Monday, September 29, 2003

Here's my moderate bias: I'm rather entertained by the liberal-media conspiracy theorists out there. As a journalist, I just can't buy the argument that the news media is intentionally pushing a liberal agenda. I personally know way too many conservative news reporters in the business for such a conspiracy to thrive.

I will concede that the major newspapers and magazines I read -- The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsweek, et al -- will slip from time to time and fall to the left when reporting issues. The Washington Times tends to land on the right, probably intentionally, but still subtly. The overall coverage, however, tends to be objective or, at the very least, tends to balance subjectivities.

I will recuse myself from evaluating broadcast networks because I rarely watch them unless a major event is happening, at which time I usually stay on CNN. Occasionally on quiet nights I'll flip among some of the shows on CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. But it won't be long until the sound of people simultaneously screaming at each other taxes my sanity.

Still, from what I've seen I haven't sensed an overbearing liberal push on news networks. Again, they may slip a little left at times, but that's not a conspiracy. Fox does have more conservative pundits, but they are open about their opinions just like liberal columnists are. But you can't call one network conservative and another liberal when talking heads, such as Geraldo Rivera and Greta Van Susteren, jump between networks.

That's not to say that news shows are completely innocent. I was utterly amazed by ABC's decision to hire Democratic partisan hack George Stephanopoulos as an "objective" journalist. And it bugs me how Fox adopts the rhetoric of the Bush administration, such as echoing the president's term "homicide bombers" for Palestinian suicide bombers. The truth is, all bombs are meant for homicide. What sets a suicide bomber apart from B-52s is that the assailant is taking his or her own life just to make sure that the bomb kills as many people as possible. Part of the job of the news media is to cut through political rhetoric and describe reality objectively.

But when somebody pegs the whole news media with a liberal bias, that person is only revealing his or her own conservative views. A perfect example of this is found in Bush's chat with Brit Hume on Fox News.

HUME: How do you get your news?
BUSH: I get briefed by Andy Card and Condi in the morning. They come in and tell me. [It's assumed that this next comment is a side, apologetic comment to Hume] In all due respect, you've got a beautiful face and everything.
I glance at the headlines just to kind of a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are -- probably read the news themselves. But like Condoleezza, in her case, the national security adviser is getting her news directly from the participants on the world stage.
HUME: Has that been your practice since day one, or is that a practice that you've...
BUSH: Practice since day one.
HUME: Really?
BUSH: Yes. You know, look, I have great respect for the media. I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions mixed in with news. And I...
HUME: I won't disagree with that, sir.
BUSH: I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world.

Bush's staff members can be called a lot of things, but I'm sure objective is not one of them. But to conservatives like Bush, only other conservatives seem fair and balanced. The rest of us can and should continue to take a critical look at what the news media serves us. But we can throw our tinfoil hats in the garbage.

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Reader Responds: Don, who runs the blog Revolutionary Moderation, writes in to share his perspective from Canada:

To respond to a few of the questions you posted on September 16, I think there was a certain fear that Bush was not going to show any restraint in Afghanistan. I myself thought it was an expensive and drawn-out police operation, and that a thousand special ops guys could accomplish better and more cheaply what a hundred thousand soldiers and daily carpet bombings couldn't. But after September 11, the world was willing to grant your country and your President a lot of leeway to respond. Canadians, among others, joined the effort. Something has happened since then, and it would serve the American electorate well to ask what.

The argument about too much security/not enough security is interesting, but I think the people who claim that security could be strengthened for the United States are complaining less about the money, and more about the focus. Iraq presented zero threat when the US invaded.

France (among others) suggested the US give Iraq's "seed of democracy" room to grow. They were told to shove off. Check the article I blogged about the Friedman essay: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=279&row=0. My favourite line? "... Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein ... have the same line: the Iraqi people aren't ready for democracy." I wonder if the "culture that breeds terrorism" isn't related more to hopelessness and poverty and colonialism than it is to a lack of democracy, even so. The occupation turns a colonial past into a colonial future.

"The terrorists fighting in Iraq would otherwise be coming to the United States." The so-called flypaper strategy. If it were true, it would be obscene to imagine that your current administration would send US soldiers into harm's way as bait. But as cynical as I am, I'm not THAT cynical, yet.

And who could we get to rebuild instead of Halliburton? How about these guys?

Finally, yes, September 11 woke your country, and the world, to a grave threat. Bush's Iraqi adventure, and the implication that we'll all be fine if only we shop some more, have been lullabyes to return us all to complacancy. "Don't worry - your government will fix it.". After Afghanistan, things could have gone in an entirely different direction, but Bush elected to make his "Axis of Evil" SotU, and the world is many times more dangerous as a result.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Friday, September 26, 2003

Journalism 101: Talk about burying the lead. In this Washington Post article, Sen. Hillary Clinton -- yes, the liberal, anti-Bush one -- admits that U.S. intelligence confirmed that Iraq still had the weapons of mass destruction Saddam was supposed to destroy:

She said she consulted widely before that vote and found that U.S. intelligence "from Bush I to Clinton to Bush II was consistent" in concluding that there was "a continuing presence of biological and chemical weapons programs" in Iraq and that the Iraqis were seeking to develop a nuclear capacity.

However, this information is found in the second-to-last paragraph of an inside-baseball story of Hillary denying that Gen. Clark's run for the presidency is part of some grand conspiracy.

In the next paragraph she goes on to criticize Bush for relying on U.S. intelligence for making decisions. Silly man. But it's irresponsible of the Washington Post to play down Hillary's concession in light of all the flak Bush is getting on the WMD issue.

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Thursday, September 25, 2003

You Can't Talk: Some conservatives at Southern Methodist University got in trouble for throwing an Affirmative Action Bake Sale. To protest colleges' taking race into consideration for admissions, the students took race into consideration when charging for cookies and other baked goodies. White men had to pay $1.00, white women could pay $0.75, Hispanics could pay $0.50, and blacks could pay $0.25.

This, as you might expect, generated a heap of controversy. Women and minorities were incensed. The university decided to shut down the protest.

But why? I've seen liberals protest through bakery goods. When Ward Connerly (a University of California regent who has fought against affirmative action and who is black) spoke at my college a long time ago, protesters were giving out Oreos (a not-so-subtle jab at Connerly) and sandwiches made of nothing but mayonnaise spread between slices of white bread with the crusts cut off (everything's gonna be all white).

Nobody shut that protest down. I am a strong supporter of affirmative action. But I'm an even stronger supporter of free speech. I disagree with what the Young Conservatives of Texas have to say, but I'll fight to the death for their right to say it.

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Say What? Some federal judge decided to strike down the national Do Not Call list before it even got under way. He ruled that the Federal Trade Commission has no authority to tell telemarketers that they can't call people who are pleading to be left alone.

What gets me is that this is just a random federal judge in Oklahoma City making the arbitrary decision. As far as I know, Oklahoma isn't the home to all telemarketers or any major portion of the FTC. It appears that telemarketers picked that federal court district out of the 663 judgeships in the country because they knew the judge there, Judge Lee R. West, would rule in their favor.

There's something wrong with our judicial system when the judges choose to rule not by what they believe will be upheld by national precedent, but by their own prejudices. This has happened many times before. For example, I think it's no coincidence that the three most liberal judges in one of the most liberal appeals courts in the nation got to rule to delay the California governor recall vote. The three judges on the panel ended up wasting the judiciary's time by making an obviously mistaken ruling that had to be corrected by an en banc decision of 11 members.

Now a judge has decided that people aren't allowed to voluntarily place a "No Soliciting" sign by their telephone numbers. The judge made a bizarre ruling that although Congress appropriated money to the FTC for the express purpose of creating a Do Not Call list, Congress didn't give the FTC any authority to do such.

Federal judges are appointed for life so they make decisions based on sound legal principles instead of on politics or special interests. But it appears the lifetime job security actually leads to outright partisanship and nutty decisions, with no potential recourse. And people are free to take advantage of this system by filing lawsuits with their favorite incompetent judge.

Take heart, this telemarketer ruling will definitely be overturned, either by another court or by Congress. The House has already passed a bill to put the judge in his place. Telemarketers may whine that they will be losing jobs with everyone signing on to the Do Not Call list, but tell that to the telegraph operators who lost their jobs after the invention of the telephone. Times change. Technology changes. Now, if we could only do something about all this spam.

8:18 p.m. Update: Ah, this is what I call sweet justice. Check it out!

Next day update: Here we go again. Another judge ruled against the Do Not Call list, this time saying it violated the telemarketers' freedom of speech. Because Congress will let charitable organizations cold call people at home but not let businesses do the same, the judge ruled, the government was restricting speech based on content, a big no-no under the First Amendment.

Of course, I've got a rebuttal. Content-neutral speech restrictions (such as no loud noises in a suburban neighborhood at night) do pass constitutional muster better than restrictions on specific speech (such as no Green Party paraphernalia in the same suburban neighborhood). However, courts have consistently held that businesses and advertisers have less leeway in speech than people talking about politics and other issues. That's why businesses are required by law to list ingredients in food and are held to strict false-advertising rules. If you're not selling anything, the government can't force you to say anything or stop you from saying something, unless it involves slander or serious threats.

Congress has the power under the Constitution to regulate interstate commerce, which is exactly what telemarketing is. Maybe we should call this Denver judge, Edward W. Nottingham, and let him know that.

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Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Insert another "I'll Be Back" joke here: So the recall is back on schedule. I'm happy with the decision just for the sake of getting the recall over with. And since I safely reside on the opposite coast, I can enjoy the entertainment without having to suffer the consequences of living with someone like Gov. Schwarzenegger.

I don't know exactly what Gray Davis did to screw things up. Apparently many Republicans and Democrats concur that the sitting governor made terrible decisions during the economic boom and has dug the government into a budgetary hole.

I think it's funny that the same Democrats that defend Davis as a victim of a nation-wide economic collapse are quick to blame Bush for screwing up the economy even though it faltered before Bush came into office.

Regardless, California should take this recall mechanism off the books as soon as this is over. Elected politicians should be allowed to fulfill their terms and then face the electorate. It's bad enough when the news media runs a poll every time a politician mumbles. We need some stability for government to work. If an officeholder does something too egregious, that's what impeachment is for.

But the recall is legal now under California law, and the law should be followed until the game is over -- just like with the 2000 elections (if you don't like the Electoral College system, amend the Constitution). Using cheap arguments and saying the current voting machines are illegal is just an attempt to subvert democracy. Those were the same voting machines that got Davis elected. So to take that argument seriously, California would have to remove him and all other elected officials today.

But the ACLU led the charge to put off allowing California residents to vote in the recall. As much as I would like to support an organization like the ACLU, I can't help but notice how partisan it acts. According to its Web site, the group is ardent in supporting free speech and privacy, with which I wholeheartedly agree. But when it comes to defending our rights under the Second Amendment of the Constitution, the group skirts the issue, saying, "The question therefore is not whether to restrict arms ownership, but how much to restrict it. If that is a question left open by the Constitution, then it is a question for Congress to decide." Well, deciding how much to restrict freedom of speech (slander, yelling fire in a crowded theater) is an open question, but I wouldn't trust Congress alone to decide that.

The ACLU should be working to empower the people in California. Instead it's working to protect the governor. The group's job is to defend all the freedoms of all Americans, not just those of liberal Democrats.

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This just in! Someone posted this on our office wall:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.

The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Vrey inretestnig!

Freedom Rings: It's nice to live in a nation that people often call "the free-est country in the world". It would be even nicer if it were true.

That title has to be given to the Netherlands. With ultra-liberalized laws on drugs, sex, and prostitution, the Dutch are free to do just about whatever they want with whomever they want, however they want. And yet Amsterdam has not been smote, smited, or smitten.

The Washington Post just ran a story about how common gay marriages are in the Netherlands, with almost 8 percent of weddings being between members of the same sex. Still, no smiting.

I don't see why some people see gay marriages as a threat. The truth is, you don't need permission from the government to get married. Any two people who commit to loving each other forever and being faithful to each other are married.

What the state provides is legal protections to married couples: marital tax exemptions; coverage of spouses under medical, dental, and life insurance; medical consent; hospital visitation; child custody; etc.

So by discriminating against certain couples by not providing such legal rights, the government is denying equal protection under the law. And according to the 14th Amendment, the government can't do that. Therefore, any denial of same-sex marriage should be considered unconstitutional.

Unfortunately, right-wingers will cry about tradition and how this ruins marriage and how it would be bad for children. But they have to face the fact that tradition changes, just like when women were allowed into the workplace. Encouraging more couples to commit will only strengthen the institution of marriage. And children are already being raised in homes with gay couples, with no adverse effects whatsoever. It's time for people to open their eyes and open their minds.

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Monday, September 22, 2003

Post Hurricane-Isabel Post: So, now the presidential election begins. Wesley Clark has become the 10th Democrat to announce his candidacy for president (or at the very least, announce that he's going to announce, as some known candidates tend to officially announce after months of campaigning).

Everybody is cooing over Clark's four stars, predicting that his military experience will make up for his soft-on-war policies. I don't see how being a former general would give anyone an advantage as president. It's widely known that Bush greatly admires the generals on staff and defers to their judgement on executing military affairs. He just lets them know which direction he wants to take the fight.

I don't think electing another ego to butt heads with the other generals would accomplish anything. Plus, Clark is lacking experience on all those domestic political issues. He's used to giving out orders instead of working within a governmental framework.

Slate has been running this story about how all the generals who were elected president, from Washington to Eisenhower, ran on a pacifist platform. My one rebuttal is that none of those guys were elected during a war.

So the question is whether Americans are really going to treat this war on terrorism like a real war. During World War II, the war effort was ubiquitous -- most of the young men were fighting overseas, women were working in factories that were converted to military plants, and everybody was rationing everything from gasoline to chocolate for the boys.

This war, except for the pretty terror alert colors that change more often than traffic lights, really hasn't been felt widespread since 9/11. So I'm afraid people will become complacent and will settle for someone who doesn't want to fight this war.

But that doesn't automatically translate into votes for General Clark. Since he has come into the picture late, he's getting a rushed treatment. Apparently his honeymoon with the press is already over. He's being accused of flip-flopping on the war in Iraq and of fibbing during his criticism about the White House. But he also appears to have jumped ahead of Howard Dean in the polls. However, no Democrat has a clear advantage, so it will still be a long and dirty campaign.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Price of Freedom: The latest criticism about President Bush seems to be that war costs money. This seems to be his biggest flaw since his failure to outlaw the business cycle.

Nevertheless, opponents are criticizing the $87-billion the president is seeking to stabilize Iraq. I don't know what people expect Bush to do to fight the war on terrorism. Critics didn't want him to fight in Afghanistan. They claimed that we had no definitive proof that Osama Bin Laden was there or that the Taliban was really all that bad. Then when the war lasted more than a few weeks, people were murmuring the word "quagmire".

I've never been loyal to any political party, but I can't help but think that if Gore were president, we'd still be waiting for economic sanctions to work against Afghanistan. But now critics are upset over us going to war, even though war was brought to us on 9/11. Critics say that instead of fighting the terrorists in the Middle East, Bush should be strengthening security at home.

I'm sorry, but it's impossible to strengthen security to the point of stopping all terrorism from occurring in the United States -- that would be like trying to stop all crime. The only way to do that would be to take away every freedom that Americans are fighting to keep. Yet while opponents are criticizing Bush for not doing enough to beef up security at home, they are also criticizing him for infringing on American freedoms via the PATRIOT Act. Perhaps some of the parts of the PATRIOT Act go too far and need to be adjusted, but I think the critics lose all credibility when they attack the president for both doing too much and not doing enough about security.

The only way to win the war on terrorism is to disrupt the mechanisms and institutions that fund and support terrorists. That involves police work at home, but more importantly we need to take the fight to them -- in the Middle East. And the only way to ward off terrorism in the long run is to change the culture there that breeds terrorism. The only chance we have of that is to let democracy grow. So we planted a seed of democracy in Iraq. Will the seed grow and flourish or will it dry up in the sand? Nobody knows for sure. But this is the route we have to take.

Unfortunately, as in any war, troops are going to die. But I think the U.S. military is better equipped and better trained to fight back against the terrorists than the civilians in New York City and Washington, DC are. The terrorists fighting in Iraq would otherwise be coming to the United States. So we need to take the fight to them in Iraq before they get here. And although any loss of life is tragic, the rate at which troops are being killed is low -- so don't compare this fight to Vietnam.

So now critics don't want to pay the additional $87-billion. I say we shouldn't put a pricetag on this war. If critics don't think we can afford it, perhaps we should delay paying $400-billion for creating a massive prescription-drug plan for seniors. I'm all for insuring universal health care for all Americans. But if we don't have enough money, we have to prioritize. National security is always the biggest priority. For now we should put pressure on drug companies to stop overcharging Americans. And we can pay down the deficits when the economy improves again.

Critics also lambast the administration for paying Halliburton for many of the services rendered in Iraq through government contracts. I don't know if Vice President Cheney is providing favors for his former company. But we have to remember that the services Halliburton is providing is what the company does for a living. If somebody thinks Halliburton shouldn't get the money, tell me who should. Is there another company that's being overlooked?

I thought 9/11 had woken us up to a grave threat. But I keep hearing nitpicking arguments against the president and calls for his impeachment. If you disagree with what's being done, offer a better alternative. But this blind hatred of Bush and these immature insults being tossed about need to stop.

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Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Good news from Iraq: I never thought I'd be agreeing with Geraldo, but he has a point here in explaining that the Iraqis are better off now that the United States has liberated Iraq. Sure it will take time and money to give the country some semblance of security and a workable infrastructure. But considering Iraq never had any of that to begin with, and a murderous dictator has now been ousted, I think they are much better off. Granted, I've never been there, but I could live with a few terrorists and suicide bombers better than a dictator who systematically tortured and killed his citizenry to keep them paralyzed in a state of fear.

Now it looks like we're going back to the United Nations to ask for help with Iraq. I'm all for spreading the cost of building Iraq to other nations considering the entire world benefits from the regime change. But I'm tired of having to go through an inept organization like the U.N.

Not only does the organization put Syria, Libya, and other countries that torture their own people on the Commission on Human Rights, but the U.N. is undermining the United States every chance it gets. United Nations inspectors knew that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Saddam Hussein gassed Kurds, our troops contracted illnesses from the chemical weapons after the first Gulf War, and even President Clinton said in 1998 that Iraq was harboring chemical weapons. And Iraq had clear ties to terrorists -- whether it aided Al Qaeda specifically is still being investigated, but Iraq was helping international terrorists who hated the United States and its allies. Yet France, Germany, and Russia suddenly had amnesia and assumed that Saddam Hussein unilaterally disarmed without telling anyone -- even hiding the evidence that he disarmed.

The United Nations snubbed its nose at us when we needed help. France and Germany are giving us a hard time once more. I'm reluctant to trust countries in that organization again.

People say that going back to the United Nations is an admission that we made a mistake, miscalculated, screwed up, and now we're in over our heads. I disagree. We asked the United Nations to join us. We put off going to war with Iraq for many months while we negotiated with the organization to get help from other countries. Now that we've ousted Saddam Hussein on our own, we're going back to see if the U.N. is willing to oversee the international role it was supposed to have in the first place.

I know this idea would never take hold, but a conservative columnist named Evan Coyne Maloney wrote an interesting piece explaining a better alternative to the failed United Nations. Instead of finding common ground with dictators and terrorist countries, we should form an alliance of democratic nations. The purpose would be to spread democracy, freedom, and human rights across the globe. Sounds nice, but for some reason I'd imagine that France would veto such an idea.

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Washington, DC: Last night the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill to create a pilot voucher program in the overwhelmingly Democratic District of Columbia. The vouchers would use local tax money set aside for public schools to pay for a student attending a failing school to transfer to a private school.

Now, I am opposed to vouchers. I don't understand how you can fix a failing public school system by taking money away and giving it to private schools. I understand that a few students would benefit from the opportunity to go to a better school, but that leaves the vast majority of the their peers in a worse situation. I don't buy the argument that competition will improve the state-run schools.

However, if conservatives want to create a pilot program to test a voucher program, I'm open to that. But notice that they aren't doing that in any of their own states or their own school districts. They're using Washington, DC as a guinea pig, and the citizens there have no political recourse.

I work in Washington, DC, but I would never want to live there (Arlington, Virginia is now my home). The city is run by Congress, yet it has absolutely no representation in Congress -- no senators and no voting representatives. The 500,000-plus people who live here have protested by posting on many of their license plates, "Taxation Without Representation", but the shouts have fallen on deaf ears.

So now Republicans are forcing the Democratic residents of the nation's capital to participate in a controversial experiment that most Democrats oppose. And the Republicans passed the bill through the House by one vote while many opponents of the bill were attending a nearby debate among the Democratic candidates for president.

Washington, DC has many of its own problems. The city doesn't need Congress making it any worse.

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Friday, September 05, 2003

Elección: Somehow Howard Kurtz turned the snoozefest that was the Democratic debate among the nine candidates into an entertaining column. The man has a gift.

I enjoy his critiques of the news media. But he forgot to mention that it's because of the constant media heckling that these debates are so boring. The press attacks and overplays any mistake or misspeak that may drip from a politicians lips. As a result, candidates are forced to stick to staid scripts just to survive a campaign. Even Howard Dean had to tone down his usually fiery rhetoric for this debate now that he's considered to have a chance at winning the nomination.

The last presidential election was a perfect example. Bush was lambasted constantly for mispronouncing words. People said that this is a sign that he's stupid. I've met Bush and have interviewed him when he was governor of Texas. He's actually a smart guy. Sure, mangling words is a heck of a liability when you're giving speeches as President of the United States. But it's no way to rate intelligence.

In the other corner was Gore, who never mispronounced anything. The press ripped him for being wooden, a robot, etc. You can't have it both ways. Let candidates be human. Let them make some mistakes. Otherwise you're going to scare off everyone who's potentially qualified for office.

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Thursday, September 04, 2003

Enough! So fighting broke out between Israel and the Palestinians again. Although that newsbreak didn't surprise anyone, I still couldn't believe how the Palestinians were blaming Israel for the violence.

The two sides were respecting an agreed-upon ceasefire while negotiations were under way. Then Hamas suicide bombers blew up a bus with 20 Israelis on it, including several children. A few days later, Israel fires rockets to kill a leader of the terrorist group and two of his bodyguards. Hamas claims to be shocked, enraged, etc. and declares that the ceasefire is NOW over.

I guess the killing of a busload of innocent people doesn't count as the end of the ceasefire, but a targeted killing of an instigator of violence does.

This just reminds me of why we need to take the handcuffs off Israel and let the country fight its war. Israelis are fighting for their survival against a group of terrorists just like the United States is. This is no different than our war against terrorism, so we shouldn't put them in the dangerous situation of negotiating with terrorists. Peace comes through victory.

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HA HA: Something everybody should read. Revelations of the biggest scam ever perpetrated against humanity -- the myth that bottled water is any better than tap water. Please read!

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Wednesday, September 03, 2003

Seriously, God's not happy with you: For those of you who look at Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and wonder where such religious fanaticism comes from, here's something to remind you that it comes from human nature.

The anti-abortion murderer who is going to be put to death for killing an abortion doctor has been quoted as saying he expects to go to heaven: "I expect a great reward in heaven," he says. "I am looking forward to glory. I don't feel remorse."

He didn't mention seventy-someodd virgins explicitly, but he's no different than the Al Qaeda terrorists who expected eternal bliss for becoming martyrs by blowing themselves up along with innocent Americans.

This isn't the first time we've dealt with an American terrorist. Besides Timothy McVeigh and the Atlanta Olympic bomber, we also had that guy in Cleveland who drove his car into a mosque soon after 9/11 in an attempt to kill innocent Muslims living in the United States. Give that man access to an airliner and a bigger target, and he's just like the terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

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