Just another Senator Phony

George Will tears into Sen. McCain today in Sun-T as possessing a tin ear for what the hell he himself is talking about or utter disregard for the Constitution.

“I would rather have a clean government than one where quote First Amendment rights are being respected that has become corrupt. If I had my choice, I’d rather have the clean government,” McClain told Don Imus 4/28.

In this he was consistent, of course, his McCain-Feingold law being a frontal attack on free speech, sold by demagoguery about corruption, about which McCain remains vague and oratorical.

He puts “first amendment rights” in scare quotes?  Would he do the same for “constitution” if he takes the oath of presidential office in January, 2009? Will asks, dissecting and explicating the man’s recent comments.

Why do newsies love him, anyhow?  Don’t they get it, that he’s soft on protecting free speech?

FDR led the way

A little perspective, please, on the so-called domestic spying by Bush, a favorite item with bashers everywhere:

An obvious problem with the current debate over NSA surveillance is that it’s been personalized around President Bush. Many critics of the surveillance have an obvious hatred for the president that colors the way they see the administration’s actions. Thus, it’s instructive to see how the Roosevelt administration handled a similar situation on the eve of World War II. Our Spectator piece examines FDR’s surveillance program — and finds striking similarities to the present controversy. In researching the article, we obtained relevant memos from Justice Jackson’s archives at the Library of Congress that haven’t been previously discussed in the press.

Interesting, I’d say.  It’s in an American Spectator piece noted by PowerLine.  It begins:

IN A BOLD AND CONTROVERSIAL DECISION, the president authorized a program for the surveillance of communications within the United States, seeking to prevent acts of domestic sabotage and espionage. In so doing, he ignored a statute that possibly forbade such activity, even though high-profile federal judges had affirmed the statute’s validity. The president sought statutory amendments allowing this surveillance but, when no such legislation was forthcoming, he continued the program nonetheless. And when Congress demanded that he disclose details of the surveillance program, the attorney general said, in no uncertain terms, that it would get nothing of the sort.

In short, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charted a bold course in defending the nation’s security in 1940, when he did all of these things.

And he did so before Pearl Harbor, while Bush’s surveillance is after our Pearl Harbor, 9/11.  He acted before we were at war, Bush after it.

FDR led the way

A little perspective, please, on the so-called domestic spying by Bush, a favorite item with bashers everywhere:

An obvious problem with the current debate over NSA surveillance is that it’s been personalized around President Bush. Many critics of the surveillance have an obvious hatred for the president that colors the way they see the administration’s actions. Thus, it’s instructive to see how the Roosevelt administration handled a similar situation on the eve of World War II. Our Spectator piece examines FDR’s surveillance program — and finds striking similarities to the present controversy. In researching the article, we obtained relevant memos from Justice Jackson’s archives at the Library of Congress that haven’t been previously discussed in the press.

Interesting, I’d say.  It’s in an American Spectator piece noted by PowerLine.  It begins:

IN A BOLD AND CONTROVERSIAL DECISION, the president authorized a program for the surveillance of communications within the United States, seeking to prevent acts of domestic sabotage and espionage. In so doing, he ignored a statute that possibly forbade such activity, even though high-profile federal judges had affirmed the statute’s validity. The president sought statutory amendments allowing this surveillance but, when no such legislation was forthcoming, he continued the program nonetheless. And when Congress demanded that he disclose details of the surveillance program, the attorney general said, in no uncertain terms, that it would get nothing of the sort.

In short, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt charted a bold course in defending the nation’s security in 1940, when he did all of these things.

And he did so before Pearl Harbor, while Bush’s surveillance is after our Pearl Harbor, 9/11.  He acted before we were at war, Bush after it.

Score four for Trib

Chi Trib today has two good stories and two good columns that struck the eye.  Probably more.  One story kicks off the Robert Sorich trial in federal court (where else?), all about City Hall patronage and job-stealing — that is, being sure jobs go to friends, which requires stealing them from qualified non-friends or neutrals.  It’s by Dan Mihalopoulos, Laurie Cohen and Todd Lighty, who do an excellent job summing up a citizen’s case, much of it the government’s too, against the newly constituted Dem machine.  It’s here.

The other story is another in an unannounced series about how farming out Austin High students to other schools has unleashed mayhem, this time at Clemente High.  Stephanie Banchero has this one.  An idea of what’s happening:

This year, nine teachers, an assistant principal and two deans were threatened or hit. Students were stabbed, choked and robbed, school reports show. A schoolyard brawl sucked in 40 students.

Amid all this, the principal of 10 years abruptly quit in March without a specific reason.

The columns are by Charles Krauthammer and Dennis Byrne, Trib’s Monday morning reliables, the former on Jews facing 1938 again, when Hitler promised their extermination and the world yawned.  Now it’s the Iranian president, soon to be nuclearly armed and happy to find so many Jews concentrated (no camps necessary) in one place, namely Israel.

Byrne’s is about pols lying in their teeth with (a) phony immigration legislation calling for unenforceable voluntary exile-taking by some 1.6 million Mexicans and others and (b) a new state budget that does it with mirrors but is declared marvelous by legislators who, Jack Horner-like, put their thumbs in pies and say what good boys they are.  Bully for them.

Score four for Trib

Chi Trib today has two good stories and two good columns that struck the eye.  Probably more.  One story kicks off the Robert Sorich trial in federal court (where else?), all about City Hall patronage and job-stealing — that is, being sure jobs go to friends, which requires stealing them from qualified non-friends or neutrals.  It’s by Dan Mihalopoulos, Laurie Cohen and Todd Lighty, who do an excellent job summing up a citizen’s case, much of it the government’s too, against the newly constituted Dem machine.  It’s here.

The other story is another in an unannounced series about how farming out Austin High students to other schools has unleashed mayhem, this time at Clemente High.  Stephanie Banchero has this one.  An idea of what’s happening:

This year, nine teachers, an assistant principal and two deans were threatened or hit. Students were stabbed, choked and robbed, school reports show. A schoolyard brawl sucked in 40 students.

Amid all this, the principal of 10 years abruptly quit in March without a specific reason.

The columns are by Charles Krauthammer and Dennis Byrne, Trib’s Monday morning reliables, the former on Jews facing 1938 again, when Hitler promised their extermination and the world yawned.  Now it’s the Iranian president, soon to be nuclearly armed and happy to find so many Jews concentrated (no camps necessary) in one place, namely Israel.

Byrne’s is about pols lying in their teeth with (a) phony immigration legislation calling for unenforceable voluntary exile-taking by some 1.6 million Mexicans and others and (b) a new state budget that does it with mirrors but is declared marvelous by legislators who, Jack Horner-like, put their thumbs in pies and say what good boys they are.  Bully for them.

Lashing back II

More on backlash from today’s Chi Trib:

Marches that turned out hundreds of thousands of people in support of immigrant rights also appear to have raised interest in the Illinois Minuteman Project, which supports a clampdown on illegal immigration.

The group, which began in Arlington Heights in October, had about 125 members until the first pro-immigrant rally was held in Chicago’s Federal Plaza in March, said Evert Evertsen, the group’s membership coordinator.

That number has grown to 360, he said, in the wake of that event and another massive march on Monday to Grant Park.

 

Lashing back II

More on backlash from today’s Chi Trib:

Marches that turned out hundreds of thousands of people in support of immigrant rights also appear to have raised interest in the Illinois Minuteman Project, which supports a clampdown on illegal immigration.

The group, which began in Arlington Heights in October, had about 125 members until the first pro-immigrant rally was held in Chicago’s Federal Plaza in March, said Evert Evertsen, the group’s membership coordinator.

That number has grown to 360, he said, in the wake of that event and another massive march on Monday to Grant Park.

 

Lashing back

This lady on illegal-immigrant backlash in Wash Times makes good reading.  Diana West’s her name. 
 
However, interesting or not, her “immorally cheap labor force” reference is mysterious.  What moral dictum is being violated when people fight to work for low wages?  She apparently speaks of pricing non-illegals out of the market.  Oh?  What does she think of printing firms moving to Tennessee, where labor costs are lower?  Immoral?
 
Her reference to illegals constituting “more than 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities,” on the other hand, is a stopper, though it leaves unsaid what percentage these are of illegals.
 
Never mind.  Herndon VA voters spoke this week, going almost entirely for opponents of an illegal-immigrant hiring facility.  Not to mention the record “463 immigration bills . . . introduced just this year in 43 states,” as reported by the National Conference of State Legislatures, most of them “designed to get tough on illegal immigrants, on employers who give them jobs and on state officials who give them benefits,” as says Wash Post.
 
Then, anecdotally, there’s the Arizona “Sheriff’s posse to patrol desert” headline.  And the Milford CT board of health’s making sure restaurants do not hire illegals in view of “the appearance of infectious diseases among” them.  (Power Line has this.)

Lashing back

This lady on illegal-immigrant backlash in Wash Times makes good reading.  Diana West’s her name. 
 
However, interesting or not, her “immorally cheap labor force” reference is mysterious.  What moral dictum is being violated when people fight to work for low wages?  She apparently speaks of pricing non-illegals out of the market.  Oh?  What does she think of printing firms moving to Tennessee, where labor costs are lower?  Immoral?
 
Her reference to illegals constituting “more than 29 percent of prisoners in Federal Bureau of Prisons facilities,” on the other hand, is a stopper, though it leaves unsaid what percentage these are of illegals.
 
Never mind.  Herndon VA voters spoke this week, going almost entirely for opponents of an illegal-immigrant hiring facility.  Not to mention the record “463 immigration bills . . . introduced just this year in 43 states,” as reported by the National Conference of State Legislatures, most of them “designed to get tough on illegal immigrants, on employers who give them jobs and on state officials who give them benefits,” as says Wash Post.
 
Then, anecdotally, there’s the Arizona “Sheriff’s posse to patrol desert” headline.  And the Milford CT board of health’s making sure restaurants do not hire illegals in view of “the appearance of infectious diseases among” them.  (Power Line has this.)

Cute but no cigar

Chi Trib’s page oner today, top left, is from Liz Sly out of Baghdad with help from Omar Salih, about “Omar” as the name “no Iraqi wants” because it’s a Sunni name and Shiite gunmen will kill you.  A story like this is a way to keep the civil-war argument in readers’ eye, Alinsky-style rubbing raw the sores of discontent with U.S. policy, or it’s just an easy-reading breezy piece to help people thank God it’s Friday.

As the number of sectarian killings in Iraq soars, and Iraqis on both sides of the Sunni-Shiite divide feel increasingly nervous about mingling with the opposite sect, name-changing is on the rise.

OK.  But deep in the story, we have:

[R]eports [counting] 24 Omars among the 700 or so Sunnis killed in recent weeks [is] hardly statistically significant. [boldface added]

. . . .

But the report has been widely disseminated, and now men named Omar are convinced they are being singled out by the Shiite militias and Interior Ministry forces suspected of carrying out the sinister killings of Sunni men whose bodies are found almost every day, dumped around town.

So. A story about the madness and panic of crowds, bolstered by misinformation and the words of one Omar saying:

“The only safe way is to leave the country. But if you can’t do that, you have to do something to survive.”

This is on-the-ground reporting?  Nothing from sources such as Brookings Institution’s Iraq Report that give an overview or grounds of comparison, even to use a Trib section title, perspective?  Not that I can see.

=====================

Add this, 5/7: 

Reader Jennifer: You’ve nailed it. Thanks. Ms. Sly’s name fits all too well.
Me: Someone in her position, however, can be the creation of editors (with whom she goes along to get along).  They say what they are looking for, or she gets it without their saying it, and they place it, deciding where on what day.  Either way, it’s bad; in fact, it’s worse when you think editors, on whom I place primary blame.