Click on "Dan's Next Job."

Courage, Dan.

Thanks to RatherBiased.com, who must just be drooling to hear Dan Rather say the words that will make the Rathergate-Watergate correspondence almost perfect:

You won't have Dan Rather to kick around anymore.

And... Meet the New Dan, same as the Old Dan. He began his career as someone only passingly interested in honest reporting:

Rather went on the air with a local Methodist minister who made a stunning claim: Children at Dallas's University Park Elementary School had cheered when told of [President Kennedy's] death.

The tale was perfect for the moment, reinforcing the notion among distant media elites that Dallas was a reactionary "City of Hate." ... Finally, for the ambitious Rather--a native Texan and then a Dallas resident--the account represented the very sort of revealing, local dirt that the throngs of out-of-town competitors would have to work far harder to get.

Except that it wasn't true, and Rather knew it, Barker says.

Approached earlier by the same minister with what was a second-hand account, Barker himself had run the story by the school's principal and some teachers, all of whom denied it outright. Because of the shooting, which took place at 12:30 p.m., the principal had decided to close the school early, though without telling the students why. The children at the school--including three of Barker's own--were merely happy to be going home early, he was told. There couldn't have been any spontaneous cheering at the news of Kennedy's murder, because no such news had been announced.

Undaunted, the dogged minister--"a very, very strong liberal and a very, very strong Kennedy supporter," Barker says--moved on to Rather.

"Rather came to me, and I said, 'My kids are in school there, and I checked it out, and there's not a darn thing to it,'" says Barker. "He said, 'Well, great--I'll just forget it.' But instead of forgetting it, he went out and did this gut job on Dallas and its conservatism," with the preacher's story at the center of his report.

Posted by: Ace at 11:12 PM | Comments (5)
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I've been joking around about the "World Without Hope" we inherited when the Paul Bunyon-esque folk-hero Jeff Gannon was felled, but, get this, the DU'ers and Kosmonauts are talking calling this brave new word "The Post-Gannon Era," and they're not kidding.

Neither, for that matter, is the very silly Frank Rich, a case study in why columnists with nothing much to say shouldn't be forced to say nothing on a weekly schedule.

Thanks to Ultron.

And thanks to Ilbis for his "He Will Rise Again" remark, which put me in mind of Cthulhu, giving me a new headline for this post.

Posted by: Ace at 11:26 AM | Comments (12)
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Good, and very disappointing, piece from Daily Pundit. Quoting constitutional scholar Bruce Fein:

The reluctant Republicans insist the Supreme Court and subordinate federal tribunals are worth sacrificing to maintain Senate harmony and fraternity on other matters. President Bush seems to agree...

The president himself has resisted working hand-in-glove with Mr. Frist to confront wavering Republicans or Red State Democrats with carrots and sticks depending on their votes in favor or against filibustering knavery. Mr. Bush apparently reasons that steamrolling Democrats over the federal judiciary would forfeit needed bipartisan support for pioneering Social Security change, tort reform, energy legislation, a Clean Sky program, and companion mundane laws; that the appointment of judges is too marginal to the nation's destiny to gamble his legislative ambitions; and that the president has no constitutional business tampering with an internal Senate rule.

Long story short: the Republicans have caved faster on ending fillibusters than they're caving on Social Security reform. Or at least that's Daily Pundit's interpretation (citing Dick Morris and Bruce Fein).

Posted by: Ace at 10:21 AM | Comments (19)
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Jim Geraghty at TKS compares and contrasts this doodler's treatment of Bush and the despot Bashar Assad.

After savaging Bush for weeks, he decides it's time to get tough on the illegally-occupying tyrant Assad... by portraying him as, well, Winnie the Pooh.

Tough stuff, Toles. To riff on Geraghty's joke, maybe soon we'll see Osama bin Ladin portrayed as Daffy Duck. Or, if he's feeling espcially tough-guy as regards despots and killers, perhaps he'll even go so far as portraying al-Zarqawi as Marvin the Martian.

Pultizer him! I haven't seen such savage commentary since Maureen Dowd made the maverick and courageous observation that "everyone was to blame" for Lewinskygate.

Posted by: Ace at 10:08 AM | Comments (5)
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Thanks to Greg.

Edited: I wanted to post this pic but I didn't have much comment, or a decent headline. So, having nothing, I originally wrote it as a kneejerk slam on the MSM for not covering this story.

Trouble is, as has been pretty demonstrated here and elsewhere, the MSM actually is covering this story. So my kneejerk why-aren't-they-covering-this whine was misplaced, as well as contradictory, as I just spent the last two weeks posting stories of liberals eating crow.

Anyway. Still a good picture. And I think I finally thought of a decent headline.

Bashar Bashing Update: Roger L. Simon notes that Assad's rally crapped out, and that his half-measure two-stage withdrawal proposal ain't cutting it.

Reckless Speculation I Just Can't Resist Linking Update: The Lebanese army has taken positions around the Syrian intelligence offices in Beirut.

Captain's Quarters wants to know if they're there to protect the Syrian spooks, or if they're there to help guide them to a peaceful, but forcible, exit.

Posted by: Ace at 05:27 PM | Comments (17)
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Heaven forfend! Tim Robbins' "chill wind" has swept across the Atlantic!

The act, if promulgated into law, would allow previously-banned law enforcement techniques, such as phone taps, infiltration of suspected terror cells, and entrapment-ish techniques like bogus agreements to sell weapons.

It still needs to be approved by the parliament.

I guess Bill Moyers' and Michael Moore's theory -- that George W. Bush has "terrorized" the American people with a fictitious threat of terrorism -- can now be adapted to include parts of northern Europe.

Damn-- when that George Bush sets out to scare people, he does a hell of a job of it. He's even got teeth chattering and knees knocking in Amsterdam!

George W. Bush

Very, very scary. Boo!

Posted by: Ace at 09:36 AM | Comments (11)
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I guess Hitler = Bush just has lost its outre cache.

The new formulation is Hitler > Bush.

Why am I giving this douchebag, who frankly draws like a retard, a link?

I don't know.

Via Michelle Malkin, discussing hate on the internet, and condemning the hate from both the left and the right.

But she notes that the MSM does not seem particularly eager to join her in condemning all hate. Just some of it.

She asks what the media reaction would be to a right-wing cartoonist who compared Clinton to Hitler, and then, in his final panel, suggested that Clinton ought to "take responsibility" the same way Hitler did and blow his brains out.

Ummm... I sorta think I know the reaction.

And yet leftist darling Ted Rall gets a pass from our fair-and-balanced media.

Garfield Ridge Explains the Difference Between Bush and Hitler: A little hint for Ted: maybe the fact that you haven't been summarily executed bears on the Hitler > Bush formulation.

Does anyone else weary of these self-righteous little solipsists deeming themselves martyrs and victims because, Horror of Horrors, they get condemned or ridiculed by (gasp!) political opponents?

Posted by: Ace at 04:58 AM | Comments (50)
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The top ten egregious journalistic violations Dan Rather committed that David Letterman ought to have asked about, but did not.

Via Joust the Facts, who has excerpts of the softball interview that actually occurred, and links to the full transcript if you can bear it.

Joust the Facts is a little annoyed that the main topics of discussion were the "independent" panel's "findings" that there was no evidence of political bias at CBS, and that no one can "prove" the documents are fake (except, of course, for the forensic expert cited in Appendix 4 of the panel's own report).

A "push," Letterman called it.

Riiiight.

Can't wait for his next interview with Hillary Clinton. I'm hoping he'll ask her some really tough, probing questions, like "How do you manage, with your busy schedule as a Senator, advocate, and devoted wife, to insure that the sun rises every day and the stars remain e'er fixed in the firmament?"

More Bashing of Letterman... Beyond the jump, with a good (but reposted) Top Ten.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 04:13 AM | Comments (8)
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I don't trust him for a minute, but...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is expected to announce a redeployment of Syrian troops in Lebanon when he addresses his parliament today, say Lebanese politicians.

Mr Assad's speech, which the Syrian press agency said would deal with "current political developments" follows unprecedented international pressure on Damascus to withdraw its 15,000 troops and its secret services from Lebanon.

After talks with Sergei Lavrov, Russia's foreign minister, in Moscow yesterday, Walid al-Muallim, Syrian's deputy foreign minister, said Damascus would soon reveal what he called "an agreement between Syria and Lebanon" which he said would meet the approval of the United Nations Security Council.

Via Instapundit, who apparently thinks the way to illustrate peaceful pro-freedom revolution is to post a bunch of pictures of comely, flag-waving lasses.

Which I find to be outrageously heteronormative.

No, wait. That's not the right word.

Arousing. That's the word I was looking for.

Do We On the Right Have to Make the Left's Arguments For Them?:

More -- much, much more -- beyond the jump. But I've been told that people don't like very long pieces, as they like to be able to quickly scan headlines. So I've put the meat of this piece into the extended entry. more...

Posted by: Ace at 02:02 AM | Comments (12)
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For a long time, I've wondered why there wasn't more actual debating between blogs. It seems like an absolute natural fit. While there is a little I-cite-you-and-disagree, you-cite-me-back and offer a surrebuttal, there really isn't that much actual debate.

Slate has week long debates between people through on-line exchanges; why don't we do that in the blogosphere?

Whether it's Reynolds and Malkin or someone else (although I don't think you can find better represenatatives for their respective sides in the blogosphere very easily), let's have someone in the dextrosphere begin a formal debate on the question of National ID.

Reynolds takes the libertarian position (which, here, I find unconvincing) and Malkin thinks we ought to have a national ID. Why not have a high-profile cross-blog debate on the issue?

Why do we have to wait for the New York Times or George Bush to tell us what subject we're supposed to be discussing this week? I think it would be interesting for the blogosphere to attempt to drive the national debate, rather than letting others dictate it and simply being content to sit back and comment upon what others have decided we should talk about.

I've been interested in this idea for a while; previously, I thought that drug legalization would be a good topic for discussion. But it seems to me the National ID debate is far more pressing.

Posted by: Ace at 03:04 PM | Comments (16)
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