You wouldn't expect it from a guy with the nickname "Dimebag," but there you go:

"[Darrell Abbot] was a hick with an attitude, and I say that respectfully," said neighbor Jim Evans, 63, a retired computer executive who said he frequently walked dogs with Abbott. "We'd talk conservative politics. He was a big, big supporter of George Bush."

And he liked dogs, too. You never know about people, do you?

Posted by: Ace at 11:21 AM | Comments (7)
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Outstanding summary of liberals' three-year AWOL status on the war on terror:

Conservatives have been saying that the Left is making the Democrats too dovish for a very, very long time. After 9/11 this became a standard refrain in most of the relevant conservative analysis. And, typically, the response from the knee-jerk Left and liberals was, "How dare you..." How dare you question my patriotism! (Kerry himself offered up that one quite often.) How dare you question my commitment to defense! How dare you assume that conservatives are better at foreign policy! Etc.

One regular source of this sort of complaint was Kevin Drum, the in-house blogger of The Washington Monthly and something of a clearinghouse for smart liberals on the web. He's normally sober-minded, but sometimes he sounds like he's lined up too many fallen soldiers on his airline tray. I still remember when John Ashcroft warned — presciently — that al Qaeda might try to influence the U.S. elections as it had in Madrid. Drum responded, "What a despicable worm. What a revolting, loathsome, toad." The upshot was that Drum took some modest offense at the suggestion that Democrats would be any less resolute in their fight against America's enemies.

So, I was particularly intrigued by Drum's initial response to Beinart's cri de coeur [about liberals' unseriousness about fighting terror]: "What he really needs to write," harrumphed Drum, "is a prequel to his current piece, one that presents the core argument itself: namely, why defeating Islamic totalitarianism should be a core liberal issue." He continues later on: "That's the story I think Beinart needs to write. If he thinks too many liberals are squishy on terrorism, he needs to persuade us not just that Islamic totalitarianism is bad — of course it's bad — but that it's also an overwhelming danger to the security of the United States."

...

There've been campus debates, symposia, and course offerings. There've been international conferences, speeches, lectures, documentaries. Whole new chairs have been established at think tanks and universities, and there've even been new think tanks established, dedicated to defending democracy against this "new" form of totalitarianism. Two Cabinet positions have been created — with bipartisan support in response to this threat. Both presidential nominees staked their campaigns in large parts on their ability to fight and win the war on terror, a sometimes-clunking euphemism for Islamic fundamentalism.

But, what Kevin Drum thinks liberals need is a really good argument explaining the threat from jihadism. Where has he been these last few years?

...

If Drum needs another argument to be persuaded about the threat, he is flatly unpersuadable. Indeed, if Beinart could surf back on the space-time continuum, he could have used Drum's response as an example of exactly his complaint: that the Democrats don't care enough about fighting Islamic totalitarianism.

...

[After largely agreeing with Beinart, he found it necessary to backpedal and] post this: "UPDATE: I guess I need to say this more plainly: I'm not taking sides on this debate right now. I'm just saying that I'd like to hear the arguments."

Why not, Kevin? Do you need more data? This is not a new conversation. Indeed, it's been close to the only conversation on the web for over three years now, and you don't want to take sides?

Read the whole thing, as the man says.

Goldberg also explores the various rhetorical dodges liberals use to explain their reluctance to be serious about the War on Terror. Primary among them is that the war in Iraq was exectued poorly; the implication is that had the "execution" been better, they'd be gung-ho terrorist fighters, same as conservatives.

Let's extend that a bit: Whenever a proposal is made to fight terrorism, domestically or overseas, liberals begin attacking the idea, not in principle, mind you, but with a thousand complaints over details. It's not the principle of fighting terrorism with which we disagree, they say, it's all these little details that make this particular idea unacceptable to us.

That, in one brief Anglo-Saxon vulgarity, is bullshit. Look, if a Republican claimed that he was all in favor of, say, extending and increasing welfare benefits, and yet quibbled with every single implementation of this policy, stating that for each and every different proposal he had a host of "questions" about each proposal, what other conclusion could a liberal -- or anyone -- draw except: He's not really in favor of this proposal at all. He claims to be in favor of it, in principle, most likely because he realizes it would be politically hazardous to oppose it outright. So instead he finds a thousand little "problems" with each proposal and then rejects each proposal in turn, which allows him to dishonestly claim he's in favor of the notion while finding a way to oppose each and every attempt to pass it into law.

Let me say that shorter: there is no such thing as perfect legislation which satisfies your every concern, no such thing as a perfect plan for war and peace which can answer your every "question" and satisify you with perfect confidence that it will all work out nicely. And if your position is that your require such perfect implementation of an idea, you have deliberately -- and dishonestly-- set the bar impossibly high for gaining your assent. You are dishonestly posing as someone in favor of a policy, where in fact you oppose it.

At some point every legislator or policy wonk or commentator or policy wonk has to decide: Am I in favor of this idea enough to overcome the inevitable fact that it won't be implemented perfectly according to my own idiosyncratic lights? And, as a practical matter, if each new iteration or implementation of the idea causes you to resist again, then you're actually not in favor of the idea at all.

And you should probably just be honest about it and say so.

This is what annoys me so much about liberals constantly carping and complaining about each set-back in Iraq. Not only does such exhuberance seem like an unhealthy pleasure in American failure and American deaths, but the implication of these bitchfests is always, "See? The details of this plan were all wrong. Now, were someone with 'intellectual curiosity' were running the show..."

But that's just not true. Most liberals were not in favor of liberating Iraq, under any circumstances, or under any management. In fact, most weren't too keen on the War in Afghanistan, either, which is also something that rankles: they speak endlessly of their opposition of the War in Iraq -- an opposition, it must be said, where they are (or could be) on fairly defensible ground -- and dishonestly fail to disclose that they were pretty much against the War in Afghanistan, too.

But that one was too popular and, despite their carping, too successful. Hence, they don't want to talk about it much, and instead use the War in Iraq as a proxy-argument for their real position: An unhealthy and naive opposition to using military force under any circumstances, especially in those few cases where such use of force seems intended to serve America's own security interests.

When we're dicking around in Haiti, they seem to have much less of a problem with putting American lives in jeopardy.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (36)
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Teach... your children well... :

CLINTON, New York (AP) -- A former leftist radical who spent 16 years in prison for possessing explosives has withdrawn from teaching a college seminar after her hiring sparked protests.

Susan Rosenberg made her decision because it was in the best interest of all parties, Hamilton College officials said Wednesday.

In response to her hiring, prospective students withdrew applications and donors rescinded hundreds of thousands of dollars in pledges, school officials said.

...

Rosenberg, who began her activism in the 1970s, was indicted in a 1981 armored car robbery carried out by a gang of radicals. A guard and two Nyack police officers were killed in a shootout. Rosenberg denied involvement in the robbery, and the charges eventually were dropped.

She was convicted in 1984 of weapons possession. Prosecutors said she had more than 600 pounds of explosives that she and another defendant had planned to use in "non-lethal" bombings.

Since Rosenberg's 58-year prison sentence was commuted in 2001 by President Clinton, she has worked as a writer and an activist for human rights, prisoner rights and AIDS. She teaches literature at John Jay School of Criminal Justice in New York.

But, understand, a conservative professor is too controversial and too outside the academic mainstream to be hired:

The latest example comes from the hiring of famed international law professor Jack Goldsmith at Harvard law School. Although Goldsmith was hired, his liberal opponents not only went public with their opposition, but also are continuing to try to get him fired. This is an almost unheard of breach of academic courtesy.

...

So why are the liberals, including three of the five international law specialists at Harvard, opposing him? Not because he is incompetent, but because they don't like what he thinks. It is the worst sort of McCarthyism; but, of course, that's precisely what the academic left is best at. And all of Chait's obfuscation can't change that basic fact.

I've got a suggestion for Professor Goldsmith: obtain 600 pounds of explosives for use in "non-lethal" bombing, and then be peripherally involved in an armed robbery resulting in the deaths of two men.

And then it's tenure for life, baby.

Thanks to JohnG. for the tip about Rosenberg, and Instapundit for the Goldsmith tip.

Update: She's been forced out of her gig at John Jay, too.

As she should be.

Just curious: Would a rapist or child molestor be allowed to teach children at colleges? Even if he thought he had "good reasons" for committing his crimes 20 years ago?

I don't believe he would be.

It's difficult to take the left's claims about being tough on terrorism seriously when they are forever making excuses for, and giving cushy high-paying jobs to, former terrorists.

Thanks to JMGalvin again for the update. I guess he doesn't mind using his full name.

Posted by: Ace at 08:57 PM | Comments (10)
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"Many higher-ups" don't want to release the report to the public in its "entirety" (i.e., the parts which find fault with CBSNews, rather than pinning it all on the dishonesty of their one so-called "unimpeachable source").

Which means, of course, that they won't be releasing it.

Keep this in mind the next time these sanctimonious pricks scold people in the government, military, or corporate world for self-serving, cover-your-ass, protect-your-own dishonesty.

Gee, how I wish alternative media could have the "credibility" and "responsibility" of a big-media outfit like CBSNews. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep like a little girl fretting about my lack of integrity and accountability compared to these paragons of honesty and candor.

Posted by: Ace at 03:28 PM | Comments (17)
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A lot of moderates are squealing that substantial chunks of the Democratic Party seem intent on moving to the left.

Many argue that we need two viable poltical parties, and that a move to the hard left will destroy the Democratic Party, leaving us with a dysfunctional one-party politics.

Well, that's not really true. Nature abhors a vacuum, and were the left-liberal coalition to fragment or alienate the middle, it would quickly create two different competing coalitions. We'd have a real Realignment, a realignment in which voting blocs actually swap political affiliations. Who knows-- it might even turn out beneficial.

But there's another reason not to fret. The left-liberals have been convinced for some time that America really wants a left-liberal or "progressive" agenda, and that what's holding them back has been the political cowardice of the Democratic leadership and candidates. Just like on at least thirty-seven West Wing "cliffhangers," the solution to declining popularity is to stop being mealy-mouthed and moderate and equivocating and just give the people what they so desperately crave-- uncompromising, unabashed, unafraid old-school fire-and-brimstone economic populism and pacificism/UN "multilateralism."

Here's the thing: this theory will continue to distort Democratic politics until it is actually tried. Until it is given a shot to work -- or fail -- we're going to continue to have a Democratic Party which simply refuses to take a clear stance as to what they actually believe. So many Democratic positions aren't coherent political positions at all, but mere positionings, incoherent shuffle-steps between the left-liberal wing and the centrist-liberals of the party.

So, why shouldn't Howard Dean become the DNC chief? Sometimes you need to experiment; sometimes you need to gamble; sometimes you actually need to test a theory, to see if it works or finally put it to rest-- hopefully for good.

Howard Dean was, I thought, something of a crank (and not a particularly intelligent one at that), but I have to give him props for being, at least most of the time, pretty clear about his actual politics. Yes, he backpedalled and equivocated and flip-flopped himself, but not nearly as much as the eventual nominee John Kerry.

As is the case with George Bush: When you listened to Howard Dean, you had a pretty fair sense of what his thinking was, and what he would do (or at least try to do) were he to actually be elected.

I think that's sort of important in politics; don't you? It may make the Democrats more electorally-viable to continue to hedge and equivocate, but that does a disservice to democracy, because real democracy demands that people make an informed decision as to which candidates they prefer; and when half the country's candidates are continually obfuscating, flip-flopping, and outright pandering to differing audiences, such an informed choice becomes impossible.

I heartily endorse Howard Dean for leader of the Democratic Party, and not just in a cynical, licking-my-chops way. It's about time this country had an actual, honest-to-goodness, fully-informed choice as to what each of the parties stand for.

Howard Dean may be a little dumb, but that has its benefits; he's a little too dumb to be strategically dishonest.

Let's have four years of real, muscular, honest liberal advocacy. If it works (and actually I have a small fear it might) then fine, the people will respond well to it, and we'll have a better idea of this nation's political temperment.

And if it doesn't work-- also fine. The left-liberal agenda will be discredited to the point where even left-liberals accept the need to support DLC-style candidates and stop their endless whining about the need to "stand up the Republicans."

And what, precisely, is wrong with any of that?

Posted by: Ace at 10:09 AM | Comments (27)
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When you need to slam the War in Iraq, nothing satisfies better than a lurid fiction:

When Army Sergeant Dennis Edwards spoke at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School last month, 100 students listened in rapt silence as he told chilling tales of battlefield horror in Iraq and criticized President Bush's motives for going to war.

Edwards, 23, a Barnstable High School graduate, said he and two other soldiers shot and killed a 10-year-old boy in Iraq who pretended to be wounded and suddenly fired an AK-47 rifle. The boy was found to have explosives attached to his body, Edwards told the stunned audience.

Now, Edwards has admitted to his superiors in the elite 82d Airborne Division that the story about the shooting was a lie, Army officials yesterday. As a result, the veteran of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan could be charged with making false statements, face a court-martial, and be stripped of his rank.

His confession has also saddened Dennis-Yarmouth teachers and students, who said they felt honored and captivated by his appearance.

''We need to use this as a teachable moment," Superintendent Tony Pierantozzi said yesterday. ''We need to make sure our students . . . clearly understand that sometimes individuals might elaborate stories or examples for their own benefit."

I'm glad the superindendent wants to make sure his students understand that sometimes political activists lie. That lesson doesn't seem to be taught much as regards the left, whose true believers are pretty much allowed to invent any ridiculous "fact" they like in support of their arguments without challenge. (As Son of Nixon used to be fond of claiming (ironically, for any editors at Newsmas): "Did you know by the year 2008 the entire state of California will be homeless?"

I witnessed him drop that ridiculous claim on several liberals and not once did one of them give him a funny look and say, "I think your numbers might be a little off." Nope-- they just said, "I know!"

But I have to say I'm getting a little sick of this term "teachable moment" that's all the vogue on the left. It seems to be a liberal version of "proactive" or "incentivize."

Or "Don't go there," actually. It's already at that level of annoyance.

Posted by: Ace at 09:49 AM | Comments (13)
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Newmax is the offender here (emphasis added):

The New York Times' David Brooks frets: "They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do. Very often they have sacrificed pleasures like sophisticated movies, restaurant dining and foreign travel, let alone competitive careers and disposable income, for the sake of their parental calling."

Oh, the agony of missing Hollywood's "sophisticated movies." Heavens, could there be people who'd rather raise their children than catch a double bill of "Kinsey" and "Saw"?

"People on the Great Plains and in the Southwest are much more fertile than people in New England or on the Pacific coast," Brooks worries.

...

Brooks offers his latte-sipping readers a bit of reassurance: "Natalists are associated with red America, but they're not launching a jihad."

Wow. Someone at the New York Times admits that heartland America is not identical with Islamic terrorists. How progressive.

Guys, David Brooks is conservative-leaning. He's not a particularly enthusiastic conservative, but he does lean Republican.

All that stuff about "sacrificing" sophisticated movies and all? It's called "irony." As a comic noted helpfully, it was invented in New York in the 1950's and apparently it hasn't caught on everywhere yet.

Come on.

Posted by: Ace at 09:38 AM | Comments (7)
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A lot of people are talking about this piece -- including, hysterically enough, the fact that a piece critical of the accuracy and responsibility of bloggers getting facts about bloggers wrong and then "correcting" them without taking responsibility for the error -- but I have a much simpler take.

But where journalists' careers may be broken on ethics violations, bloggers are writing in the Wild West of cyberspace. There remains no code of ethics, or even an employer, to enforce any standard.

First of all, let me say that most of reporting is easy. It consists primarily of jotting down what someone said and then typing it up. You don't need to verify, for example, what Karl Rove says about the "mood" of the Bush camp -- it doesn't matter if he's lying or telling the truth, the fact that an important person is making a statement is news in and of itself.

A lot of reportage just consists of writing down what spokesmen and "high administration sources" think. Now, it takes some skill and time to cultivate sources, but there's no massive fact-checking going on in most stories.

Investigative pieces are a different story-- but that's where the media usually makes almost all of its biggest mistakes, usually because they were too sloppy to fact-check, or that they wanted the story to be true, or that they just wanted to make the story juicier than the facts would allow.

Time and time again, the mainstream media gets things flat-out wrong, or at least very distorted, by deliberately leaving out critical information that would make the audience better informed but which would hurt the "story" -- not the facts, mind you, but the "story" -- by making it more ambiguous, less emphatic, less sexy.

And what does the media always say when it blows one of these stories?

It's a mantra. You've heard it thousand times before: We get most of these things right. Sometimes errors slip through; that's invevitable, given tight deadlines and human fallibility.

Sounds reasonable enough, I suppose.

But I wonder: Why is this same lenient standard never applied to bloggers or others working in alternative media?

I've made mistakes. So has Drudge. So has Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc. We've all made mistakes.

But why is it that we are not given the slack the mainstream media gives itself? The mainstream media always likes to point out We get most of this stuff right.

Well, quite frankly, I get most of this stuff right, myself. I went out on a limb a bit with the Bill Burkett stuff, because I smelled "story" and traffic; but it turns out, of course, that I was right.

And I don't have an editor, a fact-checker, or even an intern.

I've got deadlines too, guys.

As they say, every profession is a conspiracy against the layman. And in this instance, the conspiracy is, as usual, the credentialed professionals protecting themselves by employing a fairly flexible standard as far as their own accuracy and credibility.

But for those outside the profession -- for those not on a major-media outlet's payroll -- the standard seems to be quite a bit more strict, doesn't it? We get most of this stuff right doesn't seem to apply to us.

If you guys want to judge us by a strict standard of perfect accuracy, then start judging yourselves by the same standard, and stop making excuses every time you blow a story.

If no one should trust a blogger if he makes one big mistake, then no one should trust Dan Rather, either, and he should have been fired years ago.

If Dan Rather has been allowed multiple second chances, I don't see why I should be so allowed, either.

Posted by: Ace at 12:06 AM | Comments (13)
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Apparently so, according to this article, and a judge says she's owed damages.

The article also claims that elements of The Terminator films borrowed from her works-- although I don't see how anything in those movies isn't kinda obvious. Not obvious as in "bad" or "trite," but "obvious" in the sense that, hey, time-travelling and robots and the like are common story-elements.

Man, I'd like me a piece of that judgment.

Posted by: Ace at 11:36 PM | Comments (7)
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A couple of weeks ago, I did the unthinkable: I watched ten minutes of Topic A with Tina Brown. I know there were at least six or seven other people in the world watching too.

And I know that at least one lazy television critic from the amateur leftist webzine Slate was, too.

Tina Brown was vapid as usual, but in a slightly interesting way. She chirped that the re-election of a Republican President in the mold of Reagan, and the popularity of Trump and conspicuous consumption (note: conspicuous consumption never goes out of style, really, the same as miniskirts never do either), meant that the eighties were, in fact, back. (Finally!)

Now, this was a pretty silly thesis, and she had to strain to make her analogies and points and everything, but I have to admit, as far as light bullshit chatter, it was vaguely a fun idea. If I were drunk and at a bar, for example, and I had nothing else to say, I might just find myself repeating this bit of bubbleheaded cultural analysis.

As Mickey Kaus informed me, however, one incidence is just happenstance, whereas two incidences constitutes a trend. And we now definitely have a trend in lazy cultural journalism, because gushing Margaret Cho fan Dana Stevens now strains even harder than Tina Brown to spread the meme that The Eighties Are Back! (And Did They Ever Really Leave?) .

At least Brown was working with kinda-sorta "I can see that" type evidence. Stevens, on the other hand, both copies and strains to make her own case:

I Love the '80s


Barbara Walters' special was a throwback to a decade when greed was good.



It's official: As of last night, it is once again the '80s. Barbara Walters' heavily hyped year-end special, The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2004, was an unrepentant throwback to that decade of guiltless consumerism and craven celebrity worship. Three of the choices from Walters' list—Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Mel Gibson—have been around since the '80s; Walters even showed clips of herself interviewing the latter two in their big-haired heyday.

They've been around since the eighties? That's your hook for this claim? I don't want to defend Tina Brown -- God, I don't want to do that -- but 1, she already hit Trump, Dana, and 2, she also explored the "Reagan's Heir" angle.

...

When the list was announced, there was a media outcry at Walters' choice of the hotel heiress and reality-TV star, fresh from receiving her VH1 award for "Catchphrase of the Year": "That's hot." (Here's my new "catchphrase" for '05: "Good morning.") In fact, though, the choice of Paris makes a lot of sense, given the show's philosophy and retro-'80s feel; Paris, after all, looks like the long-lost love child of a character from Dynasty. In order to find entertainment in the Paris persona, one must simply accept that materialism, greed, and a naked desire for fame are highly valued attributes in our culture.

Okay, I give her props for making fun of Hilton's "catchphrase." But notice how hard she's straining to re-state Brown's thesis.

...

With the exception of a few humbler nominees (like Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling or Jeopardy! champ Ken Jennings), the overall tone of last night's celebration of venality could be summed up in Michael Douglas' mantra from the '80s epic Wall Street: "Greed is good." If we've really come full circle, maybe that can be next year's catchphrase.

I'm pretty damn sure Tina Brown mentioned Gordon Gecko, too.

At any rate: there's the dumb new meme we'll be hearing from a thousand other lazy bubbleheads in the weeks to come. Maureen Dowd, I imagine, is writing her own idiot burblings about it right now.

It was a silly throwaway observation when Tina Brown made it-- silly, but innocuous. But now all these nitwits, starved for something to say, are going to take this ball and frigging run with it.

And Dana:

Next time, try a H/t, for "Hat tip," to the person you're citing. It's what we amateur internet opinionators do.

Posted by: Ace at 11:20 PM | Comments (7)
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