How do you prevent the victims of child abuse from telling their stories? By giving them hush money. That’s what the Cathiolic Church did in England. The Times of London reports that
The Times has obtained a copy of the agreement that victims had to sign before they were compensated and a leading lawyer said last night: “This is a gagging clause and it would have been taken as such.” Some of the agreements relate to the time when Cardinal Murphy O’Connor was Bishop of Arundel and Brighton. Father Hill [a pedophile] was employed as a priest at Gatwick.
First abuse. Then bribes for silence. This church is dying – from the inside out.
THE TIMES VERSUS ISRAEL: I pointed out in my New York Sun and Washington Times column today that a New York Times story yesterday reported the capital of Israel as Tel Aviv. Here’s the official correction:
An article yesterday about a man accused of having tried to hijack an El Al plane en route to Istanbul from Tel Aviv on Sunday referred incorrectly to Tel Aviv. It is not the capital of Israel; Jerusalem is.
Two things to note. If the Times’ editors need to, they can make a correction within a day. So why do they delay for weeks sometimes on factual matters that are just as simple? Second: how did someone make this mistake? This isn’t very sophisticated fact-checking. There are two explanations: the Times doesn’t even have basic reporting skills any more or ideological aversion to Israel was a part of the problem. Or both. And to think this was once the paper of record.
KRUGMAN’S NEW LOW: If you want a good example of the sheer partisan degeneracy that now marks Paul Krugman’s New York Times columns, check out today’s. It’s about the rise of nepotism in America’s political system. It’s a worthwhile point, and one I’ve made myself on several occasions. But Krugman manages to make it an entirely partisan issue. Every example of nepotism he gives is Republican or conservative, implying a seamless connnection between family favors and his increasingly unhinged idea that America is now in the grip of a brutal plutocracy. He doesn’t mention Al Gore or Nancy Pelosi, for example, two of the most prominent Democrats whose families were already in the business. Not to mention the Browns of California. When it comes to obvious examples of liberal aristocrats – the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Sulzbergers – he lets them off the hook because they’re, er, liberals. The brown-nosing of Sulzberger was particularly egregious. For Krugman, it seems, non-liberal aristocrats are by definition repulsive, since all non-liberals are by definition selfish and cruel and heartless. If you don’t believe that the government should be the primary means for helping others, you’re immoral. This guy used to have a brain. Now he only seems to have bile.
The Dish 