For all the talk of freedom of speech, only the New York Sun locally and two other papers nationally have mustered the minimal courage needed to print simple and not especially offensive editorial cartoons that have been used as a pretext for great and greatly menacing violence directed against journalists, cartoonists, humanitarian aid workers, diplomats and others who represent the basic values and obligations of Western civilization. Having been ordered at the 11th hour to pull the now-infamous Danish cartoons from an issue dedicated to them, the editorial group—consisting of myself, managing editor Tim Marchman, arts editor Jonathan Leaf and one-man city hall bureau Azi Paybarah, chose instead to resign our positions.

The ACLU is joining the appeal of a man convicted for seeking to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge who wants his conviction overturned because he was “illegally” spied on by NSA.

Back in December, Iyman Faris, the only named American target of the National Security Agency’s secret warrantless wiretap program announced his consideration of a lawsuit against the president of the United States. To accomplish this goal, his lawyer David Smith issued an all points bulletin for civil liberties attorneys and constitutional scholars interested in taking up his client’s case.

“There has to be a real plaintiff with a real injury,” explained  Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty program, one of many civil libertarians who

Despite Faris’ admitted guilt, . . . were chomping at the bit to get him off the hook,

says StopTheACLU.com.  What did the man say about liberalism?  Yes, James Burnham: “Liberalism is the ideology of Western suicide.”  I think of Chill Wills riding the a-bomb with a cowboy whoop in “Dr. Strangelove.”  That’s ACLU riding its ideology.

What do we think of this kind of talk?

[Prominent public figure] delivered a blistering partisan speech at Fayetteville State University in North Carolina last night, equating the Republican Party with the Nazi Party and characterizing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her predecessor, Colin Powell, as “tokens.”

“The Republican Party would have the American flag and the swastika flying side by side,” he charged.

Calling President Bush a liar, [he] told the audience at the historically black institution that this White House’s lies are more serious than the lies of his predecessor’s because Clinton’s lies didn’t kill people. . . .

He referred to former Attorney General John Ashcroft as J. Edgar Ashcroft. He compared Bush’s judicial nominees to the Taliban.

Pretty extreme, huh?  Worthy of slapping into a newspaper, right?  Not necessarily.  That was Civil rights activist and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond speaking, and the coverage is in World Net Daily, an Internet publication.  Where else?  Not in Chi Trib or Sun-Times or in any other MSM outlet, unless you count Fayetteville’s News 14 TV show.

James Taranto calls it “whitewashing a black leader” and likens it to coverage of the late Yasser Arafat,

talking peace in English while inciting hatred in Arabic–except that in this case Bond is speaking a language everyone understands, and reporters, whose job is to report the facts, are instead concealing them. [Italics added]  Bond’s mostly black audience at Fayetteville hears his message of division and resentment, while the broader public is told that he has a “positive attitude” and is engaged in a “fight for equal rights.”

Let’s hear it for freedom of the press.

We’ve had quite the circus . . . in Cook County over the past few days.

. . . another indictment was handed down from US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald’s office, charging a subsidiary of technology giant Siemens AG with defrauding Cook County. The company and two of its executives are accused of entered into a phony partnership with a minority owned business to win a $49 million contract with Stroger Hospital.

Only a few days later, the Chicago Sun-Times revealed the county’s corruption watchdogs, the inspector general, auditor and ethics director and members of those offices, had made numerous contributions to President Stroger’s campaign fund. It’s little wonder that scams that defraud the taxpayers of Cook County like the Siemens scam at Stroger Hospital seem to slip through the cracks.

President Stroger . . . promised not to accept [any more] campaign contributions from these . . . officials, whose primary task is to investigate claims of corruption in Cook County government or other “sensitive officials”.

. . . finally, there’s the strange story of Vincent Jones, a relative of President Stroger and a member of Cook County Recorder of Deeds Eugene Moore’s political organization. Mr. Jones is accused of roughing up a Forest Park man who declined to have political campaign signs placed his yard. Police report that Mr. Jones became belligerent and threatened to have the arresting officers “politically taken care of”.

That’s from the web site of Tony Peraica, the star of last Saturday’s Republican beauty show at Oak Park library, where he made the top of the (ballot) program, gave a crisp, intelligent, easy-listening talk, answered qq, and then had to run.  (He had an easy act to follow, it’s true: acting OP GOP chairman Richard Willis, who, apparently conscious of Oak Parkers’ reading problems, was kind enough not only to flash sentences on the overhead but also to read them to us, word for word.)

Peraica is an immigrant (from Croatia), having arrived here 34 years ago at 13 after losing both parents, speaking no English.  He’s a Cook County commissioner, since 2002, when he took 53% of the vote over a 14–year incumbent.  He’s going after John Stroger’s county board chairmanship and playing anti-corruption melodies to a fare-thee-well.  His www.votetony06.com web site is a winner.  It includes “Tony’s blog” http://www.votetony06.com/blogs/, which makes good reading.

Jesse White, he’s a Democrat, right?  Running again?  Let’s keep watch.

The former director of Secretary of State Jesse White’s physical services division and three janitors were charged Friday with scheming to let the janitors collect full pay– more than $150,000 in all– for only minimal work.

West Virignia Senator Jay Rockefeller is the leaker who illegally supplied the New York Times with the details of the NSA program

Jed Babbin of The American Spectator said on a radio show yesterday, reports Hugh Hewitt, via Instapundit.  It’s the blogosphere at work, as it was in the Dan Rather, Trent Lott, and other affairs.

Given that the CIA’s Porter J. Goss stated emphatically that the leak had done very serious damage to the United States, if Rockefeller is a suspect, he should be hauled before a Grand Jury asap

continues Hewitt.

Meanwhile, Chi Trib’s Mark Silva had something cute but inconsequential yesterday about Bush saying “good” too often.  It’s the G-word, says a head.  Silva is resting up for a shot at Jay Rockefeller, I bet.

Bush was “clearly taken aback” when someone asked him what he thought of the gay-cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain,” says Carol Marin today in S-T.  He “looked like his skin itched.”  It’s “a start anyway” that he had heard about it.

Stop.  I can stand so much droll and no more.  So what, state of union speech last night.  Let’s talk about this delicious “Mountain” story.  The gals and guys at Ric’s (wherever) had such a fun time with it Saturday night.  It told us soooooo much about Dubya, as if we didn’t know already.

He don’t know s—t about unions anyway, gay or any other kind.  Hey.  People Mag — I said People, did you hear me? — says this movie is huge in Waco.  Oh my.  “Bar’s boy [?] needs a lot of help right now.”  Polls, you know.

Switch to thin-lipped, no-nonsense, I’m-not-kidding statement of cold fact:

George W. Bush is an isolated man living in an insular, hermetically sealed world of advisers who don’t challenge him, receiving advice born of lethally bad intelligence.

There.  Carol feels better already.

Read the rest for yourself.  It’s damn good moveon.org-the-world-can’t-wait stuff.  Carol has encapsulated beautifully what the gang is saying at Ric’s (wherever).  It’s the base, stupid.