I see the AP's Laurie Kellman has an article up today about the President's use of signing statements.

Compared to the earlier works that unsuccessfully attempted to gin up controversy on this subject, I find Kellman's recycling attempt to be uninspired.

Personally, I found the April 30 story in the Boston Globe to be better written from the liberal hysteria point-of-view, and so I'm a little disappointed that Kellman didn't improve it. Material collected from the April Globe article, Lithwick's timeless hyperventilating on January 30 in Slate, or the snarky January 2 article in the Washington Post, really should have enabled her to come out with a stronger post-consumer recycled product.

Instead, it appears that far from being 100% recyclable, this attempt seems destined for composting. I guess some media stories aren't all that recyclable after all.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 02:09 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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I just sent the following email to comments@whitehouse.gov,

Dear Mr. President,

I strongly urge you to listen to the request from NY Rep. Peter King, and instruct the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute editor Bill Keller, and reporters Eric Lichtblau,and James Risen of the New York Times under Title 18 > Part I > Chapter 37 > § 793. Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information, and any other applicable crimes.

I also ask that you request that the Justice Department seek out the identities of those who have leaked the existence of this program to the NY Times, and prosecute them as well.

I recognize that this is an extraordinary request, but we all recognize that we live in extraordinary times. A major newspaper has deemed itself the ultimate gatekeeper of national security information, and it then disclosed information about a specific program, hence destroying it's effectiveness.

Investigating and aggressively prosecuting these crimes will hopefully reign in those who seek to profit from disclosing classified information, and it will hopefully spare the lives of Americans such disclosures put in jeopardy.

Thank you respectfully and sincerely,

Bob Owens
Confederate Yankee Blog
http://confederateyankee.mu.nu

If you, too feel that the New York Times went over the line, I'd suggest sending along an email of your own.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:10 PM | Comments (17) | Add Comment
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New York Times editor Bill Keller has offered up a vapid dodge for his once great newspaper's repeated disclosures of anti-terror programs, blaming the messengers for how poorly his message was received:

I don't always have time to answer my mail as fully as etiquette demands, but our story about the government's surveillance of international banking records has generated some questions and concerns that I take very seriously. As the editor responsible for the difficult decision to publish that story, I'd like to offer a personal response.

Some of the incoming mail quotes the angry words of conservative bloggers and TV or radio pundits who say that drawing attention to the government's anti-terror measures is unpatriotic and dangerous. (I could ask, if that's the case, why they are drawing so much attention to the story themselves by yelling about it on the airwaves and the Internet.) Some comes from readers who have considered the story in question and wonder whether publishing such material is wise. And some comes from readers who are grateful for the information and think it is valuable to have a public debate about the lengths to which our government has gone in combatting [sic] the threat of terror.

You will note there is no link to Keller's excuse. My tiny contribution to their readership (and hence advertising revenue) is infinitesimal, but even that was too much. I will not link the NY Times again.

In any event, the Keller obfuscation satisfied very few people, including President Bush who lambasted the Times just a few moments ago:

"For people to leak that program and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America," Bush said. He said the disclosure of the program "makes it harder to win this war on terror."

[snip]

"Congress was briefed, and what we did was fully authorized under the law," Bush said, talking with reporters in the Roosevelt Room after meeting with groups that support U.S. troops in Iraq.
"We're at war with a bunch of people who want to hurt the United States of America," the president said. "What we were doing was the right thing."

Bill Keller is blind to this fact. "Right" doesn't matter, and it often seems, "right" is the enemy. Getting the President—hurting Bush, bringing down this Administration—seems to be the primary focus of the New York Times under Bill Keller's leadership.

The offending Times article publicized and hence destroyed an effective and legal way of tracking and disrupting those who finance Islamic terrorism, solely so that it could stick a thumb in the eye of George Bush.

Bill Keller has visions of a Bush Administration hobbled, embarrassed, and ineffective. What his newspaper's disclosures do to tip off terrorists and enable their success at the possible cost of American lives doesn't apparent enter into this blind man's view.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 11:38 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The June 14, 2006 NY Times editorial Detainees in Despair Op-ed by Mourad Benchellali was lapped up unquestioningly by liberal blogs, who used the editorial to decry the evils of the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

On June 15, 2006, a NY Times news story states that the Benchellali family was convicted in France of trying to build chemical weapons for attacks on Paris landmarks. Convicted so far are his father, mother, two brothers, and 19 other people.

Does anyone doubt that Mourad would have been in the middle of the French terrorist plot with the rest of his family if he weren't cooling his heels in Gitmo?

I sense a new marketing campaign by the Adminstration:

"Guantanamo Bay: Keeping terrorists out of the prisons they deserve to be in since 2002."

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 12:02 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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As you can see in the screen capture above, CNN appears almost disconsolent that Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike late yesterday afternoon, lamenting with the headline, 'al-Zarqawi Betrayed.'

CNN also shows a prominent picture on the CNN.com home page not of al-Zarqawi, or of celebrating Iraqis, or of President George Bush, or of Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki, or anything else of major importance to this story, but focuses instead of neighboring home destroyed in the airstrike.

It seems that CNN would like to focus on something, perhaps anything other than marking al-Zarqawi's death as a victory for the coalition, and the network that turned a blind eye to Saddam's terrorism seemed almost delighted to feature a video clip breathlessly proclaiming "(Watch how attacks turned nearby houses to heaps of cinder blocks --3:23)".

Whether more sympathy for the devil or corporate echoes of Eason Jordan disgraceful tenure, CNN seems bound and determined to tarnish any positive news coming out of Iraq, even news as big as the death of a terrorist mastermind.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 04:25 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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Perhaps Juan Cole should call his blog Poorly Informed Comment:

[my bold]

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced Thursday morning that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi had been killed, along with 7 aides, in a gun battle with US and Iraqi troops at Baqubah.

Of course, the article Juan Cole linked to said nothing of the sort:

Al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, has been killed in a joint U.S. and Iraqi military raid north of Baghdad, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced on Thursday...

How he could get the most basic of facts wrong—that al-Zarqawi was killed in an airstrike—in such a widely reported story, is absolutely astounding.

Perhaps he's having translation issues again?

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:02 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Former CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather apparently advocates the killing of newsmen who report on suspected war crimes.

In "Lone Star," an unauthorized bio of Rather out this September, Alan Weisman writes that [Morley] Safer "has not been a friend of Rather's for years, since their days in Vietnam." The final straw came when Rather took over for Safer not long after Safer's jolting report about the burning of a Vietnam village by a platoon of U.S. Marines.

"When Rather replaced me . . . he went to a group of Marines and said, 'If I were you guys, I would have shot him.' Or words to that effect," Safer tells Weisman. "And that my report should never have gone on the air." Asked whether Rather had ripped his fellow newsman to cozy up with the troops, Safer bristles, "Who the hell knows why? Have I ever confronted him about it? No. Now we just have a polite relationship."

Of course, this might not mean that Gunga Dan would support shooting today's reporters.

He might just have a different perspective on this war entirely.

Praise be to AllahPundit for the link.

Posted by: Confederate Yankee at 10:29 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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