Tennessee Rants

I'm Closing the Blog

2005-08-08T18:04:00.000-05:00

It's been fun. Too much fun. Distracts me from my family far too much. Not just the writing, but visiting other blogs, reading stories, leaving comments, haranguing lefties who tick me off...

It's kind of like an addiction, really.

Thank you, all you readers and fellow bloggers who have visited, read, left comments, linked to me, and generally made this so enjoyable and satisfying.

So, I wonder how long withdrawal will last?

The New York Times: Reprehensible?

2005-08-08T07:37:00.000-05:00

No, they just stink.

After being caught last week trying to gain access to the sealed adoption records of Judge John Roberts' children, they are both attempting to brazen it out and continuing to dig.

Texas Democratic Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison is the one who actually called the NYT's actions "reprehensible". It may be the only time I've come close to agreeing with her.

Look: for all I or anybody else knows, Roberts might turn out to be the biggest closet liberal since David Souter. In fact, that's a big concern on my part. But adoption records, in this country, are considered to be sacrosanct. Even should there be some irregularity in the adoptions (which I doubt), the NYT can achieve no good and cause only misery by pursuing this matter. They can, in fact, hurt Roberts' family and especially his children badly.

And this just after NYT executive editor Bill Keller sent out a memo basically saying that the Grey Lady needed to clean up her act.

I believe, from the initial report last week, that senior editor Bill Borders is the guy behind this piece of investigative reporting. The from this week's report, the actual reporter poking around is a fellow named Glenn Justice. Do these two guys need to have a little conference with Bill Keller? Or was Keller just joking around?

Incidentally, Drudge has done a good job keeping up with all this. He runs the news site I'm picking most of this up from.

If the NYT really wants to turn a new leaf, then a good place to start would be to cease and desist messing with people's kids.

And maybe throw in a sincere apology for even thinking about it.

Dumb shoots Dumberer

2005-08-07T20:27:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know. It's a tragedy. But both the shooter and the shootee are still idiots.

Two buddies selling firearms at a flea market in Kentucky got into an argument over the Iraq War. Somehow, it turned into an old fashioned shootout. The details aren't clear yet, but it sounds like the peacenik-gun-nut drew on the war-hawk-gun-nut and got a big dose of rest-in-peacenik for it.

Guys: that might have been cool in Wyatt Earp's day; but this isn't Wyatt Earp's day.

I was commenting only a couple days ago at Tom Carter's Blog that the biggest threat to the Second Amendment might be handgun owners with legal permits acting like nitwits. Am I going to have to come over to Tom's viewpoint that handguns simply have to be banned completely outside the military and police forces? The incident above supports his argument perfectly.

Coulter commits plagiarism?

2005-08-04T13:43:00.000-05:00

Naaaaah.

The story... No... the accusations... are summarized here. But it isn't plagiarism.

Basically, a liberal internet journal called The Raw Story says that in Ann Coulter's recent column delivering a well deserved slap at the National Endowment for the Arts, she lifted all sorts of passages from other conservative publications which have catalogued various NEA abuses over the years.

Simple to do. She could have googled the NEA, read through the most likely articles to come up, and done some cut and paste.

And that's probably what she did do. But there are a few problems.

1. The wording is not the same. The wording is similar, but not the same. She might have done cut and paste, but having reworded the material, it only amounts to failing to attribute sources.

2. She is accused of stealing various individual phrases and sentences, not paragraphs or extended passages.

3. She did not steal anybody's entire article.

4. She did not steal any unique or catchy turns of phrase. Rather, she only took samples of information from the other stories. Coulter is known best for her ability to fire off remarkably nasty barbs wrapped in splendid wit. None of that is what she is accused of having taken.

5. She is an opinion writer, not a reporter. She never claimed to be making new revelations, only summarizing information which had been made available to the public already. (I remember reading her original column and already being familiar with about half the stuff she mentioned myself.) An opinion columnist working with documented facts is not generally required to practice attribution like an academic writer. It is, indeed, rare to see a footnote among op/ed pieces.

Summary: cutting and pasting small items of old news, rewording them, and stringing them together using Coulter's uniquely acerbic style is not plagiarism.

Ann Coulter is getting smeared. If I know her, she probably feels complemented.

Yeah, right

2005-08-04T10:45:00.000-05:00

The New York Times is looking for dirt on Supreme Court Nominee Judge John Roberts.

According to Drudge, they are looking into the adoption records for Roberts' children.

According to one of Drudge's sources (I know, I know. It might be one of the janitorial staff) at the Times, such inquiries are part of a "standard background check".

I'll bet they wish they were so thorough doing "standard background checks" with characters like Jayson Blair.

Albert Eisele gets it wrong in so Many Ways

2005-08-03T14:01:00.000-05:00

In case you don't know, Albert Eisele is the editor of the The Hill, the newspaper which recently quoted Helen Thomas claiming (in a fit of hyperbole) that she would kill herself if Dick Cheney ever ran for president.

Today, Eisele published an explanation which, like the original piece, was run on Drudge.

Though I found the piece informative; it was irritating in two different respects.

First:

"Little did I know, being a creature of the typewriter/telegraph era of journalism, that cybergossip Matt Drudge would pounce on the item and transmit it to the farthest regions of the Internet universe, along with an unflattering photograph of Ms. Thomas."

Come on, Eisele! Drudge has only been doing his thing for nearly a decade now. If I had a dollar for every supposedly professional journalist who wrote "I never expected Drudge to pick it up", I'd be able to pay for high speed internet access without messing with the family budget. If it never occurred to Eisele that somebody outside the beltway might pick up some story he posted on the internet, then he needs to retire. Yesterday.

Further, one might think a publisher would like having something he wrote transmitted "to the farthest regions of the Internet universe."

Second:

"That was all Drudge acolytes needed to unleash a flood of e-mails condemning her Â and me, as her unwitting accomplice."

No. No. No.

Nobody in the United States mistook Eisele for Helen Thomas' accomplice. Everybody reading the story knew quite well that Eisele's quote from Thomas was about as flattering as a pic of John Kerry in a bunny suit.

And nobody condemned Helen Thomas. People laughed at her, mocked her, giggled at her, made cracks about her. But nobody condemned her for her comments. Don't get me wrong. Helen Thomas has been frequently condemned. But it has been for all her biased reporting and antagonistic deportment towards Republican administration officials in the White House press room. The people who giggled at Thomas were certainly not the same folks who sent hate mail to Eisele for publishing the quote

The people who sent any hate mail to Eisele were the ones who liked Helen Thomas. They sent the mail because they felt Eisele had betrayed Thomas, not been her accomplice.

Furthermore, the Drudge acolytes, as Eisele calls them, were not the ones who sent the nasty-grams to Eisele. The Drudge acolytes (myself included) were the ones who loved the quote, and republished it, and satirized it. The reason is, most Drudge readers tend to lean conservative and know very well that Helen Thomas hasn't given a Republican President an even break in decades.

It's the libs who attacked Eisele, because he embarrassed one of their icons. And most of the people who did condemn Eisele almost certainly picked up the Thomas story fourth hand, from Eisele to Drudge to some smart aleck blogger like me and then to angry lib.

When Helen Thomas made her embarrassing quote the other day, she wasn't the only fool involved in that interview.

It's the "Morally Straight" Part that Drives 'em Nuts.

2005-08-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

That's actually part of the Boyscout Oath, you see.

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
to help other people at all times;
to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Oh, yeah. They (Scout bashers) probably hate that "duty to God and my country" part as well.

Bill Murchison just wrote a piece at Townhall covering President Bush's recent speech at the Boyscout Jamboree at Fort A.P. Hill in Virginia. Murchison points out that the President's speach, in the long run, will likely call down more liberal thunder both on Bush and the Boy Scouts than will his recess appointment of John Bolton as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.

For the record, the expression "morally straight" was part of the Boyscout Oath long before the words "gay" and "straight" had anything to do with a person's sexual preferences. And most intelligent Scout bashers (if there are such persons) understand that. However, the Boyscouts do specifically exclude atheists and homosexuals both from the ranks and from among the adult leaders. It's not like the Scouts have agents monitoring the entrances to gay bars to see if any of their people go there, but they make it clear that homosexuals and atheists aren't welcome, and that they don't think much of discretely avoiding the topic, either.

But "morally straight" irritates Scout bashers as much for what it really means as for what it accidentally says. What it really does mean is a commitment to an above-board sense of obedience to God-given moral absolutes: something which is anathema to moral relativists, secularists, hedonists, and liberals.

What's worse, a universal set of implications are specifically outlined in the Scout Law (Reference din the Scout Oath above).

A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Horrors!

What's worse: Scout leaders do often remind the boys that the part of the law about being clean includes language, humor, and sexual behavior as well as hygiene.

And to add insult to injury, to those litanies of imperatives (the Scout Oath and Scout Law) recited by every single Boyscout at every single Scout Meeting across the country, they even add that classic in right-wing thought control: the Pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands: one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

It's enough to make a good, atheistic, America-hating, Streisand-loving, vegetable-oil-powered-bus-touring liberal throw-up.

Chutzpah

2005-08-01T15:30:00.000-05:00

My Yiddish isn't too good. But I think the guy who hurled this accusation at the president last week showed plenty of the quality named above.

Take that, Hippies!

2005-08-01T08:05:00.000-05:00

Bolton to be appointed today.

Bravo, Brits!

2005-08-01T07:48:00.000-05:00

It looks as if they have broken the back, maybe, of the terror cell which staged the attacks on 7/7 and 7/27. This is a big vindication for British police and security-- especially after the bungled, and fatal, misidentification of a Brazilian worker for a Moslem terrorist the day after the second bombing. It shows that despite the appearance of brutal heavy-handedness with their increase in security measures, the police in Britain knew, in general, what they were doing.

Does it justify shooting that poor Brazilian fellow? No, of course not.

Does it show that the British responded with something other than "death squads", as some folks have called them? Yes.

I hope the Italians cooperate on extradition. I also hope that if there is a link to an organization or to a government that somehow facilitated those attacks; that they, too, can be identified and dealt with in a decisive fashion.

Like the Taliban.

Or like the Iraqi Baath Party.

And I hope the Brits, with their "death squads", can stop these other guys, as well.

Why do they keep letting her in the White House?

2005-07-28T15:05:00.000-05:00

Helen Thomas says she'll "kill herself" if Dick Cheney runs for president.

It wasn't a serious threat. She was ranting.

I will not say "Run Dick! Run!" Wouldn't be nice. Wouldn't be Christian. Wouldn't be...

See Dick. See Dick run. See Helen. See Helen croak herself.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

UPDATE (Monday, 8/1/05, 8:10 AM)

Oooooh. Now Helen's really mad.

I've been discovered!

2005-07-28T12:57:00.000-05:00

I'm so happy (Sob!).

Michael Silence at the Knoxville News Sentinel, doing his "No Silence Here" feature on the newspaper's website, has been checking my site and has highlighted me two times in the last week: here and here. Thank you, Michael.

Which reminds me, I need to add a Knoxnews link to my sidebar to catch local news and writers more easily.

Am I the only one troubled by this?

2005-07-28T11:01:00.000-05:00

Federal District Judge John Coughenour in Los Angeles yesterday sentenced a would-be bomber to a twenty-two year sentence. The man could be free in fourteen years. After this, the Judge Coughenour proceeded to use the courtroom venue not as a place to consider the law, but to weigh in on security, military, and partisan political issues.

While sentencing the convicted bomber, Coughenour read (in his prepared statement): "We did not need to use a secret military tribunal, detain the defendant indefinitely as an enemy combatant or deny the defendant the right to counsel... The message to the world from today's sentencing is that our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart."

The bomber was an Algerian national named Ahmed Ressam. He was trained in Afghanistan. He was a terrorist making war against our country in a conflict nobody wanted to acknowledge existed prior to 9/11.

Several points, therefore:

1. By handing down a sentence that allowed this guy an opportunity to do anything besides immediately meet his seventy virgins, Judge Coughenour established that perhaps the case would have been handled better by a military tribunal.

2. By offering political commentary from the bench, Judge Coughenour punctures any illusion of judicial objectivity. Federal prosecutors should object strenuously to having him handle any cases touching upon terrorism or national security in the future.

3. The Ressam case is different from that of the Gitmo vacationers. First, he was apprehended before 9/11. Second, he was captured in the United States, not in a foreign war zone.

4. The prosecutors wanted thirty-five years. That might have been the most they could ask for, considering the guy didn't succeed in killing anyone, bit it was still too easy. Terrorist activities should be a capital offense.

5. Prosecutors say that they tried to make a deal with Ressam so they could get information to extradite two other captured terrorists. Ressam quit cooperating and now prosecutors say they will have to drop extradition. Why didn't the judge hit Ressam with the maximum 35 years for that alone?

6. The message Judge Coughenour sends to the world is not: "...Our courts have not abandoned our commitment to the ideals that set our nation apart." Rather, the message he sends is: "Our courts oppose prudent national security measures and also are easy on convicted terrorists. Come make war on our nation!"

I guess she wants us to forget Hanoi...

2005-07-26T08:20:00.000-05:00

...By siding with our enemies in Iraq.

Jane Fonda is planning an anti-war tour. Better yet, she wants to do it in a bus fueled by vegetable oil.

If it wasn't on the AP wire, I'd swear that ScrappleFace was making this up.

Will John Kerry sit near her at rallies like in the old days?

Will Dennis Kucinich give her tips on how to do over-aged hippie buses?

Better yet, will he ride with her so he can have nostalgic flashbacks of the 2004 campaign?

Wait! They are both single again, aren't they? Maybe this is Fonda's way of saying: "Hey Dennis, I really dig skinny little guys who have forgotten what decade they live in."

We can't call her "Baghdad Jane" because she hasn't actually gone overseas and done publicity shots manning weapons intended to kill U.S. servicemen. Then again, nobody has given her an opportunity to pose with an RPG-7 labeled "Hit that Hummer!" yet.

But since she wants to use the vegetable oil bus, it's not too soon to call her "Crisco Jane".

Okay, NOW I'm worried about Roberts

2005-07-25T12:23:00.000-05:00

Hillary Clinton has endorsed him. Maybe Ann Coulter was right.

If that is so, then abortion, porn, flag burning, pledge mangling, gay marrying, prayer prohibiting, decalogue deconstruction, and all the rest will either stay legal or continue on their merry way to judicial recognition.

Right now, it's all a time-will-tell situation.

Ten years from now, I'll either remember the Roberts nomination as one of the high points of the W. Presidency, or as the biggest mistake he ever made.

Yes, I know it's a tragedy.

2005-07-24T20:52:00.000-05:00

But this quote from a story covering the aftermath of the killing of a Brazilian worker mistaken for a terror suspect is still priceless:

"On Sunday, ministers and senior police officers defended a policy of shooting dead individuals suspected of being suicide bombers..."

From now on, maybe they should shoot only live individuals.

Kerry wants documents on Judge Roberts

2005-07-24T19:31:00.000-05:00

And ScrappleFace covers it so well.

And as always: yes, it is satire.

Bobbies Packing Heat, Part II

2005-07-23T18:02:00.000-05:00

The dead guy was a Brazilian!

I had discussed the matter earlier, wondering whether the dead man was a bomber, a decoy, or an idiot. All due respect for the dead, I still think he was one of those three. Probably the last.

Why was he wearing a heavy coat in July?

Did the police identify themselves? If so, then why didn't the suspect stop when ordered?

What was he doing in a suspected terrorist hideout?

Unless we have Moslem extremists immigrating to Britain from Brazil (doubtful) we have a tragedy. At the same time, I am not ready to condemn the British police without knowing all the facts. Why? Because in a state of emergency, when these guys are putting their lives on the line for us, we do owe them the benefit of the doubt.

And maybe even a couple of doubts.

Why is this guy walking the streets?

2005-07-23T14:51:00.000-05:00

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the outspoken Moslem cleric who has simultaneously (1) supported the bombings in Britain but (2) condemned the killing of women and children and (3) blamed the attacks on every British subject who ever voted Labour while (4) calling for additional attacks around the world and (for good measure) (5) praises the 9/11 attacks in the United States-- has now announced his desire to see a Moslem flag waving over every capital in the world.

The man's lunacy speaks for itself, and I won't bother addressing it. But I do have some questions for authorities in Britain.

Why is he walking the streets?

What does he have to say to violate sedition laws?

Why wasn't he deported back to Syria long ago?

Does anybody watch him?

Or the people around him?

Or whatever mosque he hangs his shingle at?

And how many of the known bombers worshipped at the Mosque where he preaches?

And how many bombers have to have hung out there before that Mosque can be considered a terrorist headquarters?

And shouldn't the people who consent to listen to him when he preaches be considered likely terrorist material?

And might there not be probable cause to keep folks who listen to him under surveillance?

With phone wiretaps and house searches?

Or (to make it all easier) fly them all back to whatever God-forsaken/Allah-beloved country they came from?

Or (better yet) to club Gitmo?

To sum it up: when will the people of England (and America as well) realize they are in a war far bigger than the one in Iraq, which has been going on long before the Iraq War started, and in which the battlefield and the enemy are in England and the United States as well as Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bobbies Packing Heat

2005-07-22T10:03:00.000-05:00

There was a shooting incident this morning on the London Underground. Police attempted to detain an Arab-looking person wearing an oddly heavy coat. The man ran; the police chased him down and; hesitating not a moment, used deadly force on him.

Obviously, they shot him to prevent his detonation of any bomb which he might have carried, concealed under his coat.

Of course, the Moslem community in Britain is howling.

Let them howl. Whether the dead man was carrying explosives under his coat or not, I think it was a good call by the police given the man's dress and his response to police attempts to detain him peacefully.

The police are doubly justified given the bombings yesterday and three weeks ago.

But, gosh: those mean police officers obviously had that poor guy racially profiled.

Sorry folks, but my patience has run out for Moslems who refuse to condemn terrorism but angrily oppose anything resembling prejudice against their religion. In my mind, a South Asian or Middle Eastern man who wears a heavy coat in July during a terror alert and then runs from police is probably a pretty good candidate for the Darwin Awards.

London Bombed Again

2005-07-21T11:57:00.000-05:00

Four bombs; coordinated, but smaller blasts; no deaths. Story here.

Looks like copy cats. Which means a whole, separate investigation.

Communities United Against Terror

2005-07-21T10:59:00.000-05:00

I came across a blog link to these guys while surfing on Blog Explosion. At first glance (and only a glance) the concept didn't seem too terribly impressive, and I left behind a comment saying so. This prompted one of those heated responses which challenged me to take a second look. They may have something.

Communities United Against Terror, according to Brit blogger John Holroyd, "Is an unapologetic stance against terror. We are not going to sit around and listen to those who tell us that somehow this is our own fault, that suicide murderers are really people we can negotiate with, it is about telling politicians that we don't want appeasement because we don't believe appeasement is possible... And that we won't accept our politicians removing our freedoms in the name of security."

From looking more closely at the site, and from the comments made by John H., it appears that CUAT is attempting to drum up an international grass roots response to terrorism; an effort to put some pressure on those democracies which are nominally opposed to terrorism but otherwise inactive; perhaps an effort to make the "Coalition of the Willing" a little more willing.

You might say they want to be like the International Red Cross or Amnesty International, only they won't be trying to help the enemy.

They have a petition on their front page with an attached list of signatories chiefly from the U.S. and the U.K., although I've seen Italians, Brazilians and others included as well.

It may be a worthwhile effort. I will subscribe to the weekly bulletins to this group and give my impression of them from time to time. I will also add a link to their organization on the sidebar.

And to John Holroyd at Towards a Free World: I apologize for my hasty judgment and thank you for challenging me to take a second look.

People of Germany:

2005-07-21T10:26:00.000-05:00

Hide your children.

Here is one man you don't want saying: "Ich bin ein Berliner."

HT: Drudge.

Cutting-Edge Artwork

2005-07-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

The California state attorney general has some interesting taste in the art he hangs in his offices. Here is a piece in the cafeteria.

No worries about political partisanship at the attorney general's office, are there?

Ann Coulter opposes Roberts

2005-07-20T12:08:00.000-05:00

Drudge has the news flash here.

As I write this, Coulter's website seems to be down, or crashed, or something.

And the Drudge flash will not presently link to the actual release, either.

According to Drudge, Coulter's argument seems to be that Roberts might be a Trojan Horse, or a Trojan Nominee, or a Trojan Conservative.

Per Drudge, Coulter says (at various points): "Stealth nominees have never turned out to be a pleasant surprise for conservatives. Never. Not ever... It means nothing that Roberts wrote briefs arguing for the repeal of Roe v. Wade when he worked for Republican administrations... Roberts has specifically disassociated himself from those cases... Roberts has gone through 50 years on this planet without ever saying anything controversial. That's just unnatural."

That is: She thinks Roberts is a lib in conservative clothing.

Or a blue in red clothing?

Whatever the case is, it's darn weird that criticism of the president's choice should come from the right instead of the left, and that Coulter's site should be down right now, of all times.

Is Coulter serious? Or is she purposely trying to diffuse what promises to be a perfect liberal storm of opposition to this nomination?

Imaginary message from chubby evil genius Karl Rove to beautiful sinister accomplice Ann Coulter:

"Ann, pretend you hate John Roberts. If you hate him, the liberals will think he must be another Souter. If anyone asks, I never told you this. And by the way, thanks for making those calls about Plame for me."

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ONE MORE THOUGHT (Wednesday, 7/20/05, 2:15 PM): I entertained the notion of Coulter's opposition-as- hoax because it occurred to me as a humorous, though highly unlikely, explanation for her comments. The more I think of it, however, the more unlikely it becomes. Probability would approach zero. Why? Because for her to perform a hoax of that nature would permanently end her career as a major opinion maker. Nobody-- conservative or liberal-- would ever take her opinion seriously again.

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ALSO (2:40 PM): Here is the text of Coulter's column. Found it on Worldnet Daily.