More Evidence in Favor of Term Limits

Plame's husband wants Post to probe Woodward

"Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press have asked Judge Reggie Walton to deny Fitzgerald's blanket protective order, which would bar public access to grand jury transcripts, witness statements and a wide range of other evidence in the case. Any leaks could result in civil and criminal fines, the order warns."

Wilson continue to prove that he can't keep his own mouth shut.

Believe It or Not - Are you sure you want to keep saying we were fooled by Ahmad Chalabi and the INC? By Christopher Hitchens

"Let us suppose, then, that we can find a senator who voted for the 1998 act to remove Saddam Hussein yet did not anticipate that it might entail the use of force, and who later voted for the 2002 resolution and did not appreciate that the authorization of force would entail the removal of Saddam Hussein! Would this senator kindly stand up and take a bow? He or she embodies all the moral and intellectual force of the anti-war movement. And don't be bashful, ladies and gentlemen of the 'shocked, shocked' faction, we already know who you are."

Brown's Alito letter lifted from blogger

"Brown's letter merely changed the last clause so the sentence read, 'What is striking about Alito is that he is so hostile even to the basic rights of workers to have a day in court, not to mention interpreting the law against them.'"

Joe Biden, where are you?

HUMAN EVENTS ONLINE :: Paris Burning: How Empires End by Patrick J. Buchanan

"This is the larger meaning of the ritual murder of Theo Van Gogh in Holland, the subway bombings in London, the train bombings in Madrid, the Paris riots spreading across France. The perpetrators of these crimes in the capitals of Europe are the children of immigrants who were once the colonial subjects of the European empires.

At this writing, the riots are entering their 12th night and have spread to Rouen, Lille, Marseille, Toulouse, Dijon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Cannes, Nice. Thousands of cars and buses have been torched and several nursery schools fire-bombed. One fleeing and terrified woman was doused with gasoline and set ablaze. "

GAO confirms some e-voting problems

"Although the issues are not universal, GAO found that some e-voting systems do not encrypt ballots cast or audit logs, and either one could be altered without detection. In addition, some machines are insecure enough that someone could alter a ballot's appearance so that votes cast for one candidate would be recorded for an opponent."

Democrats defeat election-law aid for bloggers | CNET News.com

"Democrats on Wednesday managed to defeat a bill aimed at amending U.S. election laws to immunize bloggers from hundreds of pages of federal regulations."

Nice going, commies!

Just The News

"Cooper, 38, has been gathering momentum all year that peaked with his on-the-scene coverage of Hurricane Katrina, Klein said.

'He's got a refreshing way of being the anti-anchor,' he said. 'He's not quote-unquote reporting at you. He's just being himself. He's asking the questions you would like answered. He's getting involved the way you might. You feel that he's a regular person that you can trust talking to you. He brings such a passion to the storytelling that's infectious.'"

What total idiots. But then, I haven't watched network TV for a long time. I'd probably have trouble going back to it. Die mainstream media, die!

WARD OF THE COURT - Democrats-Temper Tantrums or Honesty - By Steven Ward

"So to claim that Tenet and other CIA officials would have lied to Jay Rockefeller and others in private closed door meetings to help the neocons make the case for war defies credulity. Yet, that is what the room temperature IQ crowd of Cindy Sheehan and others want us to believe. "

*Chuckle*

Watered Down Volker Report Finally Sputters Forth

Even so, the "sensitive" types at the UN are shocked...

"The 19-month investigation has caused havoc at the United Nations, whose officials say the world body was unequipped to handle a program of that size."

But from here:

http://www.un.org/geninfo/ir/ch6/ch6_txt.htm...

Who works at the United Nations and what do they do there?
Economists, translators, statisticians, secretaries, TV producers, computer experts, physicians, carpenters – these are just a few of the wide variety of people with many skills and backgrounds who work as UN staff members.

The UN Secretariat employs some 7,500 staff members under the regular budget and a nearly equal number under special funding. Coming from some 170 countries, they administer the UN's policies and programmes in New York and at duty stations around the world. The UN system as a whole – the UN and its related programmes and specialized agencies, including the World Bank and the IMF – employs some 61,000 people worldwide.

Funny, thts more people than Microsoft has:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39233636,00.htm

NEWSMEAT - Hall of Fame - Political Donations of the Rich, Famous, & Powerful

Now I know who to boycott (most of 'em).

'Bill and Me'�

Mr. Freeh also heaps scorn on Mr. Clinton for his 177 last-minute pardons and commutations without consulting either the FBI or the Justice Department, contrary to established procedures. One beneficiary, Marc Rich, fled to Switzerland to avoid 50-plus indictments for fraud. Why drop the charges? Mr. Rich's socialite wife, Denise, donated more than $1 million to Democrats during the Clinton-Gore years. As Mr. Freeh writes, "the stench... should have been enough to dissuade the president. It didn't, of course. That was Bill Clinton."

Agency Probes Possible Terror Threat Leak - Yahoo! News

"'It's ironic that on the one hand the department is saying this is not a credible threat and then, if these e-mails are true, people within the department with access to classified information felt it was worth contacting their own families,' said Rep. Peter King (news, bio, voting record), R-N.Y., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.

The e-mails began circulating Oct. 3 — three days before Kelly and Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced they were putting thousands of extra police officers on patrol in the subways in response to the possible plot to bomb the subway using briefcases or baby strollers packed with explosives.

The Daily News quoted one e-mail — purportedly penned by the unnamed son of a high-ranking Homeland Security official — in which he warns recipients: 'The only information I can pass on to you is that everyone should at all costs not ride the subway for the next two weeks in major areas of NYC.'"

Nothing like this to restore my faith, along with the founding fathers that government should only be trusted as far as you can throw it. That mistrust, not shared by nearly enough US citizens these days, is exactly what made our country great. Keep disappointing us Big Government. We need the reminders.

Miers is the wrong pick - George Will

"The wisdom of presumptive opposition to Miers' confirmation flows from the fact that constitutional reasoning is a talent -- a skill acquired, as intellectual skills are, by years of practice sustained by intense interest. It is not usually acquired in the normal course of even a fine lawyer's career. The burden is on Miers to demonstrate such talents, and on senators to compel such a demonstration or reject the nomination."

E.U. Opens Historic Talks On Membership for Turkey

"PARIS, Oct. 4 -- The European Union formally opened membership talks with Turkey early Tuesday morning, but only after bitter opposition by Austria had exposed deep apprehensions about the future of the 25-country group and the prospects of admitting a large, poor, Muslim country to its ranks."

I wonder what their problem is? In another 25 years or so all of Europe will be a large poor Muslim country. Turkey will fit right in.

Katrina Takes a Toll on Truth, News Accuracy - Los Angeles Times

"Rumors supplanted accurate information and media magnified the problem. Rapes, violence and estimates of the dead were wrong."

If Ex-WMAL Host Is Sorry, It's Not For Bashing Islam

"Graham hopes to have the last laugh. ABC is seeking bids for its radio stations, including WMAL, and the overwhelming response Graham has had from other radio companies makes him optimistic that a new owner might put him back on the air here."

WMAL, another train-wreck (err, make that ship-wreck in keeping with the post below) about to happen has in recent memory been a conservative talk show station, although I've continued to think it has been such only reluctantly. WMAL's local talk has been all over the map with an emphasis on early morning wake-up humor and traffic reports. I always got them confused with WTOP and WRC, one a news-only station and the other the original home of Larry Kings radio program before he hit the jackpot of... whatever you call what he does now.

With few exceptions, media companies have two separate agendas, one, "The Agenda" whatever that happens to be, and two, the bottom line. In the past they have been able to keep these two things blissfully unaware of one another. Is the New York Times the powerhouse it is because it is a liberal paper in a liberal city? Probably not. After all, the Wall Street Journal comes out of New York too, and there are lots of more liberal papers in New York.

WMAL's success has been well correlated though with the fact that they were the primary carrier of Rush Limbaugh for as long as I can remember, and they gradually added more conservative talk, as well as shifted their own local talk to a conservative slant, presumably to keep people from tuning away as soon as Limbaugh's 12-3 slot ended.

Thinking that the ABC-Disney combine was more centrally located on the political spectrum than the others I once signed up for a slew of "services" from the company (that my spam filters are still trying to cope with) and among other things checked in at a forum where you could leave comments about their on-air activities.

That is, in fact, what I did: leave a comment about the newly restructured program "This Week" which David Brinkly had turned over to Sam Donaldson and Cokey Roberts (with short appearances each week by token conservative Pulitzer Prize winner George Will). My comment was on the sudden departure of Donalson/Roberts and their replacement with the quite liberal commentator George Stephanopolis, who's main claim to fame was a kiss-and-tell book written after he left the Clinton administration. Nothing has changed my opinion that this fellow has no particular business (i.e. credentials) to host such a national show. And nothing has changed the opinion of ABC News, who promptly deleted my comment. Fair and open, as long as you say nice things about us I suppose.

Well, nothing pleases me more than to see these outfits have trouble. Their reign as arbiters of what we all are supposed to be thinking is long overdue for an end. If WMAL goes under, or gets sold and changes to an all Hari-Crishna format, or whatever, someone else will no doubt pick up the popular programs, even if, in the shuffle, a few good things are lost. In the long run, and in the big picture, the fat-cats of the fourth estate deserve to be taken down a peg, or several. All in all, a good start.

NY Times cuts 500 jobs; Philly papers cut 100 - Boston.com

"NEW YORK --The New York Times Co. and two Philadelphia newspapers announced major job cuts Tuesday as the industry grapples with severe financial problems including weak advertising and circulation declines. The Times said it would cut about 500 jobs, while the Philadelphia papers will eliminate a total of 100 jobs."

Reminding me of my favorite lawyer joke, the punchline of which is: "A good start."

More:

Mercury News plans to shrink newsroom by 52 jobs
"16% reduction ends week of newspaper industry buyouts and layoffs;
Cuts are 'painful,' says editor, but the paper will survive"

The Conservative Brotherhood

" The Conservative Brotherhood is a group of African American writers whose politics are on the right hand side of the political spectrum. Expanding the dialog beyond traditional boundaries, they seek to contribute to a greater understanding of African Americans and America itself through advocacy and commentary."

German Debate Results

In reporting about debate results for the top job in Germany it would seem that the German and international press are as confused as is the US press over who wins our debates:

"BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder beat his conservative rival Angela Merkel in a feisty U.S.-style TV debate on Sunday but may not have delivered the knock-out blow needed to catch her in the polls, surveys showed."

While other reporting claimed that she was a clear winner. Only the polls will tell.