The Dish

Two emails from two sides:

Concerning “partial birth abortion,” I agree with the late Senator Pat Moynihan that this is nothing but infanticide. -The fiction being floated that this is done “for the health of the mother” is simply a lie. -I am a physician (full disclosure: -I am not an obstetrician), so I do know something about this. -To perform this procedure, the baby has to to be turned in the uterus from the normal head-first position into a buttocks-first (breech) position which is MORE DANGEROUS FOR THE MOTHER. -What we have here is bunch of “physicians” who concocted this procedure as a way to perform infanticide and get away with it. -The AMA and the American College of Obstetrics have both said that there is no MEDICAL reason for performing this procedure. -Quite frankly, I do not know how the people who do this stuff can live with themselves. I am in the pro-life camp, but one can be pro-choice and yet be against this barbaric fraud. -Several pro-choice people, to their credit, have been intellectually and morally honest enough to speak out against “partial birth abortion.”

Then there’s this:

Let me tell you a little story about a very common birth defect. Like a Downs Syndrome fetus it occurs when there are three chromosomes. In this case the fetus has three of the thirteenth chromosomes, Trisomy 13. The fetus develops massive multiple organ failures. Sometimes the organs develop outside the body cavity. In many cases the fetus will demise in utero and spontaneously abort. Other times the fetus is carried full term, delivered and dies on the mother’s stomach. Ever see a heart pumping outside of the chest cavity, Andrew?
Until you have sat in hospital room with a mother as she is told that she is carrying a Trisomy 13 fetus, that has no chance of surviving outside the womb. And that she will have to continue to carry that fetus for three more months because the legal date of termination of the pregnancy has passed, you have no right to call late term abortions infanticide.

I reprint. You decide. Or something like that.

The Guardian has its own version of the Raines problem. What liberal media?

There’s a touching and good piece in defense of Strauss by his daughter in the NYT today. (Thanks, David Shipley, for bringing some real divsersity to the op-ed page again.) But a deeper account has been penned by Bret Stephens, the brilliant young editor of the Jerusalem Post. Like Bret, I too learned a huge amount from teachers who had imbibed Strauss’ respect for classical thought and profound understanding of the weaknesses and foibles of modernity. I learned above all not to attach to some kind of doctrine, to question everything while not succumbing to complete skepticism, to think outside of the chattering box of contemporaneity. The attempt of some who haven’t even read Strauss (let alone read him as carefully as he deserves) to smear his legacy and denigrate those who learned from him is a pathetic display of paranoia and ignorance. No wonder it goes down so well among some on the academic left. Paranoia and ignorance are their strong suits.

After the debacle of calling Rick Santorum an “inclusive man” while Santorum supports the imprisonment of gay men in relationships, we now have attorney-general John Ashcroft banning a six-year-old tradition of a gay pride day at the Justice Department. No, this isn’t the biggest deal imaginable. It’s just a clear and petty attempt to inform gay civil servants that they are second class citizens and second class employees. I guess given Ashcroft’s own views on a whole range of matters, we should be grateful that only the homos have borne the brunt of his intolerance so far. But it’s another sign that the administration cannot hope to reach out to gay voters at the same time as appeasing those who want to see gays back in the prisons, bathhouses and closets where they once belonged. You cannot hope to reach out to the sane and compassionate middle of America, while cozying up to religious fanatics at the same time. Unless the Bush administration does something to suggest that it tangibly welcomes gay citizens into its big tent, then it will deserve to lose many of the votes it won last time around. Certainly the administration has now done a lot to give a direct one-word message to its gay supporters: suckers.

THE NYT AND EUROPE: Take a look at this editorial this morning calling for Britain to join the euro currency. Read closely and see if you can find any actual argument for the move. Would it help Britain’s economy? Would it benefit the United States? Would it be good for the world trading system? Not a word. There’s just an assumption that Britain’s loss of sovereignty and its own currency is an obviously good thing. The best you get is this: “Mr. Blair needs to start backing business leaders’ arguments that adopting the currency would be a net economic positive. One reason the negative consequences of staying out have not been all that apparent is that Mr. Blair has done a good job of keeping markets convinced that it is only a matter of time.” But the business community in Britain is deeply divided over the euro, and in recent months there has been a sharp swing of business opinion against it. Since the euro was adopted, Britain has fast out-paced the rest of Europe in growth and employment, while the European Central Bank’s euro-induced high interest rates have pushed the Continent into recession.The intellectual laziness and sheer ignorance at the NYT continues, with or without Raines. And their dumb-as-a-post piety hasn’t waned an iota either. (My own take on the new European “constitution” is now posted at The New Republic Online.)

A reader writes:

I’ll tell you a story of: Howell Raines
How everyone knew: He’ll Now Arise
Before the scandals: He is All Owner
But while in power: Ran Whole Lies

Honest reporters think: He’s Orwellian
In news, there was: Nowhere as Ill
Blair was simply: A Swollen Hire
Contributing to the: Sewer on a Hill

The internet blogs: Learn Who Lies
How fired reporters: He Reallows In
Just honest mistakes: He Will Reason
Now all media is doubted: Hell, a Sore Win

(From one John Addis. Okay. That’s enough anagrams – ed.)

“Please, please no more links to the Alterman blog. I feel like I’ve had an enema with a roto-rooter. I feel like my teeth were just cleaned by Uday Hussein. That’s the worst bit of bad writing married to self-absorption I’ve endured since the junior high poetry book. Please. I’ll pay you. Never again.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Money quote from the LA Times:

[I]n the end, it was the new world of Web sites, blogs, online editions and e-mails – not Raines – that set the pace of his exit.

Adapt or die.And here’s what Alex Jones told the Newshour:

I think there’s one other element that is worth noting. I think this story has been kept alive, in many ways, by the Internet, I think in the world that journalists occupy especially this story has just kept on and on.

Exactly.

THE PERILS OF DIVERSITY: Also from the Jim Lehrer show:

ALEX JONES: And I think these two firings – not two firings, these two resignations, these two… this dramatic gesture that has been made by Howell Raines and Gerald Jordan…
TERENCE SMITH: Gerald Boyd…
ALEX JONES: …I mean, Gerald Boyd.. is something that has a great symbolic power, and I’m hoping that that is going to say that this is a, you know, a ship that is too important to not do the painful thing when it’s required.

Gerald Boyd. Michael Jordan. Michael Boyd. Gerald Jordan. Hard to keep all those black guys straight sometimes, isn’t it?

He’s Orwellian. Uh oh. What have I started?

The arrest and now apparent disappearance of the rightful Burmese leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is the latest sign of the depravity of the military dictatorship that is still ruining Burma. The Washington Post this morning rightly urges that the Congress and the president make a stink about this. Mitch McConnell and the irrepressible John McCain are supporting strong economic sanctions – which, in this case, would directly hurt the business cronies of the junta that control much of the economy. The president should take note and urge passage of the bill and do what he can to urge Japan in particular to halt its odious appeasement of the thugs in Rangoon. I feel particularly strongly about this, as one of the relatively few Westerners who managed to get into Burma over a decade ago just before the revolution. It was a heart-breaking visit. The decay and despair of a proud and beautiful nation were emblems to me of what dictatorship does to the human soul. When you see what this country once was, its poignant and stunning religiosity, its ethnic variety, its gentle culture, and you see how it has been trashed by careless, callous generals, you get a lesson in how destructive authoritarian politics can be.

“Has not the time come to change our strategy?-What I think the rest of the world is waiting for – indeed hoping for – is some positive sign that the civilised powers are going to uphold the standards of international behaviour set by their forbears; that they are going to do so in the most systematic, relentless and comprehensive manner, and if necessary – while they still possess it – with overwhelming force. All over our tormented planet, there are millions of decent, peaceable and intelligent men and women of all religions, complexions, and races, who are praying that the resources of civilisation are not, indeed, exhausted – and that the Brezhnevs and the Amins, the Ghadaffis-and the Maos, the Arafats and the O-Sadists will not be allowed to take over the earth.” – Paul Johnson, quoted in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s “A Dangerous Place,” his memoir about the United Nations.