It’s also fair to push back at reporters who feel free to use sensationalistic terms in their own precincts. How many times have we heard versions of Republicans waging "war on the poor," or "war on women"?
From reporters?
Um, zero. If it happens with such frequency, why can’t Tim cite some examples?
Seriously, I think these people are delusional.
Howard Kallogian, a Republican congressional candidate in California’s 50th District (to replace the now-indicted "Duke" Cunningham) goes to Baghdad, and reports how calm and peaceful it is. Therefore, the press is making shit up. To prove his point, Kallogian posts a picture (that he supposedly took) on his website. Here’s the picture he posted:
Wow, downtown Baghdad does look peaceful. Couples in western style clothing, holding hands, etc.
Why, the downton Baghdad picture almost looks like this neighborhood in the Istanbul suburb of Bakirkoy (which is in Turkey, not Iraq):
Yes, those two photos look a LOT alike!!!
Major props to Josh Marshall (who created the comparison graphic).
UPDATE: Read it at TPM
UPDATE #2: E&P covers the story.
UPDATE #3: Hilarious. Check out the "replacement photo" that Kallogian used to make his point that downtown Baghdad was safe. It seems quite obvious that he didn’t even leave the safe confines of his Green Zone hotel!
Poor John Hindrocket. Hampered by his own desire to be right, he can’t see the plain evidence in front of his face. Here’s what he writes in his post "Someone’s Misreporting This Story":
Yesterday, five former judges of the FISA court testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the National Security Agency’s international terrorist surveillance program. Some observers have alleged that the NSA program is illegal to the extent that it includes surveillance conducted without a FISA court order.
John’s problem is that the headline in the Moonie-owned Washington Times says: "FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law", but the New York Times coverage [subscription required] says (under the headline the neutral headline "Judges on Secretive Panel Speak Out on Spy Program"):
…several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president’s constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order.
So which news account is accurate here? That’s what John wants to know.
Well, let’s look at the Washington Times story. The first paragraph:
A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
So far, so good. That seems consistent with the story’s headline ("FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law").
But now the second paragraph:
The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president’s constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
Ah. Well, that’s a total contradiction of the first paragraph AND the headline. According to the second paragraph, the five FISA judges didn’t opine at all about the specifics of Bush’s program, or whether or not it "within law".
So right off the bat, you’ve got a self-contradictory report from the Washington Times which, if not misreporting, is spinning what the judges "say".
Now, the third paragraph from Washington Times:
"If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute."
This is the part of the story that John latches on to. Judge Kornblum seems to think think that Bush has the constitutional authority to conduct the wiretapping, hence the headline "FISA Judges Say Bush Within Law".
There’s only one problem. Judge Allan Kornblum isn’t, and never was, a FISA judge. The Washington Times piece fails to point this out.
But the New York Times piece, reprinted here, does:
Five former judges on the nation’s most secretive court, including one who resigned in apparent protest over President George W. Bush’s domestic eavesdropping, have urged Congress to give the court a formal role in overseeing the surveillance program.In a rare glimpse Tuesday into the inner workings of the secretive court, known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, several former judges who served on the panel also voiced skepticism at a Senate hearing about the president’s constitutional authority to order wiretapping on Americans without a court order. And they suggested that the program could imperil criminal prosecutions that grew out of the wiretaps.
Harold Baker, a sitting federal judge in Illinois who served on the intelligence court until last year, said that the president is bound by the law "like everyone else."
Committee members also heard portions of a letter in support of the proposal from a fifth judge, James Robertson, who left the court last December days after the eavesdropping program was disclosed.
Bush’s decision to effectively bypass the court in permitting eavesdropping without warrants has raised the court’s profile. That was underscored by the appearance on Tuesday of the four former judges on the court – Baker; Stanley Brotman, who left the panel in 2004; John Keenan, who left in 2001, and William Stafford Jr., who left in 2003. All four still sit on the federal judiciary.
So John asks:
Is [NYT reporter] Lichtblau’s commitment to that proposition causing him to report falsely on testimony that was given to a Senate committee? Or did the Washington Times go too far in characterizing the judges’ approval of the NSA program?
Well, John. Seeing as how the Washington Times story is self-contradictory, biased, sloppy and/or misleading (take your pick), I think you’ve got your answer.
Digby caught this. Fox reporter Bill Hammer got back from Iraq and turned in a report, including this hilarious bit:
We’re in a "cop-shop" outside Falluja. A year ago, they went out on patrol for three hours. Later it was one hour. Then seven minutes. Now they can’t get them to go out at all.
But then again, the building wasn’t even here a year ago, so there is progress.
Nathan Tabor, today, writing about PETA’s exhibit entitled ""Are Animals the New Slaves?":
And it seems that PETA wants to do something else. It’s fully prepared to use the pain of slavery and the Holocaust to try to push its questionable agenda.
Yeah, I know what you mean, Nathan.
Different issues shouldn’t be conflated as if they are one and the same. It’s kind of like using the pain of slavery to push one’s views about pornography. Or arguing that abortion and illegal immigration are really the same issue.
RELATED: In the same article today, Nathan scribes this gem:
What about the lack of compassion for innocent human babies who fall victim to abortion? Apparently, that’s not on PETA’s radar screen.
Well, gosh, you’re right, Nathan. And the Council For A Drug-Free America hasn’t weighed in on the Iraq War either.
I can’t believe I have to see "Elect Nathan Tabor for Congress" signs in my neighborhood for the next few months.
According to a recent U.Minn study, atheists are the most hated and distrusted minority group in America.
So how can anyone take seriously the claim that there is a "War On Christians"?
This victimization thing has got to stop. The resurgence of Christian faith is the highest I’ve seen in my lifetime. We have a President who claims to be born-again. Most Americans believe in God, and a plurality believe in a Christian God.
I begrudge nobody for their beliefs. But the nonsense that Christians, who represent the overwhelming majority in this country, are being subjugated and attacked by — who, exactly? — is a pernicious lie.
Tom Delay:
"We are after all a society that abides abortion on demand, that has killed millions of innocent children, that degrades the institution of marriage and often treats Christianity like some second-rate superstition. Seen from this perspective, of course there is a war on Christianity," he said.
So, because you don’t agree with individual freedom and choice, your faith is being attacked?
I agree with these people:
To some outsiders, it illuminated the paranoia of the Christian right.
"Certainly religious persecution existed in our history, but to claim that these examples amount to religious persecution disrespects the experiences of people who have been jailed and died because of their faith," said K. Hollyn Hollman, general counsel of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.
Pam Spaulding has more on the "War On Christians", including their list of demands.
UPDATE: Over at The Corner, Ramesh Ponnuru chastizes his Christian conservative brethren:
…But the notion that liberals are waging a "war against Christians"–the theme, or at least title, of the conference that Milbank covered and that you spoke at–strikes me as deeply mistaken. They don’t think they’re waging war against Christians, and many of them think of themselves as Christians. Even if you grant the premise that social liberals aren’t "true" Christians, which I don’t grant, the most you could say is that some people, including some people who mistakenly think of themselves as Christians, are inadvertently waging a metaphorical war against Christians. By the time you’ve qualified the thesis enough to bring it in the ballpark of truth, you don’t have much of a thesis left.
And there’s at least one other problem. Tom DeLay brought up the injustice of abortion on demand. That is, as his own words suggest, an injustice to unborn children. Christians who object to abortion should not think of themselves as its victims. At its best, the pro-life movement is a struggle for civil rights–primarily the civil rights of unborn children; not the supposed civil right of conservative Christians to see their policy views prevail.
You had to be in Africa and parts of Europe to see it.
The next total solar eclipse, on Aug. 1, 2008, will occur northern Canada, Greenland, Siberia, Mongolia and northern China.
The next total solar eclipse visible from the United States will be Aug. 21, 2017.
Several months before he became famous in Bonnie & Clyde, Gene Hackman starred in a 16mm, 22 minute U.S. government Civil Defense instructional film entitled COMMUNITY SHELTER PLANNING.
Read the story of how the film was found, and what it is all about.
This is very good, and you should read the whole thing. My favorite from the list:
1. Underestimating the enemy. As in Vietnam, the superpower’s potent military has been astounded by the tenacity and competence of a nationalist rebellion attempting to throw a foreign occupier from its soil. For example, the U.S. military, a hierarchical organization, views the Sunni insurgency as disorganized and without a central command structure. Yet the insurgents are using this decentralized structure very effectively and are not threatened by any U.S. decapitation strike to severely wound the rebellion by killing its leaders.
2. Deceiving the American public about how badly the war is going. President Bush continues to talk of victory, and his chief military officer, Gen. Peter Pace, argued that the United States was making “very, very good progress” just two days before the more credible U.S. ambassador to Iraq warned that a civil war was possible in Iraq. President Lyndon Johnson painted an excessively rosy picture of U.S. involvement in Vietnam until the massive communist Tet offensive against the south in 1968 created a “credibility gap” in the public mind. The U.S. and South Vietnamese militaries successfully beat back the offensive, but the war was lost politically because the U.S. government lost the confidence of its own citizens. The Bush administration has fallen into the same trap by trying to “spin” away bad news from Iraq. Polls ominously indicate that Bush’s trustworthiness in the eyes of the American public has plummeted more than 20 points since September of 2003 to 40 percent.
3. The Bush administration, like the Johnson and Nixon administrations, blames the media’s negative coverage for plunging popular support of the war. Yet the nature of the press is that it would rather cover extraordinary negative events, such as fires and plane crashes, than more mundane positive developments. Vietnam demonstrated that normal media coverage of mistakes in war could undermine the war effort. The Bush administration should have expected such predictable media coverage.
And then this one:
10. Most important of all, starting a war with another country for concocted reasons, which did not hold up under scrutiny. Lyndon Johnson used a questionable alleged attack by Vietnamese patrol boats on a U.S. destroyer to escalate U.S. involvement in a backwater country that was hardly strategic to the United States. Bush exaggerated the dangers from Iraqi weapons programs and implied an invented link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 attacks. In a republic, the lack of a compelling rationale for sending men to die in a distant war can be corrosive for the morale of the troops and public support back home.
"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." – George Santayana
This week, the theme was "21st century songs". The remaining ten Idol finalists had to pick and perform a song from this century.
And, if nothing else, tonight’s show confirmed one thing for me: 21st century music sucks.
That said, almost the entire show was a disappointment. Sharp and flat notes, coupled with bland performances, ruled the evening.
I was disappointed with Kelly Pickler, a real sweetheart country girl, doing an amazingly boring country song. A few weeks ago, she was a "mynx". Now she just stinks. She better turn it around.
The greatest fall by far was Chris Daughtry. A terrible Creed song, sung waaaaaay off pitch. He’s got a great tone in his voice; I wish he would perform songs that have more than one note in them.
I told someone earlier today that I thought this was going to be Bucky Covington’s last week. But he did better than usual tonight. Still not great, but on a par with most of the others.
So who’s going?
The only "wow" person for me tonight was Paris Bennett. So she’s safe.
Taylor Hicks was very good, as always (although not his best).
Katharine McPhee didn’t blow me away, but she was entertaining. Same with Elliott Yamin.
Both Mandisa and Chris Daughtry were way below their best, but they’ll get through because they’ve been so good for so many weeks.
I would love to see Ace should go — he’s way overrated — but he’s got a pretty solid base (I’m guessing), and so does Kelly Pickler (a base which includes me).
Bucky, as I said before, will probably squeak by, although he’ll be in the bottom three.
So that leaves Lisa Tucker. She’s been in the bottom three before (so, not a strong base), she went first tonight (always a disadvantage), and she was actually very bad, if not the worst. She’s pleasant enough, and she’s got some experience (she apparently was in the stage version of "The Lion King"). But she’s only sixteen, and I think her youth is getting the best of her. She’s no dynamo, so it’s time to go.
Meet intelligent design’s stupider younger brother: Geocentrism.
Sungenis is a geocentrist. He contends the sun orbits the Earth instead of vice versa. He says physics and the Bible show that the vastness of space revolves around us; that we’re at the center of everything, on a planet that does not rotate.
He has just completed a 1,000-page tome, "Galileo Was Wrong," the first in a pair of books he hopes will persuade readers to "give Scripture its due place, and show that science is not all it’s cracked up to be."
Geocentrism is a less-known cousin of the intelligent design, or anti-evolution, movement. Both question society’s trust in science, instead using religion to explain how we got here – and, in geocentrism’s case, just where "here" is.
Mention geocentrism and physicist Lawrence Krauss sighs. He is director of the Center for Education and Research in Cosmology and Astrophysics at Case Western Reserve University and author of several books including "Fear of Physics: A Guide for the Perplexed."
"What works? Science works. Geocentrism doesn’t. End of story," Krauss said from Cleveland. "I’ve learned over time that it’s hard to convince people who believe otherwise, independent of evidence."
To Sungenis, of Greencastle, Pa., evidence is the rub.
Evidence is the rub? I’ll bet it is. But here’s my favorite part of the story:
For several years the Web site of his Catholic Apologetics International (www.catholicintl.com) offered a $1,000 reward to anyone who could disprove geocentrism and prove heliocentrism (a sun-centered solar system).
There were numerous attempts, Sungenis said, "some serious, some caustic," but no one did it to his satisfaction.
Now, that’s the rub — proving something to a wacko’s satisfaction.
Remember when I wrote that the pro-life movement wasn’t going to be fond of the "pro-life" statue which depicts a naked Britney Spears giving birth to her child on a bearskin rug?
Well, that’s the practical effect of what this GOP pollster is saying in this memo to GOP Poohbah Ken Mehlman, urging Republicans not to distance themselves from Bush:
To: Ken Mehlman
From: Jan van Lohuizen
Date: March 3, 2006
Re: Bush — Congressional RepublicansPer our conversation, we took another look at the way voters, Republicans specifically, link President Bush and Republicans in the House and the Senate. There are several points worth making:
1. President Bush continues to have the strong loyal support of Republican voters. Despite slippage in approval ratings among all voters, the President’s job approval among Republicans continues to be very high. Most members will be elected with between 80% and 100% of their support coming from Republicans. I don’t see that Republicans driving a wedge between themselves and the President is a good election strategy.
2. My read of the current environment is that our problem will be turnout. ’06 could become an election like ’82 or ’84. In ’82 Republicans showed up at relatively normal turnout rates, while Democrats, because they were angry, showed up at abnormally high turnout rates. In ’94, Republican turnout was elevated, while Democratic turnout was depressed. We have every reason to believe ’06 could become the inverse of ’82. We don’t see signs of a depressed Republican turnout yet, but we have every reason to believe Democrats will turn out in high numbers. Anything we do to depress turnout, by not running as a unified party for instance, could very well lead to serious consequences in November.
3. The President is seen universally as the face of the Republican Party. We are now brand W. Republicans. The following chart shows the extremely close correlation between the President’s image and overall ratings of the party.
President Bush drives our image and will do so until we have real national front-runners for the ’08 nomination. Attacking the President is counter productive for all Republicans, not just the candidates launching the attacks. If he drops, we all drop.
I love this infighting among the GOP.
The Democrats are really going to have to work hard to screw up ’06 and ’08. But if anybody can do it, Democrats can.
For all its talk about wanting to make Iraq a self-sufficient democracy, the Bush Administration sure likes to kibbitz and strongarm:
Senior Shiite politicians said today that the American ambassador has told Shiite officials to inform the Iraqi prime minister that President Bush does not want him to remain the country’s leader in the next government.
It is the first time the Americans have directly intervened in the furious debate over the country’s top job, the politicians said, and it is inflaming tensions between the Americans and some Shiite leaders.
The ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, told the head of the main Shiite political bloc at a meeting last Saturday to pass a "personal message from President Bush" on to the prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who the Shiites insist should stay in his post for four more years, said Redha Jowad Taki, a Shiite politician and member of Parliament who was at the meeting.
Ambassador Khalilzad said that President Bush "doesn’t want, doesn’t support, doesn’t accept" Mr. Jaafari to be the next prime minister, according to Mr. Taki, a senior aide to Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the head of the Shiite bloc. It was the first "clear and direct message" from the Americans on the issue of the candidate for prime minister, Mr. Taki said.
Whatsa matter? Frankenstein’s monster no like-y Dr. Frankenstein? That’ll teach somebody not to play God.
To hear Lyle Denniston tell it, the government had a rough day in front of the Supreme Court justices today, and the "existing ‘military commission’ scheme may well fail". Good.
And no, Scalia didn’t recuse himself, although he opined on the subject matter earlier this month.
With Justice Antonin Scalia taking part — and, in fact, providing the only clearcut signs of unstinting support for the federal government’s arguments — the Supreme Court on Tuesday probed deeply into the validity of the war crimes tribunals set up by President Bush, and came away looking decidedly skeptical. From all appearances during the 90-minute argument, the Court may have some difficulty fashioning an opinion, but perhaps not a result: the existing "military commission" scheme may well fail.
The Court spent comparatively little time on the issue of whether it has jurisdiction to proceed to a ruling on the merits in the case of Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (05-184), but Justices Stephen G. Breyer and David H. Souter strenuously — and repeatedly — advanced the point that the Court would have to find it has jurisdiction in order to avoid the very difficult constitutional question of Congress’ power to abolish all forms of habeas challenge to the treatment of war-on-terrorism detainees. It was a point that seemed likely to draw the support of enough Justices to prevail.
If the Court does proceed to the merits, it appeared that there would be at least three ways that a majority could be formed to find the "military commissions" to be flawed: first, those tribunals would be using procedures that would violate federal laws, the Constitution, or an international treaty; second, a variation of the the first, the "commission" system was not set up properly in the first place, or, third, they can only try crimes that definitely are recognized under the international laws of war and that does not include the most common charge brought so far — terrorism conspiracy. There was little exploration of an ultimate argument against the "commission" setup: the claim that the President had no power to create them on his own, without specific authorization from Congress.
With only eight Justices participating (Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., is recused), it appeared that Justice Anthony M. Kenney might well emerge as holding the decisive vote. In a variety of ways, Kennedy seemed trouble about the legitmacy of the tribunals as presently arranged. Most of his questions seemed aimed at locating the specific deficiencies that might be found in their functioning. At one point, he suggested openly to the detainees’ lawyer, Georgetown law professor Neal Katyal, that the Court might well "think there is merit" in his argument that the tribunals were not "properly constituted." In that event, Kennedy suggested, the Court would not have to get into the complex question of what kind of charges were within the tribunals’ authority to try.
There were a number of comments or questions indicating that the detainees may well be able to draw the votes of Justices Breyer, Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. There was no doubt whatsoever that Justice Scalia (whose recusal had been suggested by some amici, troubled over public statements he made about detainees’ rights) would line up definitely on the side of the "commissions" in their present form. Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., through a few questions, seemed to be sending a message that he was inclined to allow the "commissions" to go forward with trials, leaving any challenges until after convictions, if any, emerged. Justice Clarence Thomas said nothing, but he has been, in the past, the Court’s most fervent supporter of presidential wartime powers.
The overall tone of the hearings seemed significantly in favor of the challenge to the new tribunals. Solicitor General Paul D. Clement seemed more challenged than is customary for him; indeed, at times he appeared genuinely relieved at the help Justice Scalia provided for his argument. He rushed to embrace Scalia’s points as if they were stronger than his own.