Syriana

What Congress will look like . . .

. . . if the Democrats win a majority.

[With apologies to Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.]

Tongue firmly planted in cheek

Scott Ott, over at Scrappleface has posted a bogus news bulletin about Kofi Annan's assurances of world peace.

Annan Rejects Sanctions, Offers Talks with 12th Imam

By Scott Ott, Editor-in-Chief, ScrappleFace.com
News Fairly Unbalanced. We Report. You Decipher.

(2006-08-22) — As Iran’s president prepared today to reject international efforts to halt his nation’s uranium enrichment program, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan rejected calls for sanctions against the Islamic Republic and offered direct negotiations with the long-awaited 12th Imam.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has spoken of the prophesied 12th or ‘Hidden’ Imam, who is to usher in the end of the world. Many believe he would return on August 22, the alleged anniversary of the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to Jerusalem, then to heaven and back (Koran XVII.1).

Mr. Annan said he believes that “direct negotiations with the Hidden Imam can defuse all of this talk of the end of the world, which I’m confident is nothing more than a bargaining chip.”

In any case, the world’s end is expected to have little effect on the work of the United Nations, according to Mr. Annan.

“The U.N. will continue to be just as effective at resolving conflicts and ensuring world peace as it was before the end of the world,” he said.

I think Mr. Ott has accurately characterized many Americans' frustrations regarding Kofi Annan and the United Nations.

Amerika

Phin, over at Phin's Blog, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, has pointed us toward a better way to achieve socialism in America.

Heh.

Remodeling

This blog is getting a face lift by the famous (or should I say infamous?) Apothegm Designs. They are still in the midst of it, so I can't say when the new look will be online, but the mock up I've seen looks really impressive!

Just FYI.

Lost Vehicles

If anybody spots a lost vehicle with California plates, please contact the California Dept. of Lost Motor Vehicles. They seem to be missing a few.

;)

Plame outing revisited

OpinionJournal published an editorial on July 1st that lays part of the blame for the jailed reporters in the Plame scandal squarely on the shoulders of the press corps. It also goes into why this may serve to undermine the ability of the press to protect their sources.

It's worth reading.

I've reprinted the article in the extended entry.

Jailing Reporters

The press corps unleashed a prosecutor on itself.


Friday, July 1, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

As ink-stained kvetchers ourselves, we'd love to come to the full-throated defense of our reporting colleagues now threatened with jail for refusing to reveal their sources. The truth, unfortunately, is that this is a debacle that some in the press corps have brought down upon themselves and the rest of us.

They did so by demanding, in liberal unison like the Rockettes, that the Bush Administration name a "special counsel" to find out who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame. Under this pounding, the Justice Department obliged. But that special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, soon became a loose cannon threatening reporters with contempt if they wouldn't reveal their sources (presumably government officials who knew about Ms. Plame).

The two reporters--Judith Miller of the New York Times, and Matthew Cooper of Time--have now exhausted their legal appeals and face jail as soon as next week. Mr. Cooper's employer relented yesterday and said it will turn over his notes, and thus presumably his source's name. But New York Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. said yesterday he was "deeply disappointed" with Time's decision, implying that his newspaper may defy the law and that Ms. Miller may indeed go to jail.

---

It should never have come to this, on either side. Mr. Fitzgerald made his bones prosecuting the mob and doesn't seem to realize that this case isn't about organized crime. It's about disorganized politics. The leak of Ms. Plame's name probably wasn't even a crime at all under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. That statute was aimed at stopping the treasonous betrayal of secret agents in the field, not the office-bound spouse of former CIA consultant Joe Wilson, who outed himself in an attempt to assail the Iraq War and damage President Bush.

Mr. Fitzgerald has also ignored the Justice Department guidelines on pursuing source-names from journalists, which include "reasonable grounds to believe" that "a crime has been committed." And he has never publicly disclosed, even to the two reporters and their attorneys, why he needs their notes. It may be that he too has concluded that talking to the press is no crime, in which case he may by now only be pursuing a perjury rap against the leaker. If that's true, Mr. Fitzgerald will have earned a place in the Overzealous Hall of Fame.

But some in the press have been equally as willful. Liberal editorial pages were among the loudest in demanding that a special counsel be appointed to find the leaker. And only many months later, when Ms. Miller was in the dock, did New York Times editorials finally get around to admitting that the leak might not even be a crime. Their partisan loathing for Mr. Bush caused these editors to overlook the risks even to their own reporting self-interest.

---

They have also left the press more vulnerable than it was before. The First Amendment is nearly absolute in its protection of the right to publish, but it is far less categorical in protecting the news-gathering process. Courts have tried to balance media access to sources and information against other rights (say, to a fair trial) and government needs (such as grand jury probes).

Yet the Times fought this current battle as if it were a replay of New York Times v. Sullivan, the famous libel case, only to lose in court. Especially by inviting a 3-0 defeat at the hands of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, the Times has probably left everyone in the media less able to protect sources against future prosecutorial raids. While 31 states have so-called "shield laws" protecting source disclosure, the federal government does not.

In explaining his decision to turn over Mr. Cooper's notes, Time Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine said, "Once the [Supreme] Court denied cert., I decided we aren't above the law." We admire Ms. Miller for her willingness to go to jail to honor a personal promise to a source. But a journalistic institution has a duty not to be cavalier about its reporter's freedom, much less the rule of law.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

An 'Un-documentary"?

This op-ed, by Debbie Schlussel, describes another propoganda piece that masquerades as a documentary. Here is how she opens her article:

Morgan Spurlock got famous from his Oscar-nominated documentary "Super Size Me." He ingested big McDonald's meals three times a day for 30 days, then blamed McDonald's for his bloated body and dodgy health. Now he's using his 30-day premise to get Americans to ingest his version of radical Islam on cable's FX Network.

The rest is in the extended entry.

Last year, I received a request to appear on Mr. Spurlock's new reality show, "30 Days." The episode for which I was being recruited, "Inside an American Muslim Family," airs next Wednesday. It features Mr. Spurlock's childhood friend from West Virginia, David Stacy, spending 30 days "living as a Muslim" in the Detroit area.

While Mr. Spurlock is often referred to as a journalist, and touts "30 Days" as a "documentary," the outcome of the show was decided before production began. A show summary sent to me before taping said: "This process aims to deconstruct common misconceptions and stereotypes. . . . Our character will learn firsthand about Islam and the daily issues that . . . Muslims in America face today. The viewers will witness our character emerge from the immersion situation with a deeper understanding and appreciation for the Muslim-American experience. . . . The potential is great for this program to enlighten a national television audience about the Muslim American experience and increase their compassion, understanding and support."

And indeed, The Wall Street Journal's own Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing about the show last week from a preview tape, noted that Mr. Stacy, by the end of his 30 days, "has become so enlightened that he is pronouncing, if incomprehensibly, on the meaning of Islam, his knowledge of the Quran, the real definition of jihad."
-----
I asked the show's executive producers--all of whom worked on "The Awful Truth With Michael Moore," a cable TV show--how this could be a documentary when they had decided the outcome in advance. Wasn't it possible that Mr. Stacy would come out seeing that there isn't Islamophobia to the extent that the Muslim community claims? Might he see that there is disturbingly strong support in the Detroit-area Islamic community for terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah--a fact regularly documented even in the normally pliant Detroit media?
No, the producers told me. "Morgan wants the show to demonstrate to America that we are Islamophobic and that 9/11's biggest victims are Muslims." With this in mind, I agreed to be filmed only with final approval of my appearance, which I never gave. Thus I will not appear in Wednesday's show.

When I met David Stacy, about halfway through his 30-day experience, I was amazed at how uninformed he was. This new "expert" on Islam never heard of Wahhabism--the extremist Sunni strain of Islam that dominates Saudi Arabia and informs the terrorist-breeding madrassa schools throughout Arab and other Muslim lands. He was unfamiliar with groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. He did not believe me when I told him that Hezbollah had murdered hundreds of U.S. Marines and civilians in Beirut and elsewhere. He seemed mystified to learn that President Bush shut down American Islamic charities, like the Holy Land Foundation and Global Relief Foundation, for funding Hamas and al Qaeda.

In Mr. Stacy, it is clear, Mr. Spurlock had found the perfect tabula rasa. He had also found the perfect "experts" and "key members" of Detroit's Islamic community to educate him. One such was Muqtedar Khan, a professor at Adrian College whose occasional columns in the Detroit News and elsewhere have urged us to understand how devout Muslims can be driven to commit terrorism because of the West's economic alliances.

Mr. Stacy was also taught by Imam Hassan Qazwini of Dearborn's Islamic Center of America, the largest mosque in North America. In November 1998, Mr. Qazwini's mosque hosted Louis Farrakhan, who was introduced as "our dear brother" and "a freedom fighter." I was there and watched Mr. Qazwini cheer on Mr. Farrakhan's attacks on America and his descriptions of Jews as "evil" and "forces of Satan."

When I told Mr. Spurlock's executive producer that I felt David Stacy was, well, a moron, she replied that Imam Husham Al-Husainy, a prominent Dearborn Shia cleric, "said the same thing" and refused to continue teaching him about Islam for the show. The biggest morons, though, will be not Mr. Stacy but the critics and viewers who fall for this supersized phony "documentary."

Ms. Schlussel is Detroit area attorney, columnist and talk show host.

[Used with permission from OpinionJournal.com, a web site from Dow Jones & Company, Inc.]

Stoopid Bird

About three weeks ago, early on a Saturday morning (6 AM), my wife and I were sleeping peacefully. Suddenly, there was a thud from our bathroom. Then another, then another. The thuds were accompanied with what seemed to be the rustle of feathers. I finally woke up enough to step into the bathroom and look up at the half-round window we have above the picture window over the bath tub.

There was a bird out there who would periodically fly around and throw himself, head first, into our window!

I stepped outside and he flew away. Shaking my head at this unusual event, I went back inside and crawled back into bed.

Twenty minutes later the thuds returned. That stupid bird was back and was very deliberately flying into the glass window -- time after time. I finally was able to take a brightly colored feather duster (don't laugh), and scare the bird away. It did not return . . .

. . . that day.

The very next morning at 6, the stoopid bird returned and began to throw itself into the glass of our window. I scared it away. It returned at 7. I scared it away again.

Our morning visits by the stoopid bird continued through the week. When we left on vacation, we were certain that the bird could not long survive the beating it was putting itself through every day. And with us gone and not able to stop it from repeatedly slamming itself into the glass head first, we thought it was a goner.

We returned from our vacation late on Wednesday evening, unloaded the car, did some unpacking, and pretty much collapsed in bed.

At 6 AM the next morning, this strange thudding started. It took my lovely lady and I a while to 1) wake up enough to realize that there was a deliberate knocking going on at the bathroom window, and 2) that the STOOPID bird was back! It.was.not.dead.

It was still throwing itself mindlessly at our sealed window! And, three days later, it still greets us in the morning with an enthusiastic pummeling against our window.

Talk about a bird brain . . .

Get a clue!

I really, really hope that this is NOT true.

Excerpt:

"Real Men Moisturize." So begins an article on "Sharp Dressed Men" that appeared in a State Department funded magazine aimed at youth in the Arab world. The magazine, called "Hi" is published in Arabic and English. A State Department website explains that Hi is published "with the hope of building bridges of greater understanding among our cultures."

Newsweek: The Day America Died

This is was on the cover of the 2 February issue of the Japanese edition of Newsweek. After looking at this, and reading about it over at Riding Sun, it's pretty obvious to me now (20/20 hindsight) that we should not have been surprised that Newsweek published the unconfirmed report that resulted in 17 deaths ten days ago.

I recommend you read the post.