Just For You Burns!

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The Keith Olbermann is a jackass bandwagon:


Also for any people that have cancelled their Newsweek subscriptions, but still have some old issues lying around the house, here's an idea:


I value Mr. Burns’s opinion that Isikoff should be able to keep his job and I'm tempted to agree. I certainly don't want reporters losing their job every time they make a mistake. But yet, in the end, I don't agree with Burns. I want to tear down the entire elitist media establishment (apparently unlike my Washington Post-sympathizing friend). I want a country whose citizens engage in a free-exchange of ideas bolstered (not hampered) by a fact-gathering truthful free press.

And I see no better way than those citizens 1) canceling subscriptions/turning the channel/clogging up toilets with subversive anti-American rhetoric passing as weekly news; and 2)demanding severe consequences for reporters who fail to excise even minimal due diligence when the a particular story fits an "editorial premise", the so called to-good-to-check stories.

Isikoff's 20+ years of service and previous good work only further damn him on these charges, namely: He knew the rules (i.e. do not report anonymous sources that claim that an item will appear in a future document without corroboration) and willfully broke them.

This was not an article about the annual May Day Parade. This was a news item that leveled serious and unfounded allegations against the United States Military during a time of war. Worse, it served to add fuel to the fire (think: Cubs bullpen) of our sworn enemies on-going propaganda campaign. If Isikoff knew the charges to be false (which he clearly did not, his mistake was in good faith), he would be hung for treason. That is the seriousness of the misdeed!

People lost their lives. That has got to be worse than Rather-gate by any standard of measure. While not excusing the monsters that did the killing, their actions were reasonably foreseeable and therefore Newsweek cannot be absolved from blame.

Sorry Burnsy, I know where you're coming from. I've always hated Rather and was glad to see him exposed (again). And I've never really had anything against Isikoff. But based on the gravity of the crime, losing his job is the proper punishment.

But in other, more concilitory, Rather-hating news: 60 Minutes II was cancelled!! Heh!

Newsweek lied...

...and people died.

Canada in Crisis

The Canadian House of Commons voted today to ask the Public Accounts Committee to amend its report of 28-Oct-04, to recommend that the government resign. The opposition is claiming that this is as good as a vote of no confidence, and the government must accordingly resign. The Liberal House leader, Tony Valeri, says that it's not a vote of no confidence, and it has no legal effect until it is adopted by the Public Accounts committee, the committee amends the report, pursuant to the opposition directive, and the report is adopted by the House of Commons.

I hate to say this, but I think Valeri's right on this one. The motion that passed did not express the House's lack of confidence in the government, it merely asked a committee of the House to recommend that the government resign. An MP could claim with a straight face that while he still has every confidence in the gov't, they're clearly in trouble, and he thinks it would be a good idea for them to resign and take the mess to the people, and he thinks the Public Accounts committee should recommend that course of action to the gov't. If the c'tee did so, it would then be up to the gov't to decide whether to act on the recommendation or to ignore it. It's not unreasonable to suggest that at least three MPs were thinking along those lines, and therefore that this vote doesn't prove the gov't has lost the House's confidence.

Of course, if the gov't were sure of winning a confidence motion, they would have made one. But not being sure of winning isn't the same as being sure of losing. They didn't want to take the chance, and there's no legal or consittutional reason why they should.

We'll just have to wait until there's a real confidence motion. And then hope against hope that the voters won't just return the crooks, as they've done before.

On 10-May-1869, the first USA transcontinental railroad was completed at Promontory UT. Four precious metal spikes were used in the ceremony: two golden (one commissioned by Leland Stanford, the governor of CA, the other by the San Francisco News Letter), one silver (from the governor of NV), and one of an alloy of gold, silver, and iron (from the governor of AZ). But the real final spike was an ordinary iron one, which was rigged to automatically send a telegram as it was driven in, letting the world know that the railroad was complete. Except that it didn't work, and the telegram was sent by hand.

The silver spike and Stanford's golden one, as well as the silver hammer with which they were driven, may be in the Stanford museum. The gold-silver-iron spike has disappeared. But the second golden spike was probably returned to the News Letter offices, where it remained until 18-Apr-1906, when it was taken by a chrononaut, just before the building was destroyed in the earthquake and subsequent fire.

Dutch Boys

Three years ago, gay-neocon icon Pim Fortuyn was assasinated by a PETA-type terrorist. He was on the verge of becoming Prime Minister of the Netherlands; had he lived, and been able to do something about the Islamist plague, Theo van Gogh might never have been murdered.

Hide and Seek

Instapundit points to this story about explosives found in Terry Nichols's home, 10 years after it was searched by the FBI, and wonders what this says about the competence and/or efficiency of FBI teams looking for Al Qaeda sleeper cells.

This reminds me of a funny-only-after-the-event story that happened to someone I know in London. This fellow, with one of those Jewish names that could just as easily be Irish (and there seem to be a lot of those), owns some rental property, and had a tenant who actually was Irish, seemed to be behaving suspiciously, and then suddenly left. So he called the police, who came, searched the flat, found nothing that shouldn't have been there, pronounced it clean, and reassured the landlord that he had nothing to fear, the house wasn't going to blow up one morning. Years passed, and eventually a subsequent tenant pulled up some floorboards, saw explosives hidden under them, and called the police. Who came, saw said explosives, and immediately went to have a serious conversation with the landlord with the Irish-sounding name. Who said "look, I called you years ago when that suss tenant left, and you assured me that there were no bombs hidden in my house!"

I'm not sure what the moral of all this is, except that just because you've already looked somewhere doens't mean that there's nothing still hidden there.

The Arthur Dent Filibuster

I continue to believe that it would be best to set off the 'nuclear option' now, and get rid of the power to filibuster judicial nominations, a power so entrenched in history and tradition that it has never ever been used, not even once in all the years that it's been theoretically available. To those who say the Republicans should keep it because they might one day find it useful, I say:

1. If they've never found a use for it in 200 years, why think they ever will?
2. If there ever comes a time when there's a Democrat majority and president, and the president nominates someone so unacceptable to the minority (but acceptable to the majority) that they would consider trying a filibuster, do you really believe the Democrats won't immediately use this 'nuclear option' themselves? Do you think they'd hesitate a moment?

But there's a problem with normal filibusters too. Filibstering legislative proposals is an old Senate tradition, but it used to be quite rare, reserved for the most outrageous excesses of a majority gone wild. In the past 20 years or so it's become a weapon of choice for both sides, exercised several times a year by whoever happens to be in the minority. And the reason for this increase is obvious: no longer do filibusters involve actually speaking through the night, reading the phone book, or poetry, while resorting to extreme measures to keep the floor. That kind of filibuster has gone the way of cigar smoking and fist fights on the Senate floor.

Instead, we've got the Arthur Dent filibuster: the minority announces its intention to speak for as long as needed, and trots out 41 senators who will vote against cutting off the debate, and then suggests that since they are prepared to speak all night, and the majority is prepared to stay up and watch them, they don't need to actually do so; instead, they might as well both nick round to the local for a quick half. Or, in this case, pretend the debate is still going, and get on with the rest of the Senate's business. C-SPAN viewers see the usual sight of senators going about their business, while the filibuster with all its antics has been moved to Room 3B of Unseen University.

And so the filibuster has become cheap - the minority pays no price for using it, so why shouldn't it do so whenever it feels like it? I'm really surprised that it's been used so sparingly - logically every single bill should be filibustered, and there should at all times be 10 filibusters going on simultaneously, in Room 3B.

Getting rid of the Arthur Dent filibuster, returning to the old days when filibusters actually cost the minority, in personal comfort and in dignity, should mean that they'd return to being what they once were, a 'nuclear option' useful as a threat, but only actually fired very rarely, and with great reluctance.