Wolf Huffs and Puffs

On CNN's The Situation Room, Wolf Blitzer showed his true colors this afternoon when talking with Robert Bennett, Judith Miller's attorney.

Blitzer blind-sided Bennett by playing the OUT OF CONTEXT audio clip of his brother Bill speaking about aborting black babies.

Transcript

BLITZER: While you're here I'm going to switch gears dramatically on you and ask you a question about your brother. As you know, he's in hot water for some remarks he made yesterday on his radio show, Bill Bennett. Listen to this exchange he had with a caller.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

WILLIAM BENNETT, FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY: One of the arguments in this book "Freakonomics" that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up.

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either. I don't think it is either because first of all, I think there's just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.

That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far out -- these far reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BLITZER: Have you discussed this issue with him?

BENNETT: Well, no, and, Wolf, let me say, I am rather disappointed at you for not telling me you would ask me about that. This was about Judy Miller, and I think that's a courtesy you could have extended to me. What I would emphasize is Bill's comment that such a position would be morally reprehensible, I think it's largely making a mountain out of a molehill.

I mean, I suppose I'll get in trouble by saying that it's well established that men are more violent than women and so maybe if we abort all male babies, we would have a safer world. So I think this is really much ado about nothing.

BLITZER: Well, the reason I ask is because I know you and your brother love each other and you are good brothers. And it was only obvious to me, I assume, that you know I would ask a newsworthy question.

BENNETT: I didn't know that at all, Wolf. In the past you've always been very straight with me. And I'm honest with you and I'm offended by that.

BLITZER: All right. That's fair enough.

BENNETT: But I have never discussed this with him at all.

BLITZER: You are a good lawyer and a good brother and a good friend. Thanks very much for joining us.

BENNETT: OK, you're welcome.

BLITZER: Robert Bennett joining us here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

I don't know which is my favorite media moment of the week--

Bennett calling out Blitzer on his sleazy tactics

or

Scott McClellan making Terry Moran look like a complete fool after his "stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington" generalization.

It's a tie.

THE BIG BUY Spoilers

Byron York has more on The Big Buy, the most eagerly anticipated movie of the year!

No doubt, filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck have already cleared space on the mantel for Oscar.

National Review Online got a copy of the film today. It's still a work in progress, but York offers a number of interesting tidbits.

York writes:

A new film featuring Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle as he pursued the investigation that led to the indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay portrays Earle less as a partisan figure than as a messianic leader on a mission to rid American politics of the "evil" influence of money.

I didn't think Earle would give Birnbaum and Schermbeck "extraordinary access" and allow them to document his every move for two years if he believed that he would be portrayed as a satanic figure.

...On several occasions in the film, Earle engages in monologues on what he believes is the sinister effect of money in politics. "The root of the evil of the corporate and large-monied interest domination of politics is money," Earle says as he takes the filmmakers on a nighttime drive around Austin. "This is in the Bible. This isn't rocket science. The root of all evil truly is money, especially in politics. People talk about how money is the mother's milk of politics. Well, it's the devil's brew. And what we've got to do, we've got to turn off the tap."

Earle is on a crusade. It's a holy war, a jihad!

In another scene, Earle describes how he deals with offenders in cases like the campaign-finance investigation. "It's important that we forgive those who come to us in a spirit of contrition and the desire for forgiveness. That's important. But if they don't, then God help them." The film then dissolves to a picture of DeLay.

How dramatic!

There's a special place in Hell reserved for Tom DeLay!

I can't stand the suspense!

In yet another scene, Earle describes corporate political contributions, which are illegal in Texas (although state law allows corporations to fund the administrative activities of political action committees) as a problem that is "every bit as insidious as terrorism."

Hyperbole or insanity? What do you think?

The film also features footage that illustrates the extraordinary access to the DeLay investigation that Earle granted filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck. The Big Buy contains footage of the empty Travis County grand-jury room, as well as video of grand-jury staffers and some members of the grand jury entering the room (the face of one grand juror was obscured by the filmmakers). The film also contains footage of the original indictments of DeLay's associates, as well as those of several corporations, being sorted and copied, apparently before they were made public, on September 21, 2004, the day the indictments were handed up. There is also footage of Earle meeting with his staff attorneys, reading the indictments before they were released. "It's like that moment right after the missiles are launched," Earle says of the scene, "when it's real quiet, but it's not going to be quiet for long."

Ronnie Earle is a real piece of work. I'm sure he sleeps with visions of missiles launching in his head.

In the picture, Earle explains that he believes he bears a profound responsibility to alert the American public to the dangers of big political contributions. "I feel great pressure to get the information to the public, to point, to set a tone and to point a direction, and to say which hill needs to be taken," he explains. "When a powerful politician [Earle was referring to DeLay] can demand $25,000 for face time for large monied interests, I mean, something's wrong. What happened to face time for John and Jane Citizen who are raising two kids and they've got two jobs a piece and the kids don't have insurance? What about face time for them and the problems they're facing? Those are the problems that the country is facing."

Earle has some serious mental health issues. He truly seems to be suffering from a Messianic Complex.

The film features commentary from a number of DeLay critics, including Lou Dubose, author of The Hammer: Tom DeLay: God, Money, and the Rise of the Republican Congress, columnist Molly Ivins, defeated political rival Martin Frost, Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, and others. It also contains interviews with some Republican state lawmakers in Texas and attorneys for the defendants in the case (DeLay himself declined to cooperate with the filmmakers).

At one point in the picture, Rosemary Lemberg, an assistant district attorney in Earle's office, explains that Earle singlehandedly pushed forward the DeLay investigation over the objections of colleagues. "Ronnie was the only person in maybe a group of six or seven lawyers in a room who thought we ought to go ahead and investigate and look at those things," Lemberg says. "We got sued every time we turned around, we got taken to court over this, and Ronnie was the one who just kept pushing forward with it, and saying 'I'll put more resources on this, just keep hacking at it.'"

Ronnie wouldn't back down. I get choked up thinking about it. When the others went wobbly and weak-kneed, Earle fought harder.

How heroic!

Though the film's tone is admiring, the filmmakers allow Earle's critics to suggest that, given the sometimes highly politicized nature of his opinions, he should perhaps work in some field other than law enforcement. "The problem that Ronnie has is that he sees something that he believes is wrong," says Roy Minton, an attorney for one of the organizations investigated by Earle. "If you ask him, when he says, 'They're doing this' and 'They're doing that,' you say, 'Alright, let's assume they're doing that, Ronnie, is that against the law?' He will say it's wrong. You say, 'Well, OK, let's assume that it's wrong. Where is it that it is against the law?'"

Apparently, D.A. Earle carries out investigations based on the statutes of his own moral zone.

Damn the law!

Go ahead!

Full speed!

Apologize, Now!

Once again, liberals are screaming for an apology because they are incapable of comprehending English.

They cannot have a legitimate debate on a topic because they always lose. So, they fall back on the tactic of constructing a false reality to achieve their political ends.

Case in point, from the Washington Post:

Democratic lawmakers and civil rights leaders denounced conservative commentator William J. Bennett yesterday for suggesting on his syndicated radio show that aborting black children would reduce the U.S. crime rate.

This is flat out shoddy reporting. The Washington Post simply echoes the rantings of misinformed political opportunists.

While it's true that these people denounced Bennett, the reporter, Brian Faler, fails to point out that they denounced him for something he DID NOT do.

Bennett called the notion ridiculous.

Abort every baby in the country and the crime rate would go down. While true, that's a completely ludicrous, immoral proposition, as Bennett stated.

The former U.S. education secretary-turned-talk show host said Wednesday that "if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down." Bennett quickly added that such an idea would be "an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do." But, he said, "your crime rate would go down."

Faler provides no context for this. I can only conclude that he is intentionally misleading the public.

Listen to Bennett's comments IN CONTEXT here.

Faler is suggesting that Bennett said something he regretted, so he "quickly" tried to cover it up.

FALSE.

I've listened to the audio repeatedly. There is no urgency there. Bennett is simply stating the obvious.

Bennett's comments, flagged by the liberal news media watchdog group Media Matters for America, were quickly condemned by Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who issued a statement demanding that Bennett apologize. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) circulated a letter, signed by 10 of his colleagues, demanding that the Salem Radio Network suspend Bennett's show.

How many times is President Bush called a racist in any given hour on Air America?

Of course, there are no such tallies because no one listens to Air America; but the comparison is valid.

Do Republicans rush out and demand that Al Franken and Randi Rhodes have their shows suspended for making such outlandish statements about Bush and Republicans?

What about Kanye West's comments on NBC's Hurricane Katrina relief fund-raiser? He said, "George Bush doesn't care about black people." Instead of demanding that West apologize and ban him from appearing on the network, West is scheduled to perform on Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Why is it that far Left-wingers can make idiotic statements with impugnity but conservatives are condemned for things they didn't even say?

Wade Henderson, the executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, demanded that the show be canceled.

"Bennett's statement is outrageous. As a former secretary of education, he should know better," Henderson said. "His program should be pulled from the air."

Bennett was referencing Freakonomics, by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. He stated the theory in the book and said that he did not think that the claim that crime is down because the abortion rate is up was an accurate statistic.

I'm curious. Did Wade Henderson demand that all copies of Levitt and Dubner's book be removed from bookstore shelves and burned? After all, it's their theory.

A spokeswoman for Salem Radio Network did not return three calls requesting comment.

Imagine. The spokeswoman didn't return THREE calls.

Faler presents that information as indicative that the Salem Radio Network is complicit in some wrong-doing. I have no idea what the network would be complicit in, but not returning calls apparently shows it's complicit.

Bennett, education secretary under then-President Ronald Reagan and director of drug policy during George H.W. Bush's administration has written a number of books stressing the importance of traditional values, including the 1993 bestseller "The Book of Virtues."

In 2003, he admitted he was a heavy gambler after news reports that he had lost millions of dollars in casinos.

Here's where Faler loses it completely. How is any of this relevant to the story?

When Clinton recently unveiled his Global Initiative amid great fanfare, did the Post's coverage happen to mention that Clinton was impeached or that he was unfaithful to his wife or that he had a "critical lapse in judgment" when he indeed "did have a relationship with Ms. Lewinsky that was not appropriate"?

No. It wasn't relevant.

Accordingly, it's difficult to make the argument that bringing up Bennett's gambling is appropriate here. Faler's purpose is solely malicious.

Bennett's comments came Wednesday, during a discussion on his talk show "Morning in America." A caller had suggested that Social Security would be better funded if abortion had not been legalized in 1973 because the nation would have more workers paying into the system.

Bennett said "maybe," before referring to a book he said argued that the legalization of abortion is one of the reasons the crime rate has declined in recent decades. Bennett said he did not agree with that thesis.

"But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose -- you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down," Bennett said, according to an audio clip posted on Media Matters for America's Web site. "That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, you know, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

So--

Faler tacks on at the end of his article that Bennett didn't agree with the thesis put forth by the authors of Freakonomics.

Why wasn't that in the first paragraph?

The article should have been about how misguided the Democratic lawmakers and civil rights leaders were to be demanding that Bennett be silenced just because they can't seem to understand what Bennett actually said.

There's your story.

Transcript

From the September 28 broadcast of Salem Radio Network's Bill Bennett's Morning in America:

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?

CALLER: Assuming that they are. Even if only a portion of them were, it would be an enormous amount of revenue.

BENNETT: Maybe, maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occur among single women? No.

CALLER: I don't know the exact statistics, but quite a bit are, yeah.

BENNETT: All right, well, I mean, I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know. I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --

CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.

BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

I do think Bennett should issue a statement to clarify, for those needing clarification, that he was not suggesting that an effective plan to reduce crime would be to abort every black baby in this country.

If I am misunderstanding Bennett's comments, and he does, in fact, believe that a solution to crime would be the systematic abortion of all black babies, then I think he's a racist, as well as insane, and incapable of issuing a meaningful apology.

Judith Miller and Weirdness

WASHINGTON (AP) -- After nearly three months behind bars, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was released Thursday after agreeing to testify about the Bush administration's disclosure of a covert CIA officer's identity.

Miller left the federal detention center in Alexandria, Va., after reaching an agreement with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. She will appear Friday morning before a grand jury investigating the case.

"My source has now voluntarily and personally released me from my promise of confidentiality regarding our conversations," Miller said in a statement.

Her source was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, reported the Times, which supported her contention that her source should be protected.

"As we have throughout this ordeal, we continue to support Judy Miller in the decision she has made," said Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "We are very pleased that she has finally received a direct and uncoerced waiver, both by phone and in writing, releasing her from any claim of confidentiality and enabling her to testify."

John Podhoretz has a funny take on Judy Miller's release.

He writes:

I hope some day somebody writes all this down, because the whole story is unbelievable. Miller never writes a story about Plamegate, but insists she must keep her sources secret, even though the name of her primary source, Cheney chief of staff Scooter Libby, has long since been a matter of public record -- and has publicly released her from her pledge of anonymity. She decides to go to jail to protect the principle of source anonymity, and is only weeks away from being sprung (because the grand jury she was refusing to talk to will go out of business in October) before she abandons her stand on principle and decides to talk. And all this in relation to a matter that may well not have been a crime to begin with. Weird wacko crazy bananas.

That sums it up.

Very weird.

Ronnie Earle: Matinee Idol

There is so much to talk about when it comes to Ronnie Earle. He's the gift that keeps on giving.

At a May 12, 2005, Democrat fund-raising event, Earle said:

Integrity is not the sole possession of either party, but it is symbolic of the great division in our country now. That division is between those who would take more than their share from the rest of us and those who believe we’re all in this together.

The real division is between these two sets of values. The problem lies in the ethical behavior that is based on those values. The spirit of partisanship is not compatible with we’re all in this together.

It turns out that this man, obsessed with ethics, allowed a film crew to follow him around for two years and document his investigation that led to Tom DeLay's indictment.

I'm not a lawyer, but it sounds like the supposed non-partisan D.A. Earle may be brought up on some ethics charges himself.

Byron York writes about Tom DeLay: The Movie.


Entitled The Big Buy, I think it's destined to receive a ten minute standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival. I imagine Barbra Streisand will have a screening of the film at her mansion, with A-list Hollywood liberals in attendance.

Poor Michael Moore must be green with envy right now and finding comfort by downing a tub of Ben and Jerry’s.

York writes:

For the last two years, as he pursued the investigation that led to Wednesday's indictment of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Travis County, Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle has given a film crew "extraordinary access" to make a motion picture about his work on the case.

The resulting film is called The Big Buy, made by Texas filmmakers Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck. "Raymond Chandler meets Willie Nelson on the corner of Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue in The Big Buy, a Texas noir political detective story that chronicles what some are calling a 'bloodless coup with corporate cash,'" reads a description of the picture on Birnbaum's website, markbirnbaum.com. The film, according to the description, "follows maverick Austin DA Ronnie Earle's investigation into what really happened when corporate money joined forces with relentless political ambitions to help swing the pivotal 2002 Texas elections, cementing Republican control from Austin to Washington DC."

"We approached him [Earle], and he offered us extraordinary access to him and, to an extent, to his staff," Birnbaum told National Review Online Thursday. "We've been shooting for about two years."

Birnbaum and Schermbeck showed a work-in-progress version of The Big Buy last month at the Dallas Video Festival. At the moment, they do not have a deal for the film to be shown anywhere else. Their last film, Larry v. Lockney, was shown on PBS, and they hope that perhaps a similar arrangement might be made for the new picture. Whoever ends up showing it, the film has so far been funded entirely by its makers. "We tried really hard to get it funded," Birnbaum says, "but we didn't get any takers."

Birnbaum and Schermbeck must have failed to contact George Soros when they went on their hunt for funding. I can’t believe that Soros would have failed to bankroll a hit piece on DeLay, if given the opportunity.

Schermbeck told National Review Online that the film was an irresistible Texas story. "I've been pretty interested in watching Tom DeLay work," Schermbeck says. "I thought he was a fascinating guy, certainly the most powerful Texan to emerge on the national scene in some time, a kind of Republican Sam Rayburn type, with that kind of mastery of the machinery and the will to do it."

But DeLay did not cooperate with the filmmakers, and neither did a number of DeLay allies. Earle, on the other hand, did. "I had known about Ronnie Earle for a very long time," Schermbeck says. "I thought that would be an angle to approach the whole story, telling something about Tom DeLay, even though
Tom DeLay wouldn't grant us an interview."

Earle "allowed us behind the scenes when the indictments came down last year, the first wave of indictments," Schermbeck says. "We got to follow him back to his home a couple of times, which I understand he doesn't allow anybody to do." Schermbeck says the film includes interviews with some critics of Earle, as well as lawyers who are representing some of the targets of the investigation.

So far, The Big Buy has received almost no attention in the press. With DeLay's indictment, and increased attention to Earle as well, that situation seems likely to change. (The filmmakers say they will be back at work next week, filming a new ending to the picture.) "We're pretty low on everybody's radar," Schermbeck says. "We kind of took a gamble three years ago. We didn't know what was going to happen. We feel like, as documentary filmmakers, we gambled and it paid off."

Birnbaum's website describes The Big Buy as the tale of a "bloodless coup with corporate cash" and a "political crime story."

Gee, I don't know, but I get the feeling that the filmmakers might have an anti-DeLay agenda.

Just a hunch.

Yes, Ronnie Earle is a real stand-up guy, playing to the cameras during an investigation, giving "extraordinary access" to the film crew.

This part kills me:

Earle "allowed us behind the scenes when the indictments came down last year, the first wave of indictments," Schermbeck says. "We got to follow him back to his home a couple of times, which I understand he doesn't allow anybody to do."

Why would Earle make an exception and allow the filmmakers to follow him to his home?

Apparently, Earle felt his "moment of glory" was so historically significant that it had to be captured on film.

Right.

All of this and we're supposed to believe that Earle is not an out of control, egomaniacal, partisan hack.

That's impossible for me to do.

Maureen Dowd Stumbles in the Dark

Maureen Dowd is smart.

She gives her dwindling readership what they want.

Now that the New York Times no longer puts out the ramblings of its Op-Ed columnists on the Internet, free of charge, even less people are treated to the wonder of Maureen Dowd.

The struggling Times determined that it would be better for fewer people to have access to her work. Apparently, the Times wants to appeal to a narrower group, the hard-core liberals, those willing to shell out good money for Dowd's writings.

The advantage: Dowd may feel freer to serve up even greater quantities of red meat for her far Left target audience to gnaw on.

The disadvantage: The rest of us have a bit more difficulty accessing the column. That's a shame. I've always found her articles fascinating. They give me a glimpse into the workings of a troubled liberal mind. Interesting.

Dowd's September 28, 2005, column, "Dancing in the Dark," reads like a plea for help. She's dancing with the grace of a 300+ pound NFL defensive lineman. She's trying to be witty, but her acerbic tone doesn't help to expose some harsh truth about the Bush administration. Instead, her comments come off as silly, rooted in desperation.

It's pathetic.

It's also a mirror image of the state of the Democrats in fall of 2005--not much to offer other than hypocrisy and baseless personal attacks.

Dowd is so sad and bitter. I have to feel sorry for her, in the way that I'd feel sorry for a vulture that broke its wing as it swooped down while hunting a kitten.

Similarly, I have to feel some sympathy for the radical Left. It's not pretty watching them blindly stumble around while their hate consumes them.

Read Dowd's column for yourself. You be the judge.

Dancing in The Dark

I can't wait to see what's next.

Dick Cheney carpooling downtown with Brownie? Rummy Rollerblading down the bike path to the Pentagon? Condi huddling by a Watergate fireplace in a gray cardigan?

Maybe now that our hydrocarbon president is the conservation president, he'll downgrade from Air Force One to a solar-powered Piper Cub as he continues to stalk the Gulf Coast towns and oil rigs like Banquo's ghost.

The once disciplined and swaggering Bush administration has descended into slapstick, more comical even than having Clarence Thomas et al. sit in judgment as Anna Nicole Smith attempts to get more of the moolah of her late oil tycoon husband.

We've got the clownish Brownie still on FEMA's payroll, giving advice on cleaning up the mess he made. ( Let's hope the White House is paying him only long enough to buy his good will, not to take any of his bad advice.)

We've got two oilmen in the White House whose administration was built on urging us to consume and buy as much oil and energy as possible. Now they're suddenly urging us to conserve. (Since Mr. Cheney considers conservation a "personal virtue," at least he'll get some virtue.)

The president called on Americans to drive less, and told his staff members to turn off their computers at night, turn down the air-conditioning, form carpools and take the bus.

At the same time, he set a fine example by wasting gazillions of gallons of fuel with all the planes and Secret Service vans and press motorcades and police escorts that follow him around every time he goes on one of his inane photo-ops from the Colorado bunker to what's left of the Mississippi Delta and the Bayou. He did his part by knocking off a few cars from his motorcade on his seventh trip to the gulf yesterday - but if residents had hoped he'd bring them some water, they went thirsty.

"Even so," as The Times's Elisabeth Bumiller wrote, "security dictated that Mr. Bush's still-impressive caravan pick him up at the base of Air Force One in Lake Charles, La. - and drop him off just yards away for a meeting with local officials at an airport terminal."

Noting that the Bush administration has proposed new fuel economy standards that critics say could make huge S.U.V.'s and pickups even more popular, Reuters published some arithmetic about the president's notorious fuel inefficiency.

Air Force One costs $83,200 to fill up and more than $6,000 per hour to fly. Then there's the cost of helicopters and a 2006 Cadillac DTS limo that gets less than 22 miles per gallon.

Karen Hughes, the Bush nanny who knows nothing about the Muslim world and yet is charged with selling the U.S. to it, wasted even more fuel this week flying to Saudi Arabia to tell women covered from head to toe in black how much she likes driving even though they can't.

She knows so little about the Middle East that she looked taken aback when some Saudi women told her that just because they could not vote or drive did not mean that they felt they were treated unfairly.

One thing Saudi women like even less than not having certain rights is to have hypocritical Americans patronize them.

The moment when America should have used its influence to help Saudi women came on Nov. 6, 1990, as U.S. forces gathered in the kingdom to go to war in Iraq the first time. Inspired by the U.S. troops, including female soldiers, 47 women from the Saudi intelligentsia took the wheels from their brothers and husbands and drove until the police stopped them.

They were branded "whores" and "harlots" by Saudi clerics, had their passports revoked, and were ostracized from society for a dozen years. Even their husbands suffered.

The experience made them more angry at the U.S. than at their own rulers. They feel that the Bushes play up the repression of women in the Middle East when it suits their desire to bang the war drums, but do not care what happens to women once the ideological agenda has been achieved.

They feel the administration and the American media have emphasized the repression of Saudi women post-9/11 as a way to demonize Saudi Arabia and paint Saudi men as bullies and terrorists.

When Ms. Hughes goes to Saudi Arabia to introduce herself as "a mom" and to talk about Americans as people of faith, guzzling fuel all the way in a country getting flush selling us oil, I think we can consider it taxpayer money well spent.

W. doesn't really need to worry about turning down the lights in the White House. The place is already totally in the dark.

Fascinating.

I'm tempted to pick apart this pile of hateful, hypocritical rubbish; but I won't bother. It speaks for itself.

No need to detail how completely in the dark Dowd and her fellow liberals are when it's so obvious in the unforgiving, glaring light of day.

The List of Dangerous Senators

It was a done deal before this morning.

Judge John G. Roberts, Jr. is the 17th Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

Because it was a foregone conclusion, maybe that's why a remarkable number of Democrats, twenty-two, chose to vote AGAINST one of the most brilliant individuals to be nominated to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States. They felt safe in buckling under to the pressure of extremist groups.

Nevertheless, I suspect that this NAY vote will come back to bite anyone on this list hoping to win a national election.

Dianne Feinstein - California

Barbara Boxer - California

Joe Biden - Delaware

Daniel Akaka - Hawaii

Daniel Inouye - Hawaii

Dick Durbin - Illinois

Barrack Obama - Illinois

Evan Bayh - Indiana

Tom Harkin - Iowa

Barbara Mikulski - Maryland

Paul Sarbanes - Maryland

Ted Kennedy - Massachusetts

John Kerry - Massachusetts

Debbie Stabenow - Michigan

Mark Dayton - Minnesota

Harry Reid - Nevada

Frank Lautenberg - New Jersey

Jon Corzine - New Jersey

Chuck Schumer - New York

Hillary Clinton - New York

Jack Reed - Rhode Island

Maria Cantwell - Washington

Obviously, John Roberts is qualified. Nonetheless, these individuals disregarded that. They chose to play politics. They put politics ahead of principle.

Many on the list are known far Left-wingers. Their NAY votes, while unfounded, are par for their extreme liberal course.

Of particular concern to me, however, are those senators who claim to be moderate, yet voted NAY.

Barrack Obama is NOT a moderate.

Hillary Clinton is NOT a moderate.

Evan Bayh is NOT a moderate.

Has Bayh had a personality transplant? What was he thinking? Obviously, he wasn't. It had to be all politics, pure and simple.

Obama also wasn't thinking.

Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was widely considered to be a breath of fresh air. He came off as a centrist, as actually speaking with the good of the country in mind rather than his political party. He was able to impress both Democrats and Republicans.

Apparently, that was a facade. Obama's vote against John Roberts reveals that he is an extremist, or at least willing to kow-tow to the radical Left extremists.

He blew it.

When it comes to Hillary, we know that she stands for nothing, besides the most recent poll numbers. She has painted herself into the far Left corner of the room. After her NAY vote, there is no way she can claim to be in the center. No way.

It's no secret that Bayh, Obama, and Clinton have their sights set on higher office.

Because the Roberts confirmation was a done deal and their votes would not alter the outcome, it amazes me that these senators made such an incredible blunder.

Stench of Corruption

Sept. 28: Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas, talks to reporters about the indictment.

Since word of Tom DeLay's indictment, the Democrats, their media mouthpieces, and other assorted haters of Republicans have been positively giddy.

I haven't seen members of the mainstream media this happy since the night of the 2000 Election when, for a couple of hours, they erroneously believed and reported that Gore had won Florida.

At today's White House Press Briefing, they could hardly contain themselves.

I was so impressed with Scott McClellan. He is such a patient man when dealing with the "stuck on stupid" reporters.

Transcript

(Excerpt)

Q Does the President take the allegation of wrongdoing seriously, that Tom DeLay used the Republican National Committee as a money laundering operation to fund local elections in Texas? That's what the grand jury is indicting him for.

MR. McCLELLAN: That's what the legal process will proceed to address. And --

Q How seriously does the President take that allegation?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Terry [Moran], Leader Delay's office has put out a statement --

Q I'm not asking Leader DeLay's office.

MR. McCLELLAN: -- disputing the assertions. We need to let the legal process proceed. And that's what the President believes.

Q You just made a very strong statement about some acts of wrongdoing, alleged. Here we have alleged acts of wrongdoing. How seriously does the President take them?

MR. McCLELLAN: This is a different circumstance. And we're going to let the legal process -- we're going to let the legal process work.

Q Do you think this is politically motivated?

MR. McCLELLAN: We're going to let the legal process work. I've stated our views when it comes to Congressman DeLay; the President has stated them previously, and we continue to hold those views.

Q Is the President concerned that there's a stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington?

MR. McCLELLAN: Terry, I don't think you can make such a broad characterization. There are some instances of individual situations, and we'll let those -- the legal process proceed in those instances.

Q But he's not -- he doesn't take it as seriously as he takes other allegations of wrongdoing?

MR. McCLELLAN: I didn't say that; you said that.

Q He did take it seriously?

MR. McCLELLAN: There's a legal process in place to address these matters.

Q Does he still have confidence in Leader DeLay? And what does he think the impact of this will be on his agenda?

MR. McCLELLAN: I just expressed his views. Again, the President considers him a good ally and a friend who we have worked with very closely to get things done for the American people.

Q Does he still have confidence in him?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

Q Does he still have confidence in him?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Leader DeLay is going to work to address this issue. He has put out a statement by his office. I think our views are very clear, in terms of our relationship with the Congressman. And the President continues to hold those views.

Q I want to follow up on what Terry just asked you. Even before DeLay was indicted, there were a lot of Democrats who were making an argument that the Republican Party, by virtue of having controlled Congress for more than a decade now, the White House for almost five years now, had grown arrogant in its use of power, and was flouting rules and sometimes laws. What's the President's view?

MR. McCLELLAN: Welcome to Washington, D.C., Dick. That's the kind of politics that go on in this town. The Republican Party, particularly under this President, has worked to get things done for the American people. We have advanced an agenda that has helped to improve the quality of life for all Americans. And we stand very firmly behind that record and that agenda.

In terms of the question you just asked, we can sit here and try to rush to judgment, but I don't think that's a fair thing to do. We need to let the legal process work.

When it comes to the instances that Helen brought up, there is a legal process in place. And you know what? That process proceeded, and some people have been found guilty; some have not been found guilty.

Q But you said that you take those allegations very seriously. I asked if you take these allegations very seriously.

MR. McCLELLAN: Any such allegations are always taken seriously.

"Is the President concerned that there's a stench of corruption around the Republican establishment in Washington?"

Unbelievable.

"Stench of corruption" doesn't just roll off the tongue. Obviously, Terry Moran has been waiting to use that line for a while. You have to give the guy credit for mastering the ability to be simultaneously way over the top dramatic and exceedingly obnoxious.

Do you think Scott McClellan is amused by the idiotic questions he gets from the press?

I suppose it depends on his mood. Sometimes I wonder how he manages to keep a straight face.

Actually, McClellan was very kind when he responded to Moran's "stench of corruption" question/editorial statement with: "Terry, I don't think you can make such a broad characterization."

He must have been tempted to just laugh at him.

I don't know if the reporters have hearing problems or comprehension issues. One thing seems to characterize all of these briefings. They ask the same question over and over again and McClellan gives the same response over and over again.

McClellan said that the "President's view is that we need to let the legal process work. There is a process in place, and we'll let that work."

Is that so hard to understand?

No, it isn't, but that's not what all of this is about.

The press wants to pound away and damage the Bush administration and Republicans, not to provide the public with information about their government.

At this point, the MSM's partisan hacks can't be considered journalists. They're rumor-mongering, agenda-driven libs, and part of the Democrats' propaganda machine.

Let’s move off the press and on to Ronnie Earle.

What do we know about Ronnie Earle, the district attorney who led the investigation that resulted in the indictment of Tom DeLay?

Here are some very enlightening quick facts.

We do know that he has a political agenda.

In a Democrat fund-raising speech to the Texas Values Coalition, on May 12, 2005, Earle revealed that he gives lip service to defending decency and justice, while actually waging political battles.

Transcript

(Excerpts)

Thanks for inviting me. I’m so often accused of partisanship these days that I thought I’d go meet some of the groups I’m supposed to be so close to.

...My office is currently involved, as you no doubt know, in an investigation into campaign finance irregularities that occurred in the 2002 election cycle.

We began that investigation in 2002 when I read that the head of the Texas Association of Business said that TAB had collected secret corporate money and used it to blow the doors off Texas elections.

TAB at first agreed to cooperate, but then they sued in Federal Court instead, so we spent most of 2003 going up and down the appellate court ladder, including two trips to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Our investigation has since expanded to include TRMPAC, which figured prominently in the race for speaker of the Texas House, and some other organizations that were involved in other Texas elections.

...This case is not just about Tom DeLay. If it isn’t this Tom DeLay, it’ll be another one, just like one bully replaces the one before.

Ronnie Earle claims that politics didn't drive the investigation. He said, "Our job is to prosecute abuses of power and to bring those abuses to the public."

Is it appropriate for the district attorney to make statements about an individual who's part of an on-going investigation?

Of course not; but Earle doesn't care about faithfully carrying out his duties as district attorney. He's completely out of control and playing politics with the law.

In addition to addressing the press today, DeLay put out these statements:

Statement from the Office of the Majority Leader

(WASHINGTON) - Kevin Madden, spokesman for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (TX) today released the following statement regarding today's announcement by the Travis County (TX) District Attorney's Office:

"These charges have no basis in the facts or the law. This is just another example of Ronnie Earle misusing his office for partisan vendettas. Despite the clearly political agenda of this prosecutor, Congressman DeLay has cooperated with officials throughout the entire process. Even in the last two weeks, Ronnie Earle himself had acknowledged publicly that Mr. DeLay was not a target of his investigation. However, as with many of Ronnie Earle's previous partisan investigations, Ronnie Earle refused to let the facts or the law get in the way of his partisan desire to indict a political foe.

This purely political investigation has been marked by illegal grand jury leaks, a fundraising speech by Ronnie Earle for Texas Democrats that inappropriately focused on the investigation, misuse of his office for partisan purposes, and extortion of money for Earle's pet projects from corporations in exchange for dismissing indictments he brought against them. Ronnie Earle's previous misuse of his office has resulted in failed prosecutions and we trust his partisan grandstanding will strike out again, as it should.

Ronnie Earle's 1994 indictment against Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison was quickly dismissed and his charges in the 1980s against former Attorney General Jim Mattox-another political foe of Earle-fell apart at trial.

We regret the people of Texas will once again have their taxpayer dollars wasted on Ronnie Earle's pursuit of headlines and political paybacks. Ronnie Earle began this investigation in 2002, after the Democrat Party lost the Texas state legislature to Republicans. For three years and through numerous grand juries, Ronnie Earle has tried to manufacture charges against Republicans involved in winning those elections using arcane statutes never before utilized in a case in the state. This indictment is nothing more than prosecutorial retribution by a partisan Democrat."

Another message from DeLay can be found at tomdelay.com.

He writes:

Dear Friend,

As you probably know, the very partisan Travis County D.A. recently manufactured an indictment against me that is based on charges from the 2002 Texas State House elections.

These charges are groundless and false. I am completely innocent.

Just as Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and other public officials have defeated similar attacks from this D.A., I will prove his allegations are baseless and without merit.

Despite this partisan distraction, I will continue to represent you and fight for the interests of our community.

I hope you’ll take a moment now to read more about exactly what is happening and why. Thank you for visiting and I look forward to keeping you up to date on our fight this out of control DA.

DeLay did the honorable thing by following the rules and temporarily stepping aside as majority leader of the Republicans in the House.

Speaker Dennis Hastert named Missouri Rep. Roy Blunt to take DeLay's place and handle most of his leadership duties. I think it was a smart move for the Republicans to act quickly to replace DeLay while he deals with the matter. They filled the void promptly to signal that Republicans remain in control.

Dems need to remember that Republicans ARE still in control of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency.

I think there's definitely a "stench of corruption," but it's not coming from the Republican establishment.

It's coming from Ronnie Earle's office.

It's coming from the propagandists known as the mainstream media.

It's coming from the Democrat leaders.

"The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom Delay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi and other Dems are hailing the indictment as a victory.

That makes no sense to me. What have they done? Have they offered Americans anything of substance, any vision? Is a witch hunt really a victory?

Time will tell; but it appears that DeLay's indictment is the latest example of the culture of corruption fostered by the Dems' brand of politics--heavy on personal destruction and light on everything else.

Oh, the stench!

Dan Rather: Some Strange and Mysterious Things

An amazing thing happened last night.

Dan Rather successfully fought back his tendency to break into tears and refrained from another crying outburst. He mustered the fortitude to hold it together long enough to be interviewed by Marvin Kalb on C-SPAN.

From the New York Post:

DAN Rather wants to reopen the investigation into President Bush and the National Guard story that resulted in the Memogate scandal and led to his early departure from the anchor desk.

But his bosses at CBS have forbidden him to go back at it, he said.

"CBS News doesn't want me to do that story," Rather said during an interview that aired on C-SPAN Monday night.

"They wouldn't let me do that story," he said during the shockingly frank interview with former NBC newsman Marvin Kalb.

Rather continues to insist that the story was correct and suggested in the interview that he and the network may have been set up by some outsider.

"There are some strange, and to me, still mysterious things," he said. "Certainly unexplained things that happened about how it got attacked and why, even before the program was over," Rather said.

The report, delivered by Rather last September, was discredited two weeks later after drawing fire, first from politically conservative Web logs and later from mainstream media who reported that the "60 Minutes 2" story was based on forged documents. Rather retired from the "CBS Evening News" last spring. Some, including CBS chief Les Moonves, have suggested that Rather might have stayed on for at least another year had he not been embroiled in the scandal.

"I believed in the story," Rather said. "The facts of the story were correct.

"One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question," he said. "To this day, no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not."

The man is crazy. Truly.

If I were someone close to Dan, I would gently, but strongly, advise him to drop this immediately.

Why does he continue to rehash his scandal?

He wants to be vindicated. Unfortunately, nothing can change the fact that he used fraudulent documents in his story. They were fake, as in not real. That's black and white. CBS News preferred to lick its chops rather than verify the documents. That's inexcusable.

However, Americans are very forgiving. If Dan would just acknowledge reality, that the forged documents he based his 60 Minutes II story on gave a big, swollen, black eye to CBS News, he could retain a bit of personal integrity.

I've considered Rather's journalistic integrity to be questionable, at best, for years; but now I'm afraid the man has lost his sense of personal honor or his mind or both. Any way you look at it, it's bad.

Rather's insistence that the National Guard story is true and that CBS was set up by some shady character smacks of psychosis.

It's sad. Rather is becoming the King Lear of the Old Media. I don't like seeing that.

Dan should go away for a while, for a long while. He needs a rest.

International Freedom Center Gets Axed

NEW YORK (AP) -- Gov. George Pataki dropped a proposed freedom museum from the World Trade Center redevelopment plan Wednesday, saying the project had aroused "too much opposition, too much controversy."

The decision followed months of acrimony over the International Freedom Center, with furious Sept. 11 families and politicians saying that the museum would overshadow and take space from a separate memorial devoted to the 2,749 dead and would dishonor them by fostering debate about the attacks and other world events.

"We must move forward with our first priority, the creation of an inspiring memorial to pay tribute to our lost loved ones and tell their stories to the world," Pataki said in a statement.

In addition to the terrorist attacks, the Freedom Center would have dealt with such topics as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the civil rights movement, the Declaration of Independence and the South African constitution.

Clearer heads have prevailed!

The America haters and moral relativists have lost their battle to turn Ground Zero into an oasis for political propaganda.

The 9/11 families and their supporters have succeeded in taking back the memorial.

I can't wait to read the New York Times editorial on this one. It will be sure to reach previously unknown heights of condescension and bitterness.

No matter.

The liberal elite will just have to swallow hard. They are not going to get their way. Their attempt to hijack the memorial has been thwarted.

Now, plans can move forward to appropriately memorialize the victims and the heroes of 9/11, with the dignity and the respect that they deserve.

HURRICANE KATRINA DEATH TOLL

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- A doctor has offered to perform free abortions on hurricane evacuees, saying it may be too dangerous for them to wait until they return home.

Despite protests from abortion opponents, Little Rock Family Planning clinic director Dr. Jerry Edwards said he has already performed six free abortions. The clinic usually charges between $525 and $600 for a first-trimester abortion.

"If we didn't provide it now, they would get it later — a late-term abortion that would give greater risk to the mother's health," Edwards told KTHV-TV in Little Rock.

Edwards, who runs the only abortion clinic in central Arkansas, was unavailable for further comment Tuesday, a clinic employee told The Associated Press.

Rose Mimms, executive director of Arkansas Right to Life, said Edwards is risking further traumatizing women who have already lost their material belongings. "This just adds to the devastation these women already have in their lives," she said.

But Marvin Schwartz, spokesman for Arkansas-Oklahoma Planned Parenthood, said Edwards is providing women with a needed service.

"The timing of the abortion procedure is, of course, extremely critical. The earlier in the pregnancy, the less critical it is," he said.

My question is:

Will the murders of these unborn children be included in the official tally of the Hurricane Katrina death toll?

Liberal Media Cropping

Do mainstream media outlets have an agenda?

Some people actually trust the MSM to provide an "objective" presentation of events. Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of those people are Democrats.

According to Gallup's annual Governance survey, conducted September 12-15:

[T]he other significant changes recorded this year are a slight increase in public trust in media and a slight decline in trust in public officials.

Americans' trust in the media has partially rebounded after declining from 54% in 2003 to 44% last year. (The cause of last year's drop is not clear, but the most visible news controversy at the time involved CBS News anchor Dan Rather's reliance on faulty documents in his report that was critical of President Bush's service in the National Guard.) Today, 50% say they have at least a fair amount of trust and confidence in the news media.

Interesting.

Now check out the breakdown of those numbers.

% Trust a Great Deal/Fair Amount by Party ID

News/Mass media

Republicans-----31%

Independents----49%

Democrats-------70%

That trust gap is enormous. Although Gallup is quick to blame Dan Rather and CBS as responsible for last year's dismal 44% figure, the organization does not give any analysis, other than those numbers, as to why the majority of Republicans and Independents still continue to distrust the media.

Remember, this poll was taken before major media outlets pointed out that a significant amount of the Hurricane Katrina coverage was based on rumors and distortions.

Why would Democrats so strongly approve of the media's performance, while Republicans and Independents remain highly skeptical?

It's obvious. The MSM are mouthpieces for the Dems.

Remember this revealing bit of misrepresentation in the media?

Here's a photo that accompanied a Washington Post story detailing the appearances of Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Sheen at the August Crawford protest.



The caption read:

Cindy Sheehan, left, holds Rev. Al Sharpton's hand, center, as Evan Bright reaches over to comfort her as they lay roses at the crosses at Camp Casey 2 near President Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, Sunday, Aug. 28, 2005. Both women lost their sons in the war in Iraq.

It seems like it was quite a prayerful moment, a time of solemn remembrance.

The photo above certainly makes it look like a touching, intimate scene.

Looks were deceiving.

Upon zooming out, it became evident that the moment was an event manufactured for the media. Of course, they dutifully ate it up.




That intimate, heart-wrenching moment came off a little differently when viewed from this perspective, didn't it?

Once again, we have yet another example of liberal cropping.

This time it comes from the San Francisco Chronicle.

Zombie exposes the truth.

This photo appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle as part of its coverage of an anti-war protest in San Francisco on September 24, 2005.



This closely cropped photo shows what the protester is against--war. However, it does not show what the protester is for.




Zombie snapped the same photo, but gives its larger context. "You can see that the girl's protest contingent also sported Palestinian flags and obscene placards."

One more step back reveals an even clearer picture of the protester's group.



Zombie writes:

Here's my full original photo, uncropped. Now we can see that the girl is just one of several teenagers, all wearing terrorist-style bandannas covering their faces.

But, as you'll notice, the bandannas are all printed with the same design. Was this a grassroots protest statement the teenagers had come up with all by themselves?

When people picked up the San Francisco Chronicle and saw its photo of the protester, they received a distorted portrayal. They were not given the full context, that the teen was part of a group of terrorist wannabes.

It becomes clear that the person in the photo doesn't seem to be saying "No to war" at all. In fact, the protester comes off as promoting war against Israel. That's the part that the San Francisco Chronicle didn't want the public to see.

Thanks to the New Media, we saw it.

Sheehan and McCain

There was no meeting of the minds at this meeting of media whores.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Peace mom Cindy Sheehan didn't change her opposition to the war in Iraq after meeting Tuesday with one of its supporters, Sen. John McCain a Vietnam veteran whom she called "a warmonger."

Sheehan thanked McCain for meeting with her, but she came away disappointed.

"He tried to tell us what George Bush would have said," Sheehan, who protested at the president's Texas home over the summer, told reporters. "I don't believe he believes what he was telling me."

First, why does the AP keep calling Sheehan a "peace mom." Why not "anti-Semitic mom"? Why not "nutjob who thinks our troops are occupying New Orleans mom"?

Perhaps "mind reader mom" would be most appropriate. Sheehan believes that she knows what McCain REALLY believes about Iraq, and it's not what he's been saying in public.

She is starting to sound like John Edwards channeling the words of an unborn baby girl. "She speaks to you through me...I feel her presence. She's inside me, and she's talking to you."

Is that a power that all liberals have?

McCain, R-Ariz., also seemed disappointed in the meeting, which he said had been misrepresented as including some of his constituents. Only one person in her small delegation has ties to the state, and that person no longer lives there.

The two exchanged views about the war, and McCain described the conversation as "a rehash" of opinions already well known. He said he might not have met with Sheehan had he known none of his constituents was in the group.

So, McCain was looking for a meeting with his constituents and wasn't particularly interested in Sheehan?

I find that hard to believe. Would McCain meeting with a few of his constituents from Arizona have brought out the press? I don't think so.

If a meeting is held, and the press doesn't cover it, does McCain call it a meeting?

..."He is a warmonger, and I'm not," Sheehan said after meeting with McCain. "I believe this war is not keeping America safer."

"She's entitled to her opinion," McCain said. "We just have fundamental disagreements."

There's breaking news. Stop the presses!

...Sheehan and McCain had met once before, shortly after the funeral of her son. Sheehan said Tuesday that McCain told her then that her son's death was "like his buddies in Vietnam" and that he feared their deaths were "for nothing." McCain, however, denied he made such a statement.

I'm inclined to believe McCain on this one.

Sheehan could easily be confusing McCain with another Vietnam vet senator. Maybe John Kerry.

Media Disgrace

Worldwide, reports went out that there was anarchy in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. While there was tremendous suffering in the city, the lawlessness was GREATLY exaggerated and a pack of rumors were completely fabricated.

Rumors often run wild in times of crisis. However, when the news media report the rumors as facts, there's a problem.

The September 4, 2005, New York Times trumpeted the fabulous reporting of Brian Williams on Hurricane Katrina. The paper declared his work a "career-maker."

As it turns out, Brian Williams and others solidified their journalistic credentials as befitting tabloid TV.

BATON ROUGE, La. -- Maj. Ed Bush recalled how he stood in the bed of a pickup truck in the days after Hurricane Katrina, struggling to help the crowd outside the Louisiana Superdome separate fact from fiction. Armed only with a megaphone and scant information, he might have been shouting into, well, a hurricane.

The National Guard spokesman's accounts about rescue efforts, water supplies and first aid all but disappeared amid the roar of a 24-hour rumor mill at New Orleans' main evacuation shelter. Then a frenzied media recycled and amplified many of the unverified reports.

Frenzied is an excellent way to describe the state of the media after Katrina.

Do you think that there's a chance Oprah will do a show on how irresponsibly Louisiana officials and the media behaved?

Is she upset about their actions which directly led to greater hardships for the hurricane victims?

...The New Orleans Times-Picayune on Monday described inflated body counts, unverified "rapes," and unconfirmed sniper attacks as among examples of "scores of myths about the dome and Convention Center treated as fact by evacuees, the media and even some of New Orleans' top officials."

Indeed, Mayor C. Ray Nagin told a national television audience on "Oprah" three weeks ago of people "in that frickin' Superdome for five days watching dead bodies, watching hooligans killing people, raping people."

Journalists and officials who have reviewed the Katrina disaster blamed the inaccurate reporting in large measure on the breakdown of telephone service, which prevented dissemination of accurate reports to those most in need of the information. Race may have also played a factor.

The wild rumors filled the vacuum and seemed to gain credence with each retelling — that an infant's body had been found in a trash can, that sharks from Lake Pontchartrain were swimming through the business district, that hundreds of bodies had been stacked in the Superdome basement.

Where were all the investigative reporters? Wasn't anyone able to get to the truth?

Nagin was tossing around unsubstantiated reports like a writer for Newsweek.

...Times-Picayune Editor Jim Amoss cited telephone breakdowns as a primary cause of reporting errors, but said the fact that most evacuees were poor African Americans also played a part.

"If the dome and Convention Center had harbored large numbers of middle class white people," Amoss said, "it would not have been a fertile ground for this kind of rumor-mongering."

What a thoroughly racist statement!

Amoss said that middle class white people are more capable of sorting fact from fiction than poor African Americans.

Can you imagine if Bush said that?

Some of the hesitation that journalists might have had about using the more sordid reports from the evacuation centers probably fell away when New Orleans' top officials seemed to confirm the accounts.

Nagin and Police Chief Eddie Compass appeared on "Oprah" a few days after trouble at the Superdome had peaked.

Compass told of "the little babies getting raped" at the Superdome. And Nagin made his claim about hooligans raping and killing.

State officials this week said their counts of the dead at the city's two largest evacuation points fell far short of early rumors and news reports. Ten bodies were recovered from the Superdome and four from the Convention Center, said Bob Johannessen, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.

(National Guard officials put the body count at the Superdome at six, saying the other four bodies came from the area around the stadium.)

I've said it before. Nagin is no Giuliani. I wonder how much suffering could have been prevented or at least alleviated more quickly if a better qualified individual was the mayor of New Orleans.

At least Compass resigned on Tuesday.

Nagin's reaction:

"It's a sad day in the city of New Orleans when a hero makes a decision like this. He leaves the department in pretty good shape and with a significant amount of leadership."

A hero?

Right.

...The media inaccuracies had consequences in the disaster zone.

Bush, of the National Guard, said that reports of corpses at the Superdome filtered back to the facility via AM radio, undermining his struggle to keep morale up and maintain order.

"We had to convince people this was still the best place to be," Bush said. "What I saw in the Superdome was just tremendous amounts of people helping people."

But, Bush said, those stories received scant attention in newspapers or on television.

Gee, sounds similar to the MSM's coverage of conditions in Iraq. There's no time to report the good news of schools and hospitals opening, but plenty of time to dwell on Abu Ghraib.

The "inaccuracies" of the media made matters worse for hurricane victims in the Superdome. The media were actually doing a disservice and adding to the problem.

It's funny how often the Drudge Report, which for the most part is a page of links, is degraded by the MSM. Matt Drudge and his "Sludge Report" is looked down on as sensationlist rumor-mongering.

Who's rumor-mongering now???

Members of the MSM are agenda-driven. They cannot say that they are better than Drudge or better than tabloid reporters.

They have very, VERY little to be proud of regarding their coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Let's face it. It has been shown to be an utter embarrassment.

Arrested Development

I've never been arrested. Maybe I should try it. Cindy Sheehan makes it look like so much fun!

She should be careful. I think getting arrested can be quite addictive for some people.

For example, the delusional President Martin Sheen has been arrested over sixty times!

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Cindy Sheehan, the California mother who became a leader of the anti- war movement after her son died in Iraq, was arrested Monday along with hundreds of others protesting outside the White House.

Sheehan, carrying a photo of her son in his Army uniform, rallied with other protesters in a park across the street from the White House and then marched to the gate of the executive mansion to request a meeting with President Bush.

The protesters later sat down on the pedestrian walkway in front of the White House _ knowing they would be arrested _ and began singing and chanting "Stop the war now!"

The protesters have had days of different events. Was it really necessary to manufacture an activity that would assure their arrests?

I guess something drastic needed to be done for Sheehan to continue to hold the media's attention.

Police warned them three times that they were breaking the law by failing to move along, then began making arrests. One man climbed over the White House fence and was quickly subdued by Secret Service agents.

Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She smiled as she was carried to the curb, then stood up and walked to a police vehicle as protesters chanted, "The whole world is watching."

As the photo shows, Sheehan was very pleased with herself, all smiles. Apparently, this grieving mother takes solace in breaking the law.

Perhaps she enjoyed the crowd chanting, "The whole world is watching."

They're right. The world is watching, including terrorists, our enemies that want to carry out attacks that will outdo the carnage and destruction of 9/11.

This is exactly what they want to see.

Protesting, while certainly a right of all Americans, isn't always the right thing to do.

Cindy Sheehan may be the face of the anti-war movement; but she has also become the face of the anti-American movement.

Al Jazeera loves her!

Some samplings of how Sheehan's activities are being reported in the Arab world:

Thursday 22 September 2005 -- Sheehan was joined by about 30 supporters in her march down Pennsylvania Avenue on Wednesday to deliver a letter to Bush urging him to pull the troops out of Iraq.

"We want to hold this administration accountable. Nobody's asking them the hard questions but you know what, we're willing to come here," said Sheehan, the California mother whose son Casey was killed in combat in Iraq.

"We're willing to spend weeks out of our lives and ask them the hard questions," she added after handing a poster-sized petition through the iron gates of the White House to a staff member who promised to deliver it.

..."There's still a war on," Sheehan said on Capitol Hill. "Nine Americans were killed yesterday in Iraq. We will end this war. We will bring the troops home."

Sunday 25 September 2005 -- Opponents of the war in Iraq have rallied by the tens of thousands to demand the return of US troops, staging a day of protest, song and remembrance of the dead in marches through Washington and other cities in the US and Europe.

A mile-long procession of demonstrators marched through downtown San Francisco on Saturday to demand President George Bush be ousted from office and US soldiers brought home from Iraq.

..."We have to get involved," said Erika McCroskey, 27, who came from Des Moines, Iowa, with her younger sister and mother for her first demonstration, travelling in one of the buses that poured into the capital from far-flung places.

"Bush lied, thousands died," said one sign. "End the occupation," said another.

..."We believe we are at a tipping point whereby the anti-war sentiment has now become the majority sentiment," said Brian Becker, national coordinator for Answer, one of the main anti-war organisers.

Monday 26 September 2005 -- Cindy Sheehan, the American woman whose son was killed in Iraq and who has spurred the anti-war movement in the US, has been arrested while protesting outside the White House.

...Sheehan, 48, was the first taken into custody. She was led to a police vehicle while protesters chanted: "The whole world is watching."

I think what makes Sheehan particularly attractive to Al Jazeera and other anti-American propaganda outlets is her strong opinions against Israel.

The Muslim American Society, a group that played an important role in the weekend's protests, was especially pleased with the anti-Israeli rhetoric that permeated the events.

From its website:

Protestors, many of whom were first-timers, came from all over the country, representing a wide spectrum of age, ethnicity, political views and faith traditions. What fused this sea of humanity descending upon our nation’s capital was a unity surrounding the opposition to the war in Iraq, and the current domestic and foreign policy of President George W. Bush’s administration.

...The September 24 March on Washington was initiated by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition, which included a broad coalition called the September 24 National Coalition for the March on Washington.

The Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation served as the Muslim community representative on the Coalition’s Executive Committee, and played a significant role in organizing the event. However, MAS Freedom played a more pivotal role in insisting and negotiating that the cause of the Palestinian struggle not to be relegated to a side- or non-issue in the demonstration.

Additionally, MAS Freedom Executive Director Mahdi Bray spoke and emceed a significant portion of the rally, which was broadcast live on C-SPAN. MAS President. Dr. Esam Omeish, also spoke to the rally and national C-SPAN audience, followed by an evening appearance on Al Jazeera from live at the rally site.

Yes, the world is watching.

That's what makes the grandstanding Sheehan and her cohorts so dangerous to our safety.

They are helping America's enemies.

How NOT to Support the Troops

Surely, there must be some people who are capable of articulating their opposition to the Iraq war in a reasonable fashion.

If any were in Washington for Saturday's anti-war protest, their presence was lost amid the antics of the looniest of the Leftist loons. They were out in force.

That's unfortunate.

Saturday's rally succeeded in marginalizing the anti-war movement. Rather than an impressive show of thousands of concerned people committed to the cause, the gathering illustrated the extremist nature of many groups in attendance. It was far from impressive. It was embarrassing.

Maybe that's why so many wore masks. Apparently, those participants borrowed that strategy from the KKK and Hamas playbooks--cover your face.

There's no polite way to say this. The event attracted a lot of nutjobs.

Some protested capitalism. Some protested the police. Some promoted conspiracy theories. Some called for the impreachment of Bush and depicted him as Hitler. Some called for the incarceration of Cheney and urged his castration.

Some chose to honor the troops by displaying the American flag upside down, the flag that drapes the coffins of the fallen.

It was a diverse bunch, with varied agendas; but they were united by one thing:

HATE

29 Years Ago in Larry's Kitchen

Bono, September 25, 2005

It was a miserable Sunday night, as far as the weather goes. There was a driving rain, with occasional flashes of lightening and crashes of thunder.

It was the kind of night that you would not want to be on the road, the kind of night to stay snuggled inside; but not for me.

I'd been looking forward to this late September Sunday night for months and all I cared about was what was going on inside the Bradley Center.

Last night, U2's concert was a celebration. Each of their concerts are celebrations of sorts. This one, however, was special. It was an anniversary.

After opening with "City of Blinding Lights," then going into "Vertigo," and following with "Elevation," U2 revisited the early days.

Twenty-nine years ago, in Larry's kitchen, the four lads gathered for the first time and played together as a band.

There's a lot of history in twenty-nine years. It's more than a third of a lifetime.

Bono said from the stage, "Twenty-nine years to this day, this band met for the first day. Little boys with big ideas - probably just big heads."

Those little boys, with their big ideas, and heads, grew up to become one of my all-time, must see, favorite bands.

As a special nod to their anniversary, U2 performed some oldies but goodies from Boy, their first album. It was great to hear "Electric Co." and "The Ocean."

I'm not certain exactly what Bono said just before launching into "Electric Co. It was something to the effect, and I paraphrase, "Some of you may not know these songs, but who cares?" As a longtime fan, I enjoyed that. I knew them well.

I don't know if this was intentional, but after dipping into their distant past, the band performed "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." I think there was a message there. The band took us all the way back to the beginning and then reminded us that twenty-nine years and tremendous success don't necessarily mean complete fulfillment.

That was followed by "Beautiful Day" (which it was, in spite of the rain); and then three songs from their most recent release, all of which were fantastic.

I'm not sure when this happened, but it wasn't all that long into the show. After finishing a song, Bono took a swig from a bottle of water. Then, he splashed the remainder out onto the crowd. It made me think of a priest blessing the faithful with Holy Water.

Our seats were GREAT, on Edge's side at mid-circle of the stage.

They all genuinely seemed to be enjoying themselves. Of course, U2 never phones in their shows, at least not ones that I've attended. The energy is always there; but I sensed a greater closeness between them last night. Maybe it was because this time I was close enough to really see the smiles they exchanged with each other. None of it seemed forced. It smacked of sincerity.

I last saw a U2 show in May. Many of the elements of that performance were the same as this one.

Naturally, Bono talked about Africa and strides being made to alleviate poverty there. He thanked everyone in the audience that had signed on to the One campaign.

He also spoke of the suffering and devastation here at home with Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita. Bono said that one of the reasons the four members of the band were so fond of America is because when our country gets hit, we all pull together to help.

An interesting little twist--Bono sang a few lines of "Old Man River," from the musical Showboat.

I didn't see that one coming!

At one point, I think after "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," holding the Irish flag, he talked about the pride he felt for his home country. Today, the Irish Republican Army is expected to announce that it has destroyed its arsenal of weapons. Bono applauded these men and women for taking this bold step to end "the Troubles" in Ireland.

Bono said that years ago, he would cut the green and orange strips from the Irish flag and just hang onto the white portion. On the eve of the disarmament, Bono claimed to finally be comfortable with what the entire flag represented.

As in May, with Edge playing keyboards, Bono dedicated a song to the "brave men and women of the military." In May, it was "Running to Stand Still." This time, it was a haunting version of "Miss Sarajevo."

A U2 concert wouldn't be a U2 concert if Bono didn't run off at the mouth a bit; but that was kept to a minimum. He presented a positive message and acted as a cheerleader for his causes without being condescending or offensive, like the Dixie Chicks and Kanye West, for example. The list of celebrities who use their status to ram their politics down their audiences' throats is a long one. Bono, in recent years anyway, has learned to gently slide it down, making it far more effective.

With age, Bono's pontificating has taken on a much mellower tone. I think he wants to be a uniter, not a divider. If only others were willing to adopt his approach.

As always, the fifth band member on stage was God. Again, sincerity of personal convictions was in abundance.

The encores offered some endearing moments.

The first encore began with one the band rarely plays live, "First Time." It was a simple arrangement, with Edge playing acoustic. Absolutely lovely.

Then, a very funny, yet sweet thing happened on the next song. Again, with Bono and Edge standing at the tip of the circular walkway, they went into "Wild Horses." There were some miscues. Bono was a bit lost on the lyrics.

The song came to a complete stop. With Bono saying, "Just give us a minute," he and Edge had a little conference and started over. After finishing that one up, Bono shrugged his shoulders and made a thumbs up and a thumbs down sign, in effect asking the crowd, "What did you think?"

I gave it two thumbs up. Although it seemed like I was witnessing a rehearsal rather than an encore, I loved it.

For "With or Without You," Bono pulled a woman on stage with him. He embraced her for the entire song and bowed down to kiss her hand at the end.

The second encore had a terrific, high-energy version of "All Because of You."

That was followed by a beautiful, stripped down rendition of "Yahweh." As a believer, that one really hits home. Bono altered the lyrics a bit at the end.

Instead of "What no man can own, No man can take, Take this heart, Take this heart, Take this heart, And make it break," he sang:

What no man can own,
Only God can take,
Take this heart,
Take this heart,
Take this city's heart,
And keep it safe.

The show ended just as it did in May, with "40" and Bono shining a hand-held spotlight on the crowd.

After saying his final goodbye, Bono exited first. The three remaining on stage continued as the crowd sang. Adam was next to say goodbye and leave. Edge and Larry played on. Then, the music stopped. Edge left, with Larry sitting at the drums, silently staring at the crowd. He then punctuated the night with a solo blast, came out in front and waved his goodbye.

After all these years, U2 is still a band in every sense of the word.

Last night displayed what an incredible journey it's been for those four teenage boys who met in Larry's kitchen twenty-nine years ago.

I'm so glad I've been along for the ride.





Set List

City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Elevation
Cry / Electric Co.
The Ocean
I Still Haven’t Found What I'm Looking For
Beautiful Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet The Blue Sky
Miss Sarajevo
Pride (In the Name of Love)
Where the Streets Have No Name
One

First Time
Wild Horses
With or Without You

All Because of You
Yahweh
40