PJ Media and its ilk, further hastening the decline of print and broadcast media and setting up a classic Left-Right/Libertarian confrontation in cyberspace.

Now there’s a digital divide for you.

UPDATE: Newsweek sort of fesses up to a colossal error:

May 23 issue – By the end of the week, the rioting had spread from Afghanistan throughout much of the Muslim world, from Gaza to Indonesia. Mobs shouting “Protect our Holy Book!” burned down government buildings and ransacked the offices of relief organizations in several Afghan provinces. The violence cost at least 15 lives, injured scores of people and sent a shudder through Washington, where officials worried about the stability of moderate regimes in the region.

The spark was apparently lit at a press conference held on Friday, May 6, by Imran Khan, a Pakistani cricket legend and strident critic of Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. Brandishing a copy of that week’s NEWSWEEK (dated May 9), Khan read a report that U.S. interrogators at Guantánamo prison had placed the Qur’an on toilet seats and even flushed one. “This is what the U.S. is doing,” exclaimed Khan, “desecrating the Qur’an.” His remarks, as well as the outraged comments of Muslim clerics and Pakistani government officials, were picked up on local radio and played throughout neighboring Afghanistan. Radical Islamic foes of the U.S.-friendly regime of Hamid Karzai quickly exploited local discontent with a poor economy and the continued presence of U.S. forces, and riots began breaking out last week.

Late last week Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita told NEWSWEEK that its original story was wrong. The brief PERISCOPE item (“SouthCom Showdown”) had reported on the expected results of an upcoming U.S. Southern Command investigation into the abuse of prisoners at Gitmo. According to NEWSWEEK, SouthCom investigators found that Gitmo interrogators had flushed a Qur’an down a toilet in an attempt to rattle detainees. While various released detainees have made allegations about Qur’an desecration, the Pentagon has, according to DiRita, found no credible evidence to support them.

How did NEWSWEEK get its facts wrong? And how did the story feed into serious international unrest? While continuing to report events on the ground, NEWSWEEK interviewed government officials, diplomats and its own staffers, and reconstructed this narrative of events:

At NEWSWEEK, veteran investigative reporter Michael Isikoff’s interest had been sparked by the release late last year of some internal FBI e-mails that painted a stark picture of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo. Isikoff knew that military investigators at Southern Command (which runs the Guantánamo prison) were looking into the allegations. So he called a longtime reliable source, a senior U.S. government official who was knowledgeable about the matter. The source told Isikoff that the report would include new details that were not in the FBI e-mails, including mention of flushing the Qur’an down a toilet. A SouthCom spokesman contacted by Isikoff declined to comment on an ongoing investigation, but NEWSWEEK National Security Correspondent John Barry, realizing the sensitivity of the story, provided a draft of the NEWSWEEK PERISCOPE item to a senior Defense official, asking, “Is this accurate or not?” The official challenged one aspect of the story: the suggestion that Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, sent to Gitmo by the Pentagon in 2001 to oversee prisoner interrogation, might be held accountable for the abuses. Not true, said the official (the PERISCOPE draft was corrected to reflect that). But he was silent about the rest of the item. The official had not meant to mislead, but lacked detailed knowledge of the SouthCom report.

Given all that has been reported about the treatment of detainees—including allegations that a female interrogator pretended to wipe her own menstrual blood on one prisoner—the reports of Qur’an desecration seemed shocking but not incredible. But to Muslims, defacing the Holy Book is especially heinous. “We can understand torturing prisoners, no matter how repulsive,” says computer teacher Muhammad Archad, interviewed last week by NEWSWEEK in Peshawar, Pakistan, where one of last week’s protests took place. “But insulting the Qur’an is like deliberately torturing all Muslims. This we cannot tolerate.”

NEWSWEEK was not the first to report allegations of desecrating the Qur’an. As early as last spring and summer, similar reports from released detainees started surfacing in British and Russian news reports, and in the Arab news agency Al-Jazeera; claims by other released detainees have been covered in other media since then. But the NEWSWEEK report arrived at a particularly delicate moment in Afghan politics. Opponents of the Karzai government, including remnants of the deposed Taliban regime, have been looking for ways to exploit public discontent. The Afghan economy is weak, and the government (pressed by the United States) has alienated farmers by trying to eradicate their poppy crops, used to make heroin in the global drug trade. Afghan men are sometimes rounded up during ongoing U.S. military operations, and innocents can sit in jail for months. When they are released, many complain of abuse. President Karzai is still largely respected, but many Afghans regard him as too dependent on and too obsequious to the United States. With Karzai scheduled to come to Washington next week, this is a good time for his enemies to make trouble.

That does not quite explain, however, why the protest and rioting over Qur’an desecration spread throughout the Islamic region. 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. Extremist agitators are at least partly to blame, but obviously the reports of Qur’anic desecration touch a particular nerve in the Islamic world. U.S. officials, including President George W. Bush, are uneasily watching, and last week Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly remarked that any desecration of the Qur’an would not be “tolerated” by the United States. (As a legal matter, U.S. citizens are free to deface the Qur’an as an exercise of free speech, just as they are free to burn the American flag or tear up a Bible; but government employees can be punished for violating government rules.)

After the rioting began last week, the Pentagon attempted to determine the veracity of the NEWSWEEK story. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Richard Myers told reporters that so far no allegations had been proven. He did appear to cryptically refer to two mentions found in the logs of prison guards in Gitmo: a report that a detainee had used pages of the Qur’an to stop up a crude toilet as a form of protest, and a complaint from a detainee that a prison guard had knocked down a Qur’an hanging in a bag in his cell.

On Friday night, Pentagon spokesman DiRita called NEWSWEEK to complain about the original PERISCOPE item. He said, “We pursue all credible allegations” of prisoner abuse, but insisted that the investigators had found none involving Qur’an desecration. DiRita sent NEWSWEEK a copy of rules issued to the guards (after the incidents mentioned by General Myers) to guarantee respect for Islamic worship. On Saturday, Isikoff spoke to his original source, the senior government official, who said that he clearly recalled reading investigative reports about mishandling the Qur’an, including a toilet incident. But the official, still speaking anonymously, could no longer be sure that these concerns had surfaced in the SouthCom report. Told of what the NEWSWEEK source said, DiRita exploded, “People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said. How could he be credible now?”

In the meantime, as part of his ongoing reporting on the detainee-abuse story, Isikoff had contacted a New York defense lawyer, Marc Falkoff, who is representing 13 Yemeni detainees at Guantánamo. According to Falkoff’s declassified notes, a mass-suicide attempt—when 23 detainees tried to hang or strangle themselves in August 2003—was triggered by a guard’s dropping a Qur’an and stomping on it. One of Falkoff’s clients told him, “Another detainee tried to kill himself after the guard took his Qur’an and threw it in the toilet.” A U.S. military spokesman, Army Col. Brad Blackner, dismissed the claims as unbelievable. “If you read the Al Qaeda training manual, they are trained to make allegations against the infidels,” he said.

More allegations, credible or not, are sure to come. Bader Zaman Bader, a 35-year-old former editor of a fundamentalist English-language magazine in Peshawar, was released from more than two years’ lockup in Guantánamo seven months ago. Arrested by Pakistani security as a suspected Qaeda militant in November 2001, he was handed over to the U.S. military and held at a tent at the Kandahar airfield. One day, Bader claims, as the inmates’ latrines were being emptied, a U.S. soldier threw in a Qur’an. After the inmates screamed and protested, a U.S. commander apologized. Bader says he still has nightmares about the incident.

Such stories may spark more trouble. Though decrepit and still run largely by warlords, Afghanistan was not considered by U.S. officials to be a candidate for serious anti-American riots. But Westerners, including those at NEWSWEEK, may underestimate how severely Muslims resent the American presence, especially when it in any way interferes with Islamic religious faith.

So much for all those layers of editing and fact-checking. So much for candid acceptance of blame. Newsweek doesn’t have a motto (that I know of) but if it did, it would be this: “Sensationalism for the sake of sensationalism, and the consequences be damned.” Or this: “Pass the buck.”

Anything to Smear an Anti-Tax Group

AP headline:

Anti-Tax Group Hires Paroled Sex Offender

Followed by this:

A man who spent 18 years in jail after being convicted of raping eight children at a day care where he worked has been hired by an anti-tax group.

Gerald Amirault was convicted in 1986 of molesting and raping 3- and 4-year-old children at the Fells Acres day care center he and his family ran in Malden, a city north of Boston. Amirault, who maintains his innocence, was released on parole last year.

Citizens for Limited Taxation has hired Amirault as a researcher at its Marblehead office. Barbara Anderson, the anti-tax group’s executive director, said she believes Amirault was unjustly convicted and will be an enthusiastic employee.

But here’s the real story, from WSJ.com:

Friday, April 30, 2004 12:01 a.m. EDT

At 10 o’clock this morning, Gerald Amirault will walk out of his Massachusetts jail, a free man.

It is a joyous day for this prisoner, behind bars for 18 years after his 1986 conviction on charges of child sex abuse based on fantastical testimony dragged from pre-schoolers. Gerald’s mother Violet and his sister Cheryl served eight years before their convictions were overturned in 1995.

It is also a happy day for The Wall Street Journal. Readers of this page will be familiar with Dorothy Rabinowitz’s accounts of judicial abuse of the Amirault family and others falsely convicted of child sex abuse during a wave of irrational cases that swept the courts in the 1980s….

One of the reasons behind the district attorney’s decision last week not to oppose Mr. Amirault’s release on parole was that in order to have him classified as a “sexually dangerous person” there would have had to be a virtual re-trial of the entire Amirault case. The DA had to have been deterred by the prospect of parading into a courtroom with the incredible fantasies extracted from Mr. Amirault’s alleged victims–about secret rooms, magic drinks, animal butchery, assaults by a bad clown. Then-District Attorney Scott Harshbarger had offered them as “proof” of the Amiraults’ guilt.

No liberal bias at the Associated Press, right?

Rather Faint Praise

CBS News, in announcing Dan Rather’s retirement as anchor of CBS Evening News (effective next March), says:

…The triumvirate of Rather, Brokaw and ABC’s Peter Jennings has ruled network news for more than two decades. Rather dominated ratings after taking over for Cronkite during the 1980s, but he was eclipsed first by Jennings and then by Brokaw. His evening news broadcast generally runs a distant third in the ratings each week….

And it only got worse after “Memogate.” That’s the real message here: CBS pushed Rather out the door in order to rehabilitate Evening News and recapture market share (i.e., advertising dollars).

(Thanks to Captain Ed for the pointer to the CBS press release.)

In the "Old News" Department

A headline in The Washington Times: “Study finds press pro-Kerry.” Next thing you know, we’ll be told that the sun rises in the east.

Cronkite’s "Conspiracy Theory"

Drudge reports this:

…Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is “inclined to think that Karl Rove, the political manager at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up bin Laden to this thing.”…

Think of all the lefties out there who will use the quotation without noting that Cronkite was “somewhat smiling” when he said it.

P.S. I’ve noticed that the righties are getting all exercised about Cronkite’s crack. Loosen up, fellas — election’s only two days away. No serious person is going to pay attention to Uncle Walter’s mutterings. Hell, most of CBS News’s remaining fans (all three of them) think he was mummified and glued to the anchor chair. (Oops, that’s Dan Rather, isn’t it?)

Wishful and Slippery Thinking at The New Republic

Ryan Lizza writes this:

It looks like the race is down to ten swing states: Florida (27 electoral votes), Pennsylvania (21 votes), Ohio (20), Wisconsin (10), Colorado (9), Iowa (7), New Mexico (5), Nevada (5), West Virginia, and New Hampshire (4). Assuming the other 40 states are out of play, Kerry has 217 electoral votes wrapped up, and Bush has 208.

Ha, ha! Reputable polls, such as Rasmussen’s, have it the other way around (Bush 220, Kerry 190).

Lizza goes on to envision a tie in the Electoral College, which would throw the election into the House of Representatives. His take:

Almost half the country still thinks Bush’s presidency is illegitimate. There probably isn’t a way for a second Bush term to seem more illegitimate in the eyes of Democrats than his first term than for this election to be decided by the House, a far more partisan and less respected institution than the Supreme Court. But it could happen.

Where did he get that bit about almost half the country thinking Bush’s presidency is illegitimate? Source, please.

And so what if the House is partisan? It’s supposed to be partisan; it’s an elective body. Why would it be illegitimate for the House to decide the election in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution? I can see the headlines in the liberal press: Bush Re-elected by House, Madison’s Scheme to Blame!

UPDATED – 10/28/04, 12:48 PM (CT):

I wasn’t the only blogger to note Lizza’s slippery (sloppy?) thinking about the election going to the House. As Lizza admits today:

LEGITIMATE POINT: Mickey Kaus is taking me to task for writing that an electoral college tie decided in Bush’s favor by the House of Representatives would be seen as more illegitimate to Democrats than Bush’s first term. Just to make it clear, I don’t think it would be illegitimate–just as I don’t think Bush’s first term was–but I was saying that Democrats would see it that way.

But Mickey is right. It’s silly to argue that the result of a process carefully spelled out in the Constitution could be construed as illegitimate. And, thinking it over, I imagine most Democrats would accept such a result–as long as Bush also wins the popular vote. What I should have said is that if the race ends in an electoral college tie and a popular vote victory for Kerry, then a House-decided win for Bush would be seen as illegitimate by many Democrats, who would argue that the House thwarted the will of the majority. But I admit that what I wrote, which was unfortunately quoted in The Washington Post, was sort of dopey….

I heartily agree with Lizza that what he wrote was dopey. He’s right, however, that Dems would see a Bush victory in the House as illegitimate — which says a lot about the Dems and their willingness to subvert the Constitution when they don’t get what they want.

The Washington Post’s Idea of Balance

From a WashPost story about 527s:

…Named after a section of the tax code, the 527 groups are doing much of the advertising and field work traditionally left to party organizations….

Until recently, virtually all the money going to 527s went to Democratic groups. But in the last few months, Republicans have balanced the equation, collecting $1 out of every $3 raised….

So, Republican-oriented groups are collecting one-third of the money going to 527s and that’s balanced? I guess that’s as much balance as the Post can stand.

Of course, whoever’s money it is doesn’t matter to me. The real issue is freedom of speech, and 527s are a convenient way of ensuring that it’s not completely quashed when it comes to elections. But the incumbents in Washington will keep trying to find a way to quash it completely. “Money in politics” scares them because it can be used against them.

None Dare Call It Terrorism?

Why do the media — and even the military in Iraq — insist on dignifying terrorism by calling it insurgency. Latest case in point, from the Times:

We’ve Seen the Enemy and They Are … Who, Exactly?

By EDWARD WONG

Published: October 17, 2004

BAGHDAD — To hear the American commanders in Iraq tell it, William Butler Yeats could well be the poet laureate of Iraq’s insurgency. If the guerrillas were to win this war with their suicide car bombs and televised beheadings, what would come next? Nothing, the commanders say, but a widening gyre, and things falling apart, and, finally, mere anarchy being loosed in the cradle of civilization.

“This is a negative insurgency,” Brig. Gen. Erwin Lessel, deputy director of operations for the multinational forces, said in an interview inside the fortified American headquarters here, near where two powerful bombs killed five people on Thursday and left the Americans bracing for more mayhem at the start of the holy month of Ramadan. “Unlike a classical insurgency, these groups don’t offer anything.”

“They’ve got differing goals, competing ideologies,” he continued, “and don’t offer anything positive for the government.”…

That’s because they’re g**d***** terrorists — nothing more. Let’s start calling a hand-held excavating tool a spade.

No One Should Be above the Law — Not Even a Reporter

This will invoke a lot of whining about “freedom of the press” and “chilling effects,” but “due process of law” won’t get a mention:

Judge Holds Reporter in Contempt in Leak Probe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A federal judge held a New York Times reporter in contempt on Thursday for refusing to testify in the investigation of whether the Bush administration illegally leaked a covert CIA officer’s name to the media….

The emphasis is mine, all mine.