Who's exploiting whom?

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Malkin:

1110am Schumer exploits Rosa Parks...gross...

1110amEDT Schumer...Will Alito use his seat like Rosa Parks did to change history for the better?...raises real questions about his commitment to civil rights, women's rights, workers' rights...blah blah blah...America needs unity now...the president seems to want to hunker down..soothing the ruffled feathers of the extreme right wing of his party...[Alito] would make the court less diverse...whines about need to fill the seat with someone in the mold of Sandra Day O'Connor...Judge Alito does not appear to be another Sandra Day O'Connor...

[Indeed.]

More Schumer on timing: When there is a controversial nominee for a pivotal swing vote on the high court, the procedure should not be...rushed...this is a nominee who could shift the balance of the court...for decades to come...we need to review his 15 years of judicial opinions...it will take time to assemble those documents...and review them...a lot to fit in between now and Christmas...no one should seek to delay for the sake of delay...but no one should seek to rush these hearings through simply to make a point, distract from issues of the day or avoid thorough review of this nominee...

Jason Smith writes: "How shamless of Chuck Schumer to have converted Rosa Parks' casket into a soapbox to stand upon and give a partisan-hack speech about Alito."

Ditto that.

Could we get...some more elli...pses...and Insta-isms? Look, Alito is the one who "stopped by" the casket with Frist and several other Senators in tow immediately after his nomination was announced.

This is the photo-op administration. Alito was clearly being held up as a friend of civil rights, and Chuck Schumer called Alito and the administration on it. Of course, if Chuck Schumer read the weather report, Malkin would call him on it.

But will he take a pie for you?

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I'm certain Michelle receives death threats aplenty. I'm sure she has a very good reason to need a bodyguard, in fact.

But I find it sublimely ridiculous that there's a "close protection services" company

specializing in the safety and accessibility of conservative speakers

as though a liberal bodyguard might step aside and just allow the calf's blood to be thrown on Shemane Nugent.

(Hat Tip: LA)

Curse you, Photoshop!

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But...but...I thought righties love semi-automatic weapons!

As a pacifist, I don't have much use for the pseudo-militant aesthethic, but now seems like a good (if late) time to highlight Chris Clarke's profile of Ward Churchill.

Clapton Neiwert is God

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Ka-pow.

Malkin Jumps the Shark?

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The full ramifications of this abomination of a column have yet to reverberate fully across the blogosphere. Now, some would say that's simply because I was on hiatus and did not weigh in right away; those people would be blowing smoke directly up my ass. Still, I have to add my two cents, because what good are vacations if you don't have a nice easy jumping off point?

Amanda had a nice visual rebuttal here. The Rude Pundit was, well, rude. But a full fisking? Well, here you go.

The anti-war Left couldn't wait for the death of the 2,000th soldier in Iraq. Peace activists have been gearing up for protests, vigils, and other events this week to mark the completely bogus milestone.

Why 2,000? Was the 2nd or 555th or 1,678th death not as worth mourning as any other death with nice round numbers?

If Malkin's columns were a race, she'd have stumbled out of the starting blocks. Actually, she'd be running backwards. Before the war began, there were 1605 candlelight vigils around the world - before the war began. Before one soldier died. That's the 0th death, and the left was mourning. Why? Because we knew there'd be 2000 eventually. We knew there'd be 2, 555, and 1,678, too. And we were mourning. And you were whining.

Cindy Sheehan barely contained her macabre lust for the spotlight in preparation for the artificially constructed, media-hyped occasion. "I'm going to go to Washington, D.C., and I'm going to give a speech at the White House, and after I do, I'm going to tie myself to the fence and refuse to leave until they agree to bring our troops home," Sheehan told a reporter last week as the death count neared her lottery number pick.

"And I'll probably get arrested, and when I get out, I'll go back and do the same thing," she vowed.

This time, Sheehan's public relations team would be wise to make sure she tries not to look like she's having so much fun. The carnival-like atmosphere that surrounded her arrest at the White House last month did little to convince military families that Sheehan and her pink lingerie-clad Bush-bashing brigade have the troops' best interest at heart.

Macabre lust for the spotlight? This from the woman (and her husband) who claimed to know what Cindy Sheehan's son was thinking as he was killed in Iraq and who gleefully posted about Sheehan's divorce. This from the team who wrote approximately a bajillion different posts about Cindy Sheehan, all carefully linked to each other and filled with linkbacks and snarkiness and updates and "reax" and pretty, pretty pictures.

These are people, remember, who liken Iraqi terrorists to America's Minutemen during the Revolutionary War.

Michael Moore is fat.

Who oppose not only the war in Iraq, but also the invasion of Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Who believe the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and at Shanksville, Pa., were a Bush conspiracy with Israel and/or Saudi Arabia.

Who applaud when left-wing professor Ward Churchill gloats about "chickens coming home to roost" and suggests that the peace movement should support the fragging of American troops.

Who use the names and images of dead American soldiers against their families' wishes to propagate anti-Bush hatred.

Who believe Saddam Hussein should be freed and Guantanamo Bay emptied.

Who carry around banners that proclaim "WE SUPPORT OUR TROOPS WHEN THEY SHOOT THEIR OFFICERS."

Conflation is such a lovely thing, isn't it? I can do it too!

Republicans, remember, are people who believe that blacks are inherently criminal, and that aborting all the black fetuses would lower the crime rate.

Who think that interracial marriage is a sin.

Who applaud when Ann Coulter says that a few liberals should be executed just to keep the rest of them in line.

Who say that Emmitt Till had it coming.

Who said Rosa Parks was a communist spy.

Who believe that all our problems can be solved by nuking the entire Middle East.

Who think that all Muslims should be interned.

(The analogy breaks down a little bit when you consider that most of the extreme right-wing opinions above were uttered by people who actually are friends, colleagues, or husbands of Malkin.)

Lt. Col. Boylan reminded the media that "the 2,000th Soldier, Sailor, Airman, or Marine that is killed in action is just as important as the first that died and will be just as important as the last to die in this war against terrorism and to ensure freedom for a people who have not known freedom in over two generations."

What Malkin is ignoring is that, in fact, she and her friends treat "just as important" as "not very at all." Bush has been to a funeral or two now, and Rumsfeld's no longer breaking out his autopen as far as I know, but Malkin spends way more time focusing on suicidal Oklahoma college students and Harriet Miers than on the individual soldiers who die in Iraq. Maybe, just maybe, if the left got the sense that the right was concerned for the families of dead soldiers, they'd be less desperate to get someone's attention.

The milestone was important because no one else cares, not really. Americans hear death number "1,678" and shrug and go about their business. This country is not "on a war footing", because the administration and its apologists do everything they can to sweep the deaths under the rug, or excoriate those who question what those deaths were for.

The hope was that "2000" would wake people up. And that was Malkin's fear.

"Celebrate the daily milestones, the accomplishments they have secured and look to the future of a free and democratic Iraq and to the day that all of our troops return home to the heroes welcome they deserve," Boylan urged.

For the "peace activists" who hate the president with far more energy than they could ever muster in genuine support of our troops, this simple request to appreciate the fruits of hard-fought freedom is too much to ask. And too much for them to bear.

And for the "pundits" who hate the peace activists with almost as much energy as they can muster to hate "the enemy", an honest look at the state of Iraq - and the state of the President's administration - is too much for them to bear.

New post this weekend

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Sorry, the hiatus has been longer than I expected, but it was needed. I'll be back and raring to go by Saturday - so read a blog on a weekend for once!

Just a quick drop in...

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...to point out an interesting stat:

Malkin's Amazon ranking today, the day her book goes on sale: #5,084.

Al Franken's Amazon ranking today, the day before his book goes on sale: #10.

Guess the Air Enron scandal didn't take, eh, Malkins?

Update: More free publicity for Franken. Are you two sure that's the smartest strategy? Or did you learn nothing from Bill O'Reilly?

Brief Hiatus

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Life's just a little too crazy right now to focus on the high quality posts you're used to here at Malkin(s)watch...I was out of town over the weekend and am trying to catch up at work. Rest assured I will be back very soon, in possibly as little as a day, to talk about the Malkins' new book, not to mention her problems with the Quakers.

Be well.

It's On

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Well, the "pre-response" never materialized for a myriad of reasons, all of them mine, but that doesn't mean that the release of Michelle & Jesse's newest book isn't a big deal here at Malkin(s)watch. Of course, I didn't preorder it, so I'm a bit behind the curve, having to wait for the actual release date...

If Michelle doesn't like it, it must be liberal

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Race pimping:

Mike Adams blows the whistle on a murder-minded liberal racist in academia. His name is Dr. Kamau Kambon, an affiliated faculty instructor at NC State University.

He stressed one point in particular. “White people want to kill us. I want you to understand that. They want to kill you,” he said. “They want to kill you because that is part of their plan.”

Kambon closed his remarks by urging participants and C-SPAN viewers to "get very serious and not be diverted from coming up with a solution to the problem, and the problem on the planet is white people."

To steal a phrase from LA, if Kambon is 'liberal' then every Neo-Nazi is 'conservative.'

If there were such thing as a truly fair and balanced media, you'd have already seen as many stories about Kambon's comments as there were about Bill Bennett's comments, which were taken wildly out of context.

First of all, yes, they were taken out of context - but the real context makes Bennett's comments more insidious and just as racist.

Second of all, Bill Bennett: Former Secretary of Education. Kamau Kambon: Former professor at St. Augustine's College. There's a difference there, but it may just be too subtle for Malkin to grasp.

I'm anti-death penalty...

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But trying hard not to be pro-guillotine. Michelle, as sometimes happens, is right.

Friday Poetry Blogging (now with extra permalinking goodness)

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As a Quaker, I know from conscientious objection. Refusing to join the army even in the face of prison or often-dangerous alternative service - that's conscientious objection. Making the choice to become a pharmacist, then insisting that you can pick and choose which prescriptions to fill - not so much.

Edna St. Vincent Millay - Conscientious Objector

I shall die, but
that is all that I shall do for Death.
I hear him leading his horse out of the stall;
I hear the clatter on the barn-floor.
He is in haste; he has business in Cuba,
business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning.
But I will not hold the bridle
while he clinches the girth.
And he may mount by himself:
I will not give him a leg up.

Though he flick my shoulders with his whip,
I will not tell him which way the fox ran.
With his hoof on my breast, I will not tell him where
the black boy hides in the swamp.
I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death;
I am not on his pay-roll.

I will not tell him the whereabout of my friends
nor of my enemies either.
Though he promise me much,
I will not map him the route to any man's door.
Am I a spy in the land of the living,
that I should deliver men to Death?
Brother, the password and the plans of our city
are safe with me; never through me Shall you be overcome.

Friday Signs of the Apocalypse Blogging

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So I was flipping channels and saw a new Hootie and the Blowfish video.

On CMT.

Quick Fisk

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Cute:

In response to yesterday's post on Berkeley, the "birthplace of the Free Speech Movement," Steven Den Beste e-mails:

Since when is Berkeley the "birthplace of the Free Speech Movement"? I was under the impression that started with the people who pushed to get the First Amendment ratified, way back in 1790.

Have I missed something here?

Apparently you have, Steven.

The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which began on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 under the informal leadership of student Mario Savio and others. In protests unprecedented at the time, students demanded that the university administration lift a ban on on-campus political activities and recognize the students' right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement is often cited as a starting point for the many student protest movements of the 1960s and early 1970s.

I'm surprised Michelle didn't set Steven straight. After all, she's a former Berkeley girl and she's extremely conflicted about the right of political speech on campus (hint: conservatives good, liberals bad.)

Not to mention the so-obvious-it's-barely-worth-mentioning fact that ever since 1790, the first amendment has been under assault - and not just by conservatives, either. Flippantly suggesting that free speech is stare decisis is a sign of severe brainwashing.

Surprise.

Update: Ryan has a related story.

I Spy With My Jaded Liberal Eye...

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Something that begins with "U."*

If obsession can be measured in the number of PageDowns it takes to make it through a single blog post, Michelle's reached the ninth circle**.

Last week, I received a media inquiry from Wall Street Journal media reporter Joe Hagan. He wanted to talk about blogs and the University of Oklahoma bomber story. Although I was dismayed to learn the only coverage of the incident from the august WSJ would be a story about the coverage, rather than an original investigative report, I thought it would be better than nothing.

I was wrong: Nothing would have been better.

I can see her point. After all, a "story about the coverage" is about as useful as "teaching the controversy."

But amid all Malkin's bluster, one thing is clear: She wants to have her cake and eat it too. Separated by lots and lots of words are these two sentiments:

There are a few folks out there who are absolutely convinced that Hinrichs was part of an organized terrorist plot. I made crystal-clear to Hagan I was not one of them. I don't know what the truth is...

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, also mentioned in the WSJ article, writes that Hagan and Chittum misled readers about his views and posts:

One point to make in response: I advanced no speculative theories at LGF, simply asked legitimate questions based on the information available about this very curious case. Not only that, I deliberately shied away from covering the story in the first couple of days, when the only reports available were from unreliable sources.

Here’s the LGF post cited by the Journal: Jihad at the University of Oklahoma? The question mark is, of course, intended to signify that the story is questionable.

And:

It has been fascinating to watch the MSM meltdown over the new media world. From Jonathan Klein to Bill Keller and now to the WSJ news pages, the old guard has tried desperately to pigeonhole bloggers as nothing more than frivolous rumor-mongerers in order to mask their angst about increasing competition.

Frivolous or not, Michelle clearly identifies blogs as being about rumor-mongering before complaining that "old media" sees them that way. She even echoes Chazmo in calling blogs "open-source intelligence gathering."

Well, that might be a good analogy, but it also highlights a couple other problems with Michelle's theory of blogs as the new media. The first is "permanent beta." Open-source projects tend to have many different versions. When Firefox was in development, there was literally a new build every single day, which meant that someone who downloaded Firefox on Friday might have completely different functionality than someone who had downloaded it on Wednesday - or the person who downloaded it on Wednesday might find that it didn't even work. Malkin's vision of "sort[ing] out fact from fiction" tends to be taken as Version 1.0 by her legions of readers, who quickly propagate her "research" throughout the blogosphere as gospel.

Which leads us, sort of, to the second part of the analogy. I've heard this one called "Feature-based development." What it really means is that, in a typical open-source project, everyone wants to write the bells and the whistles. No one's interested in writing the behind-the scenes boring stuff. In other words, in this world of "open-source intelligence gathering", everybody wants the Rather memos. Subject might have attended a mosque? Radical Muslim! Lived with three Pakistanis? Conspiracy! No one wants to do the legwork, which appears to be revealing that the bomber was a depressed loner out to make a name for himself. To stretch the analogy a little further, this battle of egos also leads open-source programmers - not to mention "intelligence gatherers" - to focus on just exactly what would be the most useful to him or her. Case in point:

What I stressed to Hagan was that several freelance Islamists have committed acts of violence in the U.S.--the LAX El Al Muslim gunman Hesham Hadayet, for example, and the Beltway snipers--and the MSM has done a lousy job of exploring their Islamist influences

Ah yes. The MSM isn't paying attention to Muslim extremists. They're also not paying attention to this bomber, so he must be a Muslim. Let's go find a few facts to support this and "report" them. Then we'll harp on the MSM for not reporting our reporting, before backpedaling and saying we were just asking questions once those facts have been disproved.

These two factors are just examples of how the "blog" is not the be-all, end-all of good reporting. Neither is the so-called MSM, which is also subject to these shortfalls to one degree or another; the difference is that the MSM calls them "bugs" while Michelle calls them "features."

* October 24th! Makes a great gift! No it doesn't.

** Literally.***

*** This one's only four PageDowns, by the way.

They wouldn't be racist if you weren't so reactionary

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Malkin:

Pat yourselves on the back, Toledo rioters/looters/gangsters. You probably stoked more racism than the idiotic white supremacists could have ever dreamed of spreading--and you made their inconsequential demonstration of hatred a smashing success. Literally.

There's something fishy about this, though. From ABC News (who, of course, Malkin says we're not to trust):

Authorities said there was little they could do to stop the group, because they did not apply for a parade permit and instead planned to walk along sidewalks.

"They do have a right to walk on the Toledo sidewalks," said Mayor Jack Ford, who at one point confronted leaders of the mob and tried to settle them down.

That's fascinating. In Portland, there's all kinds of regulations about what you can and can't do on the sidewalks - can't sit, can't lie down.

If the Nazi group tries to come back, Ford said he would seek a court order to stop them.

I thought they had the right to walk on the Toledo sidewalks...

But at least Malkin set the record straight. ABC News ran a headline:

White Supremacists Riot in Toledo, Ohio

Thankfully we had Michelle around to dispel that myth. Wouldn't want neo-Nazis getting a bad rap.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and call bullshit on that one

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Let's ignore for a moment all the other problems with her post on the Million More March. Michelle claims:

Wyclef Jean, Howard Dean's favorite rapper, sings: "If you not scared of George Bush, you got to stand up." Calls for withdrawal of troops and sympathizes as "Father Saddam cries in prison."

Uh-huh. Okay. Which seems more likely: That Wyclef Jean actually said this, or that Michelle's fevered imagination (UNHINGEDMOONBATSUNHINGED!) cooked it up?

When you point you have three fingers pointing right back at you

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You're right, Michelle, a picture is worth a thousand words.



Proving once again that she puts the "tic" in "Quixotic", Michelle is going after Mike Wallace for daring to support the Brady Foundation.

NRAnews.com blogger/radio host Cam Edwards wondered why CBS News allowed 60 Minutes host Mike Wallace to appear at an anti-gun Brady Center event late last month...

Edwards sent a letter to the CBS News blog asking about the network's ethics and disclosure policies governing such appearances.

CBS News Public Eye blogger Vaughn Ververs, mirabile dictu, has responded.
Here's an excerpt:

Since this is just the kind of question PE is here to help answer, I spoke with Linda Mason, the senior vice president for standards and special projects at CBS News and asked her what the policy is regarding these types of appearances. Here’s what she told me:

"We allow CBS correspondents to speak at various functions and occasionally show video. We have strict regulations that if a CBS correspondent becomes identifiable with one side of a controversial issue, they will not be allowed to cover that issue in the future."

I asked Mason whether this appearance by Wallace raised him to the level of being "identifiable" with the cause of gun control and she told me, "we’re looking into it to determine" that.

Edwards is not satisfied. Neither am I.

Ververs gets kudos for being responsive, but he's kidding himself if he or anyone else at CBS News thinks there's any doubt that Wallace has made himself "identifiable" with a cause.

If we use this standard, no rightwinger would ever appear on Fox News again.

Wait a minute...

Fox News, sine feces tauri, doesn't have an ombudsman. If anyone can relate the best e-mail to inquire about Fox News' bias policy, leave it in comments.

Friday Poetry Blogging

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In case you were wondering whether the Malkins read this blog, look no further than this.

Anti-war playwright Harold Pinter wins the Nobel Prize for literature.

Here's his website, which proudly highlights Pinter's recent moonbattery.

The website also features some of his brilliant poetry...

Well, she was a day early, but she certainly gave me a good idea for Friday Poetry Blogging. Check Malkin's post for one fine poem. Here's another dark one for your Friday fix:

Death (Births and Deaths Registration Act 1953) -- Harold Pinter

Where was the body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?



Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

Where is the MSM?

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Chris Clarke breaks a huge story:

Bush Drops Miers, Taps Sidore for Supreme Court

In a column rushed to deadline [ed.: How can you tell the difference, Chris?], writer Michelle Malkin agreed. "The country is tired of activist judges on the Supreme Court," she said. "And it's clear Sidore will be no activist."

For more explanation, click here and here.

News Flash: Women Can't Be Sexist Against Women

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Malkin:

So, the First Lady pulled out the sexism card in her defense of Harriet Miers on NBC's Today Show.

Matt Lauer lapped it up.

Did the White House not inform Mrs. Bush that some of the most vocal criticism and questioning of the nomination comes from conservative women? Or does she buy into the Left's conservative-women-are-self-loathing-traitors-to-their-gender line, too?

Okay. First of all, the First Lady's contention is kind of silly and completely in line with conservative thought - the same ideology that cries "racist" when the left dares criticize Clarence Thomas in between accusing liberals of "playing the race card."

But if Malkin wants to see one of the many examples of conservative women actually being self-loathing-traitors-to-their-gender, she need look no farther than her friend Ann Coulter. Remember this nugget?

"I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the lady clapping and me. The problem with women voting -- and your Communists will back me up on this -- is that, you know, women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care."

Or there's always Phyllis Schlafly, who Lauren informs me is still around - who knew? - and presumably still saying things like this:

It's very healthy for a young girl to be deterred from promiscuity by fear of contracting a painful, incurable disease, or cervical cancer, or sterility, or the likelihood of giving birth to a dead, blind, or brain-damage (sic) baby even ten years later...

Like Shooting Fish in a Sewer Pipe

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Mykeru (at Liberal Avenger) steals back a post he was going to e-mail me the idea for. That's gotta be at least a misdemeanor.

Of course, he writes it much better than I would have, so I guess I shouldn't complain. And I blush:

I first thought I would just address all this to Auguste, who remains inexplicably chipper considering the sort of intellectual slumming he has to do day in, and day out. The only other person able to keep such a sunny outlook with such a shitty job was the fictional Ed Norton on the old Honeymooners sitcom, who was a sewer worker. However, that attitude is fragile, and I would hate to bust his positive outlook by making him read old Malkin columns, as once is one time too many.

Heeey, Mykie-boy!

I was writing an email because I came across an interesting first person account by James Yee, which differs a bit from the Malkin's omniscient suburban take on his arrest and incarceration.

Malkin(s) wrote one of their most sleazy little columns on James Yee, exceeded in nastiness only by their takedown of Helen Thomas. After beating up on octogenarian women and imprisoned clerics, I'm surprised they haven't vacationed in the Arctic Circle where I'm told the baby harp seal clubbing is fine.

Go read the whole thing.

Memo to Malkin

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Quoting a list of African-Americans and calling it a

veritable Who's Who among Unhinged Black Leaders

is not a good way to fight the image of you as racist.

Among the unhinged? The Congressional Black Caucus, Russell Simmons, Dr. Michael Eric Dyson, and Tavis Smiley. Oh, and Steve Harvey.

Steve Harvey!

Plus a whole bunch of African Americans probably listed because Michelle thinks they have funny names. Who's who among the unhinged, indeed.

Trying a temporary fix

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Okay, I know you're all as tired of the white-on-black as I am, so I'm just going to change a few things. Nothing revolutionary, but if this looks weird to you it's because I'm in the middle of it. I should unveil a completely new design...someday.

Friday Poetry Blogging

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So I just ran across an apparently bona fide celebrity online at Myspace, and it made me think of a particular poem. Enjoy:

On Fame - Keats

Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
She is a Gypsy,—will not speak to those
Who have not learnt to be content without her;
A Jilt, whose ear was never whispered close,
Who thinks they scandal her who talk about her;
A very Gypsy is she, Nilus-born,
Sister-in-law to jealous Potiphar;
Ye love-sick Bards! repay her scorn for scorn;
Ye Artists lovelorn! madmen that ye are!
Makeyour best bow to her and bid adieu,
Then, if she likes it, she will follow you.

A prediction (and a plea)

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In just over an hour, the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize will be announced. The prediction: If Bono wins, Michelle will go APESHIT. I just hope the jury kept this fact in mind, and voted their hearts.

Update: Well, I guess Mohamed Elbaradei (and the IAEA) is okay too. Not as much fun for me, though.

Update 2: Then again, she's still not happy. She quotes Neal Boortz in her post title:

THE NOBEL APPEASEMENT PRIZE

So the man who counseled that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons is being pilloried for suggesting that Iraq didn't have nuclear weapons, and therefore we ought not invade. Apparently that's "appeasement", presumably because it would have meant that we wouldn't have toppled Saddam to create the paradise that is today's Iraq. Even though we said we were going in because of the nuclear weapons. That Saddam didn't have.

As Elbaradei said.

Karma's a bitch

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Mykeru sends along this absolute gem...Americablog via Crooks and Liars:

A US Marine was working in the White House as a spy for the Philippines. He worked in the White House for 3 years, and most recently for Dick Cheney. He then stole classified documents and passed them to the Philippines opposition. He's a naturalized US citizen from the Philippines.

As Myk says...

Round those treasonous Filipinos and people of Filipino descent and put them in camps! National security! Can't be too careful!

I would add that perhaps we should focus on punishing the people who hire illegal immigrants spies.

Update: Malkin, as she does whenever something like this comes up, sez "I win."

A number of flippant liberals are e-mailing me now with calls for all Filipinos to be interned. Grow up. The safety of the president and the country was put at risk, and it may have been due in part to the blinders of political correctness and complacency. If it means now that the White House will be applying extra scrutiny to naturalized Americans of Filipino descent working at the top levels of government and in the military, well, yes, I support that. It's obviously overdue. And, as I argued in my last book, it's just one small step towards the kind of national security profiling we should have introduced aggressively after 9/11. But didn't.

Shorter Michelle Malkin

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Looks like a Muslim to me.

From her link:

Fourth, in one of the photos appearing in the media, Hinrichs appears to have a fresh beard, which is characteristic of new Muslim male converts. His father told The Oklahoman his son was a quiet, intellectual type, but he had no idea what might have incited him to take his own life. We can only assume the father also didn't know of the bomb-making material in his son's apartment. Perhaps we are dealing with a recent or a secret convert?

Who knows. Perhaps we are. All I know is that when I was in college, I always had a fresh beard, mainly because at that age, that's pretty much all I could grow. But, then again, looks are everything for Malkin.



Is that a fresh beard I see?

Update:Fisking Malkin, it helps to take a page from intelligent design - discarding the scientific method: First come to a conclusion [Malkin is wrong], then look for
evidence. This is almost never disappointing. Of course, sometimes the evidence comes to you.

Hey, what do you know. Via Roger Ailes:

Joe Hinrichs said his son was no terrorist. He said his son had been interested in high-tech gear and artillery since he was a child.

But really, who are you going to listen to, the boy's father? Or the mind-reading blogger of Montgomery County?

And yet, and yet: Oklahoma News 9 apparently reporting that Hinrichs had been seen attending the same mosque that Moussaoui attended. Besides Malkin, there are only two sources on Google News that repeat this information, which bears all the hallmarks of local news repeating an urban myth. Just in case it's true, though, I'll retract my smugness from the previous update.

For now.

Forsaken

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You can just feel the anguish in this post:

Harry Reid is so very, very happy with his Supreme Court pick.

Strangely, no mention that the link she provides tells of another person who is so very, very happy:

When Harriet E. Miers sat down Sunday for supper with President Bush in the private quarters of the White House, she had an influential ally at the table: Laura Bush...

Before the dinner of fried shrimp, polenta and chocolate mousse was over, the first lady's wish came true. Bush's nomination offer to Miers brought to a surprising end a professional courtship between the president and his White House counsel that he launched discreetly less than two weeks earlier.

Is Michelle well known for due diligence?

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Sadly, No!

(Note presumably ironic use of gender-related epithet.)

And when Michelle ain't happy...

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What Julie Myers is to the Department of Homeland Security, Harriet Miers is to the Supreme Court.

Since Malkin's contribution is, as usual, mostly limited to collecting "reax" from around the blogosphere, let's look at one of them. From Red State:

"Mr. President, you've got some explaining to do. And please remember - we've been defending you these five years because of this moment."

Hmm. Doesn't that just speak volumes. In those two sentences, at least one rightwinger completely subverts the party line that Bush is a competent, successful, victorious leader and puts it all out there: He's a worthless incompetent, but he's our worthless incompetent, and he's going to stack the court for us. Just keep covering up his miserable failure, it'll all be worth it when we overturn Roe.

Update: Atrios has his finger on the pulse:

They're angry because this was supposed to be their nomination. This is was their moment. They didn't just want a stealth victory, they wanted parades and fireworks. They wanted Bush to find the wingnuttiest wingnut on the planet, fully clothed and accessorized in all the latest wingnut fashions, not just to give them their desired Court rulings, but also to publicly validate their influence and power. They didn't just want substantive results, what they wanted even more were symbolic ones. They wanted Bush to extend a giant middle finger to everyone to the left of John Ashcroft. They wanted to watch Democrats howl and scream and then ultimately lose a nasty confirmation battle. They wanted this to be their "WE RUN THE COUNTRY AND THERE'S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT" moment.

Oh, the irony

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Malkin, speaking about Harry Reid's new blog:

So, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has a new blog called "Give 'Em Hell, Harry." You can leave comments [there]. I'd suggest asking Sen. Reid about this story...

I'd suggest asking Malkin about this story.

I would, but as we all know by now, she doesn't allow comments more than once every two months or so.

Update: Thersites notes that Malkin's efforts have had a predictable effect.

Reid's turned off comments, BTW. How happy must the wingnuts be.