Football Fans for Truth compiles their favorites, among which:

On Democrats trafficking in the rumor that the White House had Osama bin Laden stashed away for an "October Surprise"

What will it take to convince these people that this is not a year, or a time, to be dicking around? Americans are patrolling a front line in Afghanistan, where it would be impossible with 10 times the troop strength to protect all potential voters on Oct. 9 from Taliban/al-Qaida murder and sabotage. We are invited to believe that these hard-pressed soldiers of ours take time off to keep Osama Bin Laden in a secret cave, ready to uncork him when they get a call from Karl Rove? For shame.

NOTE: Oddly, the header explaining who Hitch is talking about follows, rather than prefaces, each quote. Just skip down to the footer first and it should all read nicely enough.

Posted by: Ace at 10:28 AM | Comments (2)
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Andrew had himself a scheduled snit when the New York Times, and other major newspapers, failed to state in Susan Sontag's obituary that she was a lesbian.

Was she? No clue. She had a "long-time relationship" with celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz, but then again, who hasn't?

At any rate, here's Daniel Okrent's defense of the Times' alleged omission:

Spurred by challenges and queries from several readers, I looked into the charge that The Times had willfully suppressed information about Susan Sontag's relationship with Annie Leibovitz.

My inquiry indicates that the subject was in fact discussed before publication of the Sontag obituary, but that The Times could find no authoritative source who could confirm any details of a relationship. According to obituaries editor Chuck Strum, "It might have been helpful if The Times could have found a way to acknowledge the existence of a widespread impression that Susan Sontag and Annie Leibovitz were more than just casual friends.

But absent any clarifying statements from either party over the years, and no such corroboration from people close to her, we felt it was impossible to write anything conclusive about their relationship and remain fair to both of them." Ms. Leibovitz would not discuss the subject with The Times, and Ms. Sontag's son, David Rieff, declined to confirm any details about the relationship.

Some might say that such safely accurate phrases as "Ms. Sontag had a long relationship with Annie Leibovitz" would have sufficed, but I think anything like that would not only bear the unpleasant aroma of euphemism, but would also seem leering or coy.

Additionally, irrespective of the details of this particular situation, it's fair to ask whether intimate information about the private lives of people who wish to keep those lives private is fair game for newspapers. I would personally hope not.

Seems reasonable to me. No one would confirm it, despite the rumors, and, without a confirmation, one could only hint at what one suspected, but could not verify, was true.

Not good enough for Andrew Sullivan, who's just an absolute bear on the subject of protecting sexual privacy, at least when he's not:

The closet remains intact. Privacy? Sontag informed the world about her cancers and even an abortion. And her relationships with several women were not state secrets.

I know a lot of girls who have had sexual relationships with other women, but are basically straight. Should sporadic lesbian encounters be mentioned in their obituaries?

Recall also that Sontag's career took off with her rightly celebrated essay on camp, an essay that she would had a hard time writing without intimate familiarity with gay life and culture.

With all due respect, Andrew, that's evidence she was straight. It tends to be straight urban women who are endlessly fascinated by gay camp culture, not lesbians, who tend to not be so terribly fascinated by it, having their own thing going on. (Yes, Camille Paglia is obviously plenty fascinated.)

The golden rule here is to ask what the NYT would have done if Sontag had lived with a man for a couple of decades on and off, and had written essays on various aspects of sex, love and heterosexuality. Do you think they would have never mentioned her actual love life? Or if she had had serious relationships with a variety of male artists and thinkers, some of whom had influenced her work. Would this be regarded as an invasion of her privacy? The question answers itself.

Um, a better analogy would be about a straight woman had been suspected of having a long-term secret affair with a straight man, which no source would confirm the affair. Would such a suspected, but private and secret, affair be mentioned in an obituary, depsite all parties apparently wanting to keep it hush-hush and without any real evidence whatsoever to substantiate it?

In an obituary?

And what the hell does her book on gay male camp have to do with any of this?

And, by the way, Annie Liebovitz is still alive, and would seem to prefer keeping her sexual privacy.

It seems that, according to Andrew Sullivan, if you obtain prominence, a full record of any homosexual experiences you might have had should be run in your obituary, sources or no sources.

Because, you know, sexual privacy is sacrosanct. Except when stripping it away helps to advance a poltical goal that Andrew Sullivan favors.

The goal here? No idea, except maybe to say "We're here, we're queer, we wrote frequently for the New York Review of Books."

Posted by: Ace at 11:16 PM | Comments (39)
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Not the OBL-Saddam link we'd all like, but it does put lie to the notion of Al Jazeera as a bona fide journalistic operation:

A videotape found in a pile of documents in Baghdad following the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime shows a former manager of the Al-Jazeera satellite channel thanking one of Saddam's sons for his support and telling him that "Al-Jazeera is your channel," the Asharq al-Awsat newspaper reported Sunday.

According to Asharq al-Awsat's report, the tape of the March 13, 2000, meeting shows former Al-Jazeera manager Mohammed Jassem al-Ali telling Odai Saddam Hussein, "Al-Jazeera is your channel," and Odai recalls that he proposed "some ideas" in previous meetings that led to "some changes" in political coverage, including the introduction of new hosts on Al-Jazeera programs.

The Columbia Journalism Review is planning a major expose blaming the entire affair on bloggers.

Posted by: Ace at 10:55 PM | Comments (3)
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Yeah, this guy, the one who's spent large spans of his adult life dressed up in Peter Pan garb.

As they say in Star Wars: "I've got a bad feeling about this link."

Thanks to Ken Wheaton, who updates his previous UN coverage to note that there's nothing to worry about anymore-- they've got "assessment teams" in there to assess the damage now, and "coordination teams" to coordinate the assessment teams, and legions of Estonian hookers to lap-dance the coordination teams while they swig champagne bought with US tax dollars.

Posted by: Ace at 10:46 PM | Comments (9)
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A lot of bloggers are rather unpersuaded by a dopey article by the Columbia Journalism Review which lays most of the fault involved in the forged documents mess at the feet of those to whom it so obviously belongs, i.e., the bloggers and Freepers who exposed them for what they were.

Jonathan V. Last's article in the Weekly Standard makes short work of this dreadfully incompetent hackery. Worth reading.

The nitwit author of this silly little fart of an article is destined to one day be president of a network news division. The boy's got the chops.

Posted by: Ace at 10:35 PM | Comments (2)
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Hell, even I've got that beat.

In related news about senseless underutilization of crucial natural resources, I still haven't gotten a book-deal, nor appeared on Paula Zahn.

Posted by: Ace at 02:33 PM | Comments (20)
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Good BBC animation (link at Matt Howell's).

When the tsunami reached the coasts, its swell rose to ten meters above sea-level. Or more than thirty feet, for those who schprechen American.

Posted by: Ace at 11:51 AM | Comments (1)
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Admits To Shining Beam at Two Aircraft, Deliberately

Lock him up. Terrorism, malicious "pranksterism," or just plain stupidity, this was a dangerous and potentially murderous act and he deserves hard time.

Posted by: Ace at 11:45 AM | Comments (6)
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Not really a shock; I think this writer is generally pro-American.

But still.

Further excerpts and thoughts from Michelle Malkin.

Posted by: Ace at 11:13 AM | Add Comment
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This is an old video (dating from just post 9-11), but it's still funny-- and of course it's particularly so if you haven't seen it yet.

Culled from The Drunk Report.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (3)
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