You stay classy, President Clinton:
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Clinton described the ongoing tea party protests against the Democratic agenda as a sign his party was making progress.
Whitehouse quoted Clinton arguing: “The reason the tea-baggers are so inflamed is because we are winning.”
Emphasis mine. I imagine that he has a lot of experience with tea-baggers. Probably under the desk in the Oval Office.
Why there will be more. If we couldn’t fix all of this suicidal multi-culturalism and political correctness in the military during the Bush administration, it’s hard to be very optimistic about doing it now. There was reportedly an interview by a CNN reporter who asked a military wife how she felt about her husband being deployed to Afghanistan. “At least he’ll be safe there, and able to shoot back,” she said.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Whatever happened to “connecting the dots“? If this is the best we’re willing to do, prepare for another 911.
[Update early afternoon]
I don’t often agree with David Brooks, but he has this spot on — The National Rush To Therapy:
There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors.
This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion. But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage.
Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility. He didn’t have the choice to be lonely or unhappy. But he did have a choice over what story to build out of those circumstances. And evidence is now mounting to suggest he chose the extremist War on Islam narrative that so often leads to murderous results.
The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality. It ignored the fact that the war narrative of the struggle against Islam is the central feature of American foreign policy. It ignored the fact that this narrative can be embraced by a self-radicalizing individual in the U.S. as much as by groups in Tehran, Gaza or Kandahar.
It denied, before the evidence was in, the possibility of evil. It sought to reduce a heinous act to social maladjustment. It wasn’t the reaction of a morally or politically serious nation.
It’s sadly ironic and amusing, as always, that such sentiments come from people who delude themselves that they’re part of the “reality-based community.” A culture that won’t defend its values or itself is doomed to lose to one that will.
…but in Hollywood, they don’t know Joe.
Plus, a bonus fight with a purple dinosaur.
The president doesn’t have time to help the Germans celebrate the anniversary of their freedom, but he wants to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I predict that on the sevensixty-fifth anniversary, next August, he will go there and apologize for the barbarism of the US in dropping the bombs.
He probably would have liked to apologize to the east Germans for losing their worker’s paradise, too, except he wouldn’t want to give the credit to Reagan.
More proof that government spending doesn’t do much for job creation.
One reason unemployment continues to rise may be that stimulus funds did not target high-unemployment states.
You don’t say.
…of communism:
[Update a few minutes later]
Thoughts on the Berlin Wall, from John O’Sullivan.
(Yes, I know I’m a day late with this stuff, but hopefully not a dollar short. But then, a dollar’s not what it used to be.)
Some good advice for Barack Obama, that he won’t take, because he’s too ideologically rigid, and constitutionally incapable of it. I’ll have some more in a similar vein at PJM this week.
…and journalism.
This is your country: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
This is your country on fascism:
The Chicago Tribune weighed in with an editorial late last month accusing the prosecutors of “wielding this subpoena to send an unsubtle message to these students and other journalists: Back off. Don’t make waves. You’re embarrassing us.” And in an article in Salon.com last week, American University law Prof. Darren Hutchinson called their behavior “shameful,” exemplifying “a deep contempt for the law, which makes the students’ efforts to uncover wrongful convictions even more compelling.”
The Cook County prosecutors’ actions are certainly shameful. But they may be excused for thinking that attacks on media critics are, in today’s political era, business as usual. Indeed, they need look no farther than the White House, whose occupant has sometimes styled himself the nation’s chief media critic.
It is, after all, the Obama administration that declared that its critics at Fox News Channel are not real journalists, and that Fox is not a “legitimate news organization.” In doing so—as White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs admitted with a reference to “brushback pitches” in baseball—the White House’s goal was just the same as that of the prosecutors in the president’s native city: To chill criticism, and to get journalists to think twice before stepping up to the plate.
Bert Gall and Robert Frommer of the Institute for Justice have made a compelling case that the Obama administration’s word choice is quite significant. They think that by branding Fox as something other than a “legitimate news organization,” the White House is actually setting up a more brutal attack using campaign finance laws. News media organizations are exempt from campaign-finance laws’ speech regulations. But if Fox is not a “legitimate news organization,” then federal election authorities might be able to argue that its political speech can be regulated like that of any other non-news corporation.
I hope that SCOTUS finally defangs McCain-Feingold this session.
[Update a few minutes later]
Here’s more on the Northwestern case.
[Update a few minutes after the previous one]
Here’s another story along the same lines:
In a case that raises questions about online journalism and privacy rights, the U.S. Department of Justice sent a formal request to an independent news site ordering it to provide details of all reader visits on a certain day.
The grand jury subpoena also required the Philadelphia-based Indymedia.us Web site “not to disclose the existence of this request” unless authorized by the Justice Department, a gag order that presents an unusual quandary for any news organization.
<TONE=”sarcasm”>Why should they object? What do they hav to hide?</TONE>
…for cop-killer weapons. They may have saved lives in Fort Hood.
…it would look like this.
I think that this is one of those rare cases where an abortion is the only reasonable option.