Fred Korematsu, 1919-2005

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Chris Clarke, poster at Orcinus, points out that Fred Korematsu has passed away. The story:

After finally getting his conviction overturned in the early 1980s for opposing internment orders during the war, Korematsu helped win a national apology and reparations for internment camp survivors and their families in 1988.

He was honored by President Clinton in 1998 with the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

"In the long history of our country's constant search for justice, some names of ordinary citizens stand for millions of souls — Plessy, Brown, Parks," Clinton said at the time. "To that distinguished list today we add the name of Fred Korematsu."

Here's what Korematsu had to say about Michelle Malkin:

But now the old accusations are back. Fox News media personality Michelle Malkin claims that some Japanese Americans were spies during World War II. Based upon her suspicions, Malkin claims the internment of all Japanese Americans was not such a bad idea after all. She goes on to claim that racial profiling of Arab Americans today is justified by the need to fight terrorism. According to Malkin, it is OK to take away an entire ethnic group's civil rights because some individuals are suspect. Malkin argues for reviving the old notion of guilt by association.

And another David Neiwert link:

The lingering shadow that was cast on American law by the Japanese-American internment camps was foreseen in Justice Jackson’s Korematsu dissent, in passages that would have an especially prescient ring after Sept. 11:

Much is said of the danger to liberty from the Army program for deporting and detaining these citizens of Japanese extraction. But a judicial construction of the due process clause that will sustain this order is a far more subtle blow to liberty than the promulgation of the order itself. A military order, however unconstitutional, is not apt to last longer than the military emergency. Even during that period a succeeding commander may revoke it all. But once a judicial opinion rationalizes such an order to show that it conforms to the Constitution, or rather rationalizes the Constitution to show that the Constitution sanctions such an order, the Court for all time has validated the principle of racial discrimination in criminal procedure and of transplanting American citizens. The principle then lies about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need.

Update: Eric Muller.

Rest in peace

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From the CNN report...

Kathy Dorrell, 33, from Temple, Georgia, has been at the hospice since Saturday with her husband and baby daughter.

"I know Terri has a new life, a new body. She's singing, she's dancing, she's praising God," Dorrell said.

This is a view to which I happen to subscribe...which is the very reason I asked this question. I still don't have an answer. It doesn't really matter any more, thank God...


...until the next time.

Request for contact

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If there's anyone out there who attended Oberlin College between, say, 1986 and 1992, please e-mail me. All will be explained.

Also, please to be assisting of completion of account transfer of US$30M from deposed leader of Kreplachistan here I trust good will

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Attending a funeral is not a great moodsetter for reading Michelle Malkin. Luckily, Liberal Avenger has provided me with some sort of blog chain letter to pass on that looks like fun, so here goes:

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?

Upyernoz says this means "what book would you want burned"; LA says it's both that and "what book would you like to have memorized." I'll go with LA's version.

Burned: (it goes without saying I don't approve of book-burning, right?) Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand

Memorized: Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant (I've never been able to actually read the thing, so I'd like to have it memorized.)

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

As a(n):

• Impossibly nerdy adolescent: Leetah from Elfquest
• Pre-married young adult: Lisa Miller (as played by Maura Tierney) from Newsradio
• Presumably more mature married guy: Lenina Crowe from Brave New World (armchair psychiatrists probably would have a field day with this one)
  

The last book you bought is:

• Basket Case - Carl Hiaasen
  

What are you currently reading?

I multi-task:

• On Bullshit - Harry Frankfurt (as provided by LA from the Amazon Wish List)
• Loving Without Giving In - Ron Mock (my old professor; one of the best responses to terrorism I've seen yet)
  

Five books you would take to a desert island.

1. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman(I've read it at least ten times and laughed out loud every time)
2. The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins (The first ever detective novel)
   
3. The Bible (So I'm a religious leftie. Sue me.)
4. The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Sounds uncreative? The Bible and Shakespeare? Here's the thing - I read fast. I need lots of words if I'm gonna be on a desert island. It's either these or a single-volume version of the Congressional Record, 1776-2004)
5. The Real Frank Zappa Book - Frank Zappa (Biography and artistic vision of the - believe it - finest composer of the 20th Century. Not sure he'd be too impressed with my choice of the Bible, though.)
   

Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons) and why?

1. Mykeru - I want to see if he'll refuse to get involved in something so banal.
2. Jesus' General - I'd like to see what the Christian and thoroughly non-gay Right has to say to this question.
3. Crystal - She needs a change of subject.
   

A day off for Auguste

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Family funeral today. No posting till tomorrow (or at least very, very late tonight.)

Post mentioning David Neiwert #2

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For a response to Malkin's new column, I'm going to defer to Mr. Neiwert again. The column:

April 1st, in case you haven't heard, is the launch of the Minuteman Project, an all-volunteer effort by law-abiding American citizens to call attention to the nation's wide open southern border. Hundreds of Americans from New York to Michigan to California will travel down to the U.S.-Mexico border for a month to monitor illegal aliens and alert immigration enforcement officials if they witness law-breaking.

Call it the mother of all neighborhood watch programs.

Malkin goes on to explain how the border militia is simply "exercising its free speech rights" and won't be involved in any actions beyond observation and reporting. But that liberal, America-hating ACLU has gotten involved and is oppressing these law-abiding patriots who will be armed only with cell phones and binoculars.

Neiwert disagrees:

The last "call to arms" issued by one of the Minuteman Project founders resulted in a handful of volunteers and unproven contentions that they had detained more than 4,000 illegal entrants...

In November 2002, Minuteman Project founder Chris Simcox said dozens of people would come out for his much-debated Civil Homeland Defense, the Tombstone-based group that was supposed to patrol the border, gather up illegal entrants, turn them over to the U.S. Border Patrol and show up the federal government for not doing its job.

The group has seized about 150 illegal entrants, a far cry from the 4,000 Simcox contends have been apprehended since he started two years ago, according to Miguel Escobar, Mexican consul in Douglas. The consulate responds to every citizen's encounter.

Whether it's 150 or 4,000, it's not much of a stretch to doubt that the Minutemen will content themselves with "monitoring" and "alerting."

The last time there was an organized militia roaming the border, American citizens were dragged out of their tents and threatened for the crime of being brown along the border. I think I know why the ACLU is nervous.

Post mentioning David Neiwert #1

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Neiwert writes an open letter to Michelle regarding HR 698, the bill that would end the practice of providing citizenship to all babies born on American soil.

So far -- and hey, it's early in the thing, so maybe I'm just impatient -- you don't seem to have managed to address H.R. 698. Nor have you seem to have written on it at your regular blog. Though I see your colleagues at VDare have done so enthusiastically.

But everyone has to wonder if there's at least a possibility that, were this bill to pass, you yourself could be stripped of your citizenship, Michelle Maglalang Malkin. After all, it doesn't take much to be declared an "illegal alien"; all you have to do is miss some paperwork or lack certain documents, and under this legislation, voila! Your children are no longer citizens.

Actually, Michelle has addressed the issue of "anchor babies" in the past.

In the Southwest, everyone has a story of heavily pregnant women crossing the Mexican border to deliver their "anchor babies." At East Coast hospitals, tales of South Korean "obstetric tourists" abound. (An estimated 5,000 South Korean anchor babies are born in the US every year). And, of course, there's a terrorism angle.

The time is ripe to reassess drive-by citizenship and what it means to be an American.

Neiwert:

And like most of us descended within a few generations from immigrant forebears, I'm sure this smacks of a betrayal of our heritage as a nation of immigrants to you just as it does to me. It's one thing to argue for smarter immigration; it's another to deny children their traditional birthright. A birthright I'm sure you treasure as deeply as do I.

Maybe you can clear up the confusion for us.

Historical context is for the birds, man

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At the top of Malkin's new group effort is a quote from Ronald Reagan:

"This country has lost control of its borders. No country can do that and survive."

I had to wonder under what circumstances Reagan said that. So I did a little Googling and found out: He had just signed an amnesty. From, of all places, Newsmax:

In 1986, Congress passed and Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act. One tough measure made it a crime for any employer to knowingly hire an illegal alien. But the law also granted an amnesty to all illegal aliens currently in the country, and it created a new classification of "seasonal agricultural worker."

Rather than solve the problem of immigration, the law only increased it. Formerly illegal workers who had been given amnesty and could now remain in the U.S. left the low-paying jobs they had previously filled. That left many unfilled positions, which meant a new crop of immigrants were needed to fill them again.

In short, the 1986 amnesty established a vicious circle of immigration.

I don't put much stock in Newsmax's view of the world, needless to say. But I do find it funny that the cornerstone quote for Michelle's new anti-immigration effort is referring to the same kind of policy that she is desperately fighting against.

On the trail of the liberal ghouls

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Fresh from her Roger Ailes snafu, Michelle helps break this story:

Now, the tin-foilers at the Democratic Underground are starting in: Yes, this latest natural disaster is another Bush/Rovian conspiracy!

No link in her post to these legions of DU comments. After following a link at her hat tip, we find this:

Maybe Bush was testing nukes again.

That's it. There's not even any text in the message, it's just a subject. There's even a little tin-foil-hatted emoticon in there. There's a few replies to the idea, but it's not exactly a major meme.

Michelle has clearly demonstrated her failure to recognize irony, but this time, I think she just figured no one would notice.

But as another DU poster puts it:

What wingnut will be the first to say this is God expressing anger over Schiavo?

Well, here's a blog that seems - at least from the title - to be dedicated to the link between Terri and every natural disaster known to man. People who live with glass nutcases shouldn't throw stones.

Oh, goody

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Wow. My workload just doubled in size.

From the announcement post:

Readers ask me "What can I do?" and express frustration with their inability to make a difference in the immigration debate. Quit complaining. Support one of these citizen efforts. Or start your own. Read up on what made the Prop. 200 campaign in Arizona a winner. Then start your own. Read our blog. Or start your own.

Your country's sovereignty and security are in your hands.

Ah, fantastic.

Immigration is not my specialty nor the particular reason I started this blog. But I will endeavor to fisk the immigration blog at least on occasion because I love you all that much.

To start off with, here's a post on the immigration blog that has nothing whatsoever to do with immigration. It's titled "OUR FRIENDS IN MEXICO", and it's about the behavior of Mexican soccer fans.

Does the inclusion of a post which exists only to complain about Mexicans - not immigration - in a blog called the "Immigration Blog" tell us something about the motives of she who started the blog?

I report. You decide.

Update: LA notes another fun one. In case you still need convincing as to the motives of the fine folks at the immigration blog, how about the first ever post?

When left-wing high school students turned out in Paris on March 8th to protest the latest education reform bill (the "loi Fillon"), they had a surprise waiting for them. All along the demonstration's route were small packs of black and Arab teenagers – and they hadn’t come to join the protest...

Meet the "casseurs" – literally, "breakers" or "smashers" – the violent children of the run-down suburbs, or "banlieus", that house much of the region’s immigrant and immigrant-descended population.

David Orland's opening salvo from the immigration blog, which purports to be about illegal immigration in the United States: Not about the US, and not about illegal immigration. It is about swarthy people, though...

What a difference an issue makes, part 2

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Bad.

Good.

(Part one here)

It's still technically the weekend...

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...because I haven't gone to work yet. Here's an off-topic post by Tristero (via Neiwert) that says we're no longer on the slippery slope to fascism.

Hooray!

Oh, wait...

On March 21, 2005 12:44 am, the extremists in charge of the US Government showed the world that when they don't like a law or a legally valid court decision - ANY law, ANY court decision, for ANY reason, no matter how carefully adjudicated - they are prepared to rip it up. There is a word for this.

The word is fascism...

Today, my fellow Americans, we woke up in a new United States, a fascist America in which a citizen's rights and liberties are inscribed not in a set of laws but are entirely subject to the whims of the extremists running the Federal legislative and executive branches.

I don't know if I agree fully with Tristero, but he makes enough good points to make me wonder if I'm just in denial. Read the whole thing©.

What a difference an issue makes

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Michelle now:

[T]he mainstream media has ignored the amazing stories of pro-life activists who have been keeping vigil outside Terri Schiavo's hospice--people like Steve and Tony Sakac, the Withey family, and the Anderson sisters who won't ever appear on the front page of the New York Times or Washington Post...

Instead, we get pieces like [an] Associated Press report...which treats pro-life activists as freaks and editorializes disapprovingly that demonstrators have brought children "some too young to truly understand why they are there."

Michelle then:

The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to "mark the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq." They will do so by clogging the streets, tying up police resources and leaving behind a trail of anti-Bush propaganda litter.

(All emphases mine)

Read the posts you link to

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I'm not going to get in to fisking this ugly post - ostensibly about defending Tom DeLay from charges of hypocrisy regarding right-to-die in the Terri Schiavo case, but really about calling liberal bloggers "ghouls" - except for one part of it:

The Times' journalistic irresponsibility is ugly enough. But the glee with which liberal bloggers are greeting the L.A. Times story and Rep. DeLay's painful family experience is even more appalling:

The Hypocrisy of a Texas Bug-Chaser, squealed one left-wing blogger.

The problem? That post is by the non-Fox News Roger Ailes - and has absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with right-to-die. It's about Tom DeLay's hypocrisy on the issue of tort reform. From the LA Times, via Roger's post:

The case thrust Congressman DeLay into decidedly unfamiliar territory -- the list of plaintiffs on the front page of a civil complaint. He is an outspoken defender of business against what he calls the crippling effects of "predatory, self-serving litigation."

The DeLay family litigation sought unspecified compensation for, among other things, the dead father's "physical pain and suffering, mental anguish and trauma," and the mother's grief, sorrow and loss of companionship.

I misread Ann Coulter earlier. Malkin didn't read Roger Ailes at all.

Weekend Portlandblogging

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While on the way back from here:


(I didn't take this picture. It was pouring down rain today, for one thing)

with my family today, I thought of a stunningly good, biting, acerbic, off-topic post.

Unfortunately, it has completely escaped my mind. I don't remember what it had to do with, what the punchline was, what language I intended to write it in, or anything.

No point. Pretty much just wanted to brag that I went to Multnomah Falls and you didn't.

Now this is callous

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Sometimes even I don't want to read her:

The race card-playing continues in the Friday A section of the Washington Post, under the eye-roll-inducing headline:

Native Americans Criticize Bush's Silence

Response to School Shooting Is Contrasted With President's Intervention in Schiavo Case

Ceci Connolly writes:

MINNEAPOLIS, March 24 -- Native Americans across the country -- including tribal leaders, academics and rank-and-file tribe members -- voiced anger and frustration Thursday that President Bush has responded to the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with silence.

Three days after 16-year-old Jeff Weise killed nine members of his Red Lake tribe before taking his own life, grief-stricken American Indians complained that the White House has offered little in the way of sympathy for the tribe situated in the uppermost region of Minnesota.

"From all over the world we are getting letters of condolence, the Red Cross has come, but the so-called Great White Father (Emphasis hers) in Washington hasn't said or done a thing," said Clyde Bellecourt, a Chippewa Indian who is the founder and national director of the American Indian Movement here. "When people's children are murdered and others are in the hospital hanging on to life, he should be the first one to offer his condolences. . . . If this was a white community, I don't think he'd have any problem doing that."

Kneel, kneel, before the gods of political correctness, oh, Great White Father in Washington!(Emphasis mine)

Do I really have to comment on this? Is this really the right's media darling?

...Oh, and she quotes some other idiot (no link, you can find on her post):

"Do we really expect the president to express his condolences to every murder victim in the country, or to mention every serious crime that takes place? What exactly is he supposed to say here? Columbine fit into Bill Clinton's gun control agenda as Terri Schiavo fit into Bush's "sanctity of life" agenda. What public policy position do these murders relate to?"

There's only one problem. Bill Clinton really did believe in gun control; as for Bush's "sanctity of life agenda", don't make me laugh.

Nonstory of the millennium

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Michelle Malkin, about some Ward Churchill press conference:

I'll liveblog anything newsworthy...

Earth to Michelle: THERE IS NOTHING NEWSWORTHY ABOUT WARD CHURCHILL.

Reader Doug asks: "Will this go on so long that he ends up lionized by the myopic historical lens that warped Che Guevara? Will 'Ward Lives!' become the t-shirt slogan of the future?"

Argh!

"Go on so long?" The only thing keeping this alive is people like Malkin. The rest of us have gone back to comfortably ignoring it. 'Ward Lives' only in the fevered, paranoid minds of the right.

Well, one more

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Libertarian-leaning conservatives are turning their backs on the unconstitutional and despicable actions of the religious right (and those Democrats too scared to stand up to them) in the Terri Schiavo case.

When you read Maureen Dowd, and say to your self, "Shit. She is 100% right," it is time for some serious soul-searching.

Michelle is certainly not exempted from this awakening.

Malkin should take note: Those strange letters appended to these "experts'" names, like "M.D." or "Ph.D." aren't the cryptic foreign abbreviations of leftist guerilla organizations in cahoots with MSM. They're credentials.

But why I really posted about this is that the above libertarian blogger caught something that I had missed.

Ann Coulter asks: "So how about a Republican governor's sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida?"

Oh, come on. You probably know the full text of Coulter's ravings by now:

Democrats have called out armed federal agents in order to: (1) prevent black children from attending a public school in Little Rock, Ark. (National Guard); (2) investigate an alleged violation of federal gun laws in Waco, Texas (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms); and (3) deport a small boy to Cuba (Immigration and Naturalization Service).

One of these things is not like the other. Two of the three, of course, were doing what we like to call "their jobs", and the fact that they pretty much botched them in those instances are beside the point.

As far as the National Guard goes, anyone who claims not to understand that the Arkansas school integration was a special case, 180-some years and a civil war in the making, is either a liar or insane. Or both.

Malkin's link - out of context and to a world-class nutjob - is just a sign of how far over the deep end she's gone on the Schiavo issue. Look for further backlash as this goes deeper...

Update: Okay, I know that the INS thing was a little more complicated than "doing their job." Then again, I've never known Malkin to complain about a deportation - not even Elian's.

Update 2: Well, apparently my reading comprehension skills need some work. Coulter was referring to segregationist Democrat Governor Orval Faubus, who, prior to President Eisenhower's federalization of the Arkansas National Guard to forcibly integrate, had dispatched that same body to prevent integration. That's a sequence of events that I learned once, but had forgotten.

I had thought Coulter was saying "if we can integrate schools, why can't we 'save' Terri?" What she was actually doing was accusing today's Democrats of racism by inheritance. It doesn't get any truer with repetition.

Any explanations?

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Fred Vincy of Stone Court calls attention to a case that's right in Michelle's wheelhouse:

The federal government has proudly announced that Wal-Mart has agreed to pay $11,000,000 to avoid criminal charges for using illegal immigrants to clean floors at stores in 21 states...

$11,000,000 is a lot of money, to be sure. So much money, in fact, that it equals Wal-Mart's net sales for...20 minutes. The equivalent, to one of Wal-Mart's minimum-wage employees, of about $1.75.

I have no idea why she's not all over this. At first, I thought maybe she was suffering from the traditional right-wing "Wal-Mart can do no wrong" syndrome, but she's complained about Wal-Mart before.

At my local Wal-Mart, nationwide employer of workers of dubious immigration status, I listened as a checkout lady from Africa blabbed endlessly in her native language to two visitors hanging out by her station. She didn't bother greeting me or looking at me. When I asked for a bag of items that she had forgotten to put in my cart, she ignored me. "Pardon me, can I have my bag?" I asked. "WAH?!" she finally said with a snarl, offended that I had interrupted her conversation.

Apparently, illegal immigrants are responsible for the culture of bad customer service in this country. Or not.

Somehow, I don't think she just missed this story, considering her nose for illegal immigrant-related news...

Aieee

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Aieeee. (Warning: Aieeeee.)

Picture-which-looks-like-something-Mykeru-would-have-created (and that's a compliment) aside, Malkin lays out the dirt on school shooter Jeff Weise. A few "highlights" (emphasis Michelle's):

Under "More about me," Weise wrote:

Latest News: On anti-depressants. Seeing a therapist... Thats about it, I got a brand new pair of cuts on my wrists that are gonna turn into beautiful scars some day.

Yes, yes, we get the point. He was an emo listener.

Could anything have stopped this guy from executing his bloodbath?

I find it instructive that Malkin highlights Weise's cutting, his marijuana use, and his supposed interest in zombies, but not his background. (via Michelle, but she doesn't exactly highlight this stuff)

"My mom used to abuse me a lot when I was little," Weise wrote in a posting attributed to him on another website. "She used to drink excessively, too. She would tell me I was a mistake, and she would say so many things that it's hard to ... think of them without crying."

His mother is in a mental institution, and his father committed suicide. A recipe for serious mental illness if I ever heard one. This doesn't seem to enter into Michelle's version of the narrative, though.

Update: David Neiwert posits a sociocultural cause for Weise's actions, too - but this one rings a lot truer than reefer madness and Sunny Day Real Estate.

Hopefully my last post on Schiavo

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However you feel about the Terri Schiavo case, one fact is indisputable: The mainstream media coverage of the matter has been abysmal.

And with that, Michelle Malkin begins a column filled with more disinformation and spin than almost anything else she's written. And let's remember who we're talking about here.

Take a widely publicized ABC News poll released on Monday that supposedly showed strong public opposition to any Washington intervention in Terri's case...

The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never been on "life support."...Terri was on a feeding tube.

Well, in legal, medical, and semantic circles, Michelle, that means Terri was on life support. The courts say so, the Florida legislature says so, and the fact that the only thing supporting her life is the feeding tube says so. But, of course, you have an answer for that.

And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow on her own as well.

Via Majikthise, here's Ampersand on those "medical caretakers" who make such exciting claims:

There are more speech pathologists and psychologists than there are neurologists. And the most qualified experts in this group, seem to take care not to state an opinion...

Not one of the 17 experts reports having viewed the uncut films of Terri (and I doubt any of them did); in fact, several of them specify that they viewed the short clips available on the internet or seen on TV...

Obviously, I am not a medical expert. But you don’t have to be a doctor to understand that you can’t refute an argument if you don’t address it. These 17 expert opinions do not address any of the arguments for why Terri experiences no cognition, feelings or thoughts at all; nor do they address the court’s reasoning regarding the videos. They do nothing but repeat long-discredited arguments; which is great if the goal is to be able to say “look, 17 doctors say blah blah blah,” but not useful if the goal is to meaningfully discuss Terri’s medical condition.

Or maybe Malkin was referring to an actual caretaker, Carla Sauer Iyer, who Malkin quotes:

"Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri’s death. Michael would say "When is she going to die?," "Has she died yet?" and "When is that bitch gonna die?"

The problem with Iyer's testimony, as a commenter on TalkLeft notes, is that although she worked at Palm Gardens from 1993-1997, Iyer apparently didn't come forward with her testimony until August of 2003. And why is she the only caretaker to say this?

Whether or not Michael Schiavo is the murderous asshole Malkin and the right claim he is, it doesn't change the fact that Terri Schiavo is, tragically, no more. Most of her brain has atrophied and been replaced with cerebrospinal fluid. Overwhelming medical opinion and the Florida courts agree that Ms. Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state.

But even that's not the overall point, although it is what's wrong with Malkin's column. No, the point of the Terri Schiavo case, the reason I'm expending one iota of energy on what is essentially a private tragedy within a family, is that the Republicans have once again betrayed everything they claim to stand for: small government, the sanctity of marriage, states' rights, privacy.

"It's simply outrageous," said Charles Fried, a law professor at Harvard who served as the solicitor general in the Reagan administration. "It is abusive and disgraceful. Even a senator has an obligation to use his power honestly and not to engage in subterfuge and pretense."

In remarks to reporters yesterday, Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas, said the measures were needed to save Ms. Schiavo from "an act of barbarism," referring to the removal of her feeding tube.

Experts in constitutional law and federal procedure said the Congressional actions were unprecedented.

"I can't think of any parallels," said Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard who often supports liberal positions.

"McCarthy, for all his abuses, did not reach out and try to undo the processes of a state court," Professor Tribe said, referring to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose cold war hearings into communism were widely viewed as Congressional overreaching.

Update: Adam Nagourney via Atrios:

This is a clash between the social conservatives and the process conservatives, and I would count myself a process conservative," said David Davenport of the Hoover Institute, a conservative research organization. "When a case like this has been heard by 19 judges in six courts and it's been appealed to the Supreme Court three times, the process has worked - even if it hasn't given the result that the social conservatives want. For Congress to step in really is a violation of federalism..."

"This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy," [Rep. Christopher] Shays said. "There are going to be repercussions from this vote. There are a number of people who feel that the government is getting involved in their personal lives in a way that scares them."

Wait...the Republicans have been hijacked by social "conservatives"? Why wasn't I alerted?

It's (just barely) a matter of degrees

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Michelle is disturbed that Google News links to a Nazi website, while not to LGF. So is Glenn. So, for that matter, is S.Z.:

We should probably have a discussion about what it says about the blogosphere (or about Glenn, for that matter) if LittleGreenFootballs is considered mainstream, but for now let me just agree that it seems unfair of Google News to add one racist site to their index of "legitimate news service" and to turn away another.

It's still hypocrisy

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I wasn't going to blog about Terri Schiavo now that the weekend is over, but Malkin wants to debunk this meme so badly, I figured a couple more points ought to be made.

Tom Maguire beats me to the punch in dissecting this popular new meme. Read his entire reality check.

Maguire raises some interesting questions, but I'm not sure he settles the matter.

To make a long story short, Maguire claims that

No evidence at all is presented that the decision in the case of Sun Hudson was made based on finances; none of the newspaper accounts linked by Mr. Kleiman refer to the mother's insurance status at all. The entire basis for this accusation seems to be the comment made by the Chief Medical Officer at St. Luke's...in discussing the Spiro Nikolouzos case...

Here's a legal brief that seems to support this view about the Texas Futile Care Law. The CMO was probably referring to money as a reason that no hospitals would accept Mr. Nikolouzos, which invoked the "10-day rule" under the law.According to LeanLeft, to whom Malkin also links, the confusion arises from a series of Houston Chronicle articles with headlines like "Decision hinges on patient’s ability to pay."

The truth is, predictably, very different and much more complicated.

Okay, so maybe this is a "bad meme rising", as LeanLeft would have it. However...

Two articles by Leigh Hopper in the Chronicle have painted the respective patients’ cases in emotional terms:

[T]he family of Spiro Nikolouzos fights to keep St. Luke’s from turning off the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping the 68-year-old grandfather alive. . . .

St. Luke’s notified Jannette Nikolouzos in a March 1 letter that it would withdraw life-sustaining care of her husband of 34 years . . .

* * * * * * * * * * *

The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open and smacked his lips, according to his mother.

Then at 2 p.m. today, a medical staffer at Texas Children’s Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his Sept. 25 birth. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died.

“I talked to him, I told him that I loved him. Inside of me, my son is still alive,” Wanda Hudson told reporters afterward. “This hospital was considered a miracle hospital. When it came to my son, they gave up in six months …. They made a terrible mistake.”

She also insists on quoting the patients’ distraught family members on the question of the patient’s medical status:

Spiro Nikolouzos, a retired electrical engineer for an oil drilling company, has been an invalid since 2001, when he experienced bleeding related to a shunt in his brain. Jannette Nikolouzos, 58, had cared for her husband at their Friendswood home, feeding him via a tube in his stomach. Her husband couldn’t speak, she said, but recognized family members and showed emotion.

On Feb. 10, the area around the tube started bleeding, and Nikolouzos rushed her husband to St. Luke’s for emergency care. Early the next morning, she said, the hospital called and said he had “coded” and stopped breathing and had to be placed on a ventilator.

A neurologist told her, she said, that he is not brain-dead and the part of the brain that controls breathing is still functioning. Although his eyes were open and fixed when he first was placed on the ventilator, he has started blinking, she said. . . .

* * * * * * * * * * *

“I wanted y’all to see my [infant] son for yourself,” Hudson told reporters. “So you could see he was actually moving around. He was conscious.”

Note that in neither of the quotes above is the family member’s statement reflective of medical reality. The fact that a patient with severe neurological damage blinks or moves in no way indicates that the patient is “conscious” or has intact personality or cognitive functions.

Are we spotting any parallels? Maybe with a statement like this?

"We laugh together, we cry together, we smile together, we talk together," Mary Schindler told reporters. "Please, please, please save my little girl."

So where is the outrage, as Mark Kleiman asks? The Texas cases may not be based on their inability to pay, but they're still cases of the plug being pulled over the objections of family members. The question still remains: Why is Terri Schiavo the only one with a prayer vigil outside her care facility?

Perspective

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One Last Weekend Offtopicism

The Liberal Avenger:

Probably the most important factor that kept me away from this social evil in the long term - and it is a testament to the power of this drug that I might consider this more important that commitments to job or family - is that eventually I ended up in a part of the country where crystal methamphetamine simply doesn't exist...The Ghost of Tom Joad - the thing that haunts the poor, uneducated, white working-class in California - is crystal methamphetamine. The whole place is haunted. If I'd spent the last 13 years there instead of in New England, with a quarter-gram $20 bag of meth as close as the nearest poor hollow-cheeked, toothless, Wal-Mart workin' wage-warrior bastard, I wonder if I'd have been able to say no for so long.

Send Michelle a White Feather?

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Rox Populi:

Last month, Juan Cole drew a little heat when one of his readers wondered why ChickenHack Jonah Goldberg wasn't "in the kill zone" in Iraq. In months past, I've also wondered why more of our nation's most vociferous supporters of the Iraq War hadn't adhered to the Rox Pop "Suit Up or Shut Up" doctrine.

Okay, some of them had a legit excuse --they were too old. Michelle Malkin, for example, turned 34 just last October. But according to a report in today's Stars and Stripes, the road has been paved for her and other older ChickenHacks to "suit up" after all...

Since Ms. Malkin has recently used her blog to denounce the "New York Times' bleeding heart profile of military deserters," I'd like to know when she'll start showing real support for the troops by joining up

Also of note is this post, in which Malkin asks her readers to respond to the military recruiting crisis. One of Roxanne's readers is right on top of it.

Why wait for Michelle to take the initiative? I just went to the Army National Guard website and gave them all her info. She should be getting a call from a recruiter very soon...

(Thanks LA for the tip)

"A conservative government is an organized hypocrisy"

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Benjamin Disraeli said that, and Digby lays out the evidence:

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schivos [sic] because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

Via Atrios.

Just one question

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Weekend Offtopicism

Is Terri Schiavo's soul still in her body?

If so, why is it right to keep it trapped indefinitely in an atrophied, useless shell?

If not, what difference does this all make?

And why, damn you, why are you forcing me to agree with Neal Boortz?

She's not in a coma. People recover from comas. Her condition is diagnosed as a "persistent vegetative state." There is no medical record of someone recovering from a persistent vegetative state. This is not a state of brain damage. It is, for all practical purposes, brain death...

I'm sure that there is no shortage of people who think that I'm possessed by some evil spirit. No. I'm just sad that Terri's spirit or soul .. whatever you want to call it ... is trapped in this useless body. Her parents' love has clouded their judgment. This can be understood and excused. What can't be excused is the cruelty of the so-called "right to life" movement that will allow this woman to continue to suffer [a]s long as their own needs are met.

(Via Oliver Willis and published with the full knowledge that Crystal may never come visit me again)

Heh. Indeed. Read the whole thing.

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Mykeru has a run-in with a Malkin defender apparently determined to use every blogging cliche.

Fisking? Heh.

Now THIS is funny . . . although perhaps not in the way the author meant it to be.

What happens when a smart-ass like this blows off one too many meetings off the International Brotherhood of Snarky Net Assholes? That's right, he didn't get the directive that that particular dig about something being funny, but not as intended, was officially retired. Using it these days is sort of like walking around thinking the crappy little digital camera in your cell phone is cool.

MALKIN CLAIMS UNDISCREDITED STATISTICS ARE DISCREDITED

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Sorry. I just wanted to get into the spirit of her headline writing: KRISTOF CITES DISCREDITED ABORTION STATISTICS. Wow. Sounds definitive, doesn't it?

On the New York Times op-ed page yesterday, columnist Nicholas Kristof dredged up the debunked talking point that the number of abortions has increased since George W. Bush became President...

The notion that abortion has been rising under Bush is based on Glenn Stassen's faulty analysis of abortion trends in sixteen states.

I partially de-debunked the talking point here, and my interview with Glen Stassen is here.

As I noted in the interview, the resistance of pro-lifers to any data which might help them decrease abortions would be puzzling, if it weren't so clear. Malkin encourages people to e-mail Kristof and Okrent asking for a correction. I encourage you to e-mail them in support. Reward good behavior, as Atrios would say.

Kristof (nicholas@nytimes.com), editorial page editor Gail Collins (editorial@nytimes.com), and Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent (public@nytimes.com)

Have I no sense of decency?

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A commenter on Oliver Willis' site takes exception to my echoing Malkin's description of Peter Brimelow as her "friend", accusing me of "Left-Wing McCarthyism" for engaging in "guilt by association" "because of a casual reference to Brimelow as a friend."

Oliver rightly attempts to correct him - the issue is Malkin's syndication by VDare, not her specific relationship with any of the people I mentioned - but the point does bear a little more exploration: Am I simply complaining about the excesses of the people she works with, or is VDare itself as bad as the sum of its parts?

Well, the Southern Poverty Law Center - upon whom Malkin has relied for information in the past - thinks it's the latter. VDare is on its list of hate sites, along with VDare's parent group, the Center for American Unity. One of the reasons it made the list, joining such organizations as La Voz de Aztlan, the Council of Conservative Citizens, and Christian Identity, is as follows:

In April, VDARE took one more step toward the racist right, publishing an essay on its Web site by white supremacist Jared Taylor that dismisses "the fantasy of racial equality," claims the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "stripped Americans of the right to make free decisions," and says that "[b]lacks, in particular, riot with little provocation," unlike the far more peaceable white race.

Or am I engaged in McCarthyism again by pointing out that Jared Taylor, founder of the New Century Foundation, publishes a "journal" called "American Renaissance", which once had this to say about the New Testament's Great Commission:

[It] instructs believers to preach the Gospel to all nations -- not to invite them to settle in your neighborhood and marry your daughter. There was a time in the not too distant past when white people understood this.

Well, if that's still not enough to convince you that Malkin should be embarrassed to have her columns published on VDare.com, let's look at the site itself, shall we? Following a link entitled "Why VDare.com/the White Doe?", we happen upon, well, this, written by Peter Brimelow himself (no link, they got enough from me last time):

I have always been fascinated by the story of Virginia Dare. She was the first English child to be born in the New World, in August 1587, shortly after the founding of what was to become known as "The Lost Colony" on Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast...


Perhaps you have to have a daughter yourself to appreciate what [Virginia Dare's grandfather John] White must have felt three years later, when he finally returned from a supply trip to England...The settlement stood abandoned. Over a hundred settlers, his daughter and granddaughter among them, had vanished. He would never see them again...

But multiculturalists will be happy to know that there is always the possibility that the colonists survived, merging with the local Indians. There are fables that Virginia Dare as a young woman got involved in a love triangle with a warrior and an angry medicine man, who transformed her into a white doe.

And here the story peters out, as even Brimelow seems unwilling to define where he's actually headed in his story: This is the very first the-colored-savages-are-coming-for-your-women tale. And, as it's meant to, it just sets the tone.

But the fact is, it's the nature of the "new media": You can't separate the site from the people that write for it. While the Center for American Unity (presumably) is an actual physical entity, VDare.com exists only insofar as it's made up of people who write for it. And if Malkin is comfortable having her byline appear next to people like Jared Taylor's and Sam Francis', then she and her fans should feel comfortable with us pointing this out.

But in all fairness, just because you're a colleague doesn't mean Malkin won't go after you. Just look at her fellow Townhall.com contributor Jack Kemp.

Let's see. Steve Sailer, Jared Taylor, and Sam Francis all get a free pass, but Jack Kemp? Take the sucker down.

Column day! Column day!

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We dedicate this week's edition to this brilliant post by Rev. Mykeru. Please enjoy a less brilliant fisking of a less-than-brilliant column:

The most unhinged of left-wing activists, from breast-exposing pacifists to the conspiracy-mongers of MoveOn.org, will descend on New York, Washington and other major media markets to "mark the two-year anniversary of the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq." They will do so by clogging the streets, tying up police resources and leaving behind a trail of anti-Bush propaganda litter.

Who says the Left doesn't know how to create jobs?

Other than you? I ran a Google search for:

"the Left doesn't know how to create jobs" -site:michellemalkin.com

and came up empty. I think we're left with: Q. Who says the Left doesn't know how to create jobs? A. Only the voices in your head.

In New York, the "Troops Out Now Coalition" plans to march on Saturday from Harlem to Central Park to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's home to demonstrate against the "occupation."

Snarky, sarcastic quotes aside, everyone from Pat Buchanan to President Bush has called it an occupation. Are they "lefties" too?

Their solution for helping the Iraqi people and demonstrating American leadership: Cut and run. Now!

You can guarantee there will not be a single sign of purple ink solidarity in sight, but the dictator-luvin' ladies of Code Pink who prance around in pastel underwear will be out in full force.

First of all, never, ever spell it "luvin'", I beg of you.

Second of all, as for "purple ink solidarity", have you been taking chicken-counting lessons from Max Boot? I mean, the purple ink thing was cute, and as the Liberal Avenger notes, there are certainly reasons to be hopeful, but do you really think you can wrap the universe of possible outcomes in Iraq into that one image forever?

Along the way, the marchers will stop to harass workers at a local military recruiting station. Yes, these are the supposed peaceniks who derive pleasure from ripping yellow ribbon magnets off of minivans and throwing rocks through ROTC campus offices.

Those violent magnet-rippers!

I wonder if Malkin will link to a story about these deadly peaceniks. Here's one about magnet ripping. You will notice that a) the indymedia post from the proud magnet-ripper appears to be satire and b) he gets torn apart by most (not all) of the other indymedia posters. Doesn't quite fit your narrative, does it, Michelle?

In New Paltz, N.Y., the weekend anti-war festivities will be capped by a speech from Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y. -- the unhinged tin-foil hat wearer who continues to assert that White House adviser Karl Rove planted the bogus National Guard memos that Dan Rather wrapped himself in at CBS News.

There's that word again. Casting aspersions on a member of Congress doesn't make leaking false memos any less in character for Rove. Even so, I haven't seen a single instance of Hinchey "continuing" to assert anything.

The Bush-bashers, as always, have impeccable timing. Nothing highlights the bankrupt obstructionism of the anti-war movement more than the inspiring photos of the renaissance of freedom taking place in Lebanon. Contrast the faces of hope and defiance against terrorism pictured at the massive rallies in Beirut's Martyrs Square this week with the faces of Bush hatred and capitulation to terrorism that you'll see this weekend. Any question about who's winning?

You know, this whole "whose-protestors-are-hotter" thing is really getting tired and insulting. But if you really wanted to go there, maybe you shouldn't have posted this.

Seasoned observers who cover the War on Terror in the "blogosphere" (the increasingly influential world of Internet weblogs) have a useful term for the American Left's protesters against progress: moonbats. Perry de Havilland of the blog Samizdata (samizdata.net) defined a moonbat as "someone on the extreme edge of whatever their -ism happens to be."

Surveying this bizarre array of grim-faced parade organizers on the extreme edge of anti-Americanism, it's clear: The barking Left has been left behind. And it's driving them batty.

I wonder if she realizes that she didn't actually give the origin of the term, which is weak at best. And those closing puns are just sick. Sick, I say!

Update: Small edit for clarity. And via the Liberal Avenger, Juan Cole has some things to say about how much credit Bush can really take for those hot protestors in Lebanon.

Who keeps company with wolves will learn to howl

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Just as when you leave Park Avenue and descend into the subway, when you enter the INS waiting rooms you find yourself in an underworld that is not just teeming but is also almost entirely colored.

...What impact will they all have on America?

--Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster

Peter Brimelow: Malkin's friend, former Forbes editor, author, racial obsessionist...

He described the role of race as "elemental, absolute, fundamental." He said that white Americans should demand that U.S. immigration quotas be changed to allow in mostly whites. He argued that spending tax dollars on anything related to multiculturalism was "subversive." He called foreign immigrants "weird aliens with dubious habits."

...and editor of VDare.com.

In the past, I've given Malkin guff about WorldNetDaily and GOPUSA carrying her columns. But VDare quite simply takes the cake. Some of her fellow columnists include:

• Bryanna Bevens, who once suggested renaming "Hispanic Heritage Month" "National Hispanic Crime Prevention Awareness Month"
• Paul Gottfried: You know how liberals are accused of using "neoconservative" as an antisemitic term? Paul Gottfried is a guy who actually does that.
• James Fulford, who railed against an Arab-American protecting George W. Bush. As James Taranto put it, "If Fulford had been around in 1944, would he have complained that the supreme allied commander in Europe was a 'German'?"
• Steve Sailer
• And last but not least despicable, the late Sam Francis, who before he passed away February 15 claimed that "neither 'slavery' nor 'racism' as an institution is a sin." In a column still carried by VDare, he responded to the Terrell Owens - Nicolette Sheridan "controversy" like so:

  [T]he Owens-Sheridan ad was interracial and brazenly so—if only morals and taste had been the targets, the producers could easily have found white actresses who are less obviously Nordic than the golden-locked Miss Sheridan, but Nordic is what the ad's producers no doubt wanted...
  
  The message of the ad was that white women are eager to have sex with black men, that they should be eager, and that black men should take them up on it...
  
  But the ad's message also was that interracial sex is normal and legitimate, a fairly radical concept for both the dominant media as well as its audience.

  Because the dominant media and its audience are, apparently, klansmen. (Klanspeople?)

It is unto this august chorus that Malkin adds her voice every week, all the way back to this column, in which she lamented that a trial involving black-on-white crime didn't ignite a media frenzy.

As it happens, Peter Brimelow had something to say about this particular tragedy, as well - in response to a letter from a reader (emphasis mine):

I'm sitting here looking at photo of Emmett Till in his coffin. He has one eye and a mouth that is a jagged gash. His hair is mostly gone and it's obvious that something has been eating his flesh. Pre MLK America didn't need redemption, it needed destroying and thank God that it was.

Peter Brimelow responds:

I know I’m supposed to feel guilty about this, but (possibly because I’m an unassimilated immigrant) I don’t. Instead, I wonder what the four white victims of the December 2000 Wichita Massacre looked like...

VDARE.COM does not, as it happens, advocate lynching. But it cannot be denied that Till was lynched for what would now be called the sexual harassment of a white woman. And elementary math suggests that, in the almost five decades since his death, up to 1.5 million white women may have been raped by blacks. Perhaps 50,000 whites may have been killed.

That's just beautiful.

Tell me thy company, and I'll tell thee what thou art.

They're all a nameless, faceless, blob

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Even when Malkin makes a relatively supportable point - that undocumented aliens working in sensitive military areas poses some problems, Malkin can't resist taking it too far:

It's comforting to see that lawmakers are finally realizing the dire national security consequences of turning a blind eye to illegal aliens working in sensitive areas.

Maybe the pols can start getting worked up now about illegal aliens serving in the military. With the White House and Pentagon's blessing.

For crying out loud.

Well, she must be talking about serving in sensitive, national-security related positions, right?

Plata argues that she should be spared punishment for fraud, and be spared punishment for violating our immigration laws, and be spared for deceiving the U.S. government because she served honorably in Iraq. A lot of soft-headed, open borders sympathizers agree with her.

Zero-tolerance Michelle. This, by the way, is the same woman who said this about the UAW parking fiasco:

As Lt. Col. Joe Rutledge, commanding officer of the battalion's active duty instructors, told the Detroit News in this morning's edition:

"You either support the Marines or you don't."

Well, Plata served in the Air Force, but the point is the same: Malkin is right to be concerned about espionage, about the ability of people to enter the military under false pretenses. But the legitimacy of her point is dwarfed by her clear, pervading message: No illegal alien is remotely capable of redemption, regardless of the reason they came or what they do when they get here.

New around here, Michelle?

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While I was gone over the weekend, Eric Muller asked a very important question about Michelle.

Has she, at long last, no sense of decency?

Malkin responds by tracking back to his post without linking - twice!

I guess maybe she doesn't.

Let's not change that terror alert color just yet

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Breaking news:

Internet Haganah, drawing on [an] Arab News article, reports that a member of a terrorist group has posted to the Internet a do-it-yourself plan to make a homemade hydrogen bomb.

As the Internet Haganah article says:

The plans are in fact for a homemade H-bomb, not a dirty bomb, though if all one had were these directions I suppose a dirty bomb might be the more likely result.

Okay. Where to begin? The directions are from a humor article, freely available here and was posted to rec.humor in 1994. My first clue was the passage:

Food editor Barbara Ehrenreich, investigative reporter Peter Biskind, Photographer Jane Melnick and nuclear scientist Michio Kaku were given three days to cook up a workable H-bomb. They did and we have decided to share their culinary secrets with you.

You should read the whole article, it's pretty funny. Also, I'm not a nuclear physicist, but it seems to me that anyone following the directions would die of accident or acute toxicity long before any working bomb was achieved - always assuming the bomb even theoretically works, which since it's a humor article I seriously doubt.

Plutonium is one of the most toxic substances known. If inhaled, a thousandth of a gram can cause massive fibrosis of the lungs, a painful way to go. Even a millionth of a gram in the lungs will cause cancer. If eaten, plutonium is metabolized like calcium. It goes straight to the bones where it gives out alpha particles preventing bone marrow from manufacturing red blood cells. The best way to avoid inhaling plutonium is to hold your breath while handling it. If this is too difficult, wear a mask. To avoid ingesting plutonium orally follow this simple rule: never make an A-bomb on an empty stomach.

Good times.

Now, this could certainly be a case of a gullible wannabe terrorist thinking he had a scoop because he knows how to use Google. Then again, there could be another explanation. Malkin again:

[Rusty] Shackleford also says, "I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the poster left his e-mail address--let_us_reason2005@yahoo.com."

And I would be remiss if I didn't do a little research based on this e-mail address. (See also "Correction" at bottom of page.)

I found no reference to that particular address, but the construction - let_us_reason - did show up twice as part of other yahoo.com addresses, and not one but both of those users link from their Yahoo! profile to web sites relating to Christian Apologetics, which is a Christian doctrine particularly focused on studying and responding to other religions. One of those linked web sites, "coincidentally" titled Let Us Reason, has this to say about Islam:

There are about 100 verses that endorse the use violence, and a plain reading of these is apparent what they say is what they mean. Some I'm sure may disagree saying they are not clear. Lets look at the quotes from the Qur'an that teach war and killing on the unbelievers and infidels...

(No one who brings these quotes up ever notes the multitude of similar quotes from the Old Testament.) I'm wondering if this mystery person has the best interests of Jihad at heart as Malkin seems to think.

Let's recap: A person with an e-mail address connected with Christian Apologetics, writing "using roman, not arabic, letters in a weird mix of Arabic and English", posts freely available, humorous, try-it-and-kill-yourself "instructions" for a Hydrogen bomb on a terrorist message board...and people fall for it.

Well done, folks.

Update: Malkin sez:

Update: Zachary Heaton takes a closer look at the instructions and finds them laughable. Hope he's right!

Well, he is. There's no hoping about it. And if Malkin has read the link, or even the original article, she knows that.

Correction: A comment I had missed says, and it seems to be true, that "let_it_reason" is a construction used by someone named Nadir Ahmed. As the commenter says, "Either he is a colossal idiot, or someone really doesn’t like him." So my e-mail address find may just be a coincidence.

Then they came for the Evangelicals

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The War on Christians continues with "THE WAR ON THE MOUNT SOLEDAD CROSS"...

An aggrieved atheist has won his longtime battle against a 43-foot cross that stood on a mountaintop in the San Diego area...

The cross, in other words, carries meaning for the city beyond its religious symbolism. Mark Slomka, pastor of Mount Soledad Presbyterian Church, which has been considered an alternate site for the cross, told the Washington Post last December:

"That cross is not just a religious symbol. It's a symbol of coming of age and of remembrance."

No more, thanks to the oh-so-tolerant left.

Wait - aren't humanists generally Libertarians? Since when did Ayn Rand join the left?

Let's ask Philip Paulson, the "aggrieved atheist" himself, to describe just a bit of what occurred when the Atheist Coalition received a permit to hold a celebration on the "not-just-religious" Mt. Soledad on Easter Sunday in 1996:

Here are the facts: Park event permits are issued on a first come, first serve basis. The City of San Diego granted the Atheist Coalition a permit to use the park at sunrise hours on Sunday, April 7, 1996. Easter just so happens to fall on April 7th. Just because Easter falls on April 7th does not give preference for the exclusive use of a public park to a Christian religious group over all others. The decision to issue an Event Permit to the Atheist Coalition was delayed for several days to haggle over the political fallout brought on by City Council Members Juan Vargas, a former Catholic Jesuit, and George Stevens, a Baptist Minister.

I can't possibly see how Paulson got the idea that the cross was a religious symbol.

And speaking of symbols: Was I asleep in Sunday School the day they taught us about the Easter Bunny's role in Christ's Passion? Somebody's passion, maybe, but not Jesus'.

Turns out she's sexist, too

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Was there ever a greater waste of bandwidth and time than this bullshit?

Reader Wayne L. comments:

The killer of an Atlanta judge is shown being taken into custody by a woman cop, after this same killer took a gun away from a woman court cop to go on his killing spree. Isn't there something wrong with this photo?

He's got a point.

No, he doesn't.

By the time I read this post, Malkin had already posted two "dissenting opinions", including one which points out five more important factors in this particular story:

1) Nichols was previously caught with a sharpened object known as a shank. Additional security was apparently requested and not provided.

2) Nichols, a known violent offender, was escorted unhandcuffed.

3) Nichols was escorted by one officer when he should have been escorted by two or more officers. The fact that the one officer was significantly physically older and smaller should have been another reason to add a second or third officer to assist with the escort.

4) There does not appear to have been a "duress button" in place in the courtroom, which might have alerted armed officers to the situation earlier.

5) Atlanta courthouse procedures apparently limit the number of officers with firearms in the building. Thus, fewer armed officers were available to respond to any situation whereas if officers were allowed to have firearms, in the courthouse, there's a greater likelihood of sufficient force being present to prevent an escape...

Over the course of my career, I've known female officers who are smarter and more capable than larger male counterparts. There is much more to law enforcement than simple physical strength or size. Playing to the stereotype that physical size or massive strength is required does a disservice to female officers.

Interesting note: The two "dissenting opinions" apparently come from actual corrections officers, while most of the other opinions come from, well, not.

Welcome back Blogger...

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Just in time for me to go on a short (probably not more than two days) hiatus - family matters.

But first, a couple loose ends:

Reader Ryan F. notes that Malkin's latest column is available on GOPUSA. WorldNetDaily just a bit too reputable for you, eh, Michelle?

And speaking of classy organizations, let's have a hand for the United Auto Workers (emphasis mine):

[T]he director of security at the UAW told them that while they support the troops, Marines driving foreign vehicles or sporting a President George Bush bumper sticker were no longer welcome to park there...

"While reservists certainly have the right to drive non-union made vehicles and display bumper stickers touting the most anti-worker, anti-union president since the 1920s, that doesn’t mean they have the right to park in a lot owned by members of the UAW."

Real classy.

I couldn't agree more.

I didn't want to vote for Joe Biden anyway

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Since Malkin seems bound and determined not to mention bankruptcy, I'm going to let Norbizness speak for me, including:

(3a) In this list, the Floridian Nelson once ran for President, and only Biden is mentioned as a possible candidate for 2008. Byrd is probably retiring. Those defending their seats in 2006 from primary challengers include Carper, Conrad, Kohl, Lieberman, both Nelsons, and Stabenow. If anyone in those states knows of a viable primary challenger, tell me, and I'll give them all the publicity (nearing 1,000 visits and 12 unique visitors a day!) and money (absolutely nothing!) that I can.

I second that, only divide "1,000", "12", and "absolutely nothing" by ten.

"Write what you like; there is no other rule"

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Malkin unleashes a hail of posts upon Giuliana Sgrena. I'm not altogether sure why Malkin is so obsessed with Sgrena, but I think a hint may be found in the title of her latest column: "The Ransom of the Red Reporter."

Been missing that communist menace, eh, Michelle? The inspiration of Ronald Reagan's anti-Soviet posturing receding in the distance?

That said, I, too, feel squeamish about the idea of paying ransoms, but Malkin doesn't even establish that this is what happened. In a breathtaking sequence which proves only that nobody knows anything, she writes:

Iraqi politician Younadem Kana told Belgian state TV that he had "non-official" information that Italy paid the terrorists $1 million in tribute. The Washington Times, citing the Italian newspaper La Stampa, pinned the ransom figure at $6 million. Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera reported that the Italian Government forked over between $10 million $13.4 million to free Sgrena.

Never one to let a dispute over facts get in her way, she lets us know exactly how she feels about ransoms...

Whatever the final tally, it's a whopping bounty that will undoubtedly come in handy for cash-hungry killers in need of spiffy new rocket-propelled grenade launchers, AK-47s, mortars, landmines, components for vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices, and recruitment fees.

...before adding this little tidbit:

Both the Italian government and members of the Iraq Islamic Army who abducted Sgrena vehemently deny that money was exchanged.

Look, even assuming that a ransom was paid, which seems the most likely, it's impossible to take Malkin seriously on the subject. From denying she was kidnapped in the first place, to taking the opportunity to take another crack at Eason Jordan, to calling her incoherent based on a shoddy translation, Malkin is all over the dartboard as usual - which doesn't stop Time's blog of the year - excuse me, my mistake - from comparing her writing to O. Henry's.

Seriously. Well, to be fair, she started it.

Hacktac(u)-lar!

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Malkin titled an old post "SANDY BERG(L)ER?". Clever, right? A little bit, at least? No? Well, play along.

It's definitely not clever when she uses it three times in her latest post, including the wildly overwrought "berg(l)er-y." She's really wrestling that computer into submission, isn't she?

Speaking of document filchers, what has former Clintonite and pants-stuffer Sandy Berg(l)er been up to, anyway? Wouldja believe: criticizing the Bush administration's lax national security policies.

Michelle, if you're so into wordplay, you ought to look up the phrase "that dog won't hunt."

"We were afraid of a doomsday gap"

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Fresh from her semi-forced semi-hiatus, Malkin is rubbing her hands with glee at the thought of John Bolton being named UN Ambassador.

I admit I don't know much about Bolton, but I know what I like. And it's not this:

A former director of the Project for a New American Century—the neocon movement of the '90s from which nearly all of Bush's national security team sprang—Bolton opposed not only the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty...but also the international bioweapons conference, the ban on chemical weapons, the nuclear test ban; any accord that limited anything the United States might someday want to do. At State, Bolton's main job was to serve as Vice President Dick Cheney's agent at Foggy Bottom, monitoring, opposing, and, to the extent possible, thwarting from within the moderating influence of Secretary Colin Powell and his crew of pin-striped diplomats. He was particularly active in sabotaging Powell's efforts to open up nuclear disarmament negotiations with North Korea.

Oooh, be still Malkin's heart:

Our reaction to the nomination of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.? Two thumbs up. Way up...

A jolt of Bolton is just what the doctor ordered.

Yep. Doctor Strangelove.

How can I possibly rebut this?

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From michellemalkin.com:

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Are you sure you have the correct username and password?
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Whoops. The world mourns, although probably not for long enough. Meanwhile, enjoy Mykeru.

Irony is dead

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Less than eight hours after the Armanious family nonapology, Malkin complains that Apple says bloggers aren't journalists.

If she had any credibility, this would kill it

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I've been away from the news, computers, and even telephones for the last 24 hours or so. Obviously, with my luck, I should have predicted something like this would happen.

In case you've been living under a rock like I have, it turns out they've made an arrest in the heinous murder of the Armanious family. In case you've been living under an even bigger rock, the Armanious family are a group of Egyptian Coptic Christians who were savagely murdered in New Jersey in January. Malkin first wrote about it January 16:

Will the patriotic leaders of CAIR--always quick to jump on the hate-crimes bandwagon when it fits their agenda--join the Egyptian Christian community in condemning the vicious Armanious slayings?

* Why would CAIR specifically need to condemn the slayings? Why, because it was those vicious muslims, of course:

The Newark Star Ledger has more on the Egyptian Copt community's outrage:

"This was a terrorist attack," said Amgad Zakhari, 32, a real estate investor who has known the Armanious family since their arrival in the United States. "It was to make an example of Egyptian Christians, to silence them. It has to be a religious motivation."

She wrote thousands of words on the topic, from bemoaning the MSM's refusal to condemn Islam outright to watching JihadWatch's writing on the subject (more on them in a minute), all under the heading of "A Hate Crime in Jersey City Heights."

So, as I stated, an arrest was made. And guess what? It wasn't even a freaking hate crime.

From the Associated Press, here's the assessment of Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio:

"I'd like to make one thing perfectly clear: The motive for these murders was robbery. This was a crime based on greed, the desperate need of money," DeFazio said.

What, are you kidding? This is the crime about which Malkin quoted JihadWatch saying:

The Armanious family had inspired several Muslims to convert to Christianity - or thought they had. These converts were actually practicing taqiyya, or religious deception, pretending to be friends of these Christians in order to strengthen themselves against them, as in Qur'an 3:28: "Let believers not make friends with infidels in preference to the faithful - he that does this has nothing to hope for from Allah - except in self-defense."

Of course, the family, not suspecting the deception, was happy to see the "converted" men and willingly let them in to their home. That's why there was no sign of forced entry. Then the "converted" Muslims did their grisly work.

Ah, JihadWatch. The cream of the blogosphere crop. Here's some comments from that particular site after the announcement:

I'm waiting for more information on these murders. I still think there is an Islamic jihad angle in there...And there's nothing final about this for me. I want more information on the accused, more information in general. At the risk of being racist, I will admit that Hispanic criminals like to use knives a lot more than others. They like to get personal with their victim or adversary. And Sanchez is accused of butchering three of the victims.

As sad is it may sound, I truly hope that these murders can be tied to Islamic intolerance. Maybe it's because I hate what they stand for so much I have become closed minded and paranoiac in my distrust of them.

At least then the Armanious family would not have died for nothing.

One lesson - never surrender. No matter how much pain they cause you, they will cause you more hurt as soon as you give them unopposed control. Die fighting, fight dieing.

(By the way, how is that last one a different sentiment than people like JihadWatch and LGF accuse all Muslims of having in the first place?)

Via Liberal Avenger, Fables of the Reconstruction says:

So, I'd like to give a big Fuck You to Michelle Malkin (who posted a multi-part series entitled "HATE CRIME IN JERSEY CITY HEIGHTS"), Powerline, Adam Yoshida (or a reasonable facsimile thereof), Charles Bird, Junkyardblog, Silent Running, and more fringily (and scarily), American Jihad. I intentionally ignored the literally dozens of other minor fascist twits who ran with the hate ball, because I want to make a clear point: The prominent right-wing bloggers, the so-called A- and B-list, including Time's "Blog of the Year", spread hateful lies constantly. They should be called on it.

Remember when Malkin was complaining that she couldn't get her site listed on Google News? And remember when she couldn't stop attacking Dan Rather for Memogate? (Remember?! It was only two days ago!)

Well, Michelle, considering the amount of refuse you dumped on Dan's head, do you really think this is going to cut it:

I was wrong.

Oh, well, all is forgiven. After all, all you did was bloviate for months about this, condemning everyone from the mainstream media to "the left".

Maybe the next time you make fun of the mainstream media's fact-checking, you should look back at this little incident. At least their mistakes don't nearly cause a religious war. Usually.

Update: Further down in the Fables of the Reconstruction post, which I had missed, is a very important paragraph:

I am not slamming people for a simple mistake. Bird & Co. jumped on this story because they're motivated by an ideology that holds that Muslims are dangerous. To apologize for making a mistake in this case misses the point entirely, thereby making it a sham. "Oops, I got it wrong this time" fails to recognize that the real failure is due to holding the "clash of civilizations" belief. It also fails to take responsibility for being part of what Dave Neiwert calls the "transmission belt" of eliminationist rhetoric. The people I cited do not need to apologize just for making an error - they need to apologize for holding bigoted beliefs and for helping to spread hatred in an already hatred-ridden culture, and to undertake seriously to change.

Update II: Regarding Malkin's attacks on Dan Rather: Malkin, like so many other right-wing writers, spends all day coming up with examples of how the mainstream media is biased because they write a headline in a certain way or use the word "freakishly."

Compare that to Malkin's bias, which can be broken down into two parts:

1)Does this story have an illegal immigration angle?
2)Does this story have a Muslim angle?

Coincidentally, her first book was about #1, and her second book was at least tangentially about #2. You can bet that if her third book were a cookbook, she'd start reporting stories that might have an effect on the price of foodstuffs.

Dan Rather made one mistake in an otherwise true story. Malkin's worldview led her to spend two months reporting theories, conjectures, and outright falsehoods - then calling for specific action based on those straw men.

If you want to really see shoddy reporting based on a predetermined agenda, keep letting people like Malkin into the MSM.

* Not a correction, just a clarification - she wrote questioningly about CAIR's possible statement ahead of time. CAIR then deplored the killings. Malkin then, quite sarcastically, credited them with doing so. Sorry if that wasn't clear.