It took eight (8) paragraphs for NY Times to identify as a Democrat the WVa congressman who steered $1/4 mill to five of his very own non-profits, though early in a story is the usual place. Not to mention his senior-Dem status on the gosh-darn ETHICS COMMITTEE. Two days EARLIER, Wall Street Journal had put him on Appropriations (?), where with Sen. Byrd’s help he earmarked lotsabucks for friends and allies. Tsk, tsk. It’s the paper of record? Or broken record? Dennis Byrne has it.
Tag: Blithe Spirit
The good and the bad, emphasis on Trib and Sun-Times
Stricken
Sometimes a column lead gets me all choked up, like this one from Chi Trib’s Dawn Turner Trice:
One of the things that has struck me most about the immigration reform rallies in Chicago and other cities has been the large number of students participating.
What really does it for me is my keen, abiding interest in what strikes Dawn Turner Trice. I wake up wondering about it. It’s a good thing too, because otherwise I would not read her column.
Tangled web
“That Fitzgerald is one helluva digger, able to ferret out this stuff that was in the headlines [three] years ago…”
says a Power Line correspondent that sent on a July 20, 2003 AP story “Declassified CIA documents on Iraq show divided intelligence community” and one the day before by Knight-Ridder, “Bush releases excerpts of top-secret Iraq report” meaning Special Prosecutor Patrick, who has done great things in Chi-town, putting bad guys away from feeding too voraciously at the public trough — they overdid it, you see — but may, just may be in over his head in his Plame-Wison-gate prosecution of Cheney’s top dog.
The stories, says PL,
show what we all know: the release of the NIE [Natl Intell Estimate] report was part of an attempt to quell the political uproar that was starting to build over what Bush did and did not know before the war. The stories also show that the “leak,” while criticized for being “selective,” included the State Department minority opinion — material more than sufficient for most MSM [main stream media] stories written after the briefing to be negative!
What’s new in the Fitzgerald brief
is that President Bush, according to Cheney according to Libby, authorized the release of the NIE report ten days earlier than the July 18 briefing that was widely reported [italics added], and that they disclosed it to Judith Miller, who didn’t write about it.
Ah-hah!
But Bush had nothing to do with the NYT-Miller part, authorizing de-classifying and releasing the NIE report, but that’s all — which is not surprising, unless you think he’s hands-on in such matters, in which case Harvard B-School should ask for his diploma back. This is from today’s story in, yes, NYT.
Horrible
John Kass goes after Bush as Commander in chief of leaks, comparing him to the Arkansas Word Splitter. But look at it this way: The nasty boy Joe Wilson, a schemer of the first water, goes public in that East Coast Paper of ill repute, initials NYT, with public statement misleading public about what’s going on with Sadaam and uranium, etc., and Bush wants to call him on it.
Does he go on air with a fingering of Schemer Joe, whose own official report gives the lie to his East Coast Paper report? No, it’s beneath him, but in the war of words that hurt the war effort he should be shot down. It’s done to him via Cheney and a man named Scooter, though that’s what Prosecutor Fitz has to prove (I think: it get murky here, what with ancillary charges having moved front and center), and to defend self Libby wants to know what Fitz has and describes what he wants, and it says President B. has declassified stuff to shoot down bad info — in the usual Wash. way, without which East Coast Paper and others could not survive, giving it to reporters on background w/permission to use.
It’s a horrible thing, to be sure, that there’s a political angle here — Wilson Scheming, East Coast Paper loving it, etc., White House countering — but such things do happen, and Wash.-based and other reporters will simply have to live with it, shocked though they may be. In fact, the whole thing may be a wake-up call to them to play things down the middle and stop grinding axes, but I doubt it.
The lady protests a lot
And the Washington media is probably too polite to call her on that spousal left foot in her mouth,
says John Kass today, winding up his column about the very loud of mouth Congresswoman Schakowsky whose husband caught an excellent break in federal court the other day. Yes, there’s this politesse among Beltway denizens. Touching.
It wasn’t quite the end of the column. Kass had this to add as to the congresswoman’s offensive volubility:
So I’ll say it. Jan? Please put a sock on it.
Well said.
Angle on gotcha
My take: The latest “Bush leaked” story — which doesn’t hold up very well when you look at the actual story — is basically a “spoiling attack” by the NYT and other media who fear subpoenas in the Libby case. As with all their efforts on this front, it’s likely to backfire. The more they say that leaks are bad, even as they rely on politically motivated leaks from insiders for their bread and butter , the more vulnerable they become. That’s why the Plame affair has been more damaging for them, long-term, than for Bush. Bush will be leaving in a couple of years, but the Times and other media will be living with the world they’ve created, and I predict that their position in this regard will be no better if a Democrat is elected in 2008.
They say leaks are bad? Are they sure?
Gotcha, gotcha
Chi Trib’s Mark Silva has Bush dead to rights in Trib’s on-line-only “The Swamp,” B. having leaked classified info when he said no one would leak such in his administration — dated quote is supplied. But wait. B. and Cheney can de-classify what they want for a good reason, Silva admits and it says here. Gotcha, Silva — who should have better things to do than lie in wait for the Great Satan in the White House, so as to catch him in his speech.
The sudden press flap over Scooter Libby’s alleged revelation that President Bush declassified intelligence information related to Iraq is silly but all too predictable. The entire flap relies on mixing terms and misunderstanding by innuendo a technique of demagoguery, not journalism. The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing gotcha with the Bush Administration than reporting the news.
That’s Austin Bay, who gives chapter and verse on the what and why of this. He’s hereby recommended to Silva and swamp-like colleagues.
So what’s the story here? That someone who worked in the White House selectively passed properly declassified material to the press? Thats not a scandal; thats Beltway business as usual. Id love to hear that reported its not news per se, but it would be refreshingly open and honest media analysis.
Bay is a retired Army reserve colonel who won a bronze star for service in Iraq in 2004, writes novels and non-fiction, consulted in war games at the Pentagon, and has a booming media career at this point. Quite a source for any enterprising Washington reporter.
Hidden persuaders
U. of Chi’s John Mearsheimer and partner in production of the much-discussed “israel lobby” paper may have talked to Chi Trib for yesterday’s story, he dismissing the discussion as a “food fight,” but Harvard’s daily newspaper, The Crimson, find them still unavailable for comment, as noted by PowerLine blog.
Mearsheimer in Trib
It’s here. Chi Trib’s Ron Grossman does the Mearsheimer-Israel lobby story today.
A University of Chicago professor has ignited an intellectual firestorm in halls of ivy and corridors of power with an essay in a highbrow British journal.
is the lead. 2nd graf calls the paper “a simple diagnosis.” Grossman cites qualified support for it anyhow, even from some Israeli commentators. But he notes:
“The Israel Lobby” smacks of the age-old accusation that a secret cabal of Jews aims at world dominance,
neatly summing up objections.
He also, happily, further identifies Mearsheimer — “a former West Point cadet” and no “stranger to controversy.” Regarding the latter, he cited his 1990 essay “proposing that Germany be encouraged to develop atomic weapons” and his fervent opposition to the Iraq war in 2003 on grounds that “it would give the Israelis an opportunity for an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza.”
“The precedent is there [to forcibly expel Palestinians], and it behooves us to make sure it does not happen again,”
he said at the time. Indeed, in the current essay, he and his co-author, Stephen Walt, say “the creation of Israel entailed a moral crime against the Palestinian people,” this in reference to the 1948 evacuation of Palestinian refugees.
Grossman quotes Mearsheimer as dismissing the current controversy as a “food fight.”
He and Walt find no “compelling moral cause for sustained U.S. backing” of Israel.
The Trib got to this one in the nick of time, I’d say, but did justice to it. Grossman was just the one to do it. It’s a typically reliable, sensible piece by him in which he quotes the subject, who comes off as overly fond of the hot expression (“ethnic cleansing,” for instance) and naively arrogant (“food fight”).
City Hall in the dock
Chi Trib has a story about City Hall hiring practices that promises a lot — “Politics, jobs linked by ex-top city aides: 2 say mayor’s office involved in decisions” — but gets so complicated that by the end you not only are ambivalent about the promise but aren’t quite sure who’s on first, to use an old Abbott & Costello expression. The story has a triple byline and reads as if all three took a crack at it, splitting the middle when they disagreed.
The lead,
Political job recommendations were funneled through Mayor Richard Daley’s office in a widely known and long-accepted practice at City Hall, two former Daley aides contend in court papers filed Wednesday
is straightforward enough. The prosecuting Feds say it’s “massive fraud” meant to circumvent a longstanding injunction vs. political hiring — “the Shakman decree,” we read.
Then there’s something about “an attempt by the defendants” to pry loose from a court-appointed monitor materials she says she needs to stop political hiring.
And then there’s why the defendants want the materials.
And then something about “federal authorities” not having interviewed any of the presumably relevant ex-Daley aides.
And then a concession by defendants about a hiring “clearinghouse” at the Hall and their lawyer’s disavowing any attempt to slime Daley to save his clients — here paraphrased to make sense of what the story has or spell out what it hints at.
And then their lawyer’s arguing why he should get the materials based on others’ previously getting similar materials. (But he got them this time, didn’t he? [See below] How else would the Trib know about it?)
The U.S. prosecutor who got them in 1997, now in private practice and not available. For what? To bolster the defense contention that they should get materials they already have? [See below]
And finally the city’s law dept. saying they don’t know nothing about nothing in 1997 and furthermore do not consider the mayor guilty of nothing.
There’s some good stuff here, I think, but if I have to go back over it, translating into English, as Daily News’ Bill Mooney used to say, then either I’m losing it from too much blood pressure medicine, a distinct possibility, or somebody in the Trib who knows how to write did not show up for work yesterday. (Dock him.)
(OK. Just re-read lead. It’s about what defendants “contend.” OK. They don’t have the papers yet. I get it, I get it. Finally.)
Blithe Spirit 