"Given the gravity of health care and other tumultuous debate, it hasn't got much attention. You couple that with the Democrats' stranglehold on the rules, and the minority is left somewhat impotent," – Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), bemoaning the introduction of a bill today by Council member David Catania for marriage equality in DC.
It must be so rough for them to experience for one second what it's like to be a minority with no rights or power at all, mustn't it?
This one’s for Levi, God love him:
Greenwald points to a WaPo piece praising the administration's handing of the Zazi case and plucks out every cited source, in order:
Obama aides pointed . . . administration officials said . . . a senior administration official said . . . officials said . . . a senior administration official said . . . senior Obama officials stressed . . . a senior administration official said . . . aides said . . . officials said . . . one senior administration official said. . . . one senior official said. . . . The official said . . . a senior administration official said . . . a senior administration official said . . . administration officials said . . . . a senior official said.
He lowers the boom:
[W]hat happened here is obvious: the administration watned to issue a Press Release exploiting the fear surrounding the Zazi case to justify Obama's Bush-copying civil liberties policies (including its current demands for full Bush-era Patriot Act renewal and FISA continuation) while depicting Obama as our careful yet forceful protector. So they dispatched an official (or officials) to dictate the sanctioned administration line to Anne Kornblut. She then unquestioningly wrote it all down (after granting them anonymity) and The Post uncritically published it as a "news article." That's what Washington journalists typically mean by "reporting": we dutifully write down what government officials tell us to say — while letting them hide behind anonymity — and then we publish it. This morning's Post article is as egregious as it gets.
Andrew writes in response to this post:
In the piece you link to and affirm in the Daily Beast, "The Right's Lesser Press," Conor Friedersdorf refuses to interview me as he continues to be my unofficial biographer. (I'm VERY reachable, Conor.) He writes opinion pieces on me purporting to be journalism. He doesn't quote or cite me, he simply assumes and pushes the point of view he thinks I have and makes an argument based on these alleged positions. It's sloppy and you, of all people, should know better.
Breitbart.com is MOSTLY a news aggregator. It carries the Associated Press, Reuters, even, Agence France Presse, from those dreaded croissant eaters!!!
It even carries the New York Times on its front page — a benefit that even Big Government and Big Hollywood don't receive.
Big Hollywood is what it is: a counter-voice to the virtually monolithic Hollywood left. How dare I grant a platform, and a means for the defense of those in Hollywood who would dare go against the strident and intolerant Hollywood left.
Big Government, too, is providing an outlet for voices and ideas that are not proportionally represented in the traditional and mostly biased mainstream media.When lefties have asked to challenge something written at either site I have granted them the ability to do so.
I have even proactively reached out to others. Recently I asked the authors of "Manipulating the Public Agenda: Why ACORN Was in the News, and What the News Got Wrong" to weigh in on Big Government's reporting on the ongoing ACORN scandal story. They refused.
As you well know, I was the person who came up with the idea behind the Huffington Post, and even helped Arianna and Ken Lerer launch the sucker. At the time I did not abdicate my point of view as a right leaning voice. I stated what I believe today: Let's put it all out there, and may the best ideas win.
Is it insignificant that I was behind the left's most prominent blog/media site?
Is it insignificant that I have written for the liberal-leaning Daily Beast which carried Conor Friedersdorf's criticism of me?
I believe that you and Conor would like to paint me into a corner, the one you are currently trying to paint Glenn Beck into. You are trying to marginalize me because of the net effect, pun intended, of the White House/NEA "propaganda" series on Big Hollywood, and the explosive ACORN expose´ on Big Government. Protecting President Obama and the left at all costs is your prerogative.
But anyone who knows me, has conversed with me, understood my complexities and paradoxes, does not comprehend the "obvious point" that Conor is trying to make, and you are attempting to affirm.
The New York Times is a daily read. It always has been. I loved its recent profile of my college pal, hotelier Jeff Klein.
No daily publication can capture the essence of the cultural elite — good, bad and ugly — like the New York Times. The paper has its merits, no doubt. But when it comes to the political scene, its ascent into monolithic partisan hackery in its news pages — never mind the op-ed experience — is worthy of exploration granted its self-identified motto "all the news that's fit to print" is disproved day after day when the news that hurts the political left is either ignored or distorted to sate its diminishing readership's need for political conformity.
At no point have I attempted to hide my political leanings as I have endeavored to create Big Hollywood and Big Government. There is a need for a checks and balance against the New York Times and the rest of the supposedly neutral traditional press. Just as there was a need in 2005 for Arianna to put her platinum Rolodex online so that the world could see how the power brokers, power agents and power left felt on matters that face us all. Information is gold.
I don't resent criticism. I embrace it. But I do resent self-superior journalists attempting to malign me and my vision without coming to me to get my thoughts. I'm glib and quotable and even prone to slip up. Try me!
George Will echoes a particularly brutal blog post from Marty Peretz. Steve Benen offers a defense, and it's a decent one. But look: this Copenhagen trip was a big mistake on the president's part, a piece of political tone-deafness that anyone could see would backfire. He looks like the mayor of Chicago, not the leader of the free world. Obama has his signature domestic reform on the line at home; he's at the beginning of a critical period in negotiations with Iran; he faces an immensely tough call on Afghanistan; the recovery requires every ounce of his attention … and he's dealing with touting his home town for the Olympics. Please. Someone needs to get a grip on his schedule. And he needs to get a grip on his priorities. It's not narcissism; it's arrogance.
Most of all, it was a dreadful piece of judgment. The president deserves every inevitable brickbat from the right; and David Axelrod should know better than to have left his boss this vulnerable at this critical juncture. I suspect the input of Valerie Jarrett and Michelle Obama. But the buck stops with Obama and he blew this one big time.
Over at a new blog, Minding The Campus, John McWhorter outlines his vision of what African-American studies should be. A taste:
Black people can do their best even under imperfect conditions–and if that reality is irrelevant to an African-American Studies curriculum, then we must question the value of said curricula to those whom they purport to speak up for: real people in this real world. This real world which will never be perfect–even for descendants of African slaves. In 2009, the study of blackness must be the study of a race most of whose members are now victors, not victims. Certainly the victims must be studied–but only within a genuine commitment to saving them, not chronicling them as helpless until America turns upside down in a fashion no one could seriously imagine will ever happen.
Balko captions:
If William Bennett ran an anti-smoking campaign. I laughed. Until it hit me that it would probably work.
I'm still reading Karen Armstrong's new book, "The Case For God." I'm deeply impressed by its candor and sincerity and erudition so far. I'll try and write up more detailed thoughts when I've read and tried to think and pray on it some more. But for now, a reader sent me this video of Armstrong's TED lecture of last year. This blog has tried to offer a forum whereby we can have an honest, free-wheeling debate and an argument about religion today. I got a little tetchy recently, a little battered by the constant barrage of atheist argument. Forgive me. I've had a lot on my plate recently and my moods are hard for me to disguise when writing so much so often in real time. But the reason I blog about this and air it on what is a mainly political blog is because, to my mind, it remains the vital matter of our time – not just an attempt to rescue faith from bigotry and certainty, but an attempt to acknowledge the limits of our own understanding, wherever we sit.
I've written and thought a lot about doubt as inherent in genuine faith. What I have failed to do is emphasize the role of action as religion.
My doctoral thesis focused on Oakeshott's understanding of religion not as part f the world of philosophy, or of poetry – but of practice. Religion, in one profound sense, is simply what we do every day, the practice of daily compassion and spiritual discipline that brings us closer to God and to our highest nature as humans. The obsession with doctrine is rather modern, let alone the imposition of doctrine through politics or, worse, violence. Religion, properly understood, is less the assertion of facts we cannot prove than the living of a love that transcends fact into mindful compassion. This is so so so hard. I fail every day. I fail on this blog.
But our religion is simply and best exemplified by the way we live, rather than what we say we believe. At least that is how it increasingly seems to me; and it acts simultaneously as a rebuke and a salve.
Anyway, here's a lengthy video that I recommend nonetheless. Maybe save it for later. But she gives me hope.
The US government's Iran Human Rights Documentation Center, which has investigated the torture and abuse of protesters since the June election, just had its federal funding yanked. Massie is beside himself:
As readers know, in general terms I think the Obama administration has taken a fairly sensible, moderate approach towards the Iran. Nevertheless, it's possible to take this too far. And this seems, on the face of it, to be one example of when carefulness crosses the line and becomes craven […] There are excellent reasons for not being seen to fund opposition groups inside Iran since American funding can only prejudice their cause. But this seems a rather different matter. Perhaps there's an innocent explanation but if so it would be good to hear it. Because otherwise this looks shabby and, actually, terrible.
America and Europe, Augustine and Martin Luther King, Jr, and 9/11: more conversation between me and my Atlantic co-blogger, Ta-Nehisi Coates:
The Dish 