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PostWatch: An irregular correction to the Washington Post
Brought to you by Christopher Rake
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Tuesday, January 14, 2003
10:48 PM
Largely poor, uneducated, and easy to command... That's how Washington Post reporter Michael Weiskopf once described Christians, and I hear echoes tonight...
I took a look at MediaMinded and he excerpts John Leo quoting EJ Dionne on media bias. Leo:
Call it the daily disconnect between the newsroom and the general populace. Huge majorities of Americans oppose racial preferences, want immigration limited, resent benefits for illegal immigrants, support the death penalty, are morally troubled by cloning, oppose gay marriage, look favorably on the boy scouts, support parental-consent laws on abortion and want a ban on partial-birth abortion.
In the newsroom, huge majorities take the opposite opinions. When those opinions shine through, as they regularly do in framing and selection of stories, readers and viewers begin to look elsewhere for their information.
Dionne, appearing on CNN's "Reliable Sources," acknowledged that the media have had a bias, "the bias of the educated upper-middle class," which is "not so good," he said, for religious conservatives, unions and the poor.
Yes, and it's also not so good for the military, law enforcement, nonreligious conservatives and people who are proud of America despite its frequent blunders.
Dionne is blind to liberal bias in the mainstream media and it's one of those things you just have to marvel at. In his recent comments attempting to deny it, he had a very good point about other media--how talk radio is almost completely conservative, and how there's lively conservative comment on some cable news channels. But those outlets developed precisely because mainstream media was relentlessly liberal and for the most part still is, with huge audiences by the way, by all accounts larger than the alternatives. When I first heard Dionne cite a Rush Limbaugh apperance on network election coverage as an example that the networks are now conservative, I literally laughed out loud. But then I am a jolly fellow.
I think that for some liberals, the act of hearing a conservative point of view presented fairly in mainstream media is such a shock that they think the citadel has been taken over by the huns.
MediaMinded blogged ably on the topic last month.
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10:16 PM
Alphecca, "An occasional blog by a gay gun-nut in Vermont," runs a tally of news stories posted at a gun-debate site within Yahoo. This week he classifies 14 as "For More Gun Control Or Is Anti-Gun; 1 as "For More Gun Control Or Is Anti-Gun" and 4 as "Neutral Articles." Looks like he's been doing this for about 12 weeks, with similar results (that's a lot of consistent work, by the way, so kudos). His comment:
Still not much of a "debate" as you can see. Of course, it's all left-coast liberals selecting which stories to list and link to. Several articles fell off the "front page" and went into the archives. Two new articles appeared and both were very anti-gun.
He adds the the most interesting story was this one in the Post, about rising crime in the U.K. and the death of teenagers from gunfire. Alphecca:
Getting back to the Washington Post article above, the thing I notice, aside from it being anti-gun, are the gratuitous remarks about how England has somehow been tainted by America and American culture. And how, "well at least we aren''t as bad as America yet."
Well... actually, England is worse!...
As it is in every category now except for murder, which you have to admit is a pretty bad category. Check out the site. I read that story too and what struck me was that it mentioned how gun crime has risen since the U.K. adopted its handgun ban--but it doesn't quite make the connection that gun crimes and crime in general has risen because law-abiding citizens had their firearms confiscated. Of course, one reponse is to pass even tougher laws, such as confiscating replicas. The Post:
But many question whether new laws will have much impact. They note that Britain adopted one of the toughest handgun bans in the world following the 1996 Dunblane massacre in Scotland, in which a man shot dead 16 primary school students and their teacher. The ban led to the voluntary surrender or confiscation of more than 160,000 handguns. Yet experts now estimate there are hundreds of thousands more illegal handguns in Britain, from places such as Eastern Europe and Jamaica, arming street gangs who see guns as crucial to their power.
I know that in social science, it is very hard to link cause and effect. But what has happened in the U.K. is precisely what the NRA said would happen. The Post doesn't bother to add that perspective either because....oh, why exactly?
Alphecca link ViaInsta.
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1:09 PM
Michigan Affirmative Action Case: Now the Washington Times says Bush will probably file a brief in support of the students opposing race discrimination in university admissions.
Rather than remain silent on the case, which the White House had been considering last week, the president is now expected to express his support for merit-based admissions in a brief that can be filed with the Supreme Court no later than Thursday. "The president has been consistent in his beliefs on this for a very long time," the source said.
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12:52 PM
The Scientific Method--Fact or Fiction? Via Virginia Postrel, I read a debunking of the Atkins (low-carb) diet by Michael Fumento, normally a skilled professional debunker. Over and over, I am amazed by doctors and now Fumento telling me that the diet doesn't work, despite the fact that I've lost 12 pounds, got down to my target weight, reduced my waistline and never have to restrain myself from eating when I feel hungry. And this is without working out at all--a gap in my health plan that I'm just now starting to correct.
Fumento cites some recent work on the issue and raises valid points. For example, one should be initially skeptical of studies sponsored by companies bound to benefit from them, as Atkins has done. And a study cited in this Fumento piece says Atkins dieters dropped out at a higher rate than non-Atkins'. That's different than some other studies I've heard of, but good to know.
But the logic of this statement escapes me:
...what about the blood findings? Wasn't it a real shocker that Atkins dieters consuming heavy amounts of fat saw their HDL ("good cholesterol") levels increase by 11 percent while harmful triglycerides fell 49 percent? (LDL or "bad cholesterol" levels remained the same.)
No.
"Often just losing weight alone will cause improvement in triglyceride and cholesterol levels," the president of the American Heart Association Dr. Robert Bonow told me. Since the Atkins dieters did lose more weight than those on the high-carb diet, it only stands to reason that by comparison their blood levels would also improve more.
Let's see. The goal of many dieters, including this one, is to lose weight and hopefully improve cholesterol levels (even though I think the significance of cholesterol is overrated but I'm concerned about my doctor's well-being--he worries about it). Result of the Atkins diet: Lower weight and improved cholesterol. Who cares if "often just losing weight alone will cause improvement in triglyceride and cholesterol levels"?
Before, worse. After, better.
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11:24 AM
The Post runs a correction on the Al Sharpton "white trash" quote I
cited from his appearance on Meet the Press, and the Post's account of it.
Here's the correction:
The Jan. 13 Politics column quoted Democratic presidential candidate Al
Sharpton on the subject of his past as saying "I think you got white trash with
worse backgrounds." The quote was taken from a transcript of NBC's "Meet the
Press" done by eMediaMillWorks and distributed by the Associated Press. NBC's
transcript of the show quoted Sharpton as saying, "I think you've got white
candidates with worse backgrounds." A review of a recording of the program was
inconclusive. Sharpton spokeswoman Rachel Noerdlinger said she did not know
what word Sharpton used but "he definitely didn't use the words 'white
trash.'"
Dueling transcripts.
As I said at the time, I didn't see this part of the show. However, one wonders
how hard it can be to tell the difference between "white trash" and "white
candidates," even with the sound turned off.
Note: You may see this item blogged twice--I got tired of waiting for the email blogging to kick in. I'll delete it later if that happens, or you can read it twice.
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Monday, January 13, 2003
11:33 PM
Our last VivaInsta! Venezuelan blog tonight is The Devil's Excrement, which is slightly less gross than it sounds--it's a reference to oil. It quotes one Manuel Acedo Sucre who tries to explain the Chavez crisis in terms an American--particularly a baby-boomer American--would understand:
Just imagine that Richard Nixon had used the majority he obtained in 1972 (he carried all the states except D.C. and Massachusetts) to change the U.S. Constitution. Let us say that rather than having it amended through the established constitutional procedures, he had called for a constitutional convention and that with 65% of the popular vote he had managed to get 95% of the delegates to the convention. Assume, further, that the convention had abolished Congress, extended the President's term to six years (with the possibility of re-election) and established a transitory regime under which all the Supreme Court Justices, the Attorney General (as head of a new branch of government) and the national electoral authorities (as heads of another branch), were elected either by the convention or with complete disregard for the procedures and requirements established in the new Constitution, by a newly elected Congress, packed with Nixon supporters riding on Nixon's post-electoral honeymoon. Not to strain too much your imagination, just assume that the convention decided to "clean up" the court system and substitute the existing judges by persons appointed by the Nixon-controlled majority, now following the dictates of Nixon's new party, the "New Republicans", again disregarding even the new Constitution...
Lots more worth reading.
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11:19 PM
Then there's this extraordinary blogger of Caracas Chronicles who quit his gig as a New York Times stringer because he was forced to choose between that and working against Chavez (and by the way, the NYT editor did what he or she had to do).
Also ViaInsta, see below.
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11:12 PM
Opinions will differ... InstaGuy has some extraordinary links to Venezuelan bloggers tonight, which if you investigate a bit further includes a negative reaction to a recent Post story, A Split Screen In Strike-Torn Venezuela by Mark Weisbrot. Here's the story:
Walking around Caracas late last month during Venezuela's ongoing protests, I was surprised by what I saw. My expectations had been shaped by persistent U.S. media coverage of the nationwide strike called by the opposition, which seeks President Hugo Chavez's ouster. Yet in most of the city, where poor and working-class people live, there were few signs of the strike. ...This is clearly an oil strike, not a "general strike," as it is often described.... Outside the oil industry, it is hard to find workers who are actually on strike.
It's kind of a ridiculous story on the face of it (Most Americans seem to believe that the Chavez government is a dictatorship, and one of the most repressive governments in Latin America. But these impressions are false.Not only was Chavez democratically elected, his government is probably one of the least repressive in Latin America... But I'll leave this to Venezuelan blogger Tyromaniac:
I can't tell you how depressing it is to read what passes for news in the the american media. Bloggers are right, media is dead. This is not a General Strike? So how come we can't go to the movies? (all movie theaters in Caracas are closed); Buy a soft drink? (not a single one can be found in Caracas stores, the few you can find are fetching a mark up of 1200%); Drink a beer? (Only a few foreign made beer can be found). What lies! How does a reporter invent them? They probably accept government help to write the report. Forget independent thinking, that's out! Some of the criticism of the opposition is true, but the government has done the same things and that is worse, because the government has a higher responsibility. While it is not in the constitution to held an early election it wasn't in the previous constitution (of 1961) to call for a referendum to make a new constitution, Where was this asshole then? Finally, more than 70% of Venezuelans want Chávez to leave, that includes most of the poor. Buy a clue, you dimwit!
CORRECTION: Sorry, that's Tyromaniac, with an "a." Corrected above.
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4:26 PM
Okay, now the Post is just repeating Democrat views on the Pickering nomination... In Frist to Support Bush Agenda:
On the subject of U.S. District Judge Charles W. Pickering, a nominee for appellate judge who is the most controversial choice on a list of conservative Bush judicial picks, Frist said, "I receive his nomination gladly." He added, "I plan on supporting Pickering."
Bush's renomination of Pickering, after Lott's fall because of remarks about the segregationist campaign of former senator Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), stunned Democrats, who had already rejected Pickering when they controlled the Judiciary Committee. Democrats and civil rights groups say Pickering helped a defendant in a cross-burning case and was hostile to civil rights claims. They point to his past stands against interracial dating.
"I think this really lays bare the administration's real position on civil rights," Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) said on ABC's "This Week." "This exposes the Southern strategy clearly."
This is code--not even code--for saying Republicans are racists.
I'll get into more specifics later, but from an old post by NRO's Bryon York, this is the man Democrats wants us to believe is a racist:
"In 1967, many locally elected prosecutors in Mississippi looked the other way when faced with allegations of violence against African-Americans and those who supported our struggle for equal treatment under the law. Judge Pickering was a locally elected prosecutor who took the stand that year and testified in the criminal trial against the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who was accused of firebombing a civil rights activist. Judge Pickering later lost his bid for reelection because he dared to defy the Klan, but he gained my respect and the respect of many others as a man who stands up for what is right."
The Klan case, although 35 years ago, stands out in many memories. "Pickering is not perfect — no one is — but he has courage," Johnny Magee, a black city councilman in Laurel, Mississippi, recently told Legal Times. "He was involved as a county prosecutor in fighting against the Ku Klux Klan and helped put Klansmen behind bars. That was something you just didn't do in Jones County in the 1960s."
There's much more.
Pickering hired black staffers when few other Republicans or Democrats in Mississippi did. As a private lawyer he defended a young black man accused of robbing a young white woman in a rural grocery store, then stuck with the case through two trials, and finally won the young man's acquittal. He pushed the chancellor of the University of Mississippi to establish the Institute of Racial Reconciliation and then served on its board of directors. And he built a reputation for fairness. Johnny Magee told Legal Times that his stepson, convicted of drug charges, came before Pickering for sentencing. Magee told the paper that his stepson "is currently serving time, and he deserves it. But Pickering dealt with him completely fairly."
I guess I'm supposed to expect Democrats to keep chanting that Pickering tried to reduce the sentence of a convicted criminal in the cross-burning case. But shouldn't the Post start adding the detail that Pickering thought the feds were not only too hard on one guy but too easy on another?
In a move that baffled and later angered Judge Pickering, Civil Rights Division prosecutors early on decided to make a plea bargain with two of the three suspects. The first, Mickey Thomas, had an unusually low IQ, and prosecutors decided to reduce charges against him based on that fact. The second bargain was with the 17-year-old. Civil Rights Division lawyers allowed both men to plead guilty to misdemeanors in the cross-burning case (the juvenile also pleaded guilty to felony charges in the shooting incident). The Civil Rights Division recommended no jail time for both men....
The case went to trial in Pickering's courtroom. During the course of testimony, Pickering came to suspect the Civil Rights Division had made a plea bargain with the wrong defendant. No one questioned the Justice Department's decision to go easy on the low-IQ Thomas, but the 17-year-old was a different case. "It was established to the satisfaction of this court that although the juvenile was younger than the defendant Daniel Swan, that nevertheless the juvenile was the ring leader in the burning of the cross involved in this crime," Pickering wrote in a memorandum after the verdict. "It was clearly established that the juvenile had racial animus....The court expressed both to the government and to counsel for the juvenile serious reservations about not imposing time in the Bureau of Prisons for the juvenile defendant."
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8:37 AM
Looks like I missed an illuminating interview by Tim Russert of Al Shartpon yesterday (I caught only the end of it). Here's a bit more, from a brief item saying Sharpton's going to run for president:
Russert asked Sharpton if a white candidate would be taken seriously with some of the less-attractive items on Sharpton's résumé: supported Brawley's assertion, later discredited, that she was gang-raped by white law enforcement agents; paid a defamation award; pleaded guilty for failing to file a state tax return; and was evicted for failing to pay rent.
"I think you got white trash with worse backgrounds," he said, adding: "I'm not getting into name-calling, but we've had candidates that have had personal indiscretion."
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Sunday, January 12, 2003
11:13 PM
Evil Pharmacist Guild Focus of Post Investigation... Did someone at the Post get a bad prescription? Two or three times in the past few days, depending on how you count, its coverage of Illinois Gov. George Ryan's death-row pardons includes this chilling expose:
While he has been hailed by death penalty opponents around the world for his actions--Ryan imposed the nation's first moratorium on executions three years ago--critics complain that the governor is merely trying to deflect public attention from his own political troubles. And prosecutors contend that Ryan, a pharmacist by trade, is failing crime victims.
Aha! It's not the Bilderbergs! It's pharmacists.
Basically the same story appears Jan. 11, with the same language--it appeared in the print edition; the Jan. 10 story (about the first four pardons) was breaking news, posted online. Then today, the Post reports Ryan's commutations of all death sentences:
Cook County State's Attorney Dick Devine said the future of those pardoned Friday should have been decided by the courts. "Instead, they were ripped away [from the courts] by a man who is a pharmacist by training and a politician by trade," he said. "Yes, the system is broken. The governor broke it."
Looks like the earlier versions of the story took a Devine quote, which I can only guess is intended as some kind of slur against the Pharmacist-American community, and inserted it as helpful background info.
Either that or it's a secret code launching some Special Ops brigade. Anyone live near an air base?
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10:48 PM
U.S. Border Crossings Spark Civilian Patrols:
Skip past the dreadful dark-and-stormy-night lede...eventually...
In this dusty, open desert country once haunted by cowboys and outlaws, armed civilian border patrol groups who scare off border crossers or, in some cases, hold them at gunpoint, are becoming an increasing presence.
The groups, such as Ranch Rescue and the American Border Patrol, say their purpose is to plug the holes in southern Arizona's porous border, protect citizens and expose the federal government's failure to protect the United States from drug- and people- smuggling. To critics, these angry patrols are a greater risk to society than poor migrants risking their lives for low-paying jobs in the United States.
I think this tests the limits of Glenn Reynolds' "A Pack, Not a Herd" philosophy, which I endorse. Basically it means citizens can organize themselves to act more quickly and effectively to defend the entire nation, recover from natural disasters, etc., especially immediately after the fact--his most riveting example is the still under-covered boatlift that proved crucial in the immediate aftermath of the World Trade Center attack. But this is a tough one. The U.S. government has it coming--the Administration refuses to acknowledge there's a serious problem at the border, and citizens are getting fed up with lawlesslessness, and with their property being invaded and trashed. But there are indeed crazy white militant groups who would just love to shoot up a few Mexicans, and I hope the people described in this story are telling those guys to stay the hell out.
Note: A few more InstaLinks here, including a mention about vigilantism.
Update: Looks like Reynolds credits Jim Henley with the pack/herd coinage, though this link is to something during the Washington sniper case, in late October, and I thought Reynolds had used the phrase before. No matter. I'll stipulate both are great.
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10:25 PM
I wonder about this Title IX story that appeared Saturday:
Arlington Co. Responds to Title IX Claim
By Tarik El-Bashir
Attorneys representing the Arlington County School Board yesterday proposed to make several upgrades to the girls' athletic programs and facilities at Washington-Lee High School over the coming year in response to a student's accusations that the school is in violation of Title IX, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination at schools and other educational institutions that receive federal funds.
Arlington County attorneys presented the changes -- which range from creating a girls' locker room to rearranging the awards in the school's trophy case -- in response to a proposed settlement agreement sent in November by the National Women's Law Center. The NWLC has been negotiating with the school board over the past seven months on behalf of 17-year-old Washington-Lee senior Christine Boehm, a four-year member of the school's field hockey team.
I was getting ready to blog this as a simple example of Title IX actually achieving something good--as it has, to be honest, in many cases. At first look the action means the school will provide more equal facilities to girls and boys. But then I began to wonder if we're comparing apples to oranges:
Boehm said her experiences as a field hockey player motivated her to press for change. On a typical game day, Boehm said she spent a half-hour after school hustling to her car to retrieve practice gear, and then crowding into a small bathroom to change clothes. After getting dressed, Boehm then would go back to her car and drive around to the side of the school where the field hockey equipment was stored. She filled up a water cooler, grabbed the equipment bag and double-checked for a roll of athletic tape -- which was used to hold a broken goal together and to tape the required uniform number on the back of the goaltender's jersey.
Boehm saw a far different situation on Friday nights at Washington-Lee's football games. The players changed together in the boys' locker room, complete with oversized lockers for their uniforms and equipment. She then watched as the players, wearing shiny jerseys and pants, ran onto a well-maintained field where water coolers awaited them.
The question that the story doesn't really answer is whether Boehm's field-hockey experiences were different from those experienced by other sports that are usually considered second-tier; i.e., less likely to draw large crowds, maybe make a little money, be a major focal point for school activities, etc. I have no way of knowing--and of course I don't know how big a crowd girls' field hockey draws these days. If all boys' teams get the red-carpet treatment and all girls' teams get numbers falling off uniforms, for goodness sake, the more power to her. If not, not.
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10:13 PM
PostWatch reader Fred Ray writes with two interesting items.
First, he says that contrary to my joust below, Al Sharpton owes Steven Pagones $65,000. "He
hasn't paid a cent and probably never will, since he now has no assets of his own," Fred writes. I don't exactly know how that would be the case--Sharpton wears some pretty nice suits these days, even if they don't cost $65,000--but I do vaguely recall that soon after the judgment was announced, there was a lot of trouble collecting the funds. I assumed it had finally been paid because during the exchange on Meet the Press, Tim Russert said "you paid $65,000" for the defamation suit. Either Russert misspoke or he had bad information. If that's wrong, sorry for passing it on.
Second, Fred notes another "Augusta Remains Silent" story--that is, a paper that creates a story by noting someone hasn't said something the editors, in their wisdom, think he should. This week's version: Bush Plans No Apology Over Lott Remarks:
The White House and the Republican Party have decided against taking overt steps to make amends for racially charged remarks by Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) because President Bush's aides said he has nothing to apologize for and should not pander, officials said.
There is some interesting information in the story, however:
Most significantly, Bush officials said he may go with his initial instinct and register his objections to race-based preferences in the University of Michigan's admissions, which are being reviewed by the Supreme Court in the biggest affirmative action case in a generation.
I certainly hope so. The Washington Times was writing last week that the Administration was leaning toward the duck-and-cover approach.
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1:23 PM
On Meet The Press, Al Sharpton told Tim Russert this morning he was "badgering" him for trying to get a clear answer about why Sharpton refuses to apologize for his role in the Tawana Brawley hoax. I caught just the tail end of this. Sharpton's responses matched that of a five-year-old, saying that it was Brawley who made the claim, that we was "listening to women" and more of us should do that (even when they lie maliciously?) and that he, Sharpton, forgave someone who tried to murder him, and forgave Trent Lott.
To recap, this is what Sharpton refuses to apologize for:
The jury found Sharpton liable for making seven defamatory statements about [Steven] Pagones, [Alton] Maddox for two and Mason for one. Pagones, a former assistant county prosecutor, is white; the defendants are black.
"They hurt race relations," Pagones said. "We have enough problems in society. We don't need people like Mason and Maddox and Sharpton screaming out false allegations and creating further hatred."
A jury of four whites and two blacks ruled that Sharpton, Maddox and Mason defamed Pagones in accusing him of raping black teen-ager Tawana Brawley in 1987.
So Sharpton had to pay Pagones $65,000 for falsely accusing an innocent man of raping a teenager. But it's too much to apologize.
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Saturday, January 11, 2003
1:05 PM
There is a particular kind of Yankee ignorance and condescension about the south that I know well, being a Yankee. I don't know where it comes from, other than being on the right side of the Civil War, and as a result it's almost always aimed at white southerners. But after the first 140 years or so, it gets old.
I'm reminded of this after reading a Jay Nordlinger article in National Review-the magazine, not the blog, so you'll have to buy a magazine. The story doesn't break new ground unless all you read, listen to or watch consists of mainsteam media. In that case, some of this would be new:
Funny thing is, [Hootie] Johnson, a banker, has always been known as a progressive in his home state of South Carolina. He was a mover in the desegregation of the state's colleges and universities. He was a board member of the National Urban League (for heaven's sake). He was a trustee of Benedict College (a "historically black" institution). He received the Outsanding Citizen Award from the national B'nai B'rith--the only South Carolinian besides Bernard Baruch to be so honored, says one account of him.
And of course he's been an ally of women in the corporate world, and women play at Augusta, and Augusta generates millions of dollars for charities, etc.,
etc. But this is not enough.
In any case, Martha Burk's crusade was triggered in part by good old-fashioned Yankee contempt. Nordlinger (who earlier in this piece refers to the Washington Post), writes:
Here's how she got the idea of going after Augusta National: As she related to that same Washington Post, she was watching last year's Masters on television. "The tournament was over, Tiger Woods has won, and it's time for the green jacket. So this guy comes out on camera and he says...'Ah'm Hootie Johnson, prezz-a-dint of thuh Uh-gust-a National Golf Club.' And Ms. Burk thought to herself, 'Hootie Johnson, Ah'm a-gonna wraaaht yew uh letter!' "
All class, this lady.
As a Saturday Night Live skit, I could actually laugh at this. As a window into the soul of the white northern left, how sad.
Al Sharpton is running for president. Think anyone lampooning his role in the Tawana Brawley hoax could continue to get favorable mainstream coverage after ridiculing Sharpton's speech patterns?
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Friday, January 10, 2003
6:39 PM
The Anti-Drunken Empire Strikes Back: It was a little slow in coming, but some bloggers including Their Prominences Eugene Volokh and Clayton Cramer have said they're not too upset about what happened when Fairfax County Police entered restaurants and bars for some pre-emptive arresting. I agree with Volokh that Bob Barr overstates his case by using the word "Gestapo"--a lot of Nazi imagery is used much too casually and we all should stop and think about the ultimate horror to which we're comparing relatively mild infractions. But I'm with Barr all the way on his main argument and with those who think the police overstepped their bounds. Volokh and Cramer, both of them thoughtful and careful writers, seem a bit credulous about the innocuous version of the story told by police. Much of which is in this follow-on in the Washington Times.
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6:28 PM
Bellesiles: Old loose end now, but I post it for future reference: Publisher Stops History Book Publication, an AP story in the Austin American Statesman (it's all over the place; why not Austin).
NEW YORK (AP)--Publication has been halted on a disputed book about the history of guns in the United States.
Questions about Michael Bellesiles' ``Arming America'' had already led Columbia University to rescind the prestigious Bancroft Prize for history.
When Columbia made the announcement last month, publisher Alfred A. Knopf said the book would remain in print. But Jane Garrett, Bellesiles' editor, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the publisher would no longer sell it...
According to Garrett, the book has sold about 8,000 copies in hardcover and about 16,000 in paperback.
Others have remarked that considering all the attention, these are pretty low numbers.
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1:35 PM
E.J. Dionne: The Dismal Science. His column today on the Pickering nomination is soaked in beltway cynicism.
You have to hand it to President Bush and his judge-pickers.
They understand the power of the judiciary to shape American political life for years to come. They brazenly use their executive authority to fill the courts with their allies.
Brazenly use their executive authority? The executive branch is supposed to appoint federal judges, who do not float down from heaven but rather embody legal and political principles that had darn well better reflect the views of an elected Administration. That's kind of the point.
The renominations of Justice Priscilla Owen of the Texas Supreme Court and, especially, of Judge Charles W. Pickering Sr. of Mississippi caused consternation and even a bit of shock. Pickering had been the personal choice of former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott, who was pushed out of his job after his tribute to Strom Thurmond's 1948 segregationist presidential candidacy. Pickering was hurt by his handling of the sentencing in a cross-burning case and his past views on civil rights.
Republicans argue that the cross-burning issue was invoked unfairly, because Pickering was simply seeking equity in the sentencing of the case's three defendants. But Pickering's tendency to use court opinions for disquisitions on public issues suggested a less than judicial temperament.
Fortunately, liberal judges never, ever use court opinions for disquisitions on public issues. As a result, liberal judges are universally recognized for their fairness and for recoiling in horror from the taint of judicial activism.
The real issue here involves not the personal characteristics of nominees -- there are plenty of smart conservatives on Bush's list -- but a political struggle to create an increasingly activist conservative bench. "They realized that if they took over the one unelected part of the government, they could govern for a generation," says Sen. Charles E. Schumer, a New York Democrat.
If only conservatives had realized that 30 years ago, before equal justice under the law was undermined and in some cases replaced by identity politics.
Judicial appointments are not like patronage jobs in the Commerce Department. Judges sit for life. A president who says he wants a more decorous process won't get it if he refuses to acknowledge that the road to depoliticizing the judiciary will be paved by consultation on appointments. Playing partisan politics and calling it high principle won't work anymore.
Dionne also notes Democrat shock over the re-nominations. It's real simple, folks. Democrats smeared people like Pickering and are attemtping to do it all over again, partly because Pickering was Lott's choice. The Bush Administration thought that was shameful then and guess what, it's still shameful four months later.
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1:25 PM
Lott? Who's Lott? Also from the Washington Times:
The White House yesterday denied that its hesitation to join a Supreme Court battle over affirmative action was connected to lingering raw feelings from last month's racial flap over Sen. Trent Lott.
I guess these charades are necessary sometimes.
Presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer, in response to an article in The Washington Times yesterday, said President Bush was taking a "wait and see" approach because he wants to weigh the case on its merits. White student applicants are trying to overturn the University of Michigan's preferential treatment of black and Hispanic applicants.
Discriminations has a brief transcript of the White House Q&A on this.
Q: Setting aside the affirmative action case for a moment, or whether he's going to weigh in on it, does the policy of adding 20 points to minority students, does that comport with his policy of affirmative access, or does it contrast with it?
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that's what is exactly under review among a number of other factors in the current case pending before the Supreme Court. And I think that's the type of thing that the deadline is next week for weighing in on any type of amicus curai, and we'll wait and see.
Q: It would seem on its face that adding 20 points to the score of blacks and Hispanics and not giving those 20 points to whites would, on its face, not be consistent with the President's policy. You're saying it might be?
MR. FLEISCHER: Bill, it's under review and we'll know when the review is complete
"Bill" is no doubt Bill Sammon, who wrote the Times story.
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1:16 PM
Borders? We don't need no stinking borders...From the Washington Times:
The Phillip Burton Federal Building in San Francisco has become the first federal facility to accept Mexican-issued ID cards, used by both legal and illegal immigrants, as valid identification.
The policy was requested by new House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat.
The building began a four-month trial program this week. Supporters say it will allow holders of the Matricula Consular card access to the building, which requires proper identification from all visitors.
Rep. Tom Tancredo has been a loely voice on these issues:
Opponents say accepting the ID cards encourages illegal immigrants to continue to break the law and creates an unsafe atmosphere.
"There is no one in the United States of America that needs a [Mexican-issued] ID card other than someone who is here illegally or someone here who is a felon," said Rep. Tom Tancredo, Colorado Democrat and chairman of the Congressional Immigration Reform Caucus. "This is not a secure system, and even if it were a secure system, what is the responsibility of our government to accept a foreign government's card?"
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12:21 PM
Israel's Sharon yanked off the air... This must have been strange:
By Molly Moore
JERUSALEM, Jan. 9 -- Twelve minutes and 37 seconds into Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's prime-time defense tonight against mounting corruption allegations, an Israeli Supreme Court justice pulled the plug on the live broadcast, declaring that Sharon's news conference amounted to an electoral appearance outside the time allotted to candidates.
During one of his most emotional outbursts against those accusing him of shady dealings, Sharon glared into the cameras broadcasting his appearance, slammed his hand on a lectern and shouted: "Have you gone mad? Have you lost your mind?"
It was unclear to whom Sharon was posing those questions, but Supreme Court Justice Mishael Cheshin found that too many of them pointed at the Labor Party, the primary rival of Sharon's Likud Party in elections scheduled Jan. 28. Stunned announcers on national television and radio told their audiences that Cheshin yanked the prime minister off the air for engaging in political propaganda...
Debka.com says:
Israel’s Central Committee will Saturday night discuss Judge Heshin’s decision to cut short Sharon’s broadcast news conference Thursday night alleging he was electioneering for Likud
PM appeared in response to opposition demand that he publicly answer charges of improper 1999 campaign financing. He was taken off the air after ten minutes.
A couple days ago Debka said this:
Despite headlines to the contrary - and falling opinion ratings, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon may not have too much cause for concern over this week’s revelations that a long-time friend, South African textile tycoon Cyril Kern, made a low-interest loan to son Gilad Sharon to pay back illegal foreign contributions to the Likud leader’s 1999 primaries campaign.
Even if Sharon was guilty of wrongdoing – which he is not -- the average Israeli knows that corruption is rampant in Israeli society and is more concerned with Palestinian suicide bombings that have turned life in the Jewish state into a Russian roulette.
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10:30 AM
Loose Ends Department: Augusta media consultant Jim McCarthy has heard
back from the Post regarding his objections to coverage of the Martha Burk
controversy, and is working on a resolution.
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12:15 AM
Skeptical Environmentalist Update: NRO has linked to author Bjoern Lomborg's brief response to the Danish Committee that condemned his work, but it's a a weird link--it's directly to a Word document that my old reader can't handle very well. Two of his main points:
Unfortunately the DCSD has made their decision without taking a position to the content of the complaints. The DCSD has ruled that ‘it is not DCSD's remit to decide who is right in a contentious professional issue’. I find this ruling inexplicable and it means that there is still no ruling about the numerous complaints put forth in public. So I maintain that the complaints of the plaintiffs are unfounded.
The main conclusion by DCSD finds that my book is ‘clearly contrary to the standards of good scientific practice’ because of systematically biased selection of data and arguments. But since the DCSD has neglected to take their position on the technical scientific disputes their conclusions are completely unfounded. The DCSD does not give a single example to demonstrate their claim of a biased choice of data and arguments. Consequently, I don’t understand this ruling. It equals an accusation without defining the crime....
Lomborg says he's submitted lengthier comments to the DCSD. OmbudsGod has comments and a long list of links on the issue from Scientific American.
UPDATE: OmbudgsGod has tons of stuff again and a better Lomborg link.
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Thursday, January 09, 2003
11:44 PM
So I start out reading this item via Insta about China blocking access to blogspot sites, which includes me. Easy to take freedom for granted, isn't it? (And the odd thing is at the moment, Chinese bloggers can post to their sites--they just can't read them!).
One thing leads to another and I find this fascinating post by China Hand, also linked by Insta. First there's a tale about how he's treated by his relatives after the first 20 years--he married into a Chinese family. Then this:
From the Western press you may well get the impression that China is doing nothing to avert a potential catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula but let me give you a little background which might shed light on China's apparent inaction.
In some ways China's relations with Korea are like those with Vietnam. The Korean Peninsula is something seen from China as being traditionally a Chinese suzerain if not actually Chinese territory. Nevertheless throughout the centuries the Koreans have fought for their independence and remained proudly separate from China....
Fast-forward to the Korean War, when it seemed pretty clear China wouldn't get involved if the Americans remained below the 39th parallel:
MacArthur's people clearly chose to ignore the implicit message which surely was underlined in diplomacy at the time. China, like Russia had been devastated by the war against Japan and then a two year civil war. It had no will to take on the clearly ascendant US. But it was bound to defend North Korea. While propaganda from both sides talks of the warmth and friendship between the two people, I have heard stories that Chinese troops in Korea, with over extended supply lines and inadequately equipped often received little help or welcome from the locals who regarded them to be invaders no more welcome than the US troops....
Though the two had comradely relations in the post-Korean War period there was little gratitude extended to China.When I was a trade consultant in Beijing in the 80's it was suggested I talk to the Koreans who had indicated they were interest in doing business in Australia. The talks came to nothing but I did note a hostility to Chinese even there when I attempted to speak Chinese to the Chinese fluent trade diplomats they made it clear they did not like even speaking Chinese.
So my point is this. Although we like to refer to China as North Korea's main ally, any suggestions that the Chinese just need to talk to Kim Jong-il and he will fall into line is ludicrous. China has been urging Kim for over ten, if not twenty years to open up and reform. While he has made a few token gestures so far little of substance has occurred. Korea is as fiercely independent of China today as it has been for a thousand years. Any suggestion they can be influenced by outside forces is clearly uninformed.
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11:20 PM
Here's something I didn't know, from Barry Molefsky at A City Slicker:
There is no good reason for people to expect their employers to provide health insurance. Workers don't expect their employers to provide other forms of insurance. The only reason it's expected is an IRS ruling during World War II. IRS said employer costs for employee health insurance were a deductable expense but were not taxable income to the employee...
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11:14 PM
Bravo to Fred Graham, top dog at Court TV and an old news hand, for saying tonight that the way Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has been treated--for being a black conservative--is "abominable." Graham and Stuart Taylor were on Brian Williams' MSNBC show discussing a book that Thomas will be writing under one of those millon-dollar contracts. Apparently it'll be an autobiography that will include his confirmation hearings. Pretty unusual.
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11:11 PM
Former CBS chief Thomas Wyman died, according to ESPN. Wyman recently resigned his membership from Augusta to protest its male-only membership policy. He was 73.
UPDATE: The AP obit in the Post.
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6:49 PM
Nun update... I recently faulted Andrew Sullivan for hyping a previously published study unearthed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch claiming at least 40% of nuns were the victims of sexual trauma. More on this from Amy Wellborn, whose link generated a lot of comments at her site. She also linked to this letter to the editor:
The front page subheading states "An estimated 40 pct. were victimized, some by priests, other nuns, survey found." However, nowhere in the article is there evidence for this 40 percent estimate. According to the tables in the article, 18.6 percent of the nuns who responded to the survey reported that they were sexually abused as children, and the majority of these incidents were at the hands of family members. The percentage reporting any instances of sexual exploitation or harassment during their religious life is lower (12.5 percent and 9.3 percent). Thus, the 40 percent claim and its association with "priests and other nuns" appears to be deliberately misleading.
Another subheading alleges that the study has been "kept quiet," when in fact, the results had been previously reported in two religious research journals. To attribute one's own lack of awareness to an alleged conspiracy when the research has appeared in print twice is both bizarre and suggestive of serious bias.
One commenter at Wellborn's site (In Between Naps):
After my husband pointed out the "40%" headline, I did the math - the only way they came up with that number was to add up a bunch of unrelated "issue" percentages. I also have a real problem with including as "sexual victims" the nuns who fell in love and entered into relationships with priests and willingly violated their own vows.
Yeah, somewhere in the original story it starts talking about sexual trauma, abuse, harassment......This is how feminists produce scare statistics; the mildest offense is counted as part of the worst one. So, for example, domestic violence includes "emotional violence" which, by the way, truly does exist, but in advocacy politics includes a really dirty look.
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1:35 PM
As long as I'm linking NRO, Jay Nordlinger says he's just filed a piece on Augusta for the magazine's next issue. In the Weird Story department, he adds something he left out of the magazine. He says that Augusta co-founder Clifford Roberts:
left the bulk of his estate to Planned Parenthood — because he despised children. (In fact, he kept one prospective member out of Augusta National because the man had five children, and “anyone stupid enough” to have that many offspring, said Roberts, “isn’t smart enough to belong to Augusta National.” Roberts, I might add, came from a family of five children.)
My point? Martha Burk and her brother feminists may hate Augusta National — but they should just remember ol’ Cliff’s will.
Nordlinger also describes Roberts, who eventually committed suicide, as a much less attractive character than his legenday partner Bobby Jones.
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1:12 PM
The Washington Times does a much better job of informing readers about both sides of the Judge Pickering issue. As you know, Bush renominated Pickering and Democrats are passing out in stage-managed apoplexy. Both in this story by Dana Milbank and this story by Helen Dewar, the Post doesn't really try to explain why some people don't think Pickering's opinion in an old cross-burning case has anything to do with racial prejudice, for example. Their brief outlines are basically out of the Democrat playbook.
Milbank:
Democrats say Pickering, whom they rejected in September, helped a cross-burning defendant and was hostile to civil rights claims.
Dewar:
During last year's debate and again yesterday, Republicans defended Pickering as an early civil rights supporter who fought the Ku Klux Klan while Democrats focused on other actions such as his efforts as a judge to reduce the sentence of a man convicted of burning a cross outside the home of an interracial couple.
The latter at least has the veneer of an attempt to quote both sides. But it suggests there's no direct answer to the cross-burning episode. Enter the Washington Times with Bill Sammon and Amy Fagan:
Democrats said Judge Pickering has a poor record on civil rights issues, and specifically mentioned a case in which they said he tried to get a lighter sentence for a convicted cross-burner. Mr. Schumer called that "simply mind-boggling."
But Mr. Fleischer defended Judge Pickering regarding that case. "Judge Pickering expressed his record of disdain for this heinous crime," he said. "He was concerned in this case about disparate sentences. The person he deemed most guilty was given no jail time, while the person he believed less culpable faced what even the prosecutor agreed was a draconian sentence."
Without a doubt, the Times story is more balanced, which saves me a lotta time as a reader. If you want to know what both sides think, read the Times.
I should note that the main topic of Milbank's story is Bush's political audacity, and in many ways it's complimentary. But it's the assumptions and omissions that drive PostWatch crazy. So there.
NRO's Byron York has the details on the cross-burning.
Every lawyer in the case — the defense attorneys, the prosecutors, and the judge — faced the difficulty of dealing with an ugly situation and determining the appropriate punishment for a bad guy and a somewhat less-bad guy. Pickering, who believed the Civil Rights Division went too easy on the 17-year-old bad guy, worked out what he believed was the best sentence for Daniel Swan. It was a real-world solution to the kind of real-world problem that the justice system deals with every day. And it was the end of the cross-burning case until Pickering was nominated by President Bush to a place on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
UPDATE: Eleven Day Empire has more on this.
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12:56 PM
Former Georgia GOP Congressman Bob Barr is a reliable skeptic about police powers, as he shows in a Washington Times column about Fairfax County's Alcohol Pre-Emption program. Barr, like some others, compares it to the movie Minority Report:
In last year's mega-hit movie "Minority Report," starring Tom Cruise in a mid-21st-century sci-fi thriller, D.C. police identify persons who have not yet committed a crime, but who, based on premonition evidence are going to commit a crime, and then swoop in and arrest these pre-criminals before they can carry out their dastardly deeds.
A fine movie; I saw it and liked it. Well, it isn't even 2054 (the year in which the movie is set), and already, Washington-area police — in this case, Fairfax County, Va.'s finest — are taking the movie to heart, and putting it into practice now.
Seems the local constabularies are getting bored actually waiting for crimes to be committed, and then, based on actual evidence, practicing good police work and arresting the perpetrators...
The department's explanation that it is against the law to be intoxicated in a public place (including a bar), is nonsense, even if, in a hyper-technical sense, correct. Someone perhaps ought to remind Fairfax County that bars actually exist as places in which people drink alcohol; it's not only legal, it's encouraged. This actually is a frightening scenario that one hopes is nipped in the bud. Not only is this sort of Gestapolike behavior chilling in the extreme, but if condoned or encouraged, will find its way into other areas of detaining or arresting people for potential criminal behavior.
The Post's Marc Fisher also weighs in:
• In Reston and Herndon, Fairfax County police, perhaps inspired by "Minority Report," the futuristic flick in which cops stop crimes before they happen, served up a holiday season surprise: Officers went into bars and restaurants to question, test and arrest patrons who imbibed too much -- even if they caused no disturbance and had no intention of driving....
A trade organization representing bars terms this an "anti-alcohol jihad." Oh, please. Talk to police officers who've had to respond to wrecks caused by people who insist on driving loaded, and it's easy to see where this crackdown came from. But raids on people out for a pleasant evening are no answer.
Catch drunks before they kill, but not before they're served their burger.
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12:52 PM
I was afraid of this... From the Washington Times, White House set to stay out of affirmative-action case:
President Bush is unlikely to join a Supreme Court battle over whether public universities may favor racial or ethnic groups for admissions...
The hed is more certain than the story, which basically leaves all options on the table.
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8:45 AM
Race discrimination is a good thing... Today's example: Latino Groups Urge Bush To Back Affirmative Action:
A coalition of the nation's most influential Latino organizations voiced strong support for affirmative action in higher education yesterday, and sent a letter to President Bush asking him to endorse it in the days leading up to its review at the Supreme Court.
The letter was released at a news conference where representatives of 12 groups took turns expressing concern that Latino youngsters will be deprived of an education at the colleges of their choice if the court overturns affirmative action when it rules on two legal challenges to race-based preferences at the University of Michigan....
I'm hoping that Bush's decision to renominate Judge Pickering despite the smears against his reputation is a signal that he'll have the guts to file a friend-of-the-court brief in favor of overturning Michigan's discriminatory admissions policy. But he may not want to tackle so much at once.
Among the groups present yesterday were the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, the Cuban American National Council and the National Council of La Raza.
The last translates as "The Race." So much for e pluribus unum. Permanently fragmented idenities, separate allegiances and a dysfunctional society are our future if we don't get this one right.
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Wednesday, January 08, 2003
11:19 PM
Actively Stupid Government... Nice people and some law-and-order types occasionally wonder why the public doesn't automatically greet every law enforcement pronouncement with a carpet of pixie-tossed garlands. So let's review.
Invading a bar to roust peaceably assembled citizens is one reason.
Exploiting a sniper hunt to harass lawful gun owners is another reason.
Conducting extra-constitutional prosecutions 75% of the time is another reason.
Seizing a U.S. citizen on secret evidence he cannot rebut is another reason.
Oh, but I could go on.
I'll tell you one thing. Thank God, and the Founding Fathers, for the First Amendment. It's remarkable.
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10:45 PM
Totalitarianism Today gives me more credit than I deserve in a recent link to my post about a Washington Post story detailing the arrest and detention of Mohammed Attis, who is being held on an outrageous bond, has not been charged and has not been privy to the evidence presented against him. Totalitarianism says "Postwatch explains why the whole thing 'sounds fishy.' " I wish I had! Totalitariansim actually does explain:
Meanwhile, critics continue to question the keeping of evidence from an American citizen who, by law, should be informed of the charges against him and the reasons for those charges. Without such information, a defense is impossible
However, you lose me when talking about "respect[ing] the decision of Chinese women to prostitute themselves" while adding that "marriage itself is an enlightened form of long-term prostitution." Then again, you have a priceless link to Penn, of Penn & Teller, and his tale of an overly friendly TSA screener and Penn's Fight-The-Power reaction.
I need an aspirin.
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10:23 PM
I was going to say that Eleven Day Empire has a stupendous roundup of other bloggers' New Year's resolutions under the banner Carnival of the Vanities. I think this is one of those High Concept things that's just a little over my head. But in any case, it's just possible he'll get a few more hits now that Instapundit noticed...
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1:31 PM
Chavez-Al Qaeda Update... Via Crooowblog, NRO runs this column by the Competitive Enterprise Institute's Ivan G. Osorio:
On January 5, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's former personal pilot dropped a bombshell that has been ignored by just about every major U.S. news organization: The Venezuelan president, according to the pilot, gave al Qaeda a substantial sum of money following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
Venezuelan Air Force Major Juan Diaz Castillo, who is now seeking political asylum in the United States and says his "life and liberty are in danger in Venezuela," says Chavez chose him to conduct the transfer because he trusted him as a close personal assistant. But Díaz, disgusted with Chavez's regime, resigned his post on October 25 — and fled following a December 16 attempt on his life.
Osorio doesn't mention World Net Daily's account, but adds, as I do, that it fits a pattern:
Diaz Castillo's testimony alone should not be taken at face value — but his statements are consistent with other defectors' testimony and Chavez's public behavior.
General Marcos Ferreira, who resigned as director of Venezuela's border-control service, recently told Insight magazine that Cuba's General Intelligence Directorate (Spanish initials: DGI) has practically taken over Venezuela's ominously named Directorate for Intelligence, Security, and Prevention (DISIP), and that Interior Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin pressured him to cover up the identities of terrorists — many from the Middle East — passing through Venezuela and to deceive U.S. terrorism investigators. "I quit my job when I got tired of doing dirty work for Chavez with the Cubans looking over my shoulder," he said.
General Nestor Gonzalez Gonzalez, another military dissident, says Chavez has routed weapons and supplies from Cuba through Venezuela to Marxist guerrillas in Colombia...
In 2001, Chavez paid state visits to — and signed "cooperation agreements" with — Libya, Iraq, and Iran.
Chavez's hatred of the United States and our allies is well known, as is his propensity for violence. On September 12, 2001, Chavez supporters burned an American flag in Caracas's Plaza Bolivar to celebrate the previous day's terrorist attacks. Chavez tried to seize power by force in 1992; and recently his thugs have ransacked television stations and fired on opposition demonstrators. It is not a stretch to believe he would ally himself with anyone trying to do us harm.
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1:11 PM
Something tells me this didn't happen with Bellesiles... The National Review Online cites stories in the Post and the New York Times today about some Danish science committee condemning The Skeptical Environmentalist, a book said to debunk many environmental activist claims. The stories are printed one day after the committee's report came out. NRO concludes that the Times' version is more fair than the Post's. Of the latter, NRO's Jonathan Adler said:
The Washington Post reports today that Bjorn Lomborg, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, was "denounced" for "scientific dishonesty" by the Danish Research Agency in response to several complaints filed by environmental activist researchers. The actual DRA decision, however, is more measured than the Post report, noting a lack of consensus among the reviewers on key points. Largely basing its conclusions on critiques of Lomborg's book by activist researchers published in Scientific American (critiques rebutted here[pdf-PW]), the DRA panel concluded that "subject to the proviso that the book is to be evaluated as science" (because of all those pesky footnotes), the book is "contrary to the standards of good scientific practice" because of its "onesidedness in the choice of data and line of argument."...
And on the Times:
The New York Times has a fairer report on the Danish rebuke of Lomborg. It captures the tone of the report, noting that the report labels the book "scientifically dishonest" but avoids saying the same of Lomborg, and quotes Lomborg's response: "You can't say I'm scientifically dishonest or in breach of good scientific conduct unless you point the finger and say this is the smoking gun. It's like saying you committed murder but we won't tell you who you killed. It's impossible for me to defend myself."...
Then NRO's Jonah Goldberg links to this at Tech Central Station by Nick Schulz:
When Bjorn Lomborg's book The Skeptical Environmentalist was published a little over a year ago it caused an immediate sensation in the United States and Europe for its unconventionally optimistic take on environmental matters.
At the time, I asked Ronald Bailey, the author and editor of two books on the environment and the foremost expert in the United States on the intersection of science policy and political controversy, what he thought of the book.
"Lomborg doesn't have a clue what's about to happen to him," Bailey said. "I feel sorry for him."
Bailey was right.
Schulz says Lomborg has been the target of a "smear campaign," and the Danish effort represents a new low.
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12:58 PM
Fairfax County Pre-Emption Update.... Boy, this story is taking off with new accounts in both the Washington Times and the Post.
As the designated driver in her dinner party, Pat Habib was careful to consume no more than one alcoholic drink and follow it up with two sodas.
So she was shocked when a police officer singled her out of the crowd at Jimmy's Old Town Tavern in Herndon and asked her to step outside to prove her sobriety. After she ran through the alphabet without pause, the Fairfax County police officer let her go and explained police had received a complaint about an unruly blond woman matching her description. Then she watched as police tested other women looking nothing like her.
"I could see it if they wanted to prevent you from getting into a car, but they didn't even ask me if I was driving," Habib said....
The police say everyone they arrested had alcohol levels above the legal limit for driving. Close enough for police work?
Incidentally, the Post says the story was first reported in the Reston Times. Yesterday I said it was the Fairfax Station Times. Frankly I can't tell (I'm inclined to believe the Post) because the site I linked to carries stories from a number of papers in a chain. So take your pick.
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8:52 AM
OmbudsGod comments on a Post story brought to his attention by reader Fred Ray about that Califronia Republican party official who emailed a story speculating that things would have turned out better if the South had won the Civil War:
To The OmbudsGod, the article is a bunch of hooey, but not inherently racist. Nowhere does the article call for different treatment of blacks and whites or for a return to the good 'ole days of “Whuppin' slaves and sellin' cotton.” Basically it’s the sort of revisionist drivel that I’ve come to expect from groups like the Free Congress Foundation. The flap over a state party vice chairman distributing the piece is the sort of silliness that is undeserving of comment from the White House.
Ray and OmbudsGod have a point about the headline and the main premise of the story: White House Silent on Racial Controversy--yes, that does remind one of the NYT's "Augusta-Still-Silent" maneuver. But my sorrow for the man, Bill Black, is limited. True, the email was sent back in 1999, and obviously Democrat operatives and others are scouring the planet for anything they can associate with the Lott debacle. But c'mon, Black, what were you thinking? Here's an excerpt from the article, as quoted by the Post:
Certainly Southerners would not be living under the iron rule of an all-powerful federal government, as we all do now. Northerners might not be, either; a Union defeat would have given states' rights a boost in both countries. . . . What would my great-grandfather, Union Army sergeant Alfred G. Sturgiss, say to all of this? If he could see the sorry mess the country he fought for has become, I think he might sadly say that he'd fought for the wrong side."
In which case he'd be as big a fool as writer William Lind was in this case. If you're going to be this wrong about that issue, don't let the door hit you on the way out.
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Tuesday, January 07, 2003
11:27 PM
ESPN is the target of this Minneapolis Star-Tribune column by Patrick Reusse. Most of it deals with ESPN getting scooped on the Bill Parcels/Dallas Cowboys story, and failing to credit the Dallas Morning News. But there's this passing reference to its recent, inadequate program on Augusta:
ESPN was at its unscrupulous best a couple of weeks ago, when it hosted a roundtable discussion on the controversy surrounding Augusta National and its lack of women members.
Ben Wright was recruited to serve as a backer of Augusta National's position. Wright was fired in January 1996 as a CBS golf commentator for derogatory remarks aimed at lesbians, the state of women's golf and also the woman reporter conducting the interview in question.
So what do you get when trying to conduct a meaningful discussion on golf's No. 1 current controversy? If you're ESPN, you bring in the sport's most-notorious sexist and put him on the panel, even though he has been gone from public view for seven years.
Then, you order moderator Bob Ley to keep pumping questions at Wright, hoping you can get him to pull a Trent Lott. It was amazing to watch Ley continue to aim questions toward Wright, an observer without portfolio, while asking for minimal input from the thoughtful Dave Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist from the New York Times.
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1:29 PM
Teaching Us To Hate the Police... This story about Fairfax County, Va. cops entering bars to arrest allegedly drunk patrons--call it pre-emption--was blogged by InstaGuy and apparently his source, the Fairfax Station Times, broke it Dec. 31, although today's Washington Times catch-up doesn't credit anyone (I think World Net Daily did, but I can't find the link now.). From the Washington Times:
Lt. Bennett said the program resulted in a dozen arrests, including four as the bar patrons were heading to their cars. He said the law gives officers the discretion to issue a citation simply "if a person appears drunk in public" but that arrests are made only in the "most severe cases." "These were the most severe cases," he said. "People who were just falling off their stools, stumbling down stairs."
Mr. Slone said that wasn't true. "They weren't bothering anybody. They were just sitting at the bar," he said. "It was karaoke night. They were singing songs."
This is a really bad idea. I wonder if police departments believe they need the cooperation and active support of the public. From the Fairfax Station Times:
Jimmy Cirrito, who owns and runs Jimmy's Old Town Tavern, said 10 or so officers who showed up in SWAT-like garb were intimidating and unnecessary. He also noted that police seemed to be tagging people at random, despite police telling bar owners they had undercover officers in the bar, calling in and giving descriptions of particular individuals.
"They tapped one lady on the shoulder--who was on her first drink and had just eaten dinner--to take her out on the sidewalk and give her a sobriety test," Cirrito said. "They told her she fit the description of a woman they had complaints about, and that they heard she was dancing topless."
Cirrito said the woman passed the sobriety test and was allowed to return to the bar, but, soon after, police pulled another woman outside who had arrived shortly before police came into Jimmy's Old Town Tavern.
What's the problem with the Fairfax County police? Too much free time? Bad leadership? Someone was going to miss a performance-review checkbox on "initiative?"
UPDATE: Apparently it was a sister publication, the Reston Times, that broke the story.
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1:22 PM
Interesting if true from World Net Daily:
Recent high-level Venezuelan military defectors say President Hugo Chavez gave $1 million to al-Qaida shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States.
Air Force Maj. Juan Diaz Castillo, formerly a pilot for the Venzuelan leader, was smuggled to Miami last week where he is warning the U.S. of what he calls Chavez's dismissal of the constitution and his ties to terrorism in collaboration with Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. "I must warn America about Chavez," Diaz said. "He is a danger, not just to his own people but to the whole region."
The story reports the news broke in Venezuela on Sunday. It also provides a link, militaresdemocraticos.com/en/index.html, an English-language site by Venezuelan military opposing Chavez.
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12:17 PM
Title IX Update.... I haven't taken a look at the College Sports Council's website for a long time, so I don't know when it was updated but it's much improved since last summer. The council has been fighting an uphill battle against quota-driven Title IX enforcement in high school and college athletics. If I remember correctly, the Dept. of Education is supposed to release the recommendations of its Title IX panel tomorrow. Here are some talking points from the College Sports Council; it's from a letter-writing campaign launched last week. Here's the other view from the Women's Sports Foundation, which I link despite its begging-the-question lede:
The Commission on Opportunity in Athletics, appointed by the U.S. Department of Education to examine Title IX as it applies to athletic programs, is poised to recommend the removal of the law’s long-standing equality standards. The levels they suggest would allow institutions to treat female athletes like second-class citizens, receiving from 2% to 25% fewer opportunities to participate and scholarship dollars.
True if schools are denying opportunities out of proportion to the women who want them. False if, as it happens to be the case, women generally choose to pursue competitive sports in lower proportions than men.
UPDATE: According to this schedule, the Jan. 8 meeting has been cancelled and new one announced:
January 29-30, Washington, DC: Specific location to be determined. Beginning at 9:00 am, on Wednesday, January 29th, the Commissioners will meet to discuss and focus on the Report and work through the afternoon. On Thursday, January 30th, at 9:00 the Commissioners will meet and continue to work on the Report until 1:00. The general public may observe this meeting; however, there will not be opportunity for public comment.
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Monday, January 06, 2003
4:07 PM
Because there aren't enough bad ideas in the world.. Republican Sen. Sam Brownback (Kansas) wants to create a temporary race-relations panel to examine issuing an apology for slavery, construction of a black history museum and the general issue of reparations. From the Washington Times:
"I think in light of what took place with the Senate leadership change, we need to step up and seriously address the race issues," Mr. Brownback told The Washington Times. "Unless the Republican Party steps up and addresses it, we'll be constantly taking charges that we're not sensitive on race issues."
The Republicans have wonderfully principled positions on racial equality if only they actually believed them.
These recommendations are for the most part shameful. Our apology for slavery starts with the death of thousands of Union soldiers. Building a black history museum could be a good idea--I thought somebody was working on it--except that the American Museum Community is probably inclined to build a blame-America monument rather than placing slavery in its historical context (for example, white Christians ended it; modern Sudanese still practice it). And Reparations = Extortion. Have a nice day.
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3:37 PM
Andrew Sullivan swings and misses in a recent post that links to a St. Louis Post-Dispatch story about the sexual abuse of nuns. The problem is that the story has an incredibly high figure for abuse that is reminiscent of many other over-hyped feminist claims, and says that only "some" of the abuse is the fault of priests without getting more specific about percentages. Sullivan:
Forty percent of women religious have experienced some kind of sexual abuse - many at the hands of the Church? Now how will the hierarchy manage to blame this on the homosexuals? No doubt they'll give it their best shot.
Here's what the story says:
A national survey, completed in 1996 but intentionally never publicized, estimates that a "minimum" of 34,000 Catholic nuns, or about 40 percent of all nuns in the United States, have suffered some form of sexual trauma.
Some of that sexual abuse, exploitation or harassment has come at the hands of priests and other nuns in the church, the report said.
Well look, Andrew, the report itself says "some" of that abuse comes from other nuns...
Tales in the survey sound horrific--including a nun driven away from confession for 18 years after being fondled in the confessional. But it tells us nothing about how common the problem is.
The other funny thing about this story is that the findings of the survey were first published in two religious journals in 1998, as the Post-Dispatch says, but not covered in the mainstream press. So why is the paper writing about it now?
For new visitors to PostWatch, my take on the sex-abuse crisis in the Church is that 1.Gays are no more nor less sinful than straights but also B). Given the overwhelming percentage of abuse that was practiced by gay priests, it was nonsense to deny a special problem exists in the gay priest subculture at this time and place.
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Friday, January 03, 2003
5:51 PM
Editorial Howler... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs has a bad morning reading a Post editorial:
Is the Washington Post in an anti-Israel competition with the New York Times? A WaPo editorial this morning starts with one of the most outrageous examples of blatant bias I have ever seen:
There has been a lull recently in Palestinian attacks against Israelis...
Stop right there.
Isn’t the Washington Post supposed to be America’s “other paper of record?” Aren’t the editors supposed to be better informed, more analytical, more able to separate truth from spin than the average bear?
So how does one of these big-brained super-editors end up typing something so obviously, screamingly false? A quick scan of the headlines at Ha'aretz or the Jerusalem Post or IMRA or any of a number of sources reveals that Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis are attempted every single day. The only difference recently: the murderers haven’t been as successful as they’d like.
As befits a blog with lots of readers, there are currently 74 comments; take a look. Johnson continues:
So the question becomes: is the editor who wrote this unbelievable howler monkey of an opening sentence just uninformed, or is he/she grinding an anti-Israel axe?
That’s a rhetorical question...
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1:49 PM
Fascinating column by Eve Tushnet at Jewish World Review on gender distinctions and why most of us want them. One graf in particular caught my eye:
Men have a harder time than women finding their desired gender role within family life. This is because, not to put to fine a point on it, the women have the babies. Fatherhood is a societal convention in a way that motherhood, with its inescapable physical changes, its rush of hormones and tigress-passion for the baby, and its deep connection to the developing child, simply is not. Even in the age of DNA testing, men are not as securely tied to their children as women are; even when they want to be, they need societal help in order to maintain their familial role as father and husband.
My own angle is simple: You're going to look differently at the world if a live human being comes flying out of your body.
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1:33 PM
This Washington Times editorial on "Maryland's handgun follies" is partly about the state's harmful law requiring internal locks on all handguns sold in the state, which could cripple the industry there while simultaneously making personal safety more difficult to achieve. But also note this tale in the editorial:
At around 2:30 p.m. last Sunday afternoon, an 82-year-old resident of Brooklyn Park, a Baltimore suburb, heard a noise coming from the front of his home. The elderly man, whose house had been broken into less than a week before, picked up a handgun and went to investigate. When the man got downstairs, he found that an intruder had entered his house through a side window.
The homeowner fired a single shot, which struck the intruder, who immediately fled the house. Anne Arundel County Police arrested Joseph Kelly, 41, roughly 100 yards from the scene of the break-in. He has been charged with felony burglary.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this case is that police and prosecutors in Anne Arundel County have not ruled out prosecuting the elderly homeowner. But it would be a travesty of justice if this 82-year-old man were to be prosecuted for shooting an intruder who broke into his home.
This is exactly the attitude that has turned the previously peaceable United Kingdom into a paradise for criminals. It's one thing for the state to be absent in the face of danger, as it was for this man in the dark of the night. It's another for government to be positively hostile toward citizens who do not wish to be assaulted.
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1:30 PM
Best idea for dealing with North Korea: Inform China that we back nuclear options for Japan and possibly South Korea. This has been suggested both by Ted Galen Carpenter in NRO and, for Japan alone, Charles Krauthammer in his column today. I doubt South Korea would go for it with their new appeasement tilt, but Japan is another matter despite their recent semi-pacifist tradition.
Krauthammer:
What to do when your hand is so poor? Play the trump. We do have one, but we dare not speak its name: a nuclear Japan. Japan cannot long tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea. Having once lobbed a missile over Japan, North Korea could easily hit any city in Japan with a nuclear-tipped weapon. Japan does not want to live under that threat.
We should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea and thus stopping its march to go nuclear, we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.
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1:25 PM
This sounds fishy.... N.J. Secrecy Rule Keeps Arab American in Jail and in the Dark
The guy's an American citizen.
PATERSON, N.J. -- Five months have passed since a flamboyant county sheriff led a squadron of assault weapon-wielding deputies and television news crews on a raid of a hole-in-the-wall travel services business here, declaring he was hot on the trail of an Arab American businessman who had sold fake IDs to two of the Sept. 11 terrorists.
The raid made international headlines, but not for long. As it turned out, the FBI already had interrogated Mohamed Atriss and had concluded he knew nothing more about the hijackers than he did about thousands of other mostly illegal immigrants who bought official-looking identification documents at his office, located directly across the street from City Hall.
He pleaded not guilty to charges of producing false IDs.
Five months later, the alleged proprietor of a small-time document mill is at the center of what appears to be the only criminal case of its kind in the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks -- one in which secret evidence has been presented against the defendant. Atriss remains in jail, now on $500,000 bond -- an amount consistent with a murder charge -- but prosecutors will not say why he poses such a serious risk or give him a chance to respond.
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8:41 AM
Slow news day.... A1: The presidents of the universities playing in tonight's college football championship are both women.
...Come kickoff for Friday's Fiesta Bowl, in which top-ranked Miami will face No. 2 Ohio State for college football's national championship, the top dog in the Buckeyes' box will be a woman in a scarlet outfit: President Karen A. Holbrook.
To find her Miami counterpart, the cameras will have to search for President Donna E. Shalala, who will give up her seat in the president's box so she can whoop it up alongside the Hurricanes' most rabid boosters at Tempe's Sun Devil Stadium....
Zounds! Is such a thing possible?
Maybe it's a love letter to former Clinton cabinet member Shalala, and it certainly sounds like one. And it gives Shalala a chance to offer an unrebutted opinion about Title IX:
I run the most successful football program in the country, and I am a huge supporter of our football program," Shalala said. "But the growth of the costs of football at almost every university are squeezing men's [non-revenue] sports. We've got to step up and be honest. We've got to be prepared to control all of our costs. We shouldn't pretend that we're cutting back on men's sports because of Title IX. We're not. We're cutting back on men's sports because we have some very expensive men's athletic programs. And we ought to find the proper balance."
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Thursday, January 02, 2003
11:26 PM
Random Debka.com Heds:
Three Patriot ground-to-air missile batteries were deployed Wednesday in southern Israel – north of Eilat, in central Arava and in Nitzana region close to Egyptian border
Hey, they're long heds.
DEBKAfile: One thousand US marines are due to land in Israel next week
Hizballah misfires first missile of Iraqi shipment
The powerful blast that reverberated across eastern and central Lebanon Sunday, December 29, was caused by the explosion of a big surface missile in Hizballah hands and of Iraqi origin. Reporting this, DEBKAfile’s exclusive military and Lebanese sources reveal that the Lebanese Shiite terrorist group has recently taken delivery of a shipment of surface missiles, presumed to be medium-range, from the Iraqi army...
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10:59 PM
Interesting little Augusta sidelight: Mayor Bob Young of the City of Augusta has written Martha Burk to ask she change the name of her shame-on-you website, Augustadiscriminates.org, saying it's demeaning the city's image. PostWatch reader Steven Garrett directs us to this Augusta Chronicle .pdf image of a Dec. 20 letter from Young to Burk in which he notes that Burk's "disagreement" is with Augusta National Golf Club. He continues:
...I take exception to the domain name that you have chosen. The domain suggests the City of Augusta and the people who live here discriminate. That could not be farther from the truth.
For four years the City of Augusta has been a leading participant in the International City of Character program. For the past year and a half our Human Relations Commission has been working with the U.S. Justice Department to resolve racial issues in our city. [I have no idea what that refers to--PW]. We have a diverse community where discrimination is not practiced or sanctioned as a matter of public policy....
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Wednesday, January 01, 2003
11:13 PM
As long as I'm blogrolling I should note that OmbudsGod linked to my recent post on Michael Getler's refusing to answer Augusta media consultant Jim McCarthy's many attempts to discuss a Dec. 12 Leonard Shapiro feature on Augusta. (OmbudsGod: Who do you call when the ombudsman won’t return phone calls?)
I described that story as "embarassingly one-sided" and today's story is as well. Aside from a "no comment," there's nothing from any opponents of Burk. Now I understand part of what's going on here. The reporter gave Augusta a chance to reply, they turned him down, and at that point many a reporter will say fine! If you don't want to defend yourself, that's your problem! But most of the time that's not good enough, particularly for a supposedly world-class paper. If you're going to run a story whose main quality is to repeat past attacks, then repeat past replies, either from Augusta itself or many other authorities whose opinions would create a more interesting story. Even if they're not in the liberal rolodex, they can be located in something called "the phone book."
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10:16 PM
This just in from Leonard Shapiro: Burk Ponders Strategy. Now there's the shock of the unexpected!
Martha Burk, chairwoman of the National Council of Women's Organizations, will meet with her board early next week to begin plotting final strategy in its attempt to persuade Augusta National Golf Club to admit female members before the 2003 Masters tournament in April.
One of the options, she said in an interview yesterday, will be to challenge current members to resign from the club, which has never had a female member.
That's been one of the options for awhile now. Some guy named Leonard Shapiro reported it Nov. 12:
Over the last five months, Burk's organization, representing 160 women's organizations and 7 million members, has been trying to persuade Augusta to change its policy. She has sent out close to 30 letters to members in highly visible corporate positions seeking their help in working from the inside to change the policy. She also has asked them to resign their memberships.
I'd wager neither the story nor the hed should be overnighted to the Pulitzer jury. Guess we're blowing embers here.
By the way, the Post story online includes the NCWO's new website, www.augustadiscriminates.org, aimed at shaming executives who are members of Augusta. That's fine, but it does make a conservative kinda guy wonder how balanced these links are. For example, in this Nov. 14 story on an Augusta-commissioned poll (which Shapiro derided), there's no link to the poll itself. Seems like a natural to me, particularly since he quotes critics saying noted pollster Kellyanne Conway rigged the survey to produce the desired result. Could readers decide for themselves? Then, as now, only if they read PostWatch!
By the way, I'm overdue for thanking Eleven Day Empire for very kind words on this issue. ("PostWatch is nothing if not persistent.....") So thanks. Speaking of persistence, I should warn you all that my next obsession will be the anticipated release, Jan. 8, of the findings of the Department of Education's Title IX Commission.
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