…by NPR.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Psychiatrist Charles Krauthammer
…on the lunacy of Eric Holder:
…why is Attorney General Eric Holder doing this? Ostensibly, to demonstrate to the world the superiority of our system, where the rule of law and the fair trial reign.
Really? What happens if KSM (and his co-defendants) “do not get convicted,” asked Senate Judiciary Committee member Herb Kohl. “Failure is not an option,” replied Holder. Not an option? Doesn’t the presumption of innocence, er, presume that prosecutorial failure — acquittal, hung jury — is an option? By undermining that presumption, Holder is undermining the fairness of the trial, the demonstration of which is the alleged rationale for putting on this show in the first place.
…Finally, there’s the moral logic. It’s not as if Holder opposes military commissions on principle. On the same day he sent KSM to a civilian trial in New York, Holder announced he was sending Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, (accused) mastermind of the attack on the USS Cole, to a military tribunal.
By what logic? In his congressional testimony Wednesday, Holder was utterly incoherent in trying to explain. In his Nov. 13 news conference, he seemed to be saying that if you attack a civilian target, as in 9/11, you get a civilian trial; a military target like the Cole, and you get a military tribunal.
What a perverse moral calculus. Which is the war crime — an attack on defenseless civilians or an attack on a military target such as a warship, an accepted act of war that the United States itself has engaged in countless times?
By what possible moral reasoning, then, does KSM, who perpetrates the obvious and egregious war crime, receive the special protections and constitutional niceties of a civilian courtroom, while he who attacked a warship is relegated to a military tribunal?
This will not end well.
[Update a couple minutes later]
And speaking of the corrupt political hack running the Department of Injustice, Andrew Breitbart has a warning: investigate ACORN properly, or I’ll release a lot more tapes just before the election next year. You know, I think he has them by the short hairs. I wonder if they’re too stupid to realize it, though.
And in a sane world, Breitbart, Giles and O’Keefe would be getting a Pulitzer.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Oh, this is precious, too. Breitbart totally pwned a hack columnist at the LA Times as well.
When Wood Is Outlawed
Only outlaws will have wood.
Throw all the bastards out. One of the elements in the Republicans’ new contract with America has to address these outrageously long, unread bills.
The Latest Smear On Space Tourism
Clark Lindsey responds.
[Update a while later]
You know, when supposed captains of the European space industry are both able and willing to submit such an ignorant and illogical piece to a major industry publication, and it’s willing to run it, it tells us something about how screwed up that industry is, and explains why we’ve made so little progress in opening up space after over half a century.
George W. Hoover
Ilya Somin says that George Bush should, finally, stop giving a bad name to free markets:
Bush’s belated support for free markets follows in Hoover’s footsteps. After leaving office in 1933, Hoover wrote books and articles defending free markets and criticizing the Democrats’ New Deal. Some of his criticisms of FDR were well-taken. Many New Deal policies actually worsened and prolonged the Great Depression by organizing cartels and increasing unemployment. But by coming out as a free market advocate, the post-presidential Hoover actually bolstered the cause of interventionism because he helped cement the incorrect impression that he had pursued free market policies while in office, thereby causing the Depression. Bush’s post-presidential conversion creates a similar risk: it could solidify the already widespread impression that he, like the Hoover of myth, pursued laissez-faire policies which then caused an economic crisis.
What should Bush now do if he genuinely wants to help the free market cause? The best thing would be to take up economist David Henderson’s half-joking suggestion that he “express his regret at nationalizing airport safety, carrying out illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens, raiding medical marijuana clinics, bailing out General Motors, AIG and other companies, and socializing prescription drugs for the elderly [the biggest new government program from the 1960s until the present financial crisis].” Bush could also point out that he advocated an ideology of “compassionate conservatism” that included vastly expanded government, and an “ownership society” that (in his own words) involved “us[ing] the mighty muscle of the federal government” to incentivize dubious mortgages of the kind that helped cause the financial collapse of 2008. The greatest contribution Bush can now make to free market policies is to dispel the impression that he pursued them while in office.
Unfortunately, as Somin points out, the likelihood that he will admit his perfidy to markets, or the disastrous nature of many of his domestic policies, is pretty low, so the best thing he can do for free markets now is to just shut up.
A Vision Of The Future In Space
In comments over at Space Politics, “Ray” responds to the Ares boosters over there (who are hilarious in their blind adulation of the program, or would be were it not so sad — as I say over there, they haven’t just drunk the kool aid, but are snorkeling around in an Olympic-sized pool of it):
Kaylyn63: “…fasten your seatbelt and hang on for the ride Ares is going to give the United States”
Ares has already taken the United States on quite a ride, so I can only imagine what’s next:
– ISS science and engineering cut beyond the bone
– ISS dumped in the ocean in 2015
– Ares 1 delivered in 2017 – 2019 to service the long-gone ISS
– huge commercial space opportunities lost for U.S. industry
– NASA Aeronautics vanished
– Planetary science robotics, including missions to scout human spaceflight destinations, fading to a shadow
– NASA research, development, and technology demonstration work cut and limited to Ares investigations
– NASA Earth science missions few and far between
– Ares V delivered in 2030, but no budget to put anything on it
– EELVs, Falcons, and Taurus II greatly underutilized (and thus more expensive per launch than necessary) by the loss of commercial crew transport to LEO, fuel launches, early destruction of the ISS, and lack of budget to launch robotic missions – resulting in U.S. launch industry not being competitive in the global marketplaceThanks, Ares!
So speaketh the ghost of Christmas future. If the goal was to destroy most of the useful things that NASA is, and could be doing, then perhaps it is the “Invention of the Year” after all. It has managed to accomplish much along those lines already, even though it won’t fly for years…
The frightening thing is that Chairwoman Giffords has bought into the hype as well. Of course, she has sort of a conflict of interest, in that she’s married into NASA.
The Purple Hearts Of Fort Hood
If we can’t be honest and realistic about the threat our civilization faces, we cannot win.
Explaining Away Mass Murder
Charles Krauthammer, on the deulsional and suicidal impulse of the media in its aversion to ever associate terrorism with Islam.
Joe Klein’s Latest Tantrum
Some thoughts from David Bernstein. What I actually find more interesting is the comments, in which it is once again displayed what a useless word “neocon” has become (if indeed it was ever useful).
Strength
…through dithering:
OK, I get that the political piece is vitally important, and for Eikenberry, up to his armpits in scheming warlords and bureaucrats in Kabul with his frontline diplomats daily engaged in pitched and desperate note-passing against an entrenched corruptancy, the light at the top of his own well probably is awfully dim and far away. This is a highly complex situation. Thinking outside the box, maybe it does make sense to put the cart ahead of the horse. It is intriguing, though, that in the middle of a hot war in which a determined, murderous enemy is making gains, there are ”options beyond military planning” that are so pressing that they actually trump military planning. Sounds like the president, in a show of resolve, wants to signal more firmly to Karzai and the scheming warlords that the United States is prepared to hold its breath until the Afghan people turn blue, or that the United States might even take its bat and ball and go home. Also, to signal to the United States military that he won’t be pushed around if it kills them.
One bright spot, in the Vietnam avoidance agenda. Remember how they accused LBJ of picking targets from the Oval Office? Can’t accuse Obama of that. He’s actively not picking targets from the Oval Office.
Amazing.