Category: Politics

I really enjoy Eric McErlain’s Off Wing Opinion. It’s a great sports blog, very well written, with a lot of hockey coverage that I’d otherwise not get. Eric’s a Republican, and from time to time he makes political posts. So what? For that matter, Jim Pinto is pretty conservative, and it doesn’t stop me from reading Baseball Musings. Again, why would it? If I had to agree politically with everyone I talked to, there are a lot of good people who I’d never see again.

All this is preamble to the observation that Eric’s got a bunch of very good guest bloggers posting while he’s on vacation. Sadly, he’s also got this guy named Jim McCarthy, who happens to be a paid lobbist. Among his clients are Augusta National and the College Sports Council. The latter is a group advocating some poorly defined change in Title IX.

So far, 90% of Jim’s posts have been about Title IX. Up until I asked him about it, he didn’t mention that he’s paid to advocate “Title IX reform.” He even ran an interview with the Executive Director of the College Sports Council, without bothering to mention that the guy is a paid client.

This use of blogs to drive opinion is exactly how he defended Augusta National. There’s little question that Jim is using Eric’s blog to further the agenda of his clients. I find that regrettable.

What I’m doing during the interminable classic rock segments is cranking up Britney Spears’ “Toxic” and pretending that’s the DNC soundtrack. It works particularly well when CSPAN goes to a flag waving shot: the combination of flags and dance music has that edgy mechanical appeal that Madeline L’Engle ascribes to IT on Camazotz. The people dancing are a little out of sync with the music, but you can ascribe that to a failure of the controlling intelligence.

Glenn Reynolds is curious about Atrios. More precisely, since Atrios has unveiled as Duncan Black, who works for a group that’s partially funded by George Soros, Glenn Reynolds wants to know why nobody’s making a fuss about it. The money quote: “… if I were working for, say, Richard Mellon Scaife, I think somebody — like, say, Duncan Black — would be making something of it.”

As it happens, Glenn Reynolds has a paying gig with Tech Central Station, which is funded by the DCI Group, which is a top-notch Republican lobbying organization. So I guess Glenn actually is working for Republican money-men after all. Funny how that works out.

At MTV’s Rock the Vote event, Howard Dean told the audience there are two bills in Congress to reinstate the draft. “If you want a draft, vote for George Bush!”

Bad, bad Howard. No biscuit.

It’s followup time!

a) The White House found those missing Bush military records, which contain no useful information.

b) Sandy Berger resigned. Thomas Kean, the Republican who chairs the 9/11 Commission, says they got copies of all the documents Berger removed anyhow.

c) The air marshals on board Northwest Airlines flight #327 were worried that Annie Jacobsen was in danger of panicking and creating a dangerous situation. Quoting at length, cause it’s too good to miss: “The source said the air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.” Nice. In related news, the myth that you can’t question more than two Arabs per flight? It’s a myth.

Everyone’s seen the Kerry/Bush flash funny, but my mother hasn’t, and while my response time is not as good as Google I give more personalized search results. So there it is.

Not very surprisingly, the Syrian band that freaked out Anne Jacobsen has been identified. Despite this, the usual suspects are still up in arms. From National Review Online:

That means that our air-traffic system was expecting trouble. But rather than land the plane in Las Vegas or Omaha, it was allowed to continue on to Los Angeles without interruption, as if everything were hunky-dory on board. It certainly wasn’t. If this had been the real thing, and the musicians had instead been terrorists, nothing was stopping them from taking control of the plane or assembling a bomb in the restroom. Given the information they were working with at the time, almost everyone should have reacted differently than they did.

But… everything was hunky-dory on board. The band was a band. Saying “but they might have been terrorists” is silly, because they weren’t. You might as well say, with as much justification, “but what if Anne Jacobsen had been a terrorist?” Nothing was stopping her from taking control of the plane either.

My god. Any passenger could potentially be a terrorist! We’ve got to just shut down all commercial travel. It’s the only way to be sure.

Glenn Reynolds, July 19th:

MORE: Hugh Hewitt:

Ask yourself what would be going on in Washington, D.C. tonght, and on the network news, within the blogosphere, and in the morning papers, if it had been revealed that Condi Rice was the target of a criminal investigation for removing classified handwritten notes from the government records relating to terrorism.

I think we know. But it’s early yet — this may get more attention from Big Media tomorrow.

CNN, July 20th, front and center story:

Samuel Berger, former President Clinton’s national security adviser, is under federal criminal investigation for allegedly removing classified documents and handwritten notes from a National Archives screening room during preparations for his testimony before the 9/11 commission. Berger acknowledged that he “inadvertently” removed some documents.

New York Times, July 20th:

President Bill Clinton’s national security adviser, Samuel R. Berger, removed classified security documents from the National Archives while vetting them in preparation for testimony before the Sept. 11 commission and has become the subject of a criminal investigation, his lawyer said Monday night.

Mr. Berger removed at least two versions of a memorandum assessing how the government handled intelligence and security issues before the millennium celebrations in 1999, his lawyer, Lanny A. Breuer, said. He also removed notes he took about classified documents, the lawyer said.

Glenn Reynolds, July 20th:

SISSY WILLIS says that the New York Times is way behind the curve on the Berger story. “In an inversion of Winston Churchill’s famous comparison of the speed of lies vs. truth, the blogosphere had already promulgated and commented upon the information contained in the AP report yesterday afternoon and evening before the Times had had a chance to put its pants on, so to speak.”

Some people are never satisfied.

Also: I think Sandy Berger should resign from Kerry’s campaign right now. I think he’s at the very least an idiot for doing whatever it is he did. How do you “inadvertently” remove classified documents? That’s really sloppy, and one has to suspect dishonesty. This case was leaked now by the Republicans for political reasons, I know, but Berger is still an idiot. In fact, he’s an idiot for remaining involved with the Kerry campaign while this was going on.

iTunes users may be pleased to discover that much of the 9/11 Commission hearings are available via the iTunes Music Store. This link will do something useful if you use iTunes, and if you don’t, I have no idea what will happen. Something useful, here, is defined as a page which contains the hearings among many other things. I’ve been unable to find a more useful direct link.

I just clued into the other thing that bugs me about the Annie Jacobsen story. Michelle Malkin, among others, writes smugly that this event highlights the stupidity of a policy against secondary questioning of more than two Arabs per flight. See also Ann Coulter’s racist whine, which Annie Jacobsen cited in her original article.

But Annie Jacobsen also noted that the 14 Syrians on her flight were… pulled aside and questioned in LA. This was confirmed by government officials. So, ah, doesn’t that kind of undercut the concept that the airlines have a policy against questioning groups of Arabs?

A lot of people aren’t thinking that one through. Or, more to the point, they’re assuming that a policy restricting “secondary questioning” means that airlines can never under any circumstances pull aside more than two Arabs per flight.

It’s also worth noting that the original source for the information about this policy, John Lehman, never said that he knew the policy was in effect. He said he thought it was still in effect; which, of course, was reported without the element of uncertainty inherent in “I think.” Paying attention is hard! And why should Mr. Lehman worry about getting the details right in something so important as the 9/11 hearings, anyhow? They seem like a fine forum to promulgate unverified beliefs about our security.