April 12, 2006
On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.
A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.
Framed the way Joby Warrick presents it in these opening paragraphs, it seems like a slam-dunk case of the Bush Administration lying... but the Post is being less than forthright with it's readers, attempting to bias and shape their perceptions before giving them all the facts.
What facts would those be?
That the one team of inspectors Warrick cites in his opening paragraphs were not the only team to examine these trailers, and that two other teams that initially inspected the trailers did not agree with the team highlighted in the Post article's opening paragraphs. As a matter of fact, one has to navigate a carefully parsed and misleading claim of the "unanimous findings" that were far from unanimous before finding out in the twelfth paragraph that two other teams reached the exact opposite conclusion:
Intelligence analysts involved in high-level discussions about the trailers noted that the technical team was among several groups that analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs, a finding that strongly influenced views of intelligence officials in Washington, the analysts said. "It was hotly debated, and there were experts making arguments on both sides," said one former senior official who spoke on the condition that he not be identified.
The actual facts are that a single team of nine civilian experts wrote a "unanimous" report that was only unanimous within their one group, while two military teams of experts reached the conclusion that these were bioweapons labs. By careful and I believe willful deceit, the Post would seem to purposefully imply that all experts examining the suspected bio-weapons trailers unanimously came to the conclusion that these trailers were not used to manufacture bio-weapons, and that the Administration blatantly lied in the face of the evidence. The actual facts are that this was not only a not a unanimous report, but that the "unanimous" report of the one team was actually a minority view overall.
This is willful misrepresentation of the facts by Joby Warrick and the editors of the Washington Post in a page one story. There were indeed varied interpretations of the suitability of these trailers to manufacture bio-weapons, yet the Post article purposefully decived its readers to lend weight and column inches to the minority viewpoint that was not unanimous as they suggested.
This appears to be a specific, calculated deception of a national newspaper's readership. The Washington Post must be held accountable.
Update: Seixon finds news reports on these trailers, and determines that the "sharply divided" views of this third team of experts then (2003), is not synonymous with the "unanimous" view attributed to the same team pushed by the Washington Post day.
Joby Warrick's article keeps geting more suspect by the hour...
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April 11, 2006
This is a good article, but when have the USA backed down, especially if it would require them to acknowledge the legitimacy of the Iranian regime; the withdraw of the "axis of evil" statement; and then removal of accusations of Iran's links to terrorism/freedom fighters. Even if the USA felt that this may some how be in its interest the Israelis wouldn't allow it and would drag the USA back.
There is another way. It would require the USA to acknowledge that it does not have the right, or moral standing to be the Judge, Jury and Executioner. Only then will the end of the war on Terrorism start.
As you may imagine, I had my own response to Farhad:
Farhad,Why does it seem you are more interested in ending the War on Terrorism, than on ending terrorism itself? I think you have overplayed your hand and stated your intentions a little too clearly.
Iran is a terrorist state that openly seeks the ultimate weapon, while maintaining long-standing calls for the eradication of Israel. It is no great stretch to see that a nuclear Iran would try to destroy Israel as soon as it thought it was possible. Before dying, the Israeli counterstrike is certain to exact a horrible toll of its own. All told, tens of millions will die in this ever-more-likely scenario, and the Middle East will become inhabitable for thousands of years because of nuclear radiation.
The projected and all-but-promised Islamic first strike will clearly mark Islam as an aberration; a threat to all humanity. I doubt any of the "civilized" nations will think twice about unleashing their own arsenals, conventional or otherwise, in smashing other Islamic states that can be seen as a threat to those not already killed by the Iranian-triggered war.
Islam will be smashed, consigned to the ash-heap of history with other failed religions of past centuries. Is this the future you want for Islam? That is the path you are choosing.
If western powers back down now, Iran will end your world, and your religion, and the only solace you will find is that you outlasted the Israelis by a breath.
This is the future Iran would choose for you. I suggest you find another way.
Too many people in this country are allowing their views on developments in Iran's nuclear proliferation gamble to be colored by their like or dislike of President Bush. This is a mistake.
As Mark Steyn noted in an excellent commentary today:
Anyone who spends half an hour looking at Iranian foreign policy over the last 27 years sees five things:
- contempt for the most basic international conventions;
- long-reach extraterritoriality;
- effective promotion of radical Pan-Islamism;
- a willingness to go the extra mile for Jew-killing (unlike, say, Osama);
- an all-but-total synchronization between rhetoric and action.
Later:
Â…the extremist [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map," while the moderate [former Iranian President] Rafsanjani has declared that Israel is "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" in one blast, because "a single atomic bomb has the power to completely destroy Israel, while an Israeli counter-strike can only cause partial damage to the Islamic world." Evidently wiping Israel off the map seems to be one of those rare points of bipartisan consensus in Tehran, the Iranian equivalent of a prescription drug plan for seniors: we're just arguing over the details.So the question is: Will they do it?
And the minute you have to ask, you know the answer.
When Seymour Hersh wrote in the New Yorker that the Administration is planning contingencies for possible military strikes against Iran's nuclear sites, and that even our own nuclear options were being considered as a possible response in some scenarios, my initial response was one of "isn't it their job to consider all options?" I did not however, actually think using nuclear weapons was a workable solution, anymore than did the generals in Hersh's anonymously-sourced article who threatened to resign if the nuclear option wasn't removed from the table.
Like the President, I do not desire military conflict—or in light of Iranian intrusion into Iraq, more military conflict—with Iran, and would much prefer a diplomatic settlement where no more lives need be lost. I agree with the apparent assessment of Steyn and others that the Iranian mullahcracy will not stop until they are stopped, and that stoppage, like so many things in the Islamic world, will only occur at the point of the sword.
The American nuclear option of using B61-11 tactical thermonuclear bombs or similar munitions is unsettling and unpleasant, and only to be thought of seriously if all diplomatic efforts fail, and no other military response seems capable. But it is an option, and one that must be considered. They stakes—tens of millions of lives across the Middle East and southwest Asia—are simply too high. Yes, some generals will not want to even consider this option, but generals tend fight the last war, and the civilian leadership most be more nimble in considering what may occur if we fail to stop the Iranians here.
To fail here is tantamount to the total destruction of Israel and the Palestinians, the poisoning of Jordan, Lebanon, and surrounding nations by fallout from Iranian nuclear weapons, and the destruction of much of Iran in retaliation by an Israeli response, even as the Jewish state ceases to exist. It is a price Iran says it is willing to pay, but what of neighboring Iraq, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan? What of other nations that will reap what Iran has sown? They have no say is determining this nuclear winter that ends their lives, and yet they all stand to lose because of an Iranian mullahcracy that has never deviated from its plan to rule the world for Islam, or die.
Iran cannot win this war, but it can destroy much, including Islam itself.
An Iran-triggered nuclear war would wipe out a significant portion of the cradle of civilization, and draw withering fire from suddenly isolationist populations worldwide that would prudently declare Islam a threat to the security of their states. The religion would be banned in many nations, it adherents driven out or underground in others, and the remaining Islamic nations not dying of radiation poisoning and internal wars brought about by this strife will be targeted at the slightest hint of provocation.
How long will the first Islamic nuclear state, Pakistan, last in this environment of well-earned distrust for the Islamic Bomb? What will happen to Pakistan's nuclear weapons when Pervez Musharraf is no longer firmly in charge? If Pakistan falters and control of its weapons is in doubt for even a second, the response will be swift, punitive, and decisive.
If Iran succeeds in its unholy task, Islam itself may die because the remainder of the world will deem it too dangerous to exist. Iran will kill Allah. It may take generations, but Allah will be a god as dead and forgotten as Huitzlopochtli and Heimdall. One billion Muslims armed mainly with small arms cannot compete against the modern world's militaries should the battle ever fully be joined. They will achieve their Islamic Armageddon, but they will go "into the light" alone, as forgotten as the followers of Odin and Ra.
President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union Address:
We'll be deliberate, yet time is not on our side. I will not wait on events, while dangers gather. I will not stand by, as peril draws closer and closer. The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons.
Iran is the most dangerous of those remaining regimes, and it is seeking the world's most destructive weapons. Diplomacy is our first option as it should always be. If all else fails, however, we owe it to the world to resolve the problem of Iran's nuclear ambitions with any and all of the technologies at our disposal.
Too many lives hang in the balance not to take that difficult step.
Update: And time draws short.
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Citing rampant corruption within his own government, poor economic planning and internal development under his regime that has left Mexico bereft of a middle class, Fox said, "it is the only right thing to do for the Mexican people. Generations of Mexican government has proven we have no business running a country."
"At this time, 12 million Mexicans are already taking advantage of the American economy and have developed a taste for American services. It seems only fair to extend the rights of America to the rest of my former country."
While a beaming Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was present for the impromptu and hastily prepared signing, the Administration firmly rebuked charges made by anonymous sources that Rumsfeld had threatened an "undocumented redeployment" of America military forces to secure Fox's signature.
Upon hearing of the historic agreement, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo hastily called for the construction of a border wall separating the new American States of Chaipas, Campeche, and Quintanta Roo from illegal aliens infiltrating from Belize and Guatemala.
President Bush reassured Tancredo that existing immigration laws between the former Mexican States and it's two southern neighbors would "remain the same" as they were under Mexico's immigration laws. This means future illegal aliens would not have rights to public political discourse, certain basic property rights, equal employment rights, and that illegal immigrants may be expelled for any reason. Tancredo was said to be satisfied.
Halliburton could not be reached for comment.
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The top secret letter 2205 of the Military Branch of Al Qadisya on 4/3/2001 announced by the top secret letter 246 from the Command of the military sector of Zi Kar on 8/3/2001 announced to us by the top secret letter 154 from the Command of Ali Military Division on 10/3/2001 we ask to provide that Division with the names of those who desire to volunteer for Suicide Mission to liberate Palestine and to strike American Interests and according what is shown below to please review and inform us.
According to this translation, it seems that Saddam's military was actively recruiting suicide bombers to attack American targets in the months preceding 9/11. Did the two additional translators that Ed Morrissey hired reach a similar translation?
Yes.
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Now that DNA evidence seems to have cleared the lacrosse team of the charges for a forensic perspective, will Ellen Goodman be the spokesperson to apologize on behalf of the media? Goodman wrote four days ago that many bloggers "have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions." As she is somehow qualified to judge conclusion jumping in the blogosphere, she is at least equally as qualified to judge her friends in the media when they are obviously guilty of making the exact same mistake for a longer period of time.
Does anyone think she'll have the integrity to do so?
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April 10, 2006
Wade Smith, an attorney for members of the Duke University lacrosse team, announced late Monday afternoon that no DNA samples taken from the 46 athletes matched any DNA on the alleged victim and that he hopes Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong will consider dropping the case.
Nothing on the victim's skin. Nothing on the victim's clothes. Nothing on internal swabs of the victim's mouth, anus, or vagina. Nothing on her fake fingernails found in the bathroom. Nothing, anywhere. Nothing.
The local and national media have been on something of a witch hunt against the lacrosse team from the very beginning, painting a picture of spoiled rich kids abusing a girl working her way through college any way she could. That narrative presented by the media seems all but shattered now.
Once again, a witch hunt provides no witches, and the prosecution's case seems reduced to so much Durham bull. And yet, I doubt we'll hear anything in the way of media apologies...
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Thousands of demonstrators wearing white T-shirts and waving signs and American flags filled the streets of an immigrant neighborhood Monday for the first of dozens of marches planned in a national day of action billed as a "campaign for immigrants' dignity."The two-mile Atlanta march was in support of immigrant rights nationally as well as in protest of state legislation awaiting Gov. Sonny Perdue's signature. If signed, it would require that adults seeking many state-administered benefits prove they are in the country legally.
Carlos Carrera, a construction worker from Mexico, held a large banner that read: "We are not criminals. Give us a chance for a better life."
Dignity?
To borrow from Inigo Montoya in The Princes Bride, "I do not think that word means what they thinks it means."
Dignity, according to the relevant part of the entry in the Free Online Dictionary, is:
1. The quality or state of being worthy of esteem or respect.
2. Inherent nobility and worth: the dignity of honest labor.
3.
a. Poise and self-respect.
b. Stateliness and formality in manner and appearance.
Dignity, it seems fair to say, is something that you either have, or something you have not. You cannot impart an inherent quality; it is present, or it isn't. Dignity can be lost and regained, but it is not something anyone else can bestow upon you.
Illegal immigrants have no dignity because they know that no matter how much they deny it, they are criminals, each and every one, without exception. You may not like that label, Carlos Carrera, but is still the truth. You run from problems in your own country instead of finding a way to make your own nation better, and leach off American citizens that which is not rightfully yours to take.
Illegals don't take tax dollars from America's rich, they steal it from America's poor, robbing the weakest in our society of what we have set aside for them. They are criminals for crossing our borders against our laws. They are criminals for stealing services allocated to our poor. I have heard of honor among thieves, but never dignity. Illegals have no dignity, and deserve no respect.
Do you really want dignity, illegals? Go back to your home countries. Make yourselves worthy of respect by reforming your corrupt governments, instead of trying to undermine ours. If you do come here, do so legally. Follow our laws. Respect our traditions and our cultures, and you will find that respect reciprocated. Disrespect us, demanding by the hundreds of thousands what is not your to demand, only hardens our hearts to your transgressions.
All twelve million illegals can protest for dignity, but dignity is not something that can be given to criminals.
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I can't say that I'm surprised the nuclear option was on the table; I did write about this exact same bomb not once, but twice in a more hypothetical sense more than a week ago, precisely because I think Bush once said something to the effect that "all options were on the table," and to me, "all" does in fact mean all. Predictably, the left thinks that the Hersh article is this week's concrete proof that Bush is the anti-Christ (as if that is a new opinion for them), some on the far right are ready to nuke first and ask questions later, and most center-right blogger's realize that a the use of a B61-11 is a worst-case scenario option to be used only if all other attempts fail.
What does amaze me is rhetoric from some here in the United States willing to label Bush as insane or unhinged for what has been to date a measured, reasonable response, while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who claims to have felt a holy light while addressing the United Nations in September, has time and again spoken of an "end times" scenario that his regime is rumored to have pledged to try to bring about. A Holocaust-denier with Messianic delusions runs a End-times-focused regime that has openly stated it would like to see Israel "wiped off the map." They are apparently hoping to trigger a massive nuclear war which they think will bring forth the Hidden Imam, and Bush is the one who is insane for being willing to stop them from acquiring nuclear weapons that could end tens of millions of lives?
The guys at South Park are correct. We are a nation of people with their heads buried firmly in the sand.
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April 08, 2006
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation's lawsuit against the company.Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF's lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.
This sounds serious, but what exactly does Klein say he actually saw?
AT&T was providing "full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment" according to Klein. A "secret room," that apparently all AT&T technicians knew about, was openly built beside the room housing AT&T's switching equipment for international and long distance calls.
Regular AT&T technicians, including Klein, connected circuits to a splitting cabinet leading to the secret room, which was so secret, it seems many AT&T employees knew they were being built not just there in San Francisco, but in Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. Obviously, this was something they were taking great efforts in trying to hide.
Then Klein adds:
Klein said he came forward because he does not believe that the Bush administration is being truthful about the extent of its extrajudicial monitoring of Americans' communications."Despite what we are hearing, and considering the public track record of this administration, I simply do not believe their claims that the NSA's spying program is really limited to foreign communications or is otherwise consistent with the NSA's charter or with FISA," Klein's wrote. "And unlike the controversy over targeted wiretaps of individuals' phone calls, this potential spying appears to be applied wholesale to all sorts of internet communications of countless citizens."
So what Klein actually saw was that voice and data communications were shunted into a room that he was not allowed access to, and that he did not see any external filtering equipment that blocked voice or data communications before they entered that room.
I ask a simple question: Why would the NSA put any of their top secret, state-of-the-art equipment, including the technologies they use to target and filter calls, anywhere but in a secret room?
As a taxpayer, I wouldn't want the equipment laying around where just anyone, be it a Mark Klein or an AT&T employee working for China on the side, could access it, reveal details about it, or possibly corrupt it.
Klein's statements are based at least partially on politics, as he shows a dislike for the Administration in his statements. In the end, he only confirms the existence of the location of one specific NSA intercept site, and nothing about the program itself. He adds very little to the national debate.
Once again, the evidence (or lack thereof) is irrelevant; it's the seriousness of the charge that seems to matter.
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April 07, 2006
I AM SURE that Jill Carroll and her family are too busy inhaling the sweet spring air of freedom to spend time sniffing out the pollution in the blogosphere. Anyone who spent three months imagining the grimmest fate for this young journalist in the hands of terrorists can't get too upset when a little Internet posse goes after her scalp.Nevertheless, this is not a good moment for the bustling, energetic Wild West of the new Internet media. Remember when a former CBS executive described bloggers as guys in pajamas writing in their living rooms? Well, it seems that many have only one exercise routine: jumping to conclusions.
It seems Goodman is breaking quite a sweat herself.
Goodman smears large swathes of the blogosphere based upon cherry-picked comments from just two specific bloggers out of more than 33.5 million (as tracked by Technorati), along with commentary from Debbie Schlussel, who while having a blog, also belongs to Goodman's print media as a "frequent New York Post and Jerusalem Post columnist" according to her bio.
Goodman misrepresents the blogosphere, as the vast majority of blogs on both the political left and right did not write about Jill Carroll to "go after her scalp" as Goodman contends. The overwhelimng majority on the left and right defended Carroll, myself included, many urging a wait-and-see approach, strongly suspecting her comments were made under duress. A relative handful did attack Carroll, but these bloggers were hardly representative of the greater whole.
Implying that the blogosphere in general want to attack Carroll is every bit as disingenuous on Goodman's part as is someone else saying that most Boston Globe columnists are dishonest because of the plagiarism of Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith.
Then again, maybe misrepresenting the work of others is the exercise of choice among columnists at the Boston Globe.
A real neat thing about bloggers that Ellen Goodman should know about is that we are notoriously self-correcting when we're wrong.
Let's see if she can meet our standards.
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April 06, 2006
Senate Republicans have put forth a proposal that awards more benefits to illegals the longer they've broken immigration laws. The immigration "compromise" that John O'Sullivan properly recognizes as a surrender leaves many angry conservatives feeling violated and abused by Senate Republicans led by Bill Frist that refused to listen to their constituents.
We were violated by our own party, who proved one again securing the nation's borders really doesn't matter to them. I hope these Senators enjoy ever second of their surrender of values, as conservative bloggers will not let the 65% supermajority of Republicans voters forget this betrayal in elections to come.
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No more he-grabbed-she-slapped -- whether U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney should be charged over a confrontation with Capitol Police last week will be decided by a grand jury, perhaps as soon as next week, said federal law enforcement sources familiar with the case.Prosecutors have decided to present the case, and the grand jury will begin hearing testimony Thursday, the two sources said.
Senior congressional sources said that two House staff members -- Troy Phillips, an aide to Rep. Sam Farr, D-California, and Lisa Subrize, executive assistant to Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Michigan -- have been subpoenaed to testify.
The Justice Department and the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, which is handling the case, refused to comment.
Law enforcement officials refuse to comment, while McKinney refuses to shut up, or even apologize, instead insisting that this isn't a matter of security, but one of race.
But it is about security, as it was July 24, 1998, when Capitol Police officers John Gibson and Jacob Chestnut were gunned down trying to protect members of Congress just like McKinney at the same kind of checkpoint she bypassed and ignored.
Slain Capitol Police officers John M. Gibson, left, and Jacob J. Chestnut, right.
Via the Washington Post.
Officer Chestnut was in a very similar situation to the one Cynthia McKinney placed the Capitol Police in last week, when she bypassed a metal detector like the one Officer Chestnut was manning and refused to stop.
The difference between the instances was that a bullet from Russell Weston's .38-caliber revolver killed Officer Chestnut almost instantly as he pushed through the checkpoint in 1998, and the Capitol Police were fortunate that Representative McKinney was armed only with a cell phone.
Cynthia McKinney has no respect for the men and women of the Capitol Police force who have placed their lives on the line for her day in and day out, and the dead silence of her fellow Democrats speaks volumes about how they feel about crimes against the police as well.
Democrats refuse to engage in the issue, preferring to ignore it, hoping it will go away. I think we've seen that plan before.
Update: DeLay speaks about these officers past and present as well (h/t reader Tom TB).
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Republican officials said the GOP plan would divide illegal immigrants into three categories:The officials who described the proposal did so on condition of anonymity, saying the had not been authorized to pre-empt senators.
- Those who had been in the country the longest, more than five years, would not be required to return to their home country before gaining legal status. They would be subject to several tests, including the payment of fines and back taxes, and be required to submit to a background check, according to these officials.
- Illegal immigrants in the United States less than five years but more than two would be required to go to a border point of entry, briefly leave and then be readmitted to the United States. As with the longer-term illegal immigrants, other steps would be required for re-entry, after which they could begin seeking citizenship, these officials said.
- Illegal immigrants in the United States less than two years would be required to leave the country and join any other foreign residents seeking legal entry.
These weak-willed Senate Republicans are sending the message that the longer an illegal alien has broken the law, the more that crime is acceptable. That is not the message we should be sending to those so openly contemptuous of our nation's laws. The message we should be sending?
It's time to leave.
Kill the market for illegal jobs by building a controlled legal market though a strong guest worker program. Make it too risky for companies to hire illegals by imposing stiff fines on employers using illegal immigrant labor. It will not result in mass government-run deportations, but a gradual, economics-run repatriation of illegals when they can no longer find work in this country.
It's time to leave.
Now.
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April 05, 2006
My PC's video isn't working right now, but the video is downloadable at the SITE Institute, where they have two still photos captured from the video that make me immediately suspicious. The timestamp on the video states that the date of the film is March 19, 2000. In addition, the still photo on the right seems to show an airborne helicopter with what appears to be (in the one grainy still photo can I see) skids on the undercarriage.
Current-issue UH-60 Blackhawks that are the predominate utility and MEDEVAC helicopter of the U.S. Army have wheels.
I'll update this after I have had a chance to look at the video later today, but I suspect this may not be authentic footage.
Update: The SITE video is not the same film of the crash as reported in the AP story.
Bareknucklepolitics.com has the correct video. It is of very low quality, but despite that, it is not being disputed by the U.S. military. Without anything else to go on, I'll assume that the downing of the helicopter is real.
Second Update: It now appears that the U.S. military is doubting the authenticity of the video footage, even while a stateside defense contractor says the tape looks authentic. The most reasonable conclusion to draw from this discrepancy is that the Army is aware of forensic evidence from the recent crash that does not match up with the footage shown in the video. The contractor would not necessarily have access to this information.
Variables such as the condition of the downed helicopter, the terrain of the crash site, and even the condition of the human remains collected may very well provide the military with evidence suggesting that the footage was either staged, or was footage from a previous crash.
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Some have maintained for a while now that a person other than Michelle Malkin is writing and posting some of the material that gets posted with her byline on her blog. She has denied it.To my eyes, the jury has always been out on that question.
But let's look closely at the last 36 hours at michellemalkin.com.
At 7:16 a.m., she posted that she was "back from vacation."
Sizeable posts followed at 8:00 a.m., 8:46 a.m., 9:31 a.m., 10:16 a.m., 10:52 a.m. (a short one), 11:25 a.m., 11:37 a.m., 12:37 p.m., 2:09 p.m. (subsequently updated), 4:06 p.m., 7:45 p.m., 8:01 p.m., 8:19 p.m., 10:36 p.m. (subsequently updated), 5:49 a.m., 6:05 a.m., 8:00 a.m., 8:25 a.m. (subsequently updated), and then 12:31 p.m.
In that last message, Malkin explains that she is in Minneapolis, where she'll be giving a speech at 12:00 noon. Controlling for the one-hour time difference between the East Coast and Minnesota, I infer that she posted this update a startling 29 minutes before her noontime speech.
One wonders: when did she drive (or get driven) to the airport, fly at least three hours (if non-stop) to Minnesota, and then drive (or get driven) to her Minneapolis destination? And is there a red-eye from the DC area to Minneapolis?
The jury may not be in, but they're knocking on the door.
The knocking at the door, Professor Muller, may be the men in white coats asking for you.
Muller is just one liberal with the apparent obsession of "getting" conservative blogger/journalist Michelle Malkin, who they claim must have a ghostwriter because of her prodigious output as a journalist and blogger.
What evidence does the law professor bring to bear?
His "evidence" is not that there are tell-tale differences in grammar, syntax, or tone in some of her posts (traditional, recognized "tells"), but simple fact that Malkin was able to put up 20 blog entries in 36 hours. That is impressive output if you are looking at the raw number of posts, but the raw number itself means nothing without considering the style and length of the blog posts in question.
If long-form bloggers such as Richard Fernandez or Ed Morrissey were posting 20 entries in 36 hours, people would have a right to be suspicious. Long form blog entries from these and similar writers are intricate, and they take substantial time to compose, because they require substantial independent research, analysis, synthesis, and of course, composition.
But Michelle Malkin is not in general, and definitely not in the examples provided, a long-form blogger.
Malkin writes in other forums for her primary income, and as a blogger, she typically aggregates news stories and blog entries that are often sent to her electronically either via email, RSS feeds, news media web sites, and presumably other sources.
The telling question in the equation is this: how much original written composition occurs in these 20 posts cited, and how much is aggregation?
If you strip out the images and quoted text in the 20 posts selected by Eric Muller, Michelle Malkin wrote a grand total of 938 words over 3 days, or just shy of 47 words a post (46.9, Eric, since you seem to obsess so much about the fine details). As the vast majority of those 47 words are straightforward descriptive writing that comes as easily as speech for journalists, this level of output is well within her capabilities, even while traveling.
20 brief short-form blog posts over three days is hardly difficult for a full-time professional writer. For that matter, it is not even all that difficult for part-time bloggers.
Liberal Duncan Black released a total of 57 short (often very short) posts over the past three days while holding down a Senior Fellowship with Media Matters. Glenn Reynolds (a law professor without too much time on his hands) managed to teach class, pay his final respects to a much beloved grandmother, and release 60 mostly short posts and 18 updates in the same amount of time. Perhaps he should investigate both of them as well?
For someone teaching law, Eric Muller presents a laughably weak case. Perhaps his obsession has cut too much into his sleep.
For his student's sake, I hope he gets the help he needs.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
01:32 AM
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April 04, 2006
Note: spelling error corrected. (h/t danking70)
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
11:57 AM
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Cohen starts his rant at Ground Zero:
President Bush is starting to look beyond his presidency. His focus is on his legacy, which he is sure will vindicate his decision to go to war in Iraq. But his most fitting memorial is likely to be where I was Sunday: the immense gash in Lower Manhattan known as Ground Zero. More than 4 1/2 years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the hole has yet to be filled.Tourists come and look. The selling of souvenirs is prohibited at the site itself, but around the corner, on Vesey Street, peddlers hug the shadows. The proper souvenir to take away from this place, though, is the memory of its immense emptiness. It's a hole filled with broken promises and silly rhetoric, an inverted monument to the Bush administration's unfathomable failure even to capture Osama bin Laden.
Cohen attempts to affix the failure to rebuild the WTC site as Bush's legacy, as if urban commercial architect were among the many mythical powers he has assumed in his imagined “imperial presidency.” But Bush is not to blame for the failure to rebuild at Ground Zero. Rounds of ensuing site designs have been brought forth, shot down, and slowed down because of politics, lawsuits wrangling over insurance monies, and safety concerns, all local issues.
He then chastises the President for not yet getting Osama bin Laden. I once thought more of Richard Cohen, but he seems unable to grasp the simple fact that Osama is a figurehead, a symbolic leader whose operational capabilities have steadily declined in every nation as al Qaeda cells are picked off one-by-one around the world. But then, Cohen isn't really interested in bin Laden. Were Bush to call a joint session of Congress and have bin Laden's head literally brought out on a silver platter, Cohen would assuredly be among the first to quote the Dali Llama saying that the death of bin Laden would just create ten more.
What Richard Cohen will not do, is face the brutal fact that the man he so openly admires, William Jefferson Clinton, through inaction in the Sudan and repeated hesitancy in Afghanistan, allowed bin Laden to live to see the horrors his disciples would create.
The two felled Towers and the 2,792 souls taken in their collapse are a legacy to Clinton's inaction, not Bush's bravado. Ground Zero is the hole that Bill built.
Cohen rails about President bush's supposed incompetence in waging war, yet fails to account for President Clinton's abject failure in waging peace that led us to where we are today. If Bush's legacy is a void, Bill Clinton's legacy is a blackened September sky.
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
10:53 AM
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April 03, 2006
Instead, with the city's majority-black status in doubt for the first time in decades, one dominant motif has emerged from the campaign: race, which for nearly 30 years has been merely a muted subtheme in politics here. Since 1978, New Orleans has elected black mayors, and there has been little doubt about the racial identity of the eventual winner.This year, each of the three major candidates or their supporters have aligned themselves along racial lines, with each camp hoping it has singled out the correct, and as yet unknown, demographic.
In part, this is a measure of how far the office of mayor has been reduced in the seven months after the storm.
If this election has been reduced to nothing more than a census in a hole in a swamp, are the cultural remains of New Orleans really worth rebuilding?
Posted by: Confederate Yankee at
10:51 PM
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