Internet Scofflaw

The flag-pin controversy is still stupid, but that’s no excuse for getting the facts wrong:

[Obama] has repeatedly been forced to address false rumors that he will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance, place his hand over his heart during the national anthem or wear an American-flag pin on his lapel. He wore a flag pin for Monday’s speech.

(Emphasis mine.) In fact, as I’ve noted before, the flag-pin “rumor” is absolutely true:

“You know, the truth is that right after 9/11, I had a pin,” Obama said. “Shortly after 9/11, particularly because as we’re talking about the Iraq War, that became a substitute for I think true patriotism, which is speaking out on issues that are of importance to our national security, I decided I won’t wear that pin on my chest.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but his exact words were “I won’t wear that pin on my chest,” so it seems justified to conclude that he wouldn’t wear that pin on his chest. Certainly he’s changed his mind, and even denied that he ever said it, but that doesn’t make the “rumor” wrong.

ASIDE: If they really wanted to tell the whole story, they would point out that the whole flag-pin controversy, stupid as it is, resulted from Obama’s own too-clever-by-half effort to impugn the patriotism of people who do wear flag pins. Since the story is about smears on a person’s patriotism, that seems relevant. But if they can’t tell the whole story, I would settle for them getting the facts straight.

(Via the Corner.)

John Althouse Cohen fact-checks a New York Times article on how hard men and women work.  I’ll bet the NYT wishes people would stop doing that.

(Via Instapundit.)

For the last week, orthodox Anglican leaders have been meeting at a conference in Jerusalem. Reuters reports on the results, managing to get nearly everything wrong:

Conservative Anglicans Reluctant to Break Away

Conservative Anglican leaders meeting at a rebel summit expressed frustration with the church’s leadership on Thursday but indicated that an outright schism might be avoided.

The Global Anglican Future Conference (GAFCON), a week-long convention of hundreds of conservative bishops and clergy, opened on Sunday amid talk that it was a first step towards a split between conservative and liberal wings in the 77-million-strong Anglican Communion.

The Communion is divided over issues such as homosexuality and biblical authority. [Scofflaw: The latter is the central issue, but the former is what interests the media.]

But mid-way through the conference, conservative leaders spoke only of making GAFCON a “movement,” without indicating how such a process would be handled and if there was enough support among the bishops to initiate a split.

As we’ll see, this is simply wrong.

When asked whether worshippers would be able to belong to both the new movement and the Anglican Communion, [Archbishop Nzimbi of Kenya] said: “This is something which should emerge clearly at the end of GAFCON.”

The very question indicates that they have no idea what is going on. The assumption seems to be that orthodox Christians (”conservatives,” the article calls them) would secede from the Anglican Communion. What Reuters does not understand is that the Anglican Communion is overwhelmingly orthodox. If anyone found themselves on the outside, it wouldn’t be the orthodox members.

What is happening is a small province of the Anglican Communion (the United States Episcopal Church) is aggressively challenging the core tenets of the Christian faith (such as the unique redemptive work of Jesus Christ), and is persecuting dissident congregations. Many of those dissident congregations are looking to leave the Episcopal Church and join another province within the Anglican Communion. That is the split being contemplated, one within the Episcopal Church, not the Anglican Communion as a whole.

Continuing:

The conservatives, who claim to represent 35 million Anglicans, mostly in developing countries, have been hinting at a split within the Communion since Anglicanism’s first openly gay bishop was consecrated in the United States.

However, it seems that they might now shy away from that step.

“They are trying to back down from the difficult position they put themselves in, as gracefully as possible,” said Jim Naughton, Canon for Communications with the diocese of Washington.

Notice that the only quote the article solicited was from an opponent of the conference, and it is presented uncritically (despite, we’ll see in a moment, being completely wrong). However, basic demographic facts are qualified by “claim”.

Anyway, the main thrust of the article is that participants are backing away from schism (and, according to Naughton, trying to back down gracefully). In fact, the official statement is out, and it doesn’t back away in the slightest:

We recognise the desirability of territorial jurisdiction for provinces and dioceses of the Anglican Communion, except in those areas where churches and leaders are denying the orthodox faith or are preventing its spread, and in a few areas for which overlapping jurisdictions are beneficial for historical or cultural reasons.

We thank God for the courageous actions of those Primates and provinces who have offered orthodox oversight to churches under false leadership, especially in North and South America. The actions of these Primates have been a positive response to pastoral necessities and mission opportunities. We believe that such actions will continue to be necessary and we support them in offering help around the world.

We believe this is a critical moment when the Primates’ Council will need to put in place structures to lead and support the church. In particular, we believe the time is now ripe for the formation of a province in North America for the federation currently known as Common Cause Partnership to be recognised by the Primates’ Council.

(Emphasis mine.) The statement explicitly endorses the formation of a new, orthodox province in North America. Far from backing off, this is actually a stronger position than what has recently been contemplated. (What is now being contemplated is to move orthodox parishes and dioceses to another existing province — probably the Southern Cone — rather than creation of a new province.)

This article completely misunderstands what happened in Jerusalem (or worse, deliberately misrepresents it). Truly a shabby piece of work.

With things starting to go well in Iraq, the networks are scaling back their coverage:

According to data compiled by Andrew Tyndall, a television consultant who monitors the three network evening newscasts, coverage of Iraq has been “massively scaled back this year.” Almost halfway into 2008, the three newscasts have shown 181 weekday minutes of Iraq coverage, compared with 1,157 minutes for all of 2007. The “CBS Evening News” has devoted the fewest minutes to Iraq, 51, versus 55 minutes on ABC’s “World News” and 74 minutes on “NBC Nightly News.” (The average evening newscast is 22 minutes long.)

CBS News no longer stations a single full-time correspondent in Iraq, where some 150,000 United States troops are deployed.

The networks cry that covering Iraq is too expensive now:

“It’s terrible,” Ms. Logan [of CBS] said in the telephone interview. She called it a financial decision. “We can’t afford to maintain operations in Iraq and Afghanistan at the same time,” she said. “It’s so expensive and the security risks are so great that it’s prohibitive.”

Mr. Friedman psenior VP at CBS] said coverage of Iraq is enormously expensive, mostly due to the security risks. He said meetings with other television networks about sharing the costs of coverage have faltered for logistical reasons.

I don’t buy it. How can security cost more now that it’s easier? No, they just don’t like the product they’re getting now.

Besides, they could embed for free. Why don’t they do that?

Ms. Logan said she begged for months to be embedded with a group of Navy Seals, and when she came back with the story, a CBS producer said to her, “One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.”

Oh, they don’t like the stories they get from embedding. Too many actual servicemen that way.

Bottom line, Iraq coverage is all about politics:

Journalists at all three American television networks with evening newscasts expressed worries that their news organizations would withdraw from the Iraqi capital after the November presidential election. They spoke only on the condition of anonymity in order to avoid offending their employers.

(Via Instapundit.)

The Telegraph has a generally good column comparing George W. Bush to Harry Truman, as presidents who are not well-liked as they leave office but to whom history will be kinder.  It makes a strange mistake though, referring to “President Harding, the disastrous president of the Great Depression.”

Warren Harding died in office on August 2, 1923.  The Depression is generally regarded to have begun with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929.  President Harding campaigned on a “return to normalcy” after Woodrow Wilson’s excesses during the First World War, and delivered on that promise, for which we should all be grateful.  However, he was plagued by scandal and accomplished little else before his untimely death.  He was succeeded by Calvin Coolidge, who is now generally well-regarded (more so by conservatives than liberals).  Coolidge was then succeeded by Herbert Hoover (of whom Coolidge did not approve), and it was Hoover who was president at the start of the Great Depression.

The Telegraph is a British paper, of course, but one still might hope that they could get the basic facts of American history straight in a historical retrospective column.

POSTSCRIPT: The degree to which we needed a “return to normalcy” after the Wilson administration is not well-known any more, but it should be.  Chapter 3 of Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism is all about it.

The strangest thing about the Plame-Novak-Armitage affair was the spectacle of liberal journalists pretending to be outraged at the leaking of the name of a CIA agent. Ordinarily, the media are delighted with any classified leaks they can get, and care not a whit about the implications to national security. What was different in the Plame affair was that the leak favored Republicans, and might have been (but, in fact, wasn’t) done by the White House.

Now the New York Times, who was shocked (shocked!), by the horrible disclosure of a CIA agent’s name, has decided to disclose a CIA agent’s name. There is a difference though: in this case, unlike in the Plame affair, the CIA requested them not to do so.

It’s a good thing the Plame affair has largely run its course. Any more crocodile tears from the NYT on Plame’s behalf would be awfully hard to take.

(Via the Corner.)

The AP again runs a piece on the Plame leak that insinuates Lewis Libby was responsible for the leak, and never once mentions Richard Armitage, who actually did the leaking.  (Via the Corner.)

Monday’s AP report notwithstanding, Coalition forces say that the Taliban does not control the Arghandab district:

BAGRAM AIR FIELD, Afghanistan (June 17, 2008) – Afghan National Police and Coalition forces completed a patrol in the Arghandab District of Kandahar province today and found no evidence that militants control the area.

While in the area, Coalition forces moved freely and met no resistance. Recent reports of militant control in the area appear to be unfounded.

The threat of militant activity still exists throughout the province, but the patrol found no indication that militants have overwhelming strength in the Arghandab area.

(Via America’s North Shore Journal, via Instapundit.)

Amazingly, it sounds like the AP was taken in by a fake offensive. That would be incompetent even for them.

ASIDE: I’m amused by the measured language in the CJTF press release. They don’t say for sure that the Taliban doesn’t control the area, but if it does, they can’t tell. . .

The Economist, in a review of a recent Nixon biography, repeats an old allegation against Chuck Colson:

Chuck Colson, Nixon’s general counsel who famously said that he would run over his grandmother for his boss, once contemplated firebombing the Brookings Institution, a stately think-tank, and then sending in FBI officers dressed as firemen to steal a document that Nixon wanted.

Colson admits to doing many unsavory things in his time before converting to Christianity, but he prefers to be infamous only for the real ones, writing:

SIR – I noticed that your review of a biography of Richard Nixon referred to me in a couple of unflattering ways, including the notion that I contemplated firebombing the Brookings Institution (“The fuel of power”, May 10th). You need to know, if it ever does any good, that this is untrue. The fellow that testified about it during Watergate has totally recanted.

It is not true that I ever urged or suggested it. It was the idea of one Jack Caulfield, who told me about it in the White House men’s room, and I told him he was crazy. Mr Caulfield called me one day and said he wanted to make amends; that I had been unfairly treated, and he was sorry. He later confirmed this to Jonathan Aitken, who wrote a biography of me. I don’t know if it does any good to try to change these things now, but that is the fact.

Chuck Colson

I was able to locate the relevant passage of Aitken’s book, Charles W. Colson: A Life Redeemed, online and it confirms Colson’s claim.  It’s not well-known that Caulfield recanted his allegation, so the Economist doesn’t look all that bad.  Still, fact-checking is supposed to be the big advantage of the mainstream media, isn’t it?

It’s no surprise when a newspaper prints a puff piece for Barack Obama.  It is a little bit surprising when they provide a free link to Obama’s campaign web site, though.  Somehow, John McCain doesn’t get the same treatment.  (Via Instapundit.)

Lawrence Lessig has a good explanation of what’s going on with the Judge Kozinski kerfuffle. (Via Instapundit.) Here’s the even shorter version: What most press reports (for example) are calling Kozinski’s family’s “publicly accessible Web site” would better be described as their “improperly secured private file server.” He (or someone in his family) chose to store some strange (but not illegal) files in a place he thought was private.

I think it would be a good rule, when reading any media report involving the Internet, simply to assume the report is wrong.

UPDATE: More here.

“Obama’s Official Blog is Boring. McCain’s is Enjoyable. Why That’s Bad News for the GOP.”  Seriously, that’s the title.  (Via the Corner.)

According to a Rasmussen poll, just 17% say reporters even try to give unbiased coverage of politics, versus 68% who say they try to help their preferred candidate.  Even 50% of liberals say reporters are biased.  (Via Instapundit.)

I once saw a professional debunker on television. His topic of the day was the Bermuda Triangle, in which ships have supposedly disappeared at a statistically improbable rate. He said that when they went about locating the Bermuda Triangle disappearances on a map, they had to get a much bigger map. Ships that had supposedly been lost in the Bermuda Triangle had actually been lost all over the world, and had been listed as Bermuda Triangle losses based on the most tenuous connections (for example, they were scheduled later to pass through the Caribbean Sea).

We may be starting to see a similar phenomenon with Iraq casualties. An Orlando Sentinel story under the banner “U.S. WAR CASUALTIES” reports the latest casualty, a Pfc. Howard A. Jones of Chicago. James Taranto uncovers that Jones was not killed in Iraq at all:

Pfc. Howard A. Jones, Jr., 35, of Chicago, died May 18 in Chicago from injuries sustained when he was struck by a hit-and-run driver while on leave from the Iraq theater of operations.

So being assigned to Iraq is now enough to classify a sadly commonplace death as a “U.S. WAR CASUALTY.”

To be sure, the Defense Department has to take some blame for issuing Jones’s name in a press release in the first place. Today’s media can’t be expected actually to read a press release before plugging it into their narrative. Still, the DoD has pulled their press release. (Taranto’s link has gone stale, and release 11946 no longer appears here.) The Orlando Sentinel however has yet to issue a correction.

In the AP:

McClellan was ordered to say that White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were not involved in leaking Plame’s identity. Later, a criminal investigation revealed that they were.

Unless the writer is using the word “involved” very expansively, the investigation revealed no such thing. We’ve known for over nine months that Richard Armitage was the one who leaked Plame’s identity, and he did it without any involvement from the White House.

(Via Instapundit.)

The New York Times, better late than never:

An article on May 4 about black liberation theology and the debate surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr, Senator Barack Obama’s former minister, erroneously confirmed a statement by Mr. Wright that the United States has used biological weapons against other countries. There is no evidence that the United States ever did so.

(Via the Corner.)

How does such an outlandish claim get past their vaunted army of editors and fact-checkers?

On Memorial Day, the New York Times ran a risible story about the state of reporting on the war in Iraq. I noted their amazing claim that we the public, not the media, are responsible for the poor coverage of the war. Meanwhile, other bloggers were upset about this paragraph:

But the tactical success of the surge should not be misconstrued as making Iraq a safer place for American soldiers. Last year was the bloodiest in the five-year history of the conflict, with more than 900 dead, and last month, 52 perished, making it the bloodiest month of the year so far. So far in May, 18 have died.

This is entirely misleading, for several reasons:

• Last year was the bloodiest because it included the surge, which took the battle to the enemy. The surge succeeded within months, and the latter months of 2007 saw a dramatic drop in violence. (James Taranto gives the raw numbers.) Thus, the surge did make Iraq a safer place for American troops. (One might argue that the surge cost lives in doing so, but that’s not relevant to the actual claim, which regards the surge’s outcome, not its process.)
• As a minor point, the surge significantly increased the number of troops in Iraq. Thus, on average, Iraq is a less dangerous place than the absolute numbers might suggest.
• The month of April was the bloodiest month of 2008 so far. Of course, there are only three months that precede April. In the first four months of 2008, April was slightly worse than average and February was slightly better. All four numbers are within the range of random variation.
• May is another story altogether. May saw a precipitous drop in violence that rivals the drop in mid- to late 2007. The story quotes the figure from May as if it supported its thesis, when in fact it refutes it.

That paragraph is a great example of how to lie with half-truths. Each of the claims that can be fact-checked are literally true. Not one of them, however, supports the paragraph’s overall thesis.

Jason Van Steenwyk (a veteran of Iraq) complained to the New York Times. The story’s author, David Carr, replied:

jason,

all do respect, I see nothing to correct. last year was the bloodiest of the war. last month was the bloodiest so far this year. it is still a dangerous place to be a soldier.
david

Now we see the standards at the New York Times. It’s okay to deceive your readers, so long as the facts you cite are literally true.

(Via Gateway Pundit.)

ASIDE: As most anyone familiar with the military could tell Mr. Carr, the Marine Corps provides much of the US force in Iraq, and Marines are not referred to as “soldiers.”

The Columbia Journalism Review reports:

The Securities and Exchange Commission sued a Canadian drug maker this week—and in the process blew apart the premise of a two-year-old 60 Minutes investigative piece on short sellers.

The March 2006 segment by Lesley Stahl sought to warn viewers about hedge funds that use bad information to drive down stock prices to benefit themselves at small investors’ expense.

To make its point, 60 Minutes focused on a lawsuit brought by Biovail Corp., of Toronto, which accused the big hedge-fund SAC Capital, of Stamford, Connecticut, and a stock-research firm of conspiring to spread bogus information about the company. . .

On Monday, though, the SEC sued not the targets of the 60 Minutes piece, but Biovail itself and two of its executives, alleging accounting fraud and other wrongdoing. The SEC said the drug maker “repeatedly overstated earnings and hid losses in order to deceive investors” and “actively misled investors and analysts about the reasons for the company’s poor performance.” . . .

The SEC charges against Biovail effectively torpedo the Stahl piece, which was devoted to airing the drug maker’s allegations that the stock-research firm, a predecessor of Gradient Analytics, concocted phony research to please SAC, a client.

In fact, the danger to investors was Biovail. So, 60 Minutes had it exactly wrong.

It gets worse:

Biovail had been under SEC investigation since 2003. So it was clear at the time that Biovail was probably not a good example of a public company victimized by shorts. In fact, it was more likely that the Biovail example would prove the value of shorts, as it has.

The 60 Minutes segment acknowledged that its alleged victim was under investigation, but buried the information artfully in the middle of a denial of wrongdoing by the hedge fund.

Here it is. The emphasis is mine:

The hedge fund SAC denies all the charges in Biovail’s lawsuit and says that the decline in the company’s stock was due to earnings shortfalls and investigations by authorities, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, “not any conspiracy.”

Confused? I think you’re supposed to be.

Evan Coyne Maloney has a perspicacious explanation for the woes of the mainstream media:

While it is true that the quickening pace of technological change caught the old media off guard, much of the media’s current predicament is largely of its own making. By intertwining their most valuable differentiator (facts gathered at some expense) with something that’s increasingly ubiquitous and free (opinions), media outlets diminish the perceived value of their product and send a muddled message to news consumers.

Although there are bloggers who have done excellent first-hand reporting, most bloggers are not equipped to compete with the core competency of large news-gathering organizations. Instead, bloggers tend to function as filters, amplifiers, analyzers and fact-checkers for stories that have been reported (and under-reported) by the establishment media. . .

By seeing bloggers as direct competitors, outlets put themselves in a position of competing on their greatest weakness while at the same time undermining their greatest strength. Instead of competing in the arena of gathered facts, many in the traditional media have responded to the rise of online outlets by deciding that they need more opinion in their product, not less. The problem with that is, the news media has been insisting for decades that they’re “objective.” . . .

Yet under the guise of “news analysis,” “putting things in context,” giving “perspective” and “helping you understand,” the news media insists on wrapping what should be its unique product—hard-to-gather facts—in packaging that makes their product look similar to everything else that’s available online for free.

Maloney makes a very good point, and I think there’s a lot of truth in it.  Let’s perform a thought experiment, though.  Suppose that the media is behaving rationally.  Suppose that it makes sense for the media to focus on opinion over facts.  What could be the reason?

It strikes me that the most plausible reason is that the media is no longer good at gathering facts, if indeed they ever were.  By focusing on opinion, they are competing in what their core competency is, not what it should be.

As evidence, consider Iraq.  The war in Iraq is the most important story in the world today (other than possibly the 2008 elections), and yet the media won’t cover it.  We have to rely on bloggers (particularly the three that Coyne links) to tell us what’s actually happening there.  The media’s reporting is limited to press releases and unreliable stringers, and increasingly little of those.  (And this is despite the fact that embedding is actually free.)

Indeed, we see evidence almost daily that the media is barely better at gathering facts than it is at gathering non-facts.  I think Maloney is right that the media should focus on original fact-gathering, but I conjecture that they are no longer good at it.

If I’m right, we will see the news media’s die-off continue, as outlets that cannot compete go out of business.  The ones that survive will be the few that know (or can learn) how to gather news.  Of course, before that happens, we will see calls for the government to bail-out the media and insulate them from competition.

Such is the pronouncement of the New York Times:

Even as we celebrate generations of American soldiers past, the women and men who are making that sacrifice today in Iraq and Afghanistan receive less attention every day. There’s plenty of blame to go around: battle fatigue at home, failing media resolve and a government intent on controlling information from the battlefield.

The media isn’t responsible for their coverage; we have to share in the blame. In fact, their only problem is a “failure of resolve” (whatever that means), not that they’re incompetent and dishonest.

According to the Project for Excellence in Journalism’s News Coverage Index, coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has slipped to 3 percent of all American print and broadcast news as of last week, falling from 25 percent as recently as last September.

“Ironically, the success of the surge and a reduction in violence has led to a reduction in coverage,” said Mark Jurkowitz of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. “There is evidence that people have made up their minds about this war, and other stories — like the economy and the election — have come along and sucked up all the oxygen.” . . .

I see; it’s our fault that the media stops covering the war when we start winning. Do they write this stuff with a straight face?

Television network news coverage in particular has gone off a cliff. Citing numbers provided by a consultant, Andrew Tyndall, the Associated Press reported that in the months after September when Gen. David H. Petraeus testified before Congress about the surge, collective coverage dropped to four minutes a week from 30 minutes a week at the height of coverage, in September 2007.

It was also pointed out that when Katie Couric, CBS’s embattled anchor, went to Iraq to report the story, she and her network were rewarded with their lowest ratings in over 20 years. Hollywood producers who had hoped there would be a public interest in cinematic perspectives on this war have been similarly punished.

It’s the public’s fault for not watching. The fact that Couric and Hollywood were putting out crap played no part in their woes.

The war remains on the front burner for some outlets. On Sunday, The Los Angeles Times gave over much of its front page to chronicling Californians who have died fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Washington Post continues to personalize the war with a series called Faces of the Fallen.

Honoring the memories of our fallen veterans is great, but if the war were really on the front burner, they might also report the actual events of the war. They know how to do it; in 2003, when they were paying attention, I read the Washington Post daily (or more) for updates on the war. Alas, you can’t get that kind of information from the mainstream media any more. When war reporting contains little to no actual war reporting, you can’t blame people for tuning out.

(Via Countercolumn, via Instapundit.)

I’m sufficiently used to media failure that I rarely any more find a case that really makes me angry, but this one manages. The AP runs a story that would be very bad news:

Iraq’s most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

The edicts, or fatwas, by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani suggest he seeks to sharpen his long-held opposition to American troops and counter the populist appeal of his main rivals, firebrand Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia. . .

So far, al-Sistani’s fatwas have been limited to a handful of people. They also were issued verbally and in private — rather than a blanket proclamation to the general Shiite population — according to three prominent Shiite officials in regular contact with al-Sistani as well as two followers who received the edicts in Najaf.

All spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject.

Fortunately, the story isn’t true. Unfortunately, this is the kind of story than can cost our people their lives just by being out there, even if it’s not true. One might have hoped that the AP would feel a special obligation to get the story right in this case, merely in the interest of not feeding violence.   Nope.  Instead, they run a story based entirely on anonymous accounts and apparently didn’t even ask Sistani for comment.  (The closest they get is another anonymous statement, from a “longtime official.”)  On the other hand, they’ve got plenty of people who think it’s unlikely, including one Juan Cole (an infamous Iraq war opponent).

Still, the AP comes away smelling like a rose compared to Time, who run the story after it’s already been debunked:

In recent days, there have been reports that Sistani has been quietly issuing religious edicts, or fatwas, calling for the armed resistance to U.S. forces. Such a move by Sistani would essentially mark a reversal of his passive cooperation with the U.S. enterprise in Iraq to date. However, Sistani’s aides deny the reports. “Nothing like that came from the office of the ayatollah,” said Hamid al-Kahfaff, a spokesman for Sistani in Najaf.

Times knows that Sistani’s aides deny the story, and they know that it would be out of character for Sistani to do it, and they have nothing but anonymous statements made to someone else (ie, gossip), but they print it anyway.  Time’s reporting in Iraq has been pretty funny, but I’m not laughing any more.

(Via Gateway Pundit, via Instapundit.)

According to Ed Morrissey’s source in the McCain campaign, yes. (Via Instapundit.)

The allegation isn’t exactly solidly sourced, but is it plausible? I guess the matter comes down to whom we think is more respectable, the New York Times or an anonymous source cited by Hot Air. Tough call.

UPDATE: It’s not proof that they made the threat, but if they did, they followed through on it.

The New York Times breathlessly reports:

Senator Barack Obama drew the largest crowd of his campaign so far on Sunday, addressing an estimated 75,000 people who had gathered here on the banks of the Willamette River.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

It is “fair to say this is the most spectacular setting for the most spectacular crowd” of his campaign, he told the audience. His wife and daughters, who have been with him most of the weekend, joined him on the stage at the beginning of the event but left as he was about to speak.

Also on the stage was a free concert by a popular local rock band, which might have drawn a fan or two to the park on a beautiful Sunday. The NYT didn’t think that was worth mentioning. (Via the Corner.)

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The French Court of Appeals on Wednesday found in favor of Jewish activist Philippe Karsenty, overturning a lower court decision that he had libeled France 2 and its Jerusalem correspondent Charles Enderlin when he accused them of knowingly misleading the watching world about the death of the Palestinian child Mohammed al-Dura in the Gaza Strip in 2000.

“The verdict means we have the right to say France 2 broadcast a fake news report, that [al-Dura's shooting] was a staged hoax and that they duped everybody - without being sued,” Karsenty told The Jerusalem Post shortly after the verdict was issued at 1:30 p.m. Paris time.

Al-Dura was filmed cowering with his father Jalal behind a barrel at the Gaza Strip’s Netzarim Junction on September 30, 2000, during an apparent gun battle between Palestinians and Israeli troops. Fifty-five seconds of video footage were released to the world by France 2 at the time, out of some 18 minutes that were shown in court and even more footage that France 2’s detractors claim is not being shown to the public. . .

Karsenty, the head of the media watchdog Media Ratings, was sued for libel after calling for Enderlin’s and France 2 news director Arlette Chabot’s dismissal, saying the footage was “a hoax.” Enderlin, who was not present in Gaza at the time of the incident, has vehemently denied the charge, expressing confidence in cameraman Abu Rahma’s honesty. . .

The IDF, which initially apologized for the death of al-Dura, concluded after an investigation that the boy could not have been hit by Israeli bullets.

(Via Israel Matzav, via Instapundit.)

Bruce Ramsey, an editorial writer for the Seattle Times’s “Editoral [sic] Board” writes at the Times’s editorial page blog:

The narrative we’re given about Munich is entirely in hindsight. We know what kind of man Hitler was, and that he started World War II in Europe. But in 1938 people knew a lot less. What Hitler was demanding at Munich was not unreasonable as a national claim (though he was making it in a last-minute, unreasonable way.) Germany’s claim was that the areas of Europe that spoke German and thought of themselves as German be under German authority. In September 1938 the principal remaining area was the Sudetenland.

Wow. Ramsey needs to read William Shirer if he actually believes this crap.

For the record, we knew everything we needed to know about Hitler in 1925, if only we had taken him at his word. In 1925, Mein Kampf spelled out everything he planned to do. Shirer writes:

For whatever other accusations can be made against Adolf Hitler, no one can accuse him of not putting down in writing exactly the kind of Germany he intended to make if he ever came to power and the kind of world he meant to create by armed German conquest. The blueprint of the Third Reich, and, what is more, of the barbaric New Order which Hitler inflicted on conquered Europe in the triumphant years between 1939 and 1945 is set down in all its appalling crudity at great length and in detail between the covers of this revealing book.

Each of Hitler’s “bloodless” conquests that preceded the war was executed in the context of a campaign of terror by local Nazis and the threat of invasion by the massed armies of Germany. In the lead up to Munich, the West repeatedly bent over backward to agree to Hitler’s demands, but no such appeasement was ever enough. In the case of Czechoslovakia, Hitler first wanted Germany to take over the Sudetenland if a plebiscite approved, then without a plebiscite, then without a plebiscite and with an immediate military occupation. (The relevance of the immediate occupation is clear, as the Sudetenland contained all the defenses that Czechoslovakia had built to protect themselves from Germany. Its occupation meant the end of Czechoslovakia.) Hitler’s demands at Munich, which Ramsey thinks were reasonable, were in fact the most unreasonable in a long chain of unreasonable demands.

In the course of speaking out against speaking out against appeasement, Ramsey commits the same error as Neville Chamberlain; he believes that we can achieve peace with monsters through negotiation. Hitler and Ahmedinejad have something in common. In both cases, the man has said exactly what he plans to do, but the West cannot believe he really means it. (Moreover, there’s some similarity between the two plans, at least as regards the Jews.)

Ramsey ultimately negates himself, though, by claiming that Hitler’s demands were not unreasonable. If you can’t see what Hitler was doing with seventy years of hindsight, you’re not qualified to comment on the crises of today.

POSTSCRIPT: Ramsey has silently edited his column since it was blogged by Sound Politics and LGF. The earlier version was even more bizarre.

As the old saying goes, when his lips are moving. Or, in the case of James Rubin, a Clinton administration official and sometime journalist, when he submits an op-ed to the Washington Post. Rubin accuses John McCain of a major flip-flop on Hamas:

I [Rubin] asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

For some Europeans in Davos, Switzerland, where the interview took place, that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. But it is an unusual if not unique response for an American politician from either party. And it is most certainly not how the newly conservative presumptive Republican nominee would reply today.

Given that exchange, the new John McCain might say that Hamas should be rooting for the old John McCain to win the presidential election. The old John McCain, it appears, was ready to do business with a Hamas-led government, while both Clinton and Obama have said that Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism before it can have diplomatic relations with the United States.

Rubin’s charge is clear. The old McCain “was ready to do business” with Hamas, in contrast to Clinton and Obama who say “Hamas must change its policies toward Israel and terrorism” first. Thus, Rubin is saying that McCain did not require that Hamas change its policies.

Well, firstly, the statement that “we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another” doesn’t necessarily support Rubin’s charge. After all, we dealt with Saddam, one way or another. In any case, any question about McCain’s meaning here is resolved by the very next exchange (which Rubin left out):

Rubin: So should we the United States be dealing with that new reality through normal diplomatic contacts to get the job done for the United States?

McCain: I think the United States should take a step back, see what they do when they form their government, see what their policies are and see what ways we can engage them; and if there aren’t any then their may be a hiatus. But I think that part of the relationship is going to be dictated by how Hamas acts, not how the United States acts.

(Transcript from Ankle Biting Pundits, which also has video. (Via Instapundit.))

McCain said that there may be a “hiatus” in relations, depending on Hamas’s policies, and then said further that the relationship “is going to be dictated by how Hamas acts.” In other words, McCain did require that Hamas change its policies or face an interruption in relations, which is the same thing he says now. (Incidentally, Rubin notwithstanding, it’s not at all clear that this is Obama’s position.)

An honest mistake? Not likely. CNN’s Dana Bash reports:

CNN asked Jamie Rubin earlier today for the rest of the interview or at least for a transcript and he said he didn’t have it. He said he only had this particular quote he said that was e-mailed to him.

(Via the Corner.)

Oh, come on. He expects us to believe that he only has one paragraph from his own interview with McCain, and that one paragraph is the very one that, when taken out of context, can be twisted to support Rubin’s point. It’s much more plausible that he doesn’t want us to know the context, which would eviscerate his argument.

I’ve found that the Washington Post tends to be a little more honorable than most of the mainstream media, so perhaps they’ll run a correction. I won’t hold my breath, though.

UPDATE: Rubin attempts to defend himself on Geraldo Rivera’s show. Geraldo makes it easier, by leaving out the evidence of Rubin’s duplicity — allowing Rubin to characterize it himself. I don’t think his defense works with anyone who’s watched or read McCain’s actual words.  (Via Instapundit.)

As a bonus, Mike Huckabee (who won’t often be praised at Internet Scofflaw) has a good comment about Obama’s response to Bush’s anti-appeasement speech. “It’s the hit dog who hollers,” Huckabee said. After all, Bush’s speech never mentioned him by name. Obama should have shrugged it off, saying he’s not an appeaser. Instead, he fell back on the old “how dare you question my patriotism?”, implicitly conceding that Bush was referring to him.

Ed Morrissey predicted that the crackdown in Sadr City would give us a repeat of the “Basra narrative“; that is, report defeat until victory can no longer be denied. Right on cue, Time gives us our first report of defeat in Sadr City. A month ago, Time won the prize for obtuseness, continuing to report defeat in Basra long after everyone else had noticed that the Iraqi army had won. Their latest article is eerily similar to their reporting in Basra, enough so that for a moment I thought I was looking at an old article.

Anyway, Time reports that Sadr has won again by declaring a cease-fire he does not intend to honor:

Al-Sadr aide Sheik Salah al-Obeidi said the agreement, “stipulates that the Mahdi Army will stop fighting in Sadr City and will stop displaying arms in public. In return, the government will stop random raids against al-Sadr followers and open all closed roads that lead to Sadr City.” . . . [He] added: “This document does not call for disbanding al-Mahdi Army or laying down their arms.”

The fact that a leading figure in al-Sadr’s ranks announced the deal and pointedly rejected the Iraqi government’s key demand to disarm suggests that the cleric is still controlling the agenda tactically and politically despite the most serious challenge his power the Iraqi government could muster.

Meanwhile, Bill Roggio reports on the progress of the war by tracking the activities of the combatants, rather than by interpreting the hidden meanings of public statements.  (Via Instapundit.)  He notes that operations against Mahdi Army holdouts are continuing, as is the construction of a barrier around Sadr City:

US and Iraqi forces continue to strike at the Mahdi Army in Baghdad despite the agreement reached between the Iraqi government and the Mahdi Army late Friday. Seventeen Mahdi Army fighters were killed in northeastern Baghdad over the past 24 hours. . .

The cease-fire signed yesterday between the Sadrist movement, which runs the Mahdi Army, and the government of Iraq will not hinder the building of the concrete barrier or operations against the Mahdi Army, US military officials have stated.

“Seeing as how the Special Groups never listened to [Sadr] to begin with, I don’t see how things will change,” Lieutenant Colonel Steven Stover, the chief Public Affairs Officer for Multinational Division Baghdad, told The Long War Journal on May 10. “We’re not stopping [construction on the barrier],” Stover said. “The barrier emplacement is ongoing and about 80 percent complete.”

Brigadier General James Milano, the Deputy Commanding General for Multinational Division Baghdad, confirmed the barrier is 80 percent complete and gave no indication the construction would be halted.

It sounds like our approach to the cease-fire is exactly what it should be: “you first.”  At the same time, the backbone of the Mahdi Army isn’t listening to Sadr.  On planet Time, this is a victory for Sadr.

I just listened to public radio’s This American Life do their special program on the housing crisis. The bread and butter for This American Life is the varied angsts of people who aren’t fortunate enough to live on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, so this was an unusual foray into something resembling hard news. I suppose it was to be expected that it would be filled with risible economic misinformation.

At the end, the program made its obligatory comparison to the great economic crises of the 20th century, the Great Depression and the “malaise” of the Carter administration. Comparisons to the Depression are obligatory in any election year with a Republican incumbent and a slow economy, so it’s a telling sign of economic improvement if This American Life admits that comparison doesn’t work. Instead, they compare to the 1970s: “unemployment keeps going up, and things are really bad, unless you’re comparing to the Depression.” (Quote from memory, not verbatim.)

Well, let’s look at a few numbers, comparing today with January 1, 1981. Today’s unemployment rate is 5.0% (actually down, not up, from last month). That’s higher than the recent low of 3.8%, but much lower than 1981’s 7.5%. Today’s prime rate — the best interest rate available in the private sector — is 5%. In 1981 it was a whopping 20.5%. (That was the highest it’s been since 1948, this first year my source reports the data.) Today’s inflation rate is 3.98%. In 1981 it was 11.83%. (That was actually down a bit from its mid-1980 peak of 14.76%, a height unmatched since 1947.) If we do a back-of-the-envelope calculation to adjust for inflation, that means that the real prime rate today is about 1%, compared to about 9% in 1981. (Note: this calculation is probably not exactly right, due to differences in the way the data sets are reported, but it gives a sense of the orders of magnitude.)

In addition to the numbers, there was the untold suffering caused by Nixon’s unrepealed price controls and Carter’s “voluntary” price controls, most famously the gas lines. Gasoline may be expensive today, but you can buy it nearly anywhere without waiting. (You can thank Ronald Reagan for that.) Today’s economy looks nothing like Carter’s, thank heavens.

Hot Air has the story.

The AP story on McCain’s speech this morning:

John McCain castigates Obama for vote against judge
May 6 04:50 AM US/Eastern
By LIBBY QUAID
Associated Press Writer

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (AP) - Republican John McCain castigated Democrat Barack Obama for voting against John Roberts as Supreme Court chief justice in a speech about the kind of judges McCain would nominate.

McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.

McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Obama likes to talk up his image as someone who works with Republicans to get things done, McCain said. Yet Obama “went right along with the partisan crowd, and was among the 22 senators to vote against this highly qualified nominee,” McCain said.

Mary Katharine Ham, who attended McCain’s speech, found this article rather remarkable, because four hours later she was still waiting for the speech actually to take place. (Via Instapundit.) The entire article is a fraud: a past-tense account of what the author thought was likely to take place, based on the prepared text.

Public Editor Clark Hoyt admits that it might have been useful to report the news:

While The Times was aggressive with its coverage on the Web, it was slow to fully engage the Wright story in print and angered some readers by putting opinion about it on the front page — a review by the television critic of his appearances on PBS, at an N.A.A.C.P. convention and at the National Press Club — before ever reporting in any depth what he actually said. . .

Carol Hebb of Narberth, Pa., spoke for many when she wrote that she found the newspaper’s initial coverage “very strange.” If editors did not think Wright’s remarks were newsworthy enough to be on the front page, she asked, why did they put the review by Alessandra Stanley there? “I was very surprised that her piece was not accompanied by a ‘factual’ article reporting the content of Mr. Wright’s comments more completely and perhaps adding some meaningful context.” . . .

Peter Weltner of San Francisco wrote that he wished The Times had examined what he said were falsehoods in Wright’s remarks — like the claim that blacks and whites learn with different parts of their brains — instead of “merely guessing why Mr. Wright said it.”

I’m with Hebb and Weltner. For a newspaper that showed great enterprise on the subject last year — breaking the story that Obama had disinvited Wright to deliver the invocation at the announcement of his presidential campaign, and publishing a deep examination of their relationship before most Americans had heard of Wright — it was a performance strangely lacking in energy at a potential turning point in the election.

“Strangely” lacking? Not so strange, I would say.

Incidentally, Tom Maguire notes that the NYT still has yet to report the “God damn America” phrase in any news story.  (Via Instapundit.)

AFP shows again why they’re the best at disseminating anti-Israeli propaganda.  Power Line pulls together the story of an April 28 UAV attack on terrorists operating within a populated neighborhood in Gaza in which five civilians were tragically killed.

AFP promotes the Palestinian line, that the IDF deliberately fired on a residential house (out of sheer evilness, I suppose).  In paragraph twelve, they report the IDF’s denial of responsibility:

The Israeli army later said the explosion that killed the Abu Maateq family was the result of a strike on Palestinian militants carrying explosives.

“The IDF (army) targeted from the air two Palestinian gunmen” who were approaching soldiers “while carrying large bags on their backs,” the army said in a statement after conducting an inquiry into the incident.

“A big explosion erupted on the scene, following the attack against the two, indicating the presence of bombs and explosives in the gunmen’s bags,” it said.

As always, they immediately and uncritically report a Palestinian claim that the IDF is lying:

Palestinian witnesses disputed that account, insisting that the house was more than a kilometre from the scene of the clashes and that the explosion was caused by an Israeli missile fired by an aerial drone.

No armed men were killed or wounded in the explosion at the house, and an AFP correspondent who arrived at the scene shortly after the strike saw shrapnel from an Israeli missile amid the wreckage inside.

(ASIDE: Again the AFP shows its remarkable ability rapidly to get AFP correspondents to the scene of terrorist activity.  I wonder how they do that?)  This short rebuttal contains at least two (probably three) lies in two sentences, as was made clear when the IDF released their video of the incident.

The video shows two attacks, one of which was next to the house in question.  The first attack might have been a kilometer away, but the second is fewer than ten meters away.  (Lie number one.)  Both attacks cause secondary explosions, indicating the targets were carrying some kind of munitions.  (Lie number two.)

The video also shows what probably happened.  The second attack shows a flare extending from the explosion into the house, most likely from a rocket being set off.  The majority of any shrapnel in the house, then, would be from the terrorist rocket, not the Israeli missile.  Is it possible that some Israeli shrapnel found its way into the house, and the AFP stringer was qualified to identify it among the other shrapnel?  Barely.  (Probable lie number three.)

The bottom line is that this “massacre” (as Hamas calls it) was the direct result of Hamas’s practice of carrying out their terrorism from within residential areas.  The video shows the UAV aiming several meters away from its target, so as not to fire on the house, but even with that sort of restraint on the part of the IDF, Hamas’s practice of waging war from within residential neighborhoods is inevitably going to result in tragedies.  Fortunately for Hamas, they have a reliable partner in AFP for turning tragedies into propaganda.

Roger Kimball analyzes the NYT’s formula for McCain hit pieces:

1. Prissy introductory sentence or two noting that Mr. McCain has a reputation [read “unearned reputation”] for taking the ethical high road on issues like campaign finance reform.

2. “The-Times-has-learned” sentence intimating some tort or misbehavior.

3. A paragraph or two of exposition that simultaneously reveals that a) Mr. McCain actually didn’t do anything wrong but b) he would have if only the law had been different and besides everyone knows he is guilty in spirit.

(Via Instapundit.)

In the latest case, the “misbehavior” is that McCain sometimes rides on his wife’s plane, which saves him some money. The NYT concedes that this violates no campaign finance rules, but the FEC has considered changing the rules. That’s it.

Pathetic.

Confederate Yankee demolishes a bogus ABC News story about how US gun laws are putting guns in the hands of Mexican criminals.  (Via Instapundit.)

Jim Rutenberg, who wrote the NYT’s last McCain hatchet job, has been called in for a second.  This one is even more pathetic than the last.  Ed Morrissey has the story.

At the LA Times, in a review of HBO’s John Adams:

George Washington (David Morse) so quickly tired of the infighting among his Cabinet and vagaries of public opinion that he stepped down from the presidency after a single term.

I guess that’s where the tradition of presidents stepping down after one term in office started.

The critic now is suitably embarrassed, but what about the editors?  I thought that editors and fact checking were supposed to be the big advantage of the mainstream media.

(Via the Volokh Conspiracy.)

The McClatchy wire story is breathless:

The war in Iraq has become ”a major debacle” and the outcome ”is in doubt” despite improvements in security from the buildup in U.S. forces, according to a highly critical study published Thursday by the Pentagon’s premier military educational institute.

The story is picked up by our friends on the left, as a much-desired indication that we’re still losing in Iraq despite all the evidence that we’re winning. The wishes of the left aside, how can that be? It isn’t, writes Joseph Collins, the author of the study:

The Miami Herald story (”Pentagon Study: War is a ‘Debacle’ “) distorts the nature of and intent of my personal research project. It was not an NDU study, nor was it a Pentagon study. Indeed, the implication of the Herald story was that this study was mostly about current events. Such is not the case. It was mainly about the period 2002-04. The story also hypes a number of paragraphs, many of which are quoted out of context. The study does not “lay much of the blame” on Secretary Rumsfeld for problems in the conduct of the war, nor does it say that he “bypassed the Joint Chiefs of Staff.” It does not single out “Condoleeza Rice and Stephen Hadley” for criticism.

Here is a fair summary of my personal research, which formally is NDU INSS Occasional Paper 5, “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath.”

This study examines how the United States chose to go to war in Iraq, how its decision-making process functioned, and what can be done to improve that process. The central finding of this study is that U.S. efforts in Iraq were hobbled by a set of faulty assumptions, a flawed planning effort, and a continuing inability to create security conditions in Iraq that could have fostered meaningful advances in stabilization, reconstruction, and governance. With the best of intentions, the United States toppled a vile, dangerous regime but has been unable to replace it with a stable entity. Even allowing for progress under the Surge, the study insists that mistakes in the Iraq operation cry out in the mid- to long-term for improvements in the U.S. decision-making and policy execution systems.

(Collins was specifically commenting on a version of the story running in the Miami Herald, which actually managed to make it worse by calling it a “Pentagon study” in its headline.) So the study says little about the current state of affairs — although it cites “progress under the Surge” — and mainly concludes that we made a lot of mistakes. An analysis of those mistakes so they can be corrected is useful, but it doesn’t make much of an anti-war headline. I can see why the media likes their version better.

(Via Protein Wisdom, via Instapundit.)

Rove writes to CBS, listing point after point after point where 60 Minutes neglected to investigate Jill Simpson’s outlandish charges. Dick Thornburgh may soon need to make a return trip to CBS.