“I missed this when it came out last week,” says John Hinderaker at Power Line,” referring to this from an Al Qaeda leader, admitting, “The path is long and difficult, and the enemy isn’t easy, for he is great and numerous and he can take quite a bit of punishment as well, which the PL editor notes “is very different from how al Qaeda wrote about the U.S. after the flight from Somalia.  It’s in

a new document at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center . . . a letter from a high-ranking al Qaeda officer named Atiyah, who passes on criticisms of Zarqawi that apparently originated with bin Laden, Zawahiri, or other top al Qaeda leaders. The document was found . . . in Zarqawi’s “safe” house after he was terminated with extreme prejudice by an American bomb.

He shouldn’t feel too bad about missing it.  So did Chi Trib, while featuring these stories that tell how bad things are:

Frist Says Afghan War Can’t Be Won

Frist says Taliban can’t be defeated

CIA chief warned Rice, records show

White House counters `Denial’

You can’t blame the Trib, which knows the real news is the latest from Bob Woodward.  The heck with Al Q admitting it’s in trouble.

As for the entire Sun-Times group (your source for AP), not even the Winnetka Talk reporter has unearthed the message in Zarqawi’s house.  His bosses are busy with those screaming headlines, apparently.

Chi Trib catches up to Janesville Gazette from Saturday, supplying a good deal more detail. Zilch, however, from entire Sun-Times Group (your source for AP):

Molester priest is jailed twice Probation violated, authorities say

A Chicago Jesuit priest convicted in Wisconsin earlier this year of molesting two boys in the 1960s has been jailed for the second time in a month for violating the terms of his probation, said a spokesman for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections.

Rev. Donald McGuire, 76, violated a 20-year probation sentence by failing to “complete programming needs” set forth in the terms of his probation, John Dipko said.

Dipko declined to elaborate . . . but said the department was preparing to ask an administrative law judge to revoke McGuire’s probation. If his probation is revoked, Dipko said, McGuire could face up to 30 years in prison for the violation.

. . .

The Wisconsin online sex-offender registry listed McGuire’s current address as Walworth County Jail. But Barbara Blaine, a spokeswoman for Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said that until last week, the Web site had listed his address as 300 E. Main St., Lake Geneva, a Comfort Suites hotel.

Dipko said McGuire had been staying at the hotel while the county searched for housing for him. McGuire had been staying at a Waukegan nursing home as a condition of his probation. But the home evicted him in July because the nature of his conviction violated its policies, Dipko said.

. . . .

McGuire’s first probation violation occurred in late August, when he came to Chicago to attend the funeral of a Jesuit priest at St. Ignatius Church in Rogers Park, according to church officials.

He attended funeral services Aug. 30 and was given permission by his probation officer to stay in Evanston that night on condition that he register with the local police department, Dipko said. But McGuire never informed police he had arrived in Evanston, thus violating his probation, Dipko said. He spent three days in the Walworth County Jail for the violation.

Rev. James Gschwend, the Jesuit province’s delegate for conduct inquires, said McGuire remains a Jesuit priest, though his status is under review. The review board’s decision depends on the result of McGuire’s appeal.

Mark Brown offers “man law” contributions a la the beer commercial from “Pittsburgh John,” a friend:

• If it’s not broken, don’t fix it (not just a law, a commandment.)

• If you can’t stretch out all the way, it’s not a couch.

• If you’re not a professional bike rider, don’t wear the shorts.

Etc.  “Let me hear from you,” he tells male readers.  Hmmm.  This is today’s column, Oct. 1.  Smart fella, Brown.  That closing request will be good for another column.  And if he doesn’t hear from anyone, he can go to Lipstick Chronicles for Sept. 22, where Rebecca the Bookseller has a bunch of suggestions from “several men from varying backgrounds and geographic locations,” with helpful commentary:

* Man Law on Food:  Regardless of weather, the grill is always the cooking appliance of first choice.  A Man from the midwest contributes: further, salmon is a fish, and not a color.  And a Navy Man serving overseas reminds us that No Man shall use a utensil of any kind to eat ribs.

Etc.  Such a deal.  Brown has his second column written already.  Rebecca asked for more laws too.  Maybe she and Brown can collaborate.  If this doesn’t work out, he can fish around in REO Horror Story: Man Law – Don’t Let Beer Cans Pile to the Ceiling, also of Sept. 22.  I’ll bet there are other places too.

Fr. Donald McGuire, the Jesuit convicted in Wisconsin on molesting charges, broke probation and is in jail.

Illinois representatives of a support group for those abused by priests were leafleting a Lake Geneva neighborhood with news that McGuire was closer to them than they might have thought.

The jail gave McGuire’s home address as 30 E. Main St., Waukegan. However, according to Wisconsin’s online sex offender registry, McGuire was living at the Lake Geneva Comfort Inn, 300 E. Main St., Lake Geneva.

……………

Jeff Anderson of St. Paul, Minn., an attorney representing McGuire’s two victims in civil suits against McGuire, said he was informed that McGuire refused to take the periodic lie detector tests required as part of his probation.

…………..

[He had been] sentenced in July to 20 years probation with a seven-year stayed sentence, pending [his] appeal of his conviction.

“Why is there a market for [right-wing radio talk shows]?” Hugh Hewitt asked just-retired Wash Post writer Thomas Edsall, who responded:

Because the Democratic Party and liberals have, through a lot of whatever you want to call it, politically correct and other values and programs, made themselves highly vulnerable to criticism that is difficult to voice in the workroom, because it’s kind of verboten. But on talk radio, you can say a lot of things that you think and feel,” said Edsall.

That otherwise you can’t say in lots of places.

Chi Trib calls global warming the “greenhouse gas phenomenon that most scientists believe has altered climates across much of the . . . world,” (italics added) thus achieving a sort of balance on the issue.  It’s far better than Sun-Times’s Jim Ritter’s reference to what “scientists,” not most or many, hold in regard to the nature of gayness — “Scientists have rejected earlier notions that homosexuality is a mental illness.”

Furthermore, Trib’s Howard Witt says, “The signs of warming in the Arctic are not merely anecdotal,” which is to head off at the pass the complaint about newspaper coverage of trends that sloppily finds men and women on the street with mostly sad tales that support the trend.  Witt quotes NASA researchers.

“Experts said” rears its ugly head, however, with regard to ice-recessive winters.  A NASA researcher is promptly quoted: how about “one of these experts” with regard to her?  And a “many experts” would do nicely also.  It’s a matter of the reader feeling snookered or not, or subtly urged to think (illogically) this way.

But I tell you, all is forgiven with three paragraphs quoting the opposition, an MIT man who recognizes warming data but considers it natural and not man-made. 

“The Earth is always warming or cooling. Industrial output has nothing to do with global warming. There is no evidence so far that we’ve gotten beyond natural warming.”

In this the reader has the wherewithal to think about the matter, rather than head for the hills or valleys or basement with the usual “Warming is coming!  Warming is coming!”

Rebuttal of the dissident is prompt, by a man “who reviewed 928 scientific papers about climate change published between 1993 and 2003” and found them to say the enemy is us.  Here might be a good point to note the objection that far more funding is available for people who find that than for those who don’t. 

But I am so pleased with Witt’s relatively concise (1100 words) and clean-copy account that I intend to pass over that objection in silence.  Yes!  Let no man say I cheated, either! 

However, I definitely could have done without the village elder’s opinion-as-closer in the matter.  Where does he stand on the nature-vs.-manmade argument anyhow?

Sun-Times woman Mary Mitchell apparently sees no connection between test scores and performance:

If my house catches on fire, I’m not going to worry about how high the firefighter scored when he or she applied for the job.

In which case she should call for abolition of testing entirely.

What she cares about is that the firefighter

had the capability to apply for the job, the character to get through the training needed to be on the job, and the courage required to do the job. After all, when it comes to training to be a firefighter, aren’t those the things that matter the most?

“Capability to apply”?  What’s that?  It’s being able to find your way to the fire dept. HQ and sign your name.  As for character and courage, who can cavil?  But can these virtues coexist with incompetence?  If so, why not?

Moreover, she sees “good news” in the 83% passing rate on the latest exam because it means “a larger pool of applicants to draw from.”  But if there were no exam, there would be an even larger pool.  Is she on to something here?

Down would go literacy requirements and ability to figure things out, up would go “agility testing,” etc.

Soft, soft the lede in Mark Silva’s front page Chi Trib story about Bill Clinton:

Say this much for Bill Clinton. He doesn’t walk quietly.

How nice.  Quietly flows the darn puff piece.

Mr. November?  Democrats count on Clinton for late-inning campaign magic

is the head. 

His white-hot, finger-wagging interview on “Fox News Sunday”–filled with accusations about conservative bias and Bush administration blunders–has thrust Clinton into the midterm election campaign just as the Republicans appeared to be erasing some healthy Democratic advantages.

is to put a Democrat spin on it, to say the least, buying into the best light in which Clinton’s outburst can be put.

All in all, it’s a clear-cut thumbsucker, easy-going and casual, to which faithful readers will respond: Where the “analysis” tag?  Wash bureau chief Tackett gets it, doesn’t his colleague/underling Silva deserve it for his soft, soft, shadow of those old-time Trib page-one cartoons?

 

It’s deucedly clever how Tim Mackintosh Smith injects his anti-Americanisms into his review of Geoffrey Nash’s From Empire to Orient in the 9/15/06 TLS: once in a parenthesis telling of his and another Arabist’s rejection of proposals to rat on their Arab friends, again in a closing urging of Britishers to “listen to [their] own troublemakers, to people like George Galloway.”

The first represents refusal to supply dreadfully needed help in combating terrorism. The second is an endorsement of a fevered and feverish opponent of all things American in the Middle East.