Monday, March 28, 2005
Sullivan's Law
As I said before, Andrew Sullivan doesn't have much of a grasp of the U.S. Constitution or the principles of self-government. Bill Bennett quotes Sullivan:
If the American principle of federalism means anything it means that the local state’s courts are the only relevant instruments to deal with such a tragedy.
Bennett points out that under the 14th Amendment Sullivan's reasoning is pure baloney. Here's Section 1:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So who enforces the amendment? The courts? In Section 5 the principles of self-government kick in:
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
So under the principles of American federalism, Congress is within its authority to intervene in the Schiavo case. It's Sullivan who doesn't understand the Constitution.
Bennett also catches Sullivan's hypocrisy in supporting majority rule. As far as I can tell, Sullivan has always resisted the results of state-wide votes on same sex marriage. Sullivan isn't much on the rule of law either. He supported San Francisco city officials when they illegally issued marriage licenses.
Some federalist. When it comes to religion, Sullivan is the theocrat. He'll support anything short of violence to get same sex marriage, including rule by judges.
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As I said before, Andrew Sullivan doesn't have much of a grasp of the U.S. Constitution or the principles of self-government. Bill Bennett quotes Sullivan:
If the American principle of federalism means anything it means that the local state’s courts are the only relevant instruments to deal with such a tragedy.
Bennett points out that under the 14th Amendment Sullivan's reasoning is pure baloney. Here's Section 1:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
So who enforces the amendment? The courts? In Section 5 the principles of self-government kick in:
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
So under the principles of American federalism, Congress is within its authority to intervene in the Schiavo case. It's Sullivan who doesn't understand the Constitution.
Bennett also catches Sullivan's hypocrisy in supporting majority rule. As far as I can tell, Sullivan has always resisted the results of state-wide votes on same sex marriage. Sullivan isn't much on the rule of law either. He supported San Francisco city officials when they illegally issued marriage licenses.
Some federalist. When it comes to religion, Sullivan is the theocrat. He'll support anything short of violence to get same sex marriage, including rule by judges.
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
|Monday, March 21, 2005
Not Finished
I guess I'm not finished with Dan Rather after all (see below).
For me one of the best way to judge writers is to ask the following questions:
1. Do they omit important and relevant information that I know; and
2. Can I catch factual errors
I don't make a living reporting on current events. So if I know more in some respects about the writer's subject area than the writer does, the credibility of the story goes down the drain. Consequently, The New York Review of Books has shot whatever credibility it has on Rathergate:
In the end, even the panel, without saying so explicitly, has to concede the accuracy of Mapes's statement that "there is nothing in the official Bush records that would rule out the authenticity of the Killian documents."
What about the fact that Bush received a performance appraisal 3 months before Lieutenant Colonel Killian allegedly wrote the August 1973 memo saying that he was resisting pressure to rate Bush? The contents make no sense.
Like 60 Minutes, the reviewer isn't aware that a "not observed" performance appraisal is harmless. I received a "not observed" report after spending 6 months in a Navy training school.
One of the Killian documents purports to order Bush to complete a physical by Mother's Day. Neither the reviewer not Marla Mapes is aware that Bush's unit was closed on Mother's Day weekend. If Bush reported on deadline it would have been impossible to get a physical.
The reviewer also plays down the "chain of custody" problem. As far as we know the people who had the documents before Mr. Burkett don't exist. The reviewer is unaware that Lt Col Killian didn't like to type and wasn't much of a typist. The reviewer ignores the oddity that documents would appear from a dead man's personal files 30 years after they were written, but only 2 months before an election.
Also unexplained by the reviewer is how a typewriter from the 1970s could produce a perfect match for an MS Word document. Or why Lt Col wouldn't just prepare a handwritten note for himself. Or why he would violate regulations and maintain personnel records outside of the military's recordkeeping system.
So for the documents to be authentic a dead man who hated to type, and wasn't a good typist to begin with, typed a memo to himself threatening to do something that had already happened and wouldn't have caused any harm to begin with. He illegally kept the records for years after they were needed and by coincidence they are a perfect match for documents typed in MS Word. Congratulate yourself if you don't buy it.
The reviewer has problems with matters other than the reliability of the documents:
The panel also labeled as "misleading" Dan Rather's interview with the then speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, who made a call to get George Bush in the Guard. Why is this misleading? Because, the panel said, CBS has no proof that the person who received the call was influenced by it. Can the panel be serious about this? Should CBS not have reported this call?
The reviewer accepts Barnes' assertion without question. Actually, there's no proof that the call was ever made. Like Lt Col Killian, the person who called Barnes is dead. (This coincidence is what made me suspicious about the documents when I first saw them.) The reviewer doesn't know or mention that Barnes has changed his story and was a major Kerry supporter and fundraiser.
No one had to pull strings to get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. While there was a glut of people trying to get into the reserves, there was a shortage of people who could qualify as a pilot.
Dan Rather apparently asked few such questions. According to the panel, he knew little about the background of the charges he broadcast and depended on the reporting and research of the program's producer, Mary Mapes.
Isn't this really evidence that Rather failed to do his job? Isn't he supposed to ask questions. If he knew so little, why did he insist that the source was "unimpeachable"? Why not check out the story? Could it be that Rather was in a rush to harm Bush?
Time doesn't permit discussion of other problems with the review. For The New York Review of Books, Dan Rather's shoddiness is contagious.
Update:
TigerHawk blows away whatever credibility NYROB had. I wish I had the time and skill to do this type of work.
It was William F. Buckley, Jr. who said NYROB was the "last court of appeal for highbrow screwballs."
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I guess I'm not finished with Dan Rather after all (see below).
For me one of the best way to judge writers is to ask the following questions:
1. Do they omit important and relevant information that I know; and
2. Can I catch factual errors
I don't make a living reporting on current events. So if I know more in some respects about the writer's subject area than the writer does, the credibility of the story goes down the drain. Consequently, The New York Review of Books has shot whatever credibility it has on Rathergate:
In the end, even the panel, without saying so explicitly, has to concede the accuracy of Mapes's statement that "there is nothing in the official Bush records that would rule out the authenticity of the Killian documents."
What about the fact that Bush received a performance appraisal 3 months before Lieutenant Colonel Killian allegedly wrote the August 1973 memo saying that he was resisting pressure to rate Bush? The contents make no sense.
Like 60 Minutes, the reviewer isn't aware that a "not observed" performance appraisal is harmless. I received a "not observed" report after spending 6 months in a Navy training school.
One of the Killian documents purports to order Bush to complete a physical by Mother's Day. Neither the reviewer not Marla Mapes is aware that Bush's unit was closed on Mother's Day weekend. If Bush reported on deadline it would have been impossible to get a physical.
The reviewer also plays down the "chain of custody" problem. As far as we know the people who had the documents before Mr. Burkett don't exist. The reviewer is unaware that Lt Col Killian didn't like to type and wasn't much of a typist. The reviewer ignores the oddity that documents would appear from a dead man's personal files 30 years after they were written, but only 2 months before an election.
Also unexplained by the reviewer is how a typewriter from the 1970s could produce a perfect match for an MS Word document. Or why Lt Col wouldn't just prepare a handwritten note for himself. Or why he would violate regulations and maintain personnel records outside of the military's recordkeeping system.
So for the documents to be authentic a dead man who hated to type, and wasn't a good typist to begin with, typed a memo to himself threatening to do something that had already happened and wouldn't have caused any harm to begin with. He illegally kept the records for years after they were needed and by coincidence they are a perfect match for documents typed in MS Word. Congratulate yourself if you don't buy it.
The reviewer has problems with matters other than the reliability of the documents:
The panel also labeled as "misleading" Dan Rather's interview with the then speaker of the Texas House, Ben Barnes, who made a call to get George Bush in the Guard. Why is this misleading? Because, the panel said, CBS has no proof that the person who received the call was influenced by it. Can the panel be serious about this? Should CBS not have reported this call?
The reviewer accepts Barnes' assertion without question. Actually, there's no proof that the call was ever made. Like Lt Col Killian, the person who called Barnes is dead. (This coincidence is what made me suspicious about the documents when I first saw them.) The reviewer doesn't know or mention that Barnes has changed his story and was a major Kerry supporter and fundraiser.
No one had to pull strings to get Bush into the Texas Air National Guard. While there was a glut of people trying to get into the reserves, there was a shortage of people who could qualify as a pilot.
Dan Rather apparently asked few such questions. According to the panel, he knew little about the background of the charges he broadcast and depended on the reporting and research of the program's producer, Mary Mapes.
Isn't this really evidence that Rather failed to do his job? Isn't he supposed to ask questions. If he knew so little, why did he insist that the source was "unimpeachable"? Why not check out the story? Could it be that Rather was in a rush to harm Bush?
Time doesn't permit discussion of other problems with the review. For The New York Review of Books, Dan Rather's shoddiness is contagious.
Update:
TigerHawk blows away whatever credibility NYROB had. I wish I had the time and skill to do this type of work.
It was William F. Buckley, Jr. who said NYROB was the "last court of appeal for highbrow screwballs."
Sunday, March 20, 2005
The Little Corporal
In a poll to determine the greatest Frenchman, one figure came in surprising low:
Admirers and impartial academics alike were aghast yesterday at the news that the little Corporal who became an Emperor had only made it to No 16 in the top 100 names in a poll for the state-owned TV channel France 2.
Before writing this post I checked Napoleon's biography. I couldn't find any evidence that Napoleon was ever a corporal. After completing military school Napoleon was commissioned as a second lieutenant. It was Hitler who was a corporal. These two men have a lot in common, but they didn't share the same military ranks.
Between the two dictators, it's not just Napoleon's life that's being misrepresented. Victor Davis Hanson has a long summary of the attempts to group Hitler and President Bush:
In fact, what do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At first glance, all this wild rhetoric is preposterous. Hitler hijacked an elected government and turned it into a fascist tyranny. He destroyed European democracy. His minions persecuted Christians, gassed over six million Jews, and created an entire fascistic creed predicated on anti-Semitism and the myth of a superior Aryan race.
Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.
In a world that is almost uniformly opposed to the democratic Jewish state, Israel has no better friend than Bush, who in turn is a believer in, not a tormentor of, Christianity. Afghanistan and Iraq, with 50 million freed, have elected governments, not American proconsuls, and there is a movement in the Middle East toward greater democratization — with no guarantee that such elected governments will not be anti-American. No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn.
The left's grouping of unlikely people to Hitler didn't start with Bush. Consider this excerpt, since revised, from Rick Steves' Europe Through The Back Door (1997):
For us to understand Islam by studying Khadafy and Hussein would be like a Turk understanding capitalism and Christianity by studying Hitler and Reagan.
People who can't see distinctions between Reagan and Hitler (or Bush and Hitler) have to be pretty far out there. They also have to be pretty ignorant. Hitler didn't believe in Christianity or capitalism. He was a pagan and a socialist.
Frequent comparisons to Hitler seem odd coming from the left. Charles Krauthammer points out that they don't have much trouble with modern day monsters:
After all, going back at least to the Spanish Civil War, the left has always prided itself on being the great international champion of freedom and human rights. And yet, when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, gassing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability.
A leftist judge in Spain orders the arrest of a pathetic, near-senile Gen. Augusto Pinochet eight years after he's left office, and becomes a human rights hero -- a classic example of the left morally grandstanding in the name of victims of dictatorships long gone. Yet for the victims of contemporary monsters still actively killing and oppressing -- Khomeini and his successors, the Assads of Syria and, until yesterday, Hussein and his sons -- nothing. No sympathy. No action. Indeed, virulent hostility to America's courageous and dangerous attempt at rescue.
The international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism. Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out this selective concern for the victims of U.S. allies (such as Chile) 25 years ago. After the Cold War, the hypocrisy continues. For which Arab people do European hearts burn? The Palestinians. Why? Because that permits the vilification of Israel -- an outpost of Western democracy and, even worse, a staunch U.S. ally. Championing suffering Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese offers no such satisfaction. Hence, silence.
Until now. Now that the real Arab street has risen to claim rights that the West takes for granted, the left takes note. It is forced to acknowledge that those brutish Americans led by their simpleton cowboy might have been right. It has no choice. It is shamed. A Lebanese, amid a sea of a million other Lebanese, raises a placard reading "Thank you, George W. Bush," and all that Euro-pretense, moral and intellectual, collapses.
In addition to ignorance Hanson attributes the Hitler comparisons to arrogance. That's part of it. I also think that the left keeps bringing up Hitler as a form of projection:
From the Nazi-Soviet pact through Hitler's invasion of the U.S.S.R., the international left opposed attempts to stop Hitler.
Most of the left's economics is based on socialism. Hitler was a socialist himself, though unlike the left his socialism was based on race instead of class.
Many of the most brutal dictators of the past century were supported by the left. This includes the U.S.S.R., Mao, Castro, the Sandinistas, and the Khmer Rouge.
It's really the left that seems attached to the thugs of the world.
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In a poll to determine the greatest Frenchman, one figure came in surprising low:
Admirers and impartial academics alike were aghast yesterday at the news that the little Corporal who became an Emperor had only made it to No 16 in the top 100 names in a poll for the state-owned TV channel France 2.
Before writing this post I checked Napoleon's biography. I couldn't find any evidence that Napoleon was ever a corporal. After completing military school Napoleon was commissioned as a second lieutenant. It was Hitler who was a corporal. These two men have a lot in common, but they didn't share the same military ranks.
Between the two dictators, it's not just Napoleon's life that's being misrepresented. Victor Davis Hanson has a long summary of the attempts to group Hitler and President Bush:
In fact, what do Linda Ronstadt, Harold Pinter, Scott Ritter, Ted Rall, and George Soros all have in common? The same thing that unites Fidel Castro, the European street, the Iranians, and North Koreans: an evocation of some aspects of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany to deprecate President Bush in connection with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
At first glance, all this wild rhetoric is preposterous. Hitler hijacked an elected government and turned it into a fascist tyranny. He destroyed European democracy. His minions persecuted Christians, gassed over six million Jews, and created an entire fascistic creed predicated on anti-Semitism and the myth of a superior Aryan race.
Whatever one thinks of Bush’s Iraqi campaign, the president obtained congressional approval to invade and pledged $87 billion to rebuild the country. He freely weathered mass street demonstrations and a hostile global media, successfully defended his Afghan and Iraq reconstructions through a grueling campaign and three presidential debates, and won a national plebiscite on his tenure.
In a world that is almost uniformly opposed to the democratic Jewish state, Israel has no better friend than Bush, who in turn is a believer in, not a tormentor of, Christianity. Afghanistan and Iraq, with 50 million freed, have elected governments, not American proconsuls, and there is a movement in the Middle East toward greater democratization — with no guarantee that such elected governments will not be anti-American. No president has been more adamantly against cloning, euthanasia, abortion, or anything that smacks of the use of science to predetermine super-genes or to do away with the elderly, feeble, or unborn.
The left's grouping of unlikely people to Hitler didn't start with Bush. Consider this excerpt, since revised, from Rick Steves' Europe Through The Back Door (1997):
For us to understand Islam by studying Khadafy and Hussein would be like a Turk understanding capitalism and Christianity by studying Hitler and Reagan.
People who can't see distinctions between Reagan and Hitler (or Bush and Hitler) have to be pretty far out there. They also have to be pretty ignorant. Hitler didn't believe in Christianity or capitalism. He was a pagan and a socialist.
Frequent comparisons to Hitler seem odd coming from the left. Charles Krauthammer points out that they don't have much trouble with modern day monsters:
After all, going back at least to the Spanish Civil War, the left has always prided itself on being the great international champion of freedom and human rights. And yet, when America proposed to remove the man responsible for torturing, gassing and killing tens of thousands of Iraqis, the left suddenly turned into a champion of Westphalian sovereign inviolability.
A leftist judge in Spain orders the arrest of a pathetic, near-senile Gen. Augusto Pinochet eight years after he's left office, and becomes a human rights hero -- a classic example of the left morally grandstanding in the name of victims of dictatorships long gone. Yet for the victims of contemporary monsters still actively killing and oppressing -- Khomeini and his successors, the Assads of Syria and, until yesterday, Hussein and his sons -- nothing. No sympathy. No action. Indeed, virulent hostility to America's courageous and dangerous attempt at rescue.
The international left's concern for human rights turns out to be nothing more than a useful weapon for its anti-Americanism. Jeane Kirkpatrick pointed out this selective concern for the victims of U.S. allies (such as Chile) 25 years ago. After the Cold War, the hypocrisy continues. For which Arab people do European hearts burn? The Palestinians. Why? Because that permits the vilification of Israel -- an outpost of Western democracy and, even worse, a staunch U.S. ally. Championing suffering Iraqis, Syrians and Lebanese offers no such satisfaction. Hence, silence.
Until now. Now that the real Arab street has risen to claim rights that the West takes for granted, the left takes note. It is forced to acknowledge that those brutish Americans led by their simpleton cowboy might have been right. It has no choice. It is shamed. A Lebanese, amid a sea of a million other Lebanese, raises a placard reading "Thank you, George W. Bush," and all that Euro-pretense, moral and intellectual, collapses.
In addition to ignorance Hanson attributes the Hitler comparisons to arrogance. That's part of it. I also think that the left keeps bringing up Hitler as a form of projection:
From the Nazi-Soviet pact through Hitler's invasion of the U.S.S.R., the international left opposed attempts to stop Hitler.
Most of the left's economics is based on socialism. Hitler was a socialist himself, though unlike the left his socialism was based on race instead of class.
Many of the most brutal dictators of the past century were supported by the left. This includes the U.S.S.R., Mao, Castro, the Sandinistas, and the Khmer Rouge.
It's really the left that seems attached to the thugs of the world.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
Why I Like Mark Steyn
Consider this excerpt from his latest column:
The New York Times wondered what Mr Bush’s next appointment would be:
‘Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission?’
Okay, I get the hang of this game. Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam’s Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man UN operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else. All of which happened without the UN fetishists running around shrieking hysterically. Why should America be the only country not to enjoy an uproarious joke at the UN’s expense?
Why I Like George Schultz
If you keep reading Steyn's column, you'll find this gem:
Yet the assumption behind much of the criticism of Bolton from the likes of John Kerry is that, regardless of his government’s foreign policy, a UN ambassador has to be at some level a UN booster. Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration’s ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who’d just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. ‘No,’ Schultz would say, ‘this is your country’ — and point to the United States. Nobody would expect a US ambassador to the Soviet Union to be a big booster for the Soviets. And, given that in a unipolar world the most plausible challenger to the US is transnationalism, these days the Schultz test is even more pertinent for the UN ambassador: his country is the United States, not the ersatz jurisdiction of Kofi Annan’s embryo world government.
You really should read the whole thing.
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Consider this excerpt from his latest column:
The New York Times wondered what Mr Bush’s next appointment would be:
‘Donald Rumsfeld to negotiate a new set of Geneva conventions? Martha Stewart to run the Securities and Exchange Commission?’
Okay, I get the hang of this game. Sending John Bolton to be UN ambassador is like ...putting Sudan and Zimbabwe on the Human Rights Commission. Or letting Saddam’s Iraq chair the UN conference on disarmament. Or sending a bunch of child-sex fiends to man UN operations in the Congo. And the Central African Republic. And Sierra Leone, and Burundi, Liberia, Haiti, Kosovo, and pretty much everywhere else. All of which happened without the UN fetishists running around shrieking hysterically. Why should America be the only country not to enjoy an uproarious joke at the UN’s expense?
Why I Like George Schultz
If you keep reading Steyn's column, you'll find this gem:
Yet the assumption behind much of the criticism of Bolton from the likes of John Kerry is that, regardless of his government’s foreign policy, a UN ambassador has to be at some level a UN booster. Twenty years ago, the then Secretary of State George Schultz used to welcome the Reagan administration’s ambassadorial appointments to his office and invite each chap to identify his country on the map. The guy who’d just landed the embassy in Chad would invariably point to Chad. ‘No,’ Schultz would say, ‘this is your country’ — and point to the United States. Nobody would expect a US ambassador to the Soviet Union to be a big booster for the Soviets. And, given that in a unipolar world the most plausible challenger to the US is transnationalism, these days the Schultz test is even more pertinent for the UN ambassador: his country is the United States, not the ersatz jurisdiction of Kofi Annan’s embryo world government.
You really should read the whole thing.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Rather Finished
It's always interesting to hear what the media say about each other. Here's a paraphrased summary of what Fox News Watch says about Dan Rather's retirement:
Eric Burns -- Rather is the first anchor to leave under a cloud of negativity.
Cal Thomas -- Rather didn't report, he read off a teleprompter. His career began with a lie -- the claim that Dallas children cheered JFK's assassination.
Jane Hall -- Disagrees with Thomas. It is sad. There is tremendous sadness and disarray at CBS. Rather was not a natural anchor. But he was present at various events. Hall doesn't know if Dallas story is true or false.
Jim Pinkerton -- In early 1990s Rather put out phony story that 1 of 8 American children go to bed hungry. Rather was a liberal propagandist. That's why Jane Hall likes him. Rather's colleagues trashed him.
Neil Gabler -- Rather's crime was not carelessness with documents. The right hated him because he didn't kowtow to power. Did other anchors ever say a memorable sentence? (Editor: What good is a memorable statement if it's an embarrassment to the person who made it?) Rather asked tough questions.
Pinkerton -- Rather should have been tough on the documents. His problem was shoddy journalism.
Gabler -- Documents were never discredited. Cites CBS report. (Editor: Get real. MS Word didn't exist in 1973.)
Burns -- Rather leaves under a cloud. Is it fair?
Hall -- Pieces by colleagues were snide. Tom Shales was friendly. (Editor: Shales' favorable opinion of Rather is surprising because?)
Thomas -- Rather didn't ask tough questions of Clintons.
Burns -- Rather didn't get over struggle with Roger Mudd over CBS anchor slot after Chronkite retired.
Pinkerton -- With the upcoming lawsuits Rather will have to testify.
Discussion of bloggers getting White House press credentials:
Pinkerton -- Not enough room in White House for 8 million bloggers to participate.
Hall -- First blogger missed the daily briefing because he was being interviewed about being the first blogger to participate in the daily briefing.
Thomas -- Need definition of journalist.
Gabler -- It's difficult enough to get a White House day pass.
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It's always interesting to hear what the media say about each other. Here's a paraphrased summary of what Fox News Watch says about Dan Rather's retirement:
Eric Burns -- Rather is the first anchor to leave under a cloud of negativity.
Cal Thomas -- Rather didn't report, he read off a teleprompter. His career began with a lie -- the claim that Dallas children cheered JFK's assassination.
Jane Hall -- Disagrees with Thomas. It is sad. There is tremendous sadness and disarray at CBS. Rather was not a natural anchor. But he was present at various events. Hall doesn't know if Dallas story is true or false.
Jim Pinkerton -- In early 1990s Rather put out phony story that 1 of 8 American children go to bed hungry. Rather was a liberal propagandist. That's why Jane Hall likes him. Rather's colleagues trashed him.
Neil Gabler -- Rather's crime was not carelessness with documents. The right hated him because he didn't kowtow to power. Did other anchors ever say a memorable sentence? (Editor: What good is a memorable statement if it's an embarrassment to the person who made it?) Rather asked tough questions.
Pinkerton -- Rather should have been tough on the documents. His problem was shoddy journalism.
Gabler -- Documents were never discredited. Cites CBS report. (Editor: Get real. MS Word didn't exist in 1973.)
Burns -- Rather leaves under a cloud. Is it fair?
Hall -- Pieces by colleagues were snide. Tom Shales was friendly. (Editor: Shales' favorable opinion of Rather is surprising because?)
Thomas -- Rather didn't ask tough questions of Clintons.
Burns -- Rather didn't get over struggle with Roger Mudd over CBS anchor slot after Chronkite retired.
Pinkerton -- With the upcoming lawsuits Rather will have to testify.
Discussion of bloggers getting White House press credentials:
Pinkerton -- Not enough room in White House for 8 million bloggers to participate.
Hall -- First blogger missed the daily briefing because he was being interviewed about being the first blogger to participate in the daily briefing.
Thomas -- Need definition of journalist.
Gabler -- It's difficult enough to get a White House day pass.
More on Prisoners
Nowadays I visit Andrew Sullivan's web site about as often as I visit any other train wreck. It's only been a few days, but so far he has no response to Admiral Church's report on the treatment of prisoners. Contrary to claims made by Sullivan and others, the Bush Administration did not encourage mistreatment of prisoners. Jed Babbin manages a nice summary of the report:
The Church report proves those assertions wrong. It says, "We found, without exception, that the DoD and senior military commanders responsible for the formulation of interrogation policy evidenced the intent to treat detainees humanely, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the notion that such officials or commanders ever accepted that detainee abuse would be permissible . . . [and] it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater."
But what about Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay? Weren't the interrogators just turned loose? In fact, no. Church wrote, "We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse."
Sullivan needs to write a rebuttal or an apology. Better yet, he should really take the hiatus he promised his readers.
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Nowadays I visit Andrew Sullivan's web site about as often as I visit any other train wreck. It's only been a few days, but so far he has no response to Admiral Church's report on the treatment of prisoners. Contrary to claims made by Sullivan and others, the Bush Administration did not encourage mistreatment of prisoners. Jed Babbin manages a nice summary of the report:
The Church report proves those assertions wrong. It says, "We found, without exception, that the DoD and senior military commanders responsible for the formulation of interrogation policy evidenced the intent to treat detainees humanely, which is fundamentally inconsistent with the notion that such officials or commanders ever accepted that detainee abuse would be permissible . . . [and] it is clear that none of the pictured abuses at Abu Ghraib bear any resemblance to approved policies at any level, in any theater."
But what about Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay? Weren't the interrogators just turned loose? In fact, no. Church wrote, "We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse."
Sullivan needs to write a rebuttal or an apology. Better yet, he should really take the hiatus he promised his readers.
Civil War
The issue about detaining American citizens without filing charges has come up again. While all detentions should be scrutinized, the Civil War provides ample historical precedent for the American government to detain its own citizens.
During the Civil War there were all sorts of controversies about each side's treatment of prisoners. There was no controversy about the Union's constitutional authority to hold Confederate soldiers without filing charges. And Confederates were American citizens. The Union's position was that secession was illegal. Consequently, the Confederate soldiers never lost their citizenship. The Democrats recognized this. In 1864 their platform denounced the "shameful disregard" of "our fellow-citizens who now are, and long have been, prisoners of war in a suffering condition." This was a complaint about the Union's treatment of prisoners, not the fact that it held prisoners. (For more details, see James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.)
Again, the government can't act arbitrarily or inhumanely. But it can imprison American citizens who serve the enemy.
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The issue about detaining American citizens without filing charges has come up again. While all detentions should be scrutinized, the Civil War provides ample historical precedent for the American government to detain its own citizens.
During the Civil War there were all sorts of controversies about each side's treatment of prisoners. There was no controversy about the Union's constitutional authority to hold Confederate soldiers without filing charges. And Confederates were American citizens. The Union's position was that secession was illegal. Consequently, the Confederate soldiers never lost their citizenship. The Democrats recognized this. In 1864 their platform denounced the "shameful disregard" of "our fellow-citizens who now are, and long have been, prisoners of war in a suffering condition." This was a complaint about the Union's treatment of prisoners, not the fact that it held prisoners. (For more details, see James McPherson's Battle Cry of Freedom.)
Again, the government can't act arbitrarily or inhumanely. But it can imprison American citizens who serve the enemy.
Monday, March 07, 2005
Kool Aid
Today's Best of the Web has some good posts on the Democrats' attempt to get religion. It also reveals the left's disdain for religion. Mixing religion and politics is never objectionable when it helps Democrats. Witness Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. Don't forget, John Kerry campaigned in churches.
The Democrats need to be careful about the religious figures they approach. Ask Walter Mondale. The man who criticized Reagan's connections to the Religious Right has his own problems. I remember the following from page A16 of the November 21, 1978 New York Times:
Among the documents made public was a section of a letter from Mr. Mondale that said in part, "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."
Mondale's letter was to the Reverend Jim Jones.
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Today's Best of the Web has some good posts on the Democrats' attempt to get religion. It also reveals the left's disdain for religion. Mixing religion and politics is never objectionable when it helps Democrats. Witness Jimmy Carter, Jesse Jackson, and Al Sharpton. Don't forget, John Kerry campaigned in churches.
The Democrats need to be careful about the religious figures they approach. Ask Walter Mondale. The man who criticized Reagan's connections to the Religious Right has his own problems. I remember the following from page A16 of the November 21, 1978 New York Times:
Among the documents made public was a section of a letter from Mr. Mondale that said in part, "Knowing of your congregation's deep involvement in the major social and constitutional issues of our country is a great inspiration to me."
Mondale's letter was to the Reverend Jim Jones.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Ted Raw
Ted Rall needs to take a history class:
Adolf Hitler wasn't elected democratically. He never won a free election. He became Germany's chancellor through a series of threats and maneuvers.
Building the autobahns didn't interfere with Hitler's military plans. Hitler build the autobahns to make military transportation more convenient. President Bush's budget provides more money for domestic purposes than Hitler's did.
President Bush's military campaigns have been far more successful than Hitler's. We don't know what's in the future, but it's a good bet that Bush won't end up surrounded in a White House bunker preparing to shoot himself.
Maybe it's Bush's success that bothers Rall. Rall's ignorance is only exceeded by his viciousness.
Via Michelle Malkin.
Update:
Do cartoonists have a problem making analogies? Jim Geraghty catches Tom Toles treating Syrian dictator Assad like Winnie the Pooh.
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Ted Rall needs to take a history class:
Adolf Hitler wasn't elected democratically. He never won a free election. He became Germany's chancellor through a series of threats and maneuvers.
Building the autobahns didn't interfere with Hitler's military plans. Hitler build the autobahns to make military transportation more convenient. President Bush's budget provides more money for domestic purposes than Hitler's did.
President Bush's military campaigns have been far more successful than Hitler's. We don't know what's in the future, but it's a good bet that Bush won't end up surrounded in a White House bunker preparing to shoot himself.
Maybe it's Bush's success that bothers Rall. Rall's ignorance is only exceeded by his viciousness.
Via Michelle Malkin.
Update:
Do cartoonists have a problem making analogies? Jim Geraghty catches Tom Toles treating Syrian dictator Assad like Winnie the Pooh.
Justic Kennedy's PowerGrab
As much as I agree with PowerLine about the Supreme Court's abuse of its authority, I have to acknowledge that the court has the implicit authority to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Part of the court's role is to interpret the law. If laws contradict each other, the justices have to decide which one applies. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence.
Federalist 78 recognizes this:
... whenever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former.
Alexander Hamilton recognized the possibility that justices like Anthony Kennedy:
... may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature ... The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.
Hamilton goes on in Federalist 78 to say that permanent tenure of the judiciary is intended to prevent this from happening. In Federalist 79 Hamilton says that impeachment and removal from office is the only way to deal with power-hungry judges. In the past attempts to impeach justices backfired.
In Federalist 80 Hamilton seems to rule out another remedy sometimes suggested by conservatives, limiting the court's jurisdiction under Congress's Article 3 authority. Hamilton says that this provision is intended to deal with inconveniences.
I hope the folks at PowerLine look into what The Federalist Papers say about the Supreme Court. They are much keener on the law than this amateur. George Neumayr tells us where we're heading:
The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his?
The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress.
The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse.
Update:
George Will doesn't think much of Justice Kennedy either:
Last Tuesday Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4 decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute people who committed murder when they were under 18 years old. Such executions, it said, violate the Eighth Amendment proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishments because. . . . Well, Kennedy's opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined, is a tossed salad of reasons why those five think the court had a duty to do what state legislatures have the rightful power and, arguably, the moral responsibility to do.
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As much as I agree with PowerLine about the Supreme Court's abuse of its authority, I have to acknowledge that the court has the implicit authority to strike down laws as unconstitutional. Part of the court's role is to interpret the law. If laws contradict each other, the justices have to decide which one applies. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence.
Federalist 78 recognizes this:
... whenever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former.
Alexander Hamilton recognized the possibility that justices like Anthony Kennedy:
... may substitute their own pleasure to the constitutional intentions of the legislature ... The courts must declare the sense of the law; and if they should be disposed to exercise WILL instead of JUDGMENT, the consequence would equally be the substitution of their pleasure to that of the legislative body.
Hamilton goes on in Federalist 78 to say that permanent tenure of the judiciary is intended to prevent this from happening. In Federalist 79 Hamilton says that impeachment and removal from office is the only way to deal with power-hungry judges. In the past attempts to impeach justices backfired.
In Federalist 80 Hamilton seems to rule out another remedy sometimes suggested by conservatives, limiting the court's jurisdiction under Congress's Article 3 authority. Hamilton says that this provision is intended to deal with inconveniences.
I hope the folks at PowerLine look into what The Federalist Papers say about the Supreme Court. They are much keener on the law than this amateur. George Neumayr tells us where we're heading:
The Supreme Court's judicial activists are cutting off the branch on which they sit. By rejecting the law and putting their personal opinions in its place, the justices invite the people to imitate them and disregard their decrees with the same willfulness they disregard the Constitution. If Anthony Kennedy isn't bound by the framers' words, why are the people bound by his?
The authority of Supreme Court justices derives from the authority of the Constitution: once they deny its authority, they deny their own. The Roper v. Simmons decision is a stunningly stark illustration of this despotism that masquerades as jurisprudence. Despotism is not an overwrought description here: we are dealing with a lawless court, judges who obey no law save their own will. Yes, they invoke a living Constitution, but that just means the real Constitution lies dead at their feet, having been trampled beneath a juggernaut of false progress.
The Supreme Court has been holding a de facto constitutional convention for decades, ripping up the old one and writing a new one without the consent of the people. A fitting punishment for this act of hubris will come when the chaos that their own example of lawlessness has set in motion consumes them in impeachment trials or worse.
Update:
George Will doesn't think much of Justice Kennedy either:
Last Tuesday Kennedy played those three roles when, in yet another 5-4 decision, the court declared it unconstitutional to execute people who committed murder when they were under 18 years old. Such executions, it said, violate the Eighth Amendment proscription of "cruel and unusual" punishments because. . . . Well, Kennedy's opinion, in which Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens joined, is a tossed salad of reasons why those five think the court had a duty to do what state legislatures have the rightful power and, arguably, the moral responsibility to do.
Saturday, March 05, 2005
De-Certifying the Spectator
Jay Rosen is worried that the Bush Administration is trying to de-certify (whatever that is) the news media. Basically, he's worried that some people besides Democrats may break some stories.
Where was Rosen at in the 1990s? Back then a lot of damaging stories about the Clinton Administration originated with The American Spectator. A palm reader made a spurious allegation that the Spectator paid off a witness to make false statements regarding Whitewater. Unlike its handling of the fundraising scandals, Clinton's Department of Justice moved with alacrity to investigate. The Spectator was eventually cleared, but not before the legal expenses practically put it out of business for several years.
Can you imagine the reaction if this had been the other way around? Do you think John Ashcroft would get away with harassing The New Republic? Not a chance. Yet back then we heard barely a peep about the Clinton Administration trying to shut down a magazine. What does Rosen have to say about this?
Rosen agrees with Eric Boehlert that "If the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate." Too late, Dan Rather and Eason Jordan have already taken care of that.
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Jay Rosen is worried that the Bush Administration is trying to de-certify (whatever that is) the news media. Basically, he's worried that some people besides Democrats may break some stories.
Where was Rosen at in the 1990s? Back then a lot of damaging stories about the Clinton Administration originated with The American Spectator. A palm reader made a spurious allegation that the Spectator paid off a witness to make false statements regarding Whitewater. Unlike its handling of the fundraising scandals, Clinton's Department of Justice moved with alacrity to investigate. The Spectator was eventually cleared, but not before the legal expenses practically put it out of business for several years.
Can you imagine the reaction if this had been the other way around? Do you think John Ashcroft would get away with harassing The New Republic? Not a chance. Yet back then we heard barely a peep about the Clinton Administration trying to shut down a magazine. What does Rosen have to say about this?
Rosen agrees with Eric Boehlert that "If the press loses its credibility, that eliminates agreed-upon facts -- the commonly accepted information that is central to public debate." Too late, Dan Rather and Eason Jordan have already taken care of that.
