Startlegramwatch.com

2002-09-17T16:26:00.000-05:00

A great (and unfortunately unintentional) juxtaposition in Sunday's paper. Under a little blurb about that rancorous old sow and White House reporter Helen Thomas is a headline reading, "Beached 400-pound whale dies depsite rescuers' efforts." Priceless.

2002-09-17T16:22:00.000-05:00

Bob Ray's behind the curve as usual
Bob Ray Sanders takes the President to task for doing what everyone has been whining about for months: being more multilateral. He writes that, "Despite his litany of U.N. resolutions that Iraq has violated over the past 10 years, [President Bush] failed to make the case for invasion of the country with the expressed intent of 'regime change.'" I thought that was the point. After all, they're the UN's resolutions. What better place for the president to discuss the "litany" of violations then the institution that put them in place.

He then tells us that it's "absurd" that the President wants Congress to debate about the Iraq situation. He even likens Bush to a raving cowboy in "some kind of High Noon shootout with the bad guy." Again, I rather thought this was what the leftists wanted: more debate and less unilateralism. Why is getting Congress to discuss an important issue of war and peace "absurd?"

BS wastes the balance of his column with an extended quotation from Kofi Annan's speech, calling it "by far more meaningful." More banal is probably a bit more accurate. At any rate, to the extent that Annan drew attention to the need for countryies to make use of "multilateral institutions," it seems that Bush's talk about the UN defending its own resolutions was right on.

I guess it's clear at this point that no Bush policy decision on Iraq would have pleased Boob Ray. If he had come out and said that he and Saddam were going to skip into a field together and sniff daisies, BS would have been upset that Saddam didn't get to smell a more exotic flower.

2002-07-11T23:39:00.000-05:00

2002-07-10T20:04:00.000-05:00

Why has Judicial Watch lost its "conservative" moniker?
I noticed this in our fair paper this morning, but by the time I got to write about it, Best of the Web beat me to it with reference to an AP dispatch.

Anyway, today's story was about how the group Judicial Watch filed suit against Vice President Cheney and Halliburton for accounting fraud. Judicial Watch is described as a "government watchdog organization."

But S-T hasn't always seen Judicial Watch as a mere watchdog organization. An editorial from June 5, 2001, labeled JW a "conservative watchdog group" and blasted them for honoring the Bush v. Gore trial judge at a Washington dinner.

S-T has also referred to JW as a "conservative legal group" (4/20/01), and a "conservative activist group" (4/15/01).

S-T doesn't refer to them ideologically today. Has the group's outlook changed, or was S-T wrong to label them in the first place? Apparently, the paper must have thought that only a bad, bad, awful "conservative" group would dare sue members of the Clinton administration. But, of course, a group that sues a Republican vice-president must be a mere "watchdog" organization.

2002-07-07T10:45:00.000-05:00

African-American extraterrestrial?
In a capsule description of John Sayles' 1984 movie "The Brother From Another Planet," Robert Philpot states the following:

Joe Morton plays a mute African-American extraterrestrial who lands in New York and impresses everyone.

I hope I'm not the only one who thinks it's idiotic to call a space alien (who happens to be black) an "African-American."
S-T stylebook 1, Logic 0.

2002-06-21T16:33:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the lack of links, but the S-T site has changed its archive system to something that is abominable and unusable. Anything I don't see on the internet the day it comes out, I have to look at the print edition.

2002-06-21T16:32:00.000-05:00

Another reprint from the NY Times, this time a Sarah Lyall piece entitled "Denmark tough on asylum seekers." Particularly unjournalistic is the following: "But Denmark today has been rattled by the rise of right-wing politicians who have run on virulently anti-immigrant platforms." Virulent? In Lyall's own words, Denmark is "tighten[ing] the criteria for asylum seekers." Big deal. I thought the press would lay off this "right-wing" labeling after Fortuyn was killed. I guess not.

2002-06-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

There was an editorial on Thursday applauding last week's Supreme Court decision holding it unconstitutional to require Jehovah's Witnesses to get a permit before knocking on doors. They're right, but not very consistent. The subheadline reads, "That pesky Constitution just keeps getting in the way when people want to restrict speech." Except, of course, for newspapers that want to restrict our ability to engage in political speech through the wonderful medium of "campaign finance reform."

2002-06-02T23:55:00.000-05:00

I used to think I'd have stuff to say about the reliably left-wing and hopelessly-indistinguishable-from-every-other-weekly-alternative-paper-in-the-country Fort Worth Weekly. Unfortunately, I haven't kept up with it recently, mainly because it's so God-awful boring.

There was a film review this week, however, that got my attention. In the movie "Sum of All Fears," the writers have changed Tom Clancy's story about how Arab terrorists blow up a nuclear device in Baltimore to a story about how "neo-fascists" blow up a nuclear device in Baltimore. A counter-factual, odd, and predictably politically correct choice. But FWWeekly reviewer Kristian Lin delivers this interpretation:

The change was made before the events of last September, and it's just as well, considering that the filmmakers here couldn't have handled Arab villains without shortchanging the complexities of politics in the Middle East.

Huh? I think Lin means that the political "complexities" would have actually justified such a terrorist action. Or maybe that those complexities justify Arab terrorists knocking down buildings. I guess in Lin's mind, an example of a movie that didn't "shortchange" these complexities is one which would have included some Arab dude explaining that he's doing all this because -- choose one: (a) female soldiers in Saudi Arabia are sleeping in their underwear; (b) evil Jews are putting the blood of Palestinian children into unleavened bread; (c) there's a Starbuck's in Cairo.

2002-05-31T16:08:00.000-05:00

Thursday had the first World Cup dispatch from Gil LeBreton. LeBreton bugged me during the Nagano Olympics because of his constant "gee whiz" observations about sushi and bullet trains. Thursday's piece wasn't that bad (a bit heavy on the Japan-Korea hatred angle, though). I hope it stays centered on sport.

2002-05-31T16:04:00.000-05:00

Pilots and weapons
In a reversal of an earlier editorial board decision, S-T has now decided that the Bush administration is correct and that commercial airline pilots should not have access to weapons. The only reason they can give is that "The No. 1 priority of an airline pilot in the event of an in-flight emergency is to get the aircraft on the ground as quickly and safely as possible." It doesn't occur to them that it might be helpful to kill someone who is trying to prevent a pilot from doing just that.

We are also told that armed pilots are unnecessary because of "increased scrutiny of passengers." Well, that's not exactly right. Passengers aren't being scrutinized (that would be politically incorrect). What is scrutinized are fingernail clippers and nose hair trimmers. As an Israeli security expert put it, "The difference between the Israeli and American systems is that we are looking for the terrorist, while the Americans look for the weapons."

2002-05-24T07:26:00.000-05:00

Apologists for totalitarianism
Wednesday's lead editorial ("Facing Havana") is another half-baked, uncentered plea for us to just get along with Fidel. The point seems to be that the United States needs to "reconsider our policy" toward Cuba. Of course, that was the purpose of Bush's speech the other day -- announcing a new policy toward Cuba.

However, as far as S-T is concerned, Bush's overtures were designed to "pander[] to the voters in Florida." Isn't that cute? It's hard to imagine a newspaper saying that someone who criticizes Hitler is "pandering to Jews," or someone who criticized South Africa in the 1980's was merely "pandering to Blacks." But when someone points out the obvious -- Castro imprisons political opponents, he refuses to hold free elections, he denies the Cuban people access to basic goods and services, etc. -- he is immediately accused of "pandering" to voters in Florida.

Embedded in this piece is a repetition of the old, worthless journalistic canard that Cuba's people are poor because of an American trade embargo. Yeah, right. The rest of the world trades with Cuba. There aren't American ships denying access to Cuban ports by foreign vessels. The reason that the Cubans' lot in life sucks is that forty years of socialism has made their economy a shambles. There are no private property rights and no goods available because the state has tried to repeal the law of supply and demand. But it would never occur to a newspaper's editorial board that government intervention in an economy could actually be detrimental.

Then we get to hear about how unreasonable Pres Bush's conditions are for normalizing trade: freeing political prisoners, allowing trade unions, and permitting opposition parties to speak freely. S-T calls these "lofty and desirable goals," but thinks we should first loosen our economic "grip" on Cuba. I don't know where this grip is. As the media is fond of telling us, the embargo hasn't gotten rid of Castro. So it doesn't seem like much of a "grip" to me. In any event, it doesn't seem unreasonable to ask for an actually free Cuba, so that the people could benefit from trade with America. As it is now, trade now would do nothing but line the coffers of the state.

A final word about Jimmy "all hail our great leader Kim Il-Sung" Carter. The editorial wants to contrast Carter's apparently reasonable view that sanctions should be eased in relief to Bush's allegedly hardline stand. This is silly. First, Bush does want to ease sanctions on Cuba, only under certain conditions. Second, who cares what that pathetic loser Carter thinks? He has never met a dictator he didn't like. He has praised Syria's Assad, N. Korea's Kim, Romania's Ceausescu, Yugoslavia's Tito, Ethiopia's Mengitsu, and Arafat. Now he's slobbering all over the feet of Castro. A great "human rights" president? That's one of the great libels on people who actually care about human rights. Few have done more to give aid and comfort to the enemies of human rights than Carter -- "history's greatest monster."

Disclaimer
The characterization of Jimmy Carter as "history's greatest monster" comes, of course, from a Simpsons episode. For legal purposes, let me state that I express no opinion about whether Carter is actually "history's greatest monster."

Further disclaimer
Okay, I admit it. He's not really history's greatest monster. Just one of them.

2002-05-06T22:46:00.000-05:00

The death of Pim Fortuyn
Tuesday's edition has an AP story on the assassination of libertarian-conservative Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn. He is described in S-T as "right-wing," although this is an improvement over the usual newspaperese description of him as "far-right."

The only thing we hear about Fortuyn's politics is that he is "anti-immigration." Oh, and that he's gay as well, which I suppose in the world of the press might say something about his politics (but not, in this case, what the editors probably hope).

The worst part of the article is the following paragraph, which I've tried to decipher:

Nevertheless, Fortuyn had dissociated himself from Le Pen and other European extreme right leaders. Fortuyn's platform seemed out of place in the Netherlands, which has a reputation for liberalism.
[These two sentences seem oddly juxtaposed. If Fortuyn has distanced himself from the "extreme right," why is his platform out of place in the Netherlands. Maybe the author will tell us what the platform is.]
It was the first country to legalize gay marriages, regulate prostitution, approve and control euthanasia, and tolerate the over-the-counter sale of marijuana in hundreds of "coffee shops."
[No, we still don't know what the platform is. But I guess we're supposed to think that Fortuyn's party was against all these things. Well, I don't think he was against the first one. I don't know about the others, but shouldn't the author let us know whether the party actually opposes this stuff rather than making us guess?]
Though tolerant of such subcultures, Fortuyn's popularity has exposed a deep vein of suspicion of immigrants in Europe's most densely populated country, about 2 million of whose 16 million people are not native Dutch. About 800,000 are Muslims.
[Okay, I had to read this sentence several times to understand the author's point. At first, I thought that Fortuyn was the tolerant one, but of course that wouldn't make any sense (it would actually be his popularity that was tolerant). I guess the author is again referring to the tolerance of "Europe's most densely populated country." That's redundant, however, since we just heard a litany of things that show how wonderfully liberal Holland is. It also overplays the immigrant thing. The author simplistically assumes the existence of "a deep vein of suspicion of immigrants." But my understanding is that Fortuyn only wanted to curb future immigration. It's not like he wanted to send foreigners back. He just wanted them to assimilate into Dutch society.

UPDATE
The story I commented on came from the S-T website. Today's (Tuesday's) actual newspaper has a different version of the same story. The changes are both good and bad. On the good side, it looks like space constraints caused the excise of the puzzling paragraph that I criticized above.

On the bad side, both the headline and the text now refer to Fortuyn as a "far-right" candidate. Now that he's far-right, and not simply "right-wing," you would think the article would at least try to back up such an assertion. But no, the piece is just as silent as it was before concerning the specifics of Fortuyn's views. Well, here's a smattering from Michael Gove of the London Times:

An advocate of laxer rules on euthanasia, greater drugs liberalisation, more use of the private sector in healthcare and tax cuts, he was very far from Le Pen's hearthland politics of Vichyiste nostalgia. He may have been a "cultural protectionist" like Le Pen. But the culture he wished to protect was the Dutch libertarianism so familiar to many Britons from their weekends in Amsterdam, so congenial to him as a gay man, and so threatened, he claimed, by the incursions of Islam.

Does that seem very "far-right"? It sounds like a guy who wanted people who came to his country to be respectful of its liberal institutions and culture. If the term "far-right" is now synonomous with with someone who doesn't believe that multiculturalism is the answer to all of our problems, then a lot of us have suddenly moved to that end of the political spectrum. More likely, it's a case of sloppy editing, and a Dutch AP reporter with an ax to grind.

2002-05-05T23:31:00.000-05:00

Ethnically sensitive graduation robes

Occasionally we get treated to the thoughts of Richard Gonzales, something of a community activist, writer, and sometime contributor to S-T. Today, he weighs in with Time for Latino colors to be seen at TCC.

Apparently, some Hispanics graduating from Tarrant County College want to wear a special "cultural stole." According to a story from S-T on April 27, the stole's design "evokes Hispanic heritage with multicolored bands on a royal blue background, and features diamond and arrow symbols." The school essentially told them no.

Mr. Gonzales, sometimes known as a champion of Cesar Chavez Day (an abomination of a holiday that Tarrant County shares with only one other Texas county), has weighed in on this issue. He does it in the predictably cumbersome open-memo-to-the-guy-you-disagree-with format that's a favorite with op-ed guys. This he "addresses" to Leonardo de la Garza, Chancellor of Tarrant County College. In part:

[The students will] beam to see their families watch them walk tall across a stage where so few raza walk but many sweep up. Their stoles will say to the Latino and non-Latino community, "Rejoice, for here's a bright Latino/Latina who beat the odds, dropped in and finished school."

This ethnic graduation robe stuff gets put forth more frequently each year (along with ideas for ethnically-separate ceremonies). If the above-quoted section is Gonzales' main rationale, the idea sounds. . . well, dumb. I mean, I could go on and on about the voluntary balkanization of ethnic groups at a ceremony that is supposed to be about a shared bond. But I won't. I will ask if the robes are necessary to achieve the effect that Gonzales thinks is important. Won't the "raza" members' very appearance send the message that "we've arrived"? Won't their individual names sounding over the loudspeaker do this as well? I'm happy that the graduates are proud, but I always thought segregation was bad.

2002-04-10T08:12:00.000-05:00

In the lead editorial today, we are urged that Saddam Hussein is "Not the big problem." There's nothing spectacularly original or surprising about this NYtimes-speak, but it is contains a shockingly imprecise statement, even by S-T standards:
"More than anything, Saddam wants to stay in power - and the chances that he will wreak unholy destruction if forced out militarily are high." If he is actually "forced out," I wonder how he'll be able to wreak anything. I guess what they mean is that any attempt to force him out will cause him to do some wreaking. The editors could be a bit clearer.

2002-04-10T07:49:00.000-05:00

I was shocked to see S-T pick up an AP story about taxes and title it "The richest pay the most taxes." The gist of the story is that the wealthiest 5% of taxpayers paid 55% of all income taxes in 1999. That's an increase from 44% in 1989. The percentage paid by the bottom 50% of taxpayers declined from 6% to 4% over the same period. I've complained before about mollyivins-type whiners who ignore facts like these. Anyway, nice accurate story from S-T.

2002-04-02T22:50:00.000-06:00

I try not to pick on S-T too much when they print bad columns by syndicated writers (if I did, I'd be whining about every piece of crap that dribbles out of Ellen Goodman, for example). Molly Ivins is an exception, mainly because her idiocy makes her a target as big as all outdoors and because she's so identified with S-T. I also take note of reprints of pieces or "thoughts" of non-syndicated columnists who appear in S-T under the mystifying rubric of "Special to the Star-Telegram." Sunday's op-ed page had a real beaut by leftist and "critical thinker" Robert Jensen.

I was out of town this weekend, so I'm happy that S-T indulged me by putting this piece ("The might of corporations undermines democracy") on the internet. Robert Jensen is familiar to most web denizens as an idiot par excellence. His post-Sept 11 work has been particularly rich with anti-Western invective. As a matter of fact, he holds the distinction of being one of the first to write an America-bashing piece, and got it printed in that other bastion of kick-ass journalism in Texas, the Houston Chronicle ("U.S. just as guilty of committing own violent acts"). (By the way, although the Chron printed this thing on September 26, it was actually first published elsewhere on September 12. Timely, huh?). To the extent that he has any relevance at all, Jensen is mostly remembered for being on the wrong side, all the time, and always making the wrong predictions (example: "A war that is supposed to help feed the desperate people of Afghanistan will in fact help starve them" from October 8, 2001. Yeah, whatever.).

Anyway, this latest drivel is about how corporations aren't "democratic." I thought I would actually critique what he has to say, but it doesn't make enough sense. He drifts from a general criticism of Bush's policies, to a few thoughts about how bad companies are to a pointless reference to Enron, to how bad the profit motive is, and finally to some banal thoughts about how the purpose of "corporate capitalism" is to "concentrat[e] power." Of course, as in most of his other pieces, Jensen doesn't offer any solutions for these "problems." All he has to say is, "That means the struggle to make American democracy ever more democratic in practice will have to be a struggle against corporate power." Huh? Oh, yeah. Workers of the world unite against your ruthless capitalist oppressors!

2002-03-14T10:49:00.000-06:00

Max Baker pushes his agenda
It's a little late to talk about Tuesday's primary election, but something struck me that was placed in Monday's supplemental "Voters Guide." (Shouldn't there be an apostrophe in there someplace?) Anyway, Max Baker wrote about the candidates for the three places on the Court of Criminal Appeals, including a few of the important issues. Included is this gem:

"Womack [Place 2 incumbent] has ruled with the majority in some of the court's controversial decisions, including the recent Graves decision, which said a defendant is entitled to a competent lawyer but not necessarily an effective one."

It would be inaccurate to call that statement a simplification of a more complicated issue. In reality, it's a misrepresentation which Baker must think oh-so-cleverly hides his legal agenda. Anyone reading that would think that Womack believes (and has ruled) that defendants at trial are not entitled to a Sixth Amendment right to effective representation. But Graves doesn't say that. In that case (Ex parte Graves, No. 73,927 (Tex. Crim. App. Jan. 2, 2002)) the defendant filed his third post-conviction petition for writ of habeas corpus. That's after he's already had his case affirmed on direct appeal. He claimed that a lawyer was ineffective on one of his earlier habeas petitions. However, although he has a Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel at trial and on direct appeal, he does not have a right to effective assistance of counsel to file a habeas (indirect, fact-based) appeal. If defendants did have such a right, habeas appeals would never end (you could always claim that the lawyer who filed your last habeas was ineffective, ad infinitum).

Anyway, by omitting the fact that Graves is limited to habeas appeals Baker misleads the reader into thinking that the Court in general (and Womack in particular) is trying to deprive everyone of their rights. Unfortunately, the facts get in the way of Baker's agenda.

By the way, the S-T editorialized on this case on January 16, 2002 and completely (predictably) misunderstood the issue. It decided that the Court of Criminal Appeals had determined that a defendant didn't have the right to "competent" counsel. It did this by conflating what it means to be competent and what it means to be effective. Obviously, an attorney could be objectively competent (as required by statute) but not be effective in a given case. Graves was complaining that his attorney was ineffective; he wasn't complaining about his competence.

2002-03-05T15:16:00.000-06:00

"Vicious Circle"
More on the subject of the S-T's view that Israel's defense of its borders is morally equivalent to the Palestinians' deliberate targeting and killing of Israeli civilians. In a front page piece in S-T that also appeared in today's New York Times, we get the following reported as "news":
"From both sides came louder vows of vengeance and violence, and there was no sign of any effort to break the vicious circle."
As I've said before, the S-T gets into the most trouble when it reprints crap from the Slimes.

2002-03-01T09:04:00.000-06:00

Today's lead editorial is a thumbnail assessment of the most recent Saudi "peace initiative." The piece is surprisingly cynical about the plan, but then, predictably, lapses into an S-Tish naivete about how the plan is "worth pursuing." The "plan," by the way, involves full Israeli withdrawal to its pre-1967 borders (including full withdrawal from Jerusalem) as a precondition for Arabs merely recognizing Israel's right to exist.

Why does the S-T think this plan is "worth pursuing"? The Saudis have floated this plan before, since at least 1981. They've apparently never thought it was worth pursuing. In fact, just after this plan got reported, the Saudi ambassador to the UN said that Israel serially engaged in the worst kind of "persecution and racism and occupation and systematic terrorism." How serious can the Saudis be? None of this, of course, takes into account the Palestinians' "right of return" to Israel, a "right" insisted upon by every Arab state. Naturally, the Arabs would support such a right of return because it would erase Israel's existence as a nation.

S-T ends the piece by falling back into its abyss of moral relativsm: "both major parties to the conflict, the Palestinian Authority and Israel, must try to curb the cycle of violence." There's nothing better than appeasement-speak, especially when you can engage in a meaningless cliche ("cycle of violence") to get there. Stick to editorials about trash pick-up.

2002-02-28T13:26:00.000-06:00

Don't you love Wednesday's editorial about how horrible it is that broadcasters might own cable companies and tv stations in the same market? This from a monopoly newspaper in a medium-sized city owned by a chain that dominates press coverage in 32 cities. Cute. It's called hypocrisy.

2002-02-26T11:17:00.000-06:00

S-T hard up for op-ed items -- gives star treatment to idiotic ravings of leftist "teacher"
Will the S-T print anything that anyone hands them these days? On Monday's op-ed page, the paper printed "How did I object to the war? Let me count the ways." It was a "special" by Kenneth Lee Wheatcroft-Pardue, apparently (and unfortunately) a teacher. Let me count the idiocies contained in this column:

There was no real debate. . . . [fighting a war] with no discussion of less expensive and less destructive alternatives was shortsighted. . . .
Well, I remember a debate in Congress. It didn't go on for a week, but that doesn't mean it didn't have merit. After all, one representative even voted against the United States defending itself. What bothers Kenny-boy is that the vote didn't go the way he wanted it to. Which is. . . well, he doesn't tell us. And that's part of his problem. No one has any ideas what "less expensive and less destructive alternatives" he's thinking about. I suppose he wants to have a "proactive" "sit-down" with the barbarians, and listen to their concerns. Or something.

Harborers of terrorists are not terrorists. . . .[What Bush said] was a strange statement, considering U.S. support of terrorism (most notably the contras and anti-Castro Cubans). . . .
Oh, now we know where he's coming from. Castro's Cuba is a glorious workers' paradise and the United States is a seething petri dish of hatred, tyranny, and terrorism.

As Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Noam Chomsky pointed out, the British did not bomb the United States after it suffered terrorist attacks by Irish Republican Army members who were given safe harbor and barrels of cash in the Irish enclaves of New York and Boston.
This is so ineffably stupid that it hardly merits a response. First, you have to wonder about someone who has to rely on Noam Chomsky to help him make idiotic analogies. Second, to my knowledge, neither the government of the United States nor the Commonwealth of Massachusetts has ever actively "harbored" terrorists. Any IRA types who try to get in to the United States are promptly sent back, with or without Britain's request. And there have been prosecutions of those who ship arms to the IRA. There are, of course, bad people all over the world. Members of al Queda live in the U.S. Terrorists live in the Philippines, Japan, and Spain. That doesn't mean they're being "harbored," as a moment of simple reflection would confirm. But this concept eludes the more simple-minded like Chomsky and Kenny hyphenated whatshisname.

There were no negotiations.
Oh, boo-hoo. So the demand for Osama was unconditional. So what? Some things are non-negotiable. Get over it. Besides, doesn't Kenny-hyphen remember the Taliban categorically stating that Osama was a guest of Afghanistan and would not be turned over? Don't let the facts get in the way of a worthless op-ed piece that gets you published in this nutty newspaper.

The U.S. bombing campaign, by design, was disproportionate and massive so as to lessen U.S. military casualties at the expense of Afghan civilian losses.
Even if this were true, it would be a stupid statement. Should a nation at war "design" its response in order to increase its own casualties? Of course, the "design" of the campaign was the opposite of what Ken says -- it was designed specifically not to kill Afghan civilians.

. . . at least 3,000 more Afghan civilians died because the bombing campaign exacerbated an already horrendous humanitarian crisis.
What? The bombing and subsequent (and consequent) defeat of the Taliban actually prevented a horrendous humaitarian crisis. This Chomskyite bullshit has been debunked so many times, I don't see the need in spending any more time on it. If you're interested see "Massive Food Delivery Averts Afghan Famine" in the Washington Post.

instead of a misguided thirst for vengeance, ground zero can teach us to distrust retaliation
Leftists have a funny way of confusing self-defense with vengeance. I hope for your sake, Kenny, that the criminals in your crappy neighborhood don't know about your feelings concerning self-defense.

the half-million Iraqi children who died because of our illegal bombing of their water treatment plants
This has been debunked so often, it's not even funny. Check out this Reason article for a pretty even-handed look at sanctions and a blasting of the worthless "half-million Iraqi children" figure thrown around like so much day-old humuus.

The rest of it is just mindless pacifism dressed up as. . . well, it's not dressed up. It sucks. Would the S-T print the diseased-ravings of a Nazi or KKK member? Would they be fooled if the piece was clouded by "facts?" I doubt it. But who knows? They certainly jumped all over this piece of crap. I guess they're just trying to fill dead space.

2002-02-13T17:05:00.000-06:00

Okay, I'm starting to figure out the S-T's problem. It's no secret. They've got their nose up the arse of the New York Times (aka Slimes, aka The Old Gray Whore). Case in point is today's article about the Shays-Meehan campaign finance "reform" bill. It's lifted from the Times and it contains, of course, the phrase "wealthy individuals" to describe the persons who will be subjected to the tyranny of this ill-conceived law. As noted in these pages before, the S-T uses just that description in its editorials. (Of course, it's wrong -- the law applies to everyone regardless of income). It's nauseating that the S-T would slavishly put NYT pieces on their front page that persist in making this egregious error. It's even worse that they would perpetuate this mistake in their editorials.

2002-02-11T10:28:00.000-06:00

Bob Ray's got problems.

Bob Ray Sanders must be a plant by conservative groups to thoroughly destroy any respectability that might be retained by the left. How else can we explain his commentary in Sunday's metro section ("Lindh case tests constitutional guarantee of right to fair trial" 2/10/02)?

He starts out with the oh-so-clever rhetorical statement that John Walker Lindh is "innocent." Bob Ray knows this, we are told, because the U.S. Constitution guarantees the presumption of innocence. Oh, please. The "presumption of innocence" is a legal construct that protects a defendant's rights before a jury. It has nothing to do with objective reality. If I look at a situation like Lindh's, I can certainly say that, in my opinion, he's guilty. I may be wrong, but that's not the same thing as convicting someone. The fact that Bob Ray doesn't know the difference says volumes.

Then, "The government, in its overreaching, overbearing and heavyhanded handling of this case, may have done Lindh a favor at the same time that it was doing a disservice to American justice." Overreaching? Here's a guy who's been indicted for conspiracy to kill Americans, based largely on his own statements. Not a death-penalty offense. He could have been charged with something greater, but wasn't. It's not even clear that charging him with treason would have been "overreaching."

But that's apparently not what Bob Ray was talking about. It seems that the only "overreaching" he can point to is that "authorities held and questioned him for more than 50 days without allowing him access to an attorney." This represents either a misunderstanding about what "allowing access" means or it's a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the truth. Lindh was Mirandized and waived his right to have an attorney present during questioning. If this is "overreaching" it's the kind of overreaching that happens in the criminal justice system every single day.

Bob Ray also makes the hilariously idiotic statement, "We've suspended civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution. . . ." It would be nice if he would tell us what liberties have been "suspended." But of course, that would get in the way of good copy. I could sit here and try to figure out what Bob Ray is talking about, but that would be a waste of time. Sort of like trying to understand the babblings of a mental patient.

Along the same lines, Bob Ray tells us that Lindh should have been granted bail. He doesn't tell us why, but he does tell us that the government fought against it and, "the government gets what it wants."

Finally, why does Bob Ray insist on calling Lindh by his birth name? We all know that he converted to Islam and changed his name to Sulayman al-Lindh. We've all been told for years that referring to Muhammed Ali as Cassius Clay would be hopelessly racist and condescending. I've seen nothing from Mr. Lindh (al-Lindh?) that indicates he wants to go back to being called John. Tell us Bob Ray, why are you so willing to deny a man's chosen religious calling? (sarc)

2002-02-11T09:59:00.000-06:00

"Wealthy individuals?"

An editorial from 2/8/02 ("It's a start") cheerleads again for campaign finance reform. The most striking quotation is, "The Shays-Meehan bill would ban unregulated 'soft money' contributions by wealthy individuals, corporations and unions to national parties."

As far as I know the Shays-Meehan bill does not contain any means testing or income requirements to determine who will be affected by the law. It applies to a millionaire who wants to give money (or something of value) to a political party as well as middle class or poor persons who want to do the same.

And what's with this "unregulated" business? The only "unregulated" soft money contributions that exist now are illegal ones -- soft money contributions are already subject to disclosure regulations enforced by the Federal Election Commission.

There are other problems with this amateurishly written piece, but the most humorous (unintentional, I'm sure) section is toward the end -- "[the bill would] . . . force parties and politicians to develop more creative ways of getting their messages to the voting public." To me, this means that politicians and parties would end up doing what they always do: find ways of taking contributions that are harder to regulate, aren't covered by the law, and more likely to be hidden. Then, in another twenty-five years, the S-T can drumbeat again for "much-needed" reforms.

2002-01-24T09:40:00.000-06:00

Curtis Jenkins delivers the following:
"I am so glad I decided it was not too cold, wet, or rainy to rescue my Star-Telegram from the pond in my driveway. Imagine how chagrined I would be to suffer the slightest delay in learning that adult-male humans possess the uncanny ability to grow facial hair. Kudos to intrepid Telegram-reporter Barry Shlachter for uncovering this startling fact of nature. More kudos to the editorial staff for recognizing the front-page-newsworthiness of this important scientific discovery."
Unfortunately, I missed this little gem. Is this what Barry's doing now that he's back from Afghanistan?

2002-01-18T15:27:00.000-06:00

In Friday's Life and Arts section, Miki Turner wrote a piece about the Roots 25th Anniversary special coming up on NBC. Roots is great television, of course. But Taylor's missing a big chunk of the story if she doesn't explain how Alex Haley basically made it up. Eric Fettmann gives a pretty good sketch of this in the NY Post. Well, made some up and plagiarized the rest.

If she's ignorant about it, it's hard to blame her. I didn't know about it until Donald Piller brought it to my attention yesterday, and there seems to be a well-concerted effort to keep this out of the American media. I just wish the S-T could be a little bit more alert.

2002-01-18T11:02:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, Molly Ivins' column in S-T was a pretty banal and rambling exercise (surprise) about how "we" aren't paying enough attention to non-war related subjects since September. The following is typical and bears a response:

"Actually, reporting that the wealthiest 1 percent got 38 percent of the benefits is not fomenting class warfare; passing a tax cut that gives 38 percent to the wealthiest 1 percent is fomenting class warfare. Likewise, proposing an 'economic stimulus package' of which 92 percent of the benefits are tax cuts for huge corporations is fomenting class warfare."

Ah yes, that dreaded "1 percent." Of course, that 1 percent make 17% of the money in this economy and pay 33% of the taxes. On the other hand, the BOTTOM 50% of the economy (that group that Molly seems to think is carrying us all) pays only 5% of the taxes. (Or did in 2000). Now, "1 percent" is a pretty broad category. It includes families with incomes of $250,000. Given all this, it's interesting that Molly won't tell us, or doesn't know, that rate decreases for that upper 1 percent always result in a LARGER proportion of revenue paid by them. Before the Reagan tax cuts, the top 1 percent were responsible for 18% of the revenue; in 1988, it was 28%. Following the 1997 capital gains tax cut, it went up to 33%.

If Molly wants to avoid "fomenting class warfare," she shouldn't adhere to outdated tax policy that punishes economic efficiency and actually leads to the rich paying a smaller share of revenues.

2002-01-18T10:16:00.000-06:00

In Thursday's edition, the S-T essentially printed a press release from Americans for Gun Safety Foundation, a gun control group. The S-T refers to them accurately, but incompletely, as an "advocacy group." Anyway, the AGS claims that since 1999, "about 10,000 felons and others legally barred from buying guns were able to cruise past background checks and purchase firearms." Interesting, but untrue, as a moment's research would have shown.

According to a more in-depth article in the Wichita Eagle, the "10,000" figure was arrived at by counting the persons whose background checks took longer than three days to process. That's it. As the ATF points out, a delayed report doesn't always correlate with an illegal purchase. The delayed checks are still investigated, and a great many of those turn out to be people that shouldn't have been blocked anyway.

At any rate, the S-T could have at least included an ATF response. If the S-T is going to continue to slavishly print press releases from "advocacy groups" (even in a wire service blurb) it doesn't seem like the newspaper is even necessary -- why not just get news directly from the groups themselves?