President Obama replaced Gen. Stanley McChrystal for insubordination after he made disparaging remarks during an interview with Rolling Stone. For an institution that often gets called “imperialist” or worse, it says something about the American military when its highest officers respectfully accept rebuke from civilian authority. But accountability is just one thing that makes the American military special.
We spent billions of dollars rebuilding Afghanistan and Iraq, fixing sewers and roads, building schools, making sure people have access to clean drinking water. The cost of reconstruction in Iraq alone is already more than $44.6 billion.
As Dinesh D’Souza tells me in my first Fox News Channel TV special (airing 9pm ET on Saturday and Sunday), “How common is it for one military power to be feeding the civilians on the other side?” Very common, for Americans. We did it big after World War II.
The American military is also unique in that it has never attacked another country with the intention to conquer it. Bosnia, Grenada, Kosovo, Panama, Dominican Republic. The military went in, finished the mission, and then left.
The military is just one thing that’s great about America. Saturday and Sunday at 9pm ETon the Fox News Channel, I’ll report on America’s military, and on more things that illustrate “What’s Great About America.”
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"The media, for like five seconds, those with thrill up and down their legs, they were a little critical of the Anointed One and what was one of the worst speeches in the Oval Office... but as soon as he fired McChrystal and hired Petraeus, they went nuts," Sean Hannity observed last night at the beginning of his recurring "Media Mash" segment with NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell.
The Fox News host then rolled a montage compiled by Media Research Center (MRC) analyst Kyle Drennen which showed the mainstream media hailing Obama as "brilliant" for the personnel move.
After the montage, Bozell noted that the same media that proclaimed Obama sacking McChrystal as "brilliant" were claiming that the president really had no choice but to fire the Afghanistan commander. "If he had no choice, then it really wasn't really altogether all that brilliant," the MRC president observed.
Bozell and Hannity also discussed the media's double standard in bashing BP CEO Tony Hayward -- who had been relieved of duty for overseeing the cleanup operation -- for yachting over the weekend, while ignoring President Obama's weekend golfing excursion and MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski admitting she was parroting White House talking points to defend the administration's handling of the ongoing crisis.
At the top of Thursday's O'Reilly Factor on FNC, host Bill O'Reilly cited a NewsBusters video montage of various media figures touting President Obama's "brilliant" handling of the General McChrystal controversy: "[Obama] has a very powerful ally, the American media. After the President fired General McChrystal yesterday, NewsBusters.org put together this montage of press reaction." [Audio available here]
O'Reilly played the video as part of his Talking Points Memo opening the show. After it finished, he joked: "So I guess the firing of McChrystal was a brilliant move." He then noted how "...we could have played that montage with another 30 seconds with different reporters echoing the same theme."
Minutes later, O'Reilly asked radio host Laura Ingraham about the media all singing from the same hymnal: "When you hear the mainstream media, brilliant, it was brilliant, it was brilliant, it was brilliant." Ingraham interjected: "It was hilarious." O'Reilly replied: "Isn't it? I mean, how far down in the tank does the American people – the American media have to go, before the people just say enough." Ingraham concluded: "Well, it shows you Bill, how totally out of touch all these media figures – and that montage, I was screaming in the studio here, it was so funny to hear – but it's so out of touch with the way regular people think."
Ingraham continued: "Most people are saying, okay, what they're doing on the economy isn't working. What they're doing in Afghanistan, we're losing confidence. We love our troops, we want them to win. But we're not getting why this is working. And they're losing confidence across the board in the way this administration is operating. And meanwhile, putting in Petraeus, who obviously is a hero, is 'Oh, well, that's brilliant. That's decisive.'
Later, O'Reilly spoke with liberal Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill about the same topic and declared: "He [Obama] had to do it. But it wasn't brilliant. It was like he had to do it. And these clowns are going 'it was a brilliant move.' What do you think?" Even Hill admitted: "Brilliant was pushing it." O'Reilly grilled Hill on the left-wing media slant: "...you watch these guys in the mainstream media supposed, you know, objective reporters. You know it's a farce." Hill again admitted: "I'll agree the response last night was clearly a left-leaning analysis." O'Reilly later observed: "But traditionally, the media in this country are cynical and they're distrustful of people in power, and they're looking to get you, and then you go on and 'he so brilliant.'"
On Wednesday night, radio host Mark Levin also cited the NewsBusters item on his show and similarly mocked the media reaction.
Here is a full transcript of O'Reilly's June 24 Talking Points Memo:
8:00AM TEASE
BILL O'REILLY: The O'Reilly Factor is on. Tonight:
CHIP REID: It sounds like a pretty brilliant decision.
WOLF BLITZER: A very brilliant move.
CHUCK TODD: It's going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the President.
O'REILLY: The mainstream media senses President Obama may be going down so they are propping him up. We will have opinions on that from Laura Ingraham and Marc Lamont Hill.
8:01AM SEGMENT
O'REILLY: Hi, I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight. President Obama on the descent. That is the subject of this evening's Talking Points Memo.
As we reported last night, this week is the low point for the Obama administration. And today, a new Wall Street Journal poll confirms what we said yesterday. For the first time in that poll, more Americans think President Obama is doing a bad job than a good job. 48% Disprove, 45% say he's doing okay. But the really bad news for the President is that 62% of Americans now feel the country's heading in the wrong direction. That is the highest number since before the presidential election of 2008.
Talking Points believes it is the chaos factor that is damaging the Obama administration, once again. The economy, shaky. The oil spill, chaos. The Afghan war, not going well. And the border situation is so bad the state of Arizona is now defying the federal government. Add it all up and you are in the chaos zone. No president can survive there. Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon were all done in by the perception they could not control the country. That is where the President is right now. But he has a very powerful ally, the American media. After the President fired General McChrystal yesterday, NewsBusters.org put together this montage of press reaction:
CHIP REID: Sounds like a pretty brilliant decision, really.
JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: This is nothing less than a stunning development, Brian. And quite frankly, at a quick glance, almost brilliant.
CHUCK TODD: Politically, in this town, it's going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the President.
WOLF BLITZER: A very brilliant move to tap General Petraeus.
DAVID GREGORY: I think he took swift and decisive action. I think that's how it's going to be read.
O'REILLY: So I guess the firing of McChrystal was a brilliant move. By the way, we could have played that montage with another 30 seconds with different reporters echoing the same theme.
Like life, politics is not fair. President Obama didn't cause the oil spill, he did not encourage General McChrystal to make indiscreet comments, he inherited a very bad economy, but has not been able to turn it around. For a guy like the President, who is ultra confident, this must be a frustrating time. His policies simply aren't working. And if the war in Afghanistan and the economy get any worse, he will go the way of Jimmy Carter. Fair-minded Americans bear no malice towards Mr. Obama. Just as President Bush was treated unfairly at times, so has the President been. But the truth is, America is now in the chaos zone. And November is coming up fast. And that's the memo.
Hopefully my two-cents about the films in this five-part series will help if you are looking for a way to honor those veterans, living and dead, who deserve to be remembered today, June 25th, the...
On Wednesday's Today show, NBC's Chuck Todd touted President Obama's "swiftness" in dealing with the controversy surrounding General Stanley McChrystal comments in Rolling Stone magazine as a "commander-in-chief moment," and hinted that it was a blessing in disguise, given the executive's tanking approval ratings.
Todd led the 7 am Eastern hour with his report on the President appointing General David Petraeus to replace General McChrystal, who was relieved of command following the Rolling Stone interview. The NBC White House correspondent remarked that with the Petraeus appointment, "the President signaled to his team, no more firestorms like this one will be tolerated." After playing a clip of Mr. Obama stating that he "won't tolerate division," he continued that "the President's aides don't expect there will be much division in the Senate, either, where some are predicting Petraeus will have the fastest confirmation in history, and the praise is bipartisan."
Later in the report, Todd used his "commander-in-chief moment" term as he emphasized the apparent good timing of the controversy and detailed the public's decreasing confidence in the President, according to NBC's own poll:
TODD: Still, the swiftness of the President's action is a commander-in-chief moment, at a time when the public is having doubts about his ability. According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, just 45 percent approve of the job he's doing as president. Forty-four percent believe he's firm and decisive in his decision making. That's down from 63 percent 18 months ago. And just under half the country, 49 percent, believe he has strong leadership qualities. That's down a whopping 21 points from the month he took office. And as the list of domestic problems, like unemployment and the oil spill, pile up on the President's desk, some say it was vitally important the President buy time on Afghanistan.
An on-screen graphic further described that President Obama's disapproval rating was at 48%, though the correspondent didn't specifically mention this statistic.
Almost a day earlier, Todd lauded the chief executive just as the Petraeus appointment was being made: "Politically, in this town, it's going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the President."
The full transcript of Chuck Todd's report from Thursday's Today show:
MEREDITH VIEIRA: Let us begin with the change in command in Afghanistan. Chuck Todd is NBC's chief White House correspondent. Good morning, Chuck.
CHUCK TODD: Good morning, Meredith. Well, after a rare swift set of personnel moves by this White House, the President is now back focused on trying to make his complicated Afghanistan strategy work, rather than fixated on who's going to implement it.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy.
TODD (voice-over): With General Petraeus by his side, and General McChrystal headed out a side door, the President signaled to his team, no more firestorms like this one will be tolerated.
OBAMA: I've just told my national security team that now is the time for all of us to come together. I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division.
TODD: The President's aides don't expect there will be much division in the Senate, either, where some are predicting Petraeus will have the fastest confirmation in history, and the praise is bipartisan.
SENATOR CARL LEVIN: I admire him and others that respond to that kind of a call from the President. I don't think he even had a chance to talk to his wife.
SENATOR LINDSAY GRAHAM: Dave Petraeus is our best hope. If things don't change, nobody can pull it out in Afghanistan.
TODD: But the hearings are expected to re-ignite the very divisive debate among the two parties about the question of a timetable for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, scheduled to begin next July.
SENATOR JOHN MCCAIN: Whether that is, quote- etched in stone, as the President's spokesperson, Mr. Gibbs, stated, or whether it will be conditions-based.
TODD: Still, the swiftness of the President's action is a commander-in-chief moment, at a time when the public is having doubts about his ability.
According to a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, just 45% approve of the job he's doing as president. Forty-four percent believe he's firm and decisive in his decision making. That's down from 63% 18 months ago. And just under half the country, 49%, believe he has strong leadership qualities. That's down a whopping 21 points from the month he took office. And as the list of domestic problems, like unemployment and the oil spill, pile up on the President's desk, some say it was vitally important the President buy time on Afghanistan.
RETIRED GENERAL BARRY MCCAFFREY: It does give the President cover and a strategy, and it does buy him time. He's putting a leader out there that will not be questioned.
TODD (live) Today, the focus stays on foreign affairs, as the President meets with the president of another country who's familiar with a quagmire-like situation in Afghanistan. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev visits the White House today. The two will hold a joint press conference, and Afghanistan is likely to come up, Matt.
MATT LAUER: All right. Chuck Todd at the White House this morning. Chuck, thank you very much.
Far-left MSNBC ranter Ed Schultz just can't let facts get in the way of his rank partisanship and liberal propagandizing. His latest whopper, that Gen. Stanley McChrystal was "another problem [President Obama] inherited from the Bush administration," was blatantly untrue, and just earned him a "pants on fire" rating from Politifact.com.
Politifact, which has busted up other untruths propagated by media liberals, noted a valuable lesson for liberals and Democrats: "not everything can be blamed on President Bush." Indeed.
Not only did President Obama not "inherit" McChrystal's command from the previous administration, he "effectively sacked the general in charge to create a vacancy that he then proceeded to fill with McChrystal as his fix-it man," notes Politifact.
We applaud the folks at Politifact for checking Schultz's inane rantings. Welcome to our world!
NBC's Today show on Wednesday refreshingly brought on a conservative guest who ripped the Obama administration's management of the war in Afghanistan. Daniel Goure of the Lexington Institute blasted the "dysfunctional organization" at the White House overseeing the war: "It's not a team of rivals. It's a team of nine-year-olds, and something needs to be done about that" [audio available here].
Anchor Matt Lauer brought on Goure and retired General Barry McCaffrey for a panel discussion on the controversy surrounding Rolling Stone's recent article on General Stanley McChrystal, the now-former commander of American forces in Afghanistan. Goure defended McChrystal in a Wednesday column on his organization's website, suggesting that the general shouldn't be fired for his and his staff's criticism of Obama administration officials. Lauer asked to explain his position: "Mr. Goure, you think that firing General McChrystal would be a disaster- is that accurate? Tell me why."
The conservative guest almost quoted directly from his column in his reply: "He is the war in Afghanistan. It is his strategy, his surge, his organization, his command structure. He is a general who fights and fights and fights. If you want to have a chance of winning this war, you beat him up, send him to the woodshed, and then send him back to Afghanistan."
The NBC anchor followed-up on the question of the general's comments in Rolling Stone: "It's funny you use the term 'his command structure,' yet he has completely broken the command structure, in terms of the people above him, by his comments, and...it's not the first time. How many strikes does he get?"
Goure refuted Lauer's premise and continued with his "nine-year-old" label of the Obama administration: "Actually, I don't think he broke the command structure above him. What you're seeing, in the McChrystal behavior and his staff, is a broken command structure from the top. This is a president who has a dysfunctional organization running his war. It's not a team of rivals. It's a team of nine-year-olds, and something needs to be done about that, not just about Stanley McChrystal."
While General McCaffrey, who is a NBC News military analyst, didn't defend McChrystal, it's interesting to note that the morning show turned to a conservative to comment on the controversy, instead of someone from the left.
The full transcript of Matt Lauer's panel discussion with retired General Barry McCaffrey and Daniel Goure, which began six minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour of Wednesday's Today show:
LAUER: Two men with very different perspectives on this are Retired General Barry McCaffrey, an NBC News military analyst, and Dan Goure, vice president of the conservative think tank, the Lexington Institute. Gentlemen, good morning to both of you.
BARRY MCCAFFREY: Good morning, Matt.
DANIEL GOURE: Good morning.
LAUER: General, let me start with you. You know, Savannah says that the President doesn't go into this with a preconceived notion. Do you think this is already a done deal? Is General McChrystal gone?
MCCAFFREY: I don't know. I'm sure of one thing- that he's impaired his effectiveness to guide the interagency process in Afghanistan- to deal with our own embassy, to deal with the White House in a significant way. And plus, it was sort of insulting to the allies. So Matt, it was a significant error. It's done political damage to the commander-in-chief and impairs effectiveness. Probably, he'll go, but- you know, the President could send him back.
LAUER: Well, is there anything, General, that General McChrystal could say to the President today, do you think, that could save his job?
MCCAFFREY: Well, I don't think what McChrystal has to say is really relevant. I think what the President is going to have to determine, in his own mind- what's the tradeoff between taking out- by the way, McChrystal is probably the most competent counter-terrorist fighter that we've produced in a generation. This guy is really good- so that's the tradeoff-
LAUER: Right.
MCCAFFREY: The strategy's faltering. It's $9 billion a month, 46,000 killed and wounded in the armed forces since 9/11. We're really in trouble from a political perspective
LAUER: Mr. Goure, you think that firing General McChrystal would be a disaster- is that accurate?
GOURE: That is accurate.
LAUER: Tell me why.
GOURE: He is the war in Afghanistan. It is his strategy, his surge, his organization, his command structure. He is a general who fights and fights and fights. If you want to have a chance of winning this war, you beat him up, send him to the woodshed, and then send him back to Afghanistan.
LAUER: It's funny you use the term 'his command structure,' yet he has completely broken the command structure, in terms of the people above him, by his comments, and, as Savannah Guthrie pointed out in her piece, it's not the first time. How many strikes does he get?
GOURE: Actually, I don't think he broke the command structure above him. What you're seeing, in the McChrystal behavior and his staff, is a broken command structure from the top. This is a president who has a dysfunctional organization running his war. It's not a team of rivals. It's a team of nine-year-olds, and something needs to be done about that, not just about Stanley McChrystal.
LAUER: Let me ask you both to comment on this next question. What happens to the troops on the ground and their morale if either of these situations plays out? General, I'll start with you,- if they fire General McChrystal, how does that impact morale, and if they keep him on, knowing- although Dan disagrees with this- but knowing that he seems to have broken the chain of command here, what does that do to morale?
MCCAFFREY: Well, you know, this would be the second in a row fired in Afghanistan, so it's a problem. But look- and let me disagree, if I may, with one of Dan's points. There are ten people who could step in and take command in Afghanistan without a momentary break in the effectiveness of the organization. General Mattis, a Marine general, at Joint Forces Command-
LAUER: Right.
MCCAFFREY: There's a lieutenant general, Dave Rodriguez, on the ground. So, no one commander is vital. Petraeus may be vital, our strategic genius at CENTCOM, but not McChrystal.
LAUER: Mr. Goure, what happens to morale? How does it impact, depending on which way this goes?
GOURE: The Rolling Stone article pointed out this is a general who walks the line with his troops. I think he is unique to this moment and unique to this war, and I think it does great damage to the morale of the troops.
LAUER: And real quickly, General McCaffrey, does it- if you think that General McChrystal needs to go, does it matter how it happens? In other words, can he resign, or does the President need to take the proactive step of actually firing him?
MCCAFFREY: Well, it's all optics. You know, Admiral Fallon essentially got fired by Secretary Gates over a similar situation with a reporter. They can do this in a gentlemanly way or not. It almost doesn't make any difference. I think Dan's major point is a good one. What we have to focus on is the war. The war is not going well. Karzai's incompetent-
LAUER: Right.
MCCAFFREY: The [Afghani] government's corrupt, the American people don't support it- those are the issues on the table, not bad judgment on the part of McChrystal and his public affairs guys.
LAUER: We will wait to see what happens at the White House today. General Barry McCaffrey and Dan Goure- gentlemen, thanks to both of you. I appreciate it.
While the media are attempting to grapple with the change in leadership of the Afghanistan war and what that all means, one thing that could be learned from this, which has been ignored, are valid criticisms of President Barack Obama and his ability to command the U.S. military.
Michael Hastings, author of the now-famous Rolling Stone magazine article "Runaway General" that captured several gotcha moments resulting in Obama relieving General Stanley McChrystal of his command, appeared on Al Jazeera English on June 23. He offered some startling insight into Obama's failure to grasp what he was actually getting into with this Afghanistan strategy known as the counterinsurgency strategy.
Hastings was asked if McChrystal had perhaps gotten the whole strategy wrong, but Hastings explained it was the President that didn't know what he was really getting into.
"I think that ship had sailed last year," Hastings said. "I think once the decision was made to do a counterinsurgency strategy, they had a pretty clear idea in mind what they wanted to do and I think this is quite interesting. I think this is one of the issues Obama didn't really understand what counter-insurgency meant and when the military said they wanted to do a counterinsurgency strategy that that actually meant 150,000 troops. Obama thought he could get away with just sending 21,000 over and getting a new general."
And as Hastings explained, Obama wasn't prepared due to this miscalculation.
"That clearly - anyone who has spent anytime around the military over the past few years you know, you know how many troops they wanted in Afghanistan all along, but I think Obama was clearly caught off guard by that," Hastings said.
Later in the interview, Hastings accused Obama of not dedicating a lot of his time into putting the counterinsurgency strategy (or COIN) in place. Instead the Rolling Stone reporter said Obama was looking for a quick way to fill a campaign promise with roughly a seventh of the troops needed to successfully implement the strategy.
"I think it's clear that [Defense Secretary Robert]Gates and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike] Mullen are big counterinsurgency fans and they sold Obama on the idea," Hastings explained. "I don't think Obama really put too much thought into it to be honest. I think it was a campaign promise that he thought he dealt with by just sending 21,000 troops and not really thinking about what that really meant. And that was clear even last August when, you know, Bob Woodward released that report of McChrystal's strategy - you know that the Obama administration was like, ‘Whoa, what does this mean?' And you know, I think anyone who knows anything about COIN - that's what they call counterinsurgency, knows that it takes a heck of a lot of guys, a heck of a lot of money and a heck of a long time."
While the media are attempting to grapple with the change in leadership of the Afghanistan war and what that all means, one thing that could be learned from this, which has been ignored, are valid criticisms of President Barack Obama and his ability to command the U.S. military.
Michael Hastings, author of the now-famous Rolling Stone magazine article "Runaway General" that captured several gotcha moments resulting in Obama relieving General Stanley McChrystal of his command, appeared on Al Jazeera English on June 23. He offered some startling insight into Obama's failure to grasp what he was actually getting into with this Afghanistan strategy known as the counterinsurgency strategy.
Hastings was asked if McChrystal had perhaps gotten the whole strategy wrong, but Hastings explained it was the President that didn't know what he was really getting into.
"I think that ship had sailed last year," Hastings said. "I think once the decision was made to do a counterinsurgency strategy, they had a pretty clear idea in mind what they wanted to do and I think this is quite interesting. I think this is one of the issues Obama didn't really understand what counter-insurgency meant and when the military said they wanted to do a counterinsurgency strategy that that actually meant 150,000 troops. Obama thought he could get away with just sending 21,000 over and getting a new general."
And as Hastings explained, Obama wasn't prepared due to this miscalculation.
"That clearly - anyone who has spent anytime around the military over the past few years you know, you know how many troops they wanted in Afghanistan all along, but I think Obama was clearly caught off guard by that," Hastings said.
Later in the interview, Hastings accused Obama of not dedicating a lot of his time into putting the counterinsurgency strategy (or COIN) in place. Instead the Rolling Stone reporter said Obama was looking for a quick way to fill a campaign promise with roughly a seventh of the troops needed to successfully implement the strategy.
"I think it's clear that [Defense Secretary Robert]Gates and [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike] Mullen are big counterinsurgency fans and they sold Obama on the idea," Hastings explained. "I don't think Obama really put too much thought into it to be honest. I think it was a campaign promise that he thought he dealt with by just sending 21,000 troops and not really thinking about what that really meant. And that was clear even last August when, you know, Bob Woodward released that report of McChrystal's strategy - you know that the Obama administration was like, ‘Whoa, what does this mean?' And you know, I think anyone who knows anything about COIN - that's what they call counterinsurgency, knows that it takes a heck of a lot of guys, a heck of a lot of money and a heck of a long time."
President Obama's decision to relieve General Stanley McChrystal of command in Afghanistan and replace him with General David Petraeus was met with a chorus of praise in the media, as anchors and pundits on CBS, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC all sang in unison that it was a "brilliant" move. [Audio available here]
During live special coverage leading up to the announcement in the 1PM ET hour on CBS, White House correspondent Chip Reid proclaimed: "it sounds like a pretty brilliant decision really." At the same time on NBC, correspondent Jim Miklaszewski described it as a "stunning development" and added "at a quick glance, almost brilliant." Minutes later, White House correspondent Chuck Todd declared: "politically, in this town, it's going to be seen as a brilliant choice by the President."
Over on CNN, moments after Obama finished speaking, anchor Wolf Blitzer remarked that it was a "major moment for this president" and later observed: "a very brilliant move to tap General Petraeus." Finally, in the 2PM ET hour on MSNBC, Meet the Press host David Gregory concluded: "I think he took swift and decisive action. I think that's how it's going to be read."
In addition to cheering Obama's brilliance, another common theme in the media reaction was to assert the President's decision would be immune from criticism. Reid explained: "So the President avoids both the criticisms here, number one, putting somebody new in charge and, number two, since he fired McChrystal, he's not going to be accused of being weak." Miklaszewski noted: "this may quiet some of the critics up on Capitol Hill." Todd later added: "...you will not hear a single word from Capitol Hill, no Republican will dare say a negative thing about this decision."
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MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday claimed that for what General Stanley McChrystal allegedly said about the White House, he legally, morally, ethically, professionally ought to be canned.
Discussing the issue with colleagues Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie on "The Daily Rundown," Mitchell claimed McChrystal's alleged statement "crosses the line of insubordination, and it crosses the line of the military code of justice."
She later made a comment one can't possibly imagine such a liberal media member making when George W. Bush was in the White House, "There is a reason why the military code of justice says you don't diss the Commander in Chief" (video follows with partial transcript and commentary, h/t HotAirPundit):
SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, HOST: Do you think this walks up to the line of insubordination?
ANDREA MITCHELL: Oh I think it crosses the line of insubordination, and it crosses the line of the military code of justice. He has challenged the Commander in Chief, and legally, morally, ethically, professionally he ought to be canned. Question is whether practically you can fire the top commander at a time when the war is really, talk about inflection points. This war is in a very bad stage.
A few minutes later, Mitchell said:
The bottom line has to be the focus on what is the best for the men and women in the field, the troops. There is a reason why the military code of justice says you don't diss the Commander in Chief. It's because all the way down the line, this is a hierarchy. And this is telling troops in the field that they have to salute even when they don't agree with an order.
To be sure, I completely agree with her, and if it turns out that McChrystal and/or his staffers said what Rolling Stone magazine claims, he has INDEED been insubordinate and possibly should be fired or be forced to resign.
If the allegations are true, what McChrystal did is TOTALLY unacceptable regardless of who's in the White House. Plain and simple!
However, isn't it extraordinary to hear a military-hating liberal like Mitchell -- who just a few weeks ago blamed war on testosterone as well as "male insecurity," and in January said the incursions in Afghanistan and Iraq have impeded our battle against terrorism -- suddenly quoting the "military code of justice" and claiming "you don't diss the Commander in Chief?"
Wouldn't it have been wonderful if she felt the President of the United States demanded such respect when George W. Bush held the position?
After all, as NewsBusters reported Tuesday, during Bush 43's reign, America's press promoted military criticism of everyone associated with the White House.
Now that there's someone in the Oval Office the press are in love with, military codes and what's in the best interest of the troops are suddenly en vogue.
What a difference a "D" makes, huh?
I'd say this was the height of hypocrisy, but that bar gets raised virtually every 24 hours with the sycophant activists pretending to be journalists these days.
During Tuesday’s Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough called for the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. He boldly exclaimed that this discharge should not come from the Commander-in-Chief because “Democrats have to treat generals differently from Republicans.”
He goes even further and states, “Were this a Republican, were it George W. Bush, McChrystal would have been fired yesterday,” and “the press would have understood it.” Of course, because during the last administration, the media was noted for giving former President George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt, especially with military decisions.
Interestingly enough, a flashback to January 31, 2006, tells a different tale.
During MSNBC's three-hour post State of the Union coverage, Chris Matthews and Joe Scarborough, denounced President Bush’s message about Iraq.
Matthews thought that President Bush “cashiered” General Shinseki’s remarks about wanting more troops and believed the “idea that these guys are free to think out loud, I thought, has been yet to be proven.” Scarborough echoed Matthews and cited that, “For the most part, the Generals and the Admirals, 99 percent of them parrot what the Pentagon and what the President wants." [Full article available here]
However, it is now 2010, and it is no longer cool to have the courage to stand up or to think out loud against this administration. There is a new president, so Scarborough insisted, because he is a Democrat, “Gates and Petraeus both have to come out, they need to fire McChrystal, and keep the president's hands clean.” Since, Scarborough served on the Armed Services Committee he should be aware that the President is the top link in the chain of command and therefore is the ultimate authority, but he wants to make it easier for this Democrat to not do his duty as Commander-in-Chief.
Apparently, Scarborough’s conservative viewpoint is synonymous with other MSNBC hosts who parrot White House talking points.
The transcript of MSNBC's Morning Joe segment airing on June 22, 2010:
JOE SCARBOROUGH: So Eric Bates, the executive editor of "Rolling Stone," we called him. He's going to be over here at the top of 8 to talk about this explosive article. Listen, there is no alternative. This general has to be fired. He has to be gone by the end of the day. Petraeus has to lower the boom. It can't be the president. I know some people at home won't understand this, and you'll. Democrats have to treat generals differently from Republicans. Were this a Republican, were it George W. Bush, McChrystal would have been fired yesterday.
TINA BROWN: Absolutely.
SCARBOROUGH: And the press would have understood it. Democrats have to treat them differently. Petraeus is the one that has to come out today and he's got to --
WILLIE GEIST: and Gates.
SCARBOROUGH: And Gates. Gates and Petraeus both have to come out, they need to fire McChrystal, keep the president's hands clean, because he's a Democrat. It's that simple. And they need to do it, hell they should have already done it. If they knew about this yesterday, Petraeus and Gates should have already fired McChrystal. This is outrageous.
When I heard that General Stanley McChrystal, the man running the show in Afghanistan, had mouthed off about Obama to Rolling Stone and could conceivably be fired, my first thought turned to the conflict between MacArthur and Truman that helped destroy Truman’s presidency. If you don’t remember, Truman ended up firing MacArthur after the general [...]
I wonder how a certain left-wing film site will cover “The Tillman Story,” a documentary about Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan directed by Amir Bar-Lev and narrated by Josh...
No general should criticize his or her commander, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal is no exception. But the mainstream media is primarily concerned with the political fallout of McChrystal's apparent insubordination as revealed by a piece in Rolling Stone. They are not concerned with whether his critiques are accurate, in stark contrast to other military officers' critiques of war policy under the Bush administration.
During Bush's tenure, active duty generals that spoke out against administration policy were portrayed as courageous whistleblowers. Retired generals were treated as ever-wise sages of military policy. None were scrutinized as McChrystal, pictured right, has been in the hours since Rolling Stone released its article.
The most prominent active duty general to earn the media's affection was Gen. Eric Shinseki, current Secretary of Veterans Affairs (to the media's delight). He insisted in 2003 that, contrary to Defense Department policy as iterated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the United States would need to send "hundreds of thousands" of troops to Iraq during the initial invasion. The media ate it up.
Granted, Shinseki made his comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee, a more appropriate setting than in the pages of a magazine. But the fact remains that Shinseki was expressing an opinion--one that undermined administration policy--and the media seized on his statement not as a commentary on the chain of command, but rather as criticism of the administration's war effort.
"Top generals, including Eric Shinseki," wrote the Boston Globe in 2004, "fault Pentagon leadership for not heeding their advice to deploy more ground forces before the invasion or to prepare adequately for the aftermath."
After Shinseki's repudiation of official military policy prompted rebukes from Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the New York Times dubbed those rebukes "unusual" and went on to bemoan the fact that Shinseki "has not had more influence on the war planning and the allocation of forces," in the words of another Army general.
The Times also devoted a piece to active duty personnel's criticisms of Rumsfeld and the Iraqi war effort generally. The article read,
Long-simmering tensions between Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Army commanders have erupted in a series of complaints from officers on the Iraqi battlefield that the Pentagon has not sent enough troops to wage the war as they want to fight it…
One colonel, who spoke on the condition that his name be withheld, was among the officers criticizing decisions to limit initial deployments of troops to the region. "He wanted to fight this war on the cheap," the colonel said. "He got what he wanted."...
Underlying the strains between Mr. Rumsfeld and the Army, which began at the beginning of Mr. Rumsfeld's tenure, are questions that challenge not only the Rumsfeld design for this war but also his broader approach to transforming the military.
Instead of going on to examine the apparent problems with a military chain of command in which policymakers are criticized, the Times, the Globe, and many other media outlets used critiques from officers both named and anonymous to question the effectiveness and wisdom of American military policy.
McChrystal's statements could spur some discussion on whether President Obama is really up to the task in Afghanistan--the general is certainly is not the first to suggest it. Yet the media focus has been almost entirely trained on the general himself and on the supposed danger of a dysfunctional chain of command and a general who questions the president's orders.
"The most important issue at hand in the furor over Gen. Stanley McChrystal's acerbic comments in Rolling Stone," wrote Alter, "is the central one in a democracy: civilian control over the military." Got it? The question is not whether McChrystal's critiques of the administration could shine some light on an ineffective war effort or misguided military policies.
No, unlike military criticism of Bush war policy, McChrystal's comments spur discussion of the intricacies of a civilian-controlled military, not the specific policies employed by the civilian government and their consequences on the battlefield.
Time's Joe Klein applauded Mike Huckabee in 2007 for saying he "would have met with Shinseki privately and carefully weighed his advice." But now Klein is far more concerned with the "military tradition and practice" violated by generals who speak out against their commanders than he is with the ongoing war effort.
McChrystal was of course out of line. But media liberals who are only distraught at potential insubordination when the subordinate does not aid their political goals in speaking out are commentators whose opinions must be taken with a few grains of salt.
Contessa Brewer got a lot more than she was likely looking for when she interviewed Col. Jack Jacobs [ret.] this afternoon about the McChrystal situation. The MSNBC host wanted to focus on the impropriety of McChrystal publicly airing his criticisms of Pres. Obama and others in the chain of command.
But while the Medal of Honor recipient readily agreed that McChrystal was out of line, and would probably pay with his job, Jacobs also went out of his way—twice—to add an inconvenient truth: that when it comes to the substance of the criticism, most in the military think McChrystal "was right."
CONTESSA BREWER: It's about the sort of disdain for authority. And that worries me.
JACK JACOBS: Well it sure worry you, and I think he's going to wind up getting fired because of that; at least partially because of that.
BREWER: But is his view not only about the President but about Joe Biden, about Jim Jones, the National Security advisor, about Karl Eikenberry [US ambassador to Afghanistan], on and on down the list: Richard Holbrooke --
JACOBS: Those views are very widely held, by the way, inside the military and outside the military, about those people. That they're ineffective, that Jim Jones, the National Security Advisor, does not have an impact on national security policy, that he has very little access. That Holbrooke hasn't done anything and so on. Those views are widely held. They're not just held by McChrystal's staff for example.
Contessa didn't respond to Jacobs' startling assertion. And when a bit later she closed with more concerns about respecting the chain of command, the colonel took a tough parting shot.
BREWER: There are hundreds of thousands of enlisted men and women in the military who are taught not to question authority; they don't go outside their chain of command. what kind of message does this send to people at the lower levels in the military?
JACOBS: Well, it's not a very one. But let me tell you what's going to happen. Gen. McChrystal can't stay in his position. He's probably going to tender his resignation, and it's probably going to be accepted--or demanded in the first place. He might stay. There are certain circumstances in which he might stay. Likely as not he is going to be gone, and he's probably going to wind up retiring.
And in the end, this is what the rank and file of military establishment is going to say, privately. They're going to say: absolutely right: you can't do this, you can't countenance your subordinates speak to the press and say that the rest of the chain of command above you are a bunch of knuckleheads. But they're going to say: you know what? He was right.
“Who was Bob Hope?” To anyone over 35 that seems like such a strange question. Bob Hope, everyone knows, was one of the greatest American entertainers of the 20th century, and whose greatest public service was his decades-long commitment to U.S. troops all over the world for many decades, which earned him the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors.
And yet it's quite possible that a senior graduating from high school this month would scrunch up his face with a puzzled look over the question. It is why it was refreshing to hear that the Library of Congress has a new exhibit called “Hope for America: Performance, Politics and Pop Culture,” drawn from the Bob Hope Collection, which was donated to the Library by the Hope family in 1998.
Unfortunately, as with so much that affects our popular culture, this man’s legacy is also an excuse to unveil a leftist political agenda, the likes of which Bob Hope would be the first to denounce.
On display are items from Hope’s personal papers, joke files, films, and radio and TV broadcasts. This exhibit really makes you feel that the 20th century was more like distant history. It follows that it would be educational to walk students through exhibits like this to give them information that we older people have deeply ingrained in our memories.
Alan Gevinson, the Library of Congress exhibit curator, told Penny Starr of CNSNews.com that Hope’s daughter Linda and son Kelly have seen the exhibit and approved of it. But that doesn't mean a Bob Hope fan wouldn't expect more than this.
Unfortunately, this exhibit seems to consider Hope merely an excuse for a much broader exhibit sprawling all over a myriad of topics. It gives the impression that what the Library calls its "treasured" Hope Collection would fit in about three boxes. Much of its Hope Collection material is contained in the very back of the exhibit space in dimly lit corners where it's hard to even read the exhibits.
Instead, the first thing a visitor would notice and absorb is the video presentation, hosted by Comedy Central star Stephen Colbert. Think of all the archival television material they could use to showcase Bob Hope entertaining the troops, and remembering all the stars who generously donated their time to bringing the home front to the war front, especially at Christmas time. But the Library of Congress displays its boredom with Hope in the interests of a broader topic. But while they broadened the subject, the exhibit didn’t have the slightest whisper of interest in who’s been entertaining the troops in the last few decades, and honoring them.
Instead we get Colbert, in his usual self-absorbed shtick, showing clips of himself joking with Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton: "Why are you undressing me with your eyes now?"
The Library’s bureaucrats found room for a section touting "Government Support for the Arts," and how "federal support for the arts remained unrealized until the twentieth century," with the founding of the National Endowment for the Arts. There was no space for debating the wisdom or the controversies of that agency.
But there was space for debating Bob Hope. A letter is on display written by feminists who claim they want to stage their own U.S.O. show, since Hope was a incorrigible sexist. “Since this is a counter-U.S.O. show, we think that the script should have none of the sexist scenes in it that Bob Hope specials have, dancing girls or any portrayal of Women (sic) being inferior to men (which they aren’t),” the feminists declare.
Political correctness seems to overwhelm the supposed exhibit topic of “American comedians commenting on the political scene in satires that have entertained and rattled the political establishment.” In the video, Colbert proclaims Hollywood movies “draw the nation’s attention to matters of urgent importance,” with scenes shown from the union-glorifying film “Norma Rae” and the movie "Milk," Sean Penn's portrayal of slain gay San Francisco city councilman.
Under the title “Causes and Controversies,” exhibit highlights include video footage of Jane Fonda visiting North Vietnam, the polar opposite of Bob Hope. There's an exhibit on "A Climate of Fear," how "the entertainment industries suffered greatly” from McCarthyism.
This isn’t about comedians or satire at all.
In this exhibit in our nation’s capital, Bob Hope deserves better than to be treated as a mere introductory point to shoehorn in every other political controversy of the last century. An unabashed Republican, Hope bent backward to keep politics out of his performances when entertaining troops or doing anything as an “ambassador” of the United States. It’s why he was beloved by people in both parties. If people wanted today to find a role model for national unity and civility, they could no better than that.
Remember that story about a Rhode Island boy who was informed by his school that he couldn’t wear his hat with toy soldiers glued on to it because they held tiny plastic guns (hard to believe that a toy soldier would carry a gun, eh)? Well, the story takes a trip down Awesomeness Road
A Rhode [...]
A policy of no tolerance for weapons got an 8-year-old boy in trouble at his Rhode Island grade school this week. The boy brought in nearly a dozen M-14 Army rifles to his Tiogue School in Coventry, R.I. grade school and was chastised by the principal for the outrage.
How did he get all those assault [...]
Last week two Massachusetts High School teachers took it upon themselves to protest against the U.S. Military as students that had announced plans to join our armed forces were receiving recognition from their school. Incensed students and parents called for the teachers to be fired.
History teacher Marybeth Verani and English teacher Adeline Koscher raised signs [...]
[Ed. Note: "Unthinkable" went straight-to-DVD and hits stores tomorrow. Here's a sneak peek so you know better what you're spending your hard-earned money on.]
I’ve only been in “Hollywood” the past...
Catching up from Friday night, on the last Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO until September, Maher insisted “I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist,” but then proceeded to assert the Defense Department “uses more oil than anywhere else to kill people in the Middle East to get fuel to fight wars,” so “I do think there’s something -- just the way the pharmaceutical companies sometimes come up with a pill before they come up with the disease -- I think maybe we need a war all the time so we can wear out equipment and buy oil.”
Maher’s claim came during a one-on-one with far-left film director Oliver Stone, who is producing a ten-hour documentary for Showtime, Secret History of America, about how, as Maher agreed, “America always does seem to need an enemy.” When Stone maintained the Cold War was fueled by an exaggerated fear of communism, Maher jumped in: “I’d like to blame it on oil.”
He expounded:
The United States Defense Department is the largest procurer of oil in the world, it uses more oil than anywhere else to kill people in the Middle East to get fuel to fight wars. It’s sort of a cycle of life thing. Now, I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist. But I do think there’s something -- just the way the pharmaceutical companies sometimes come up with a pill before they come up with the disease -- I think maybe we need a war all the time so we can wear out equipment and buy oil.
Do you think BP could end this oil gushing out of the ocean if they just blew up the well and tapped it and they are not doing so because there's still money to be made from the oil coming out of the well?
Remember these the next time a MSNBC lefty derides a conservative for some “crazy” belief.
As left-wing comedian Kathy Griffin appeared on Friday’s Larry King Live on CNN, after the conversation turned to her "My Life on the D List" show’s trip to Wasilla, Alaska, featuring Levi Johnston, host King asked her about her "attraction" to Johnston, referring to talk of a relationship between the two which is rumored to just be a publicity stunt. The left-wing comedian asserted that "every time that I'm with Levi and put him in the public eye, I feel that it's my very subtle middle finger to Sarah Palin." Griffin then added, "Yeah, go ahead, Tweet me, Palin freaks, I don't care anymore."
A few minutes later, as the subject turned to her taking her show to a Senate hearing about the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on gays in the military, Griffin recounted her meeting with Republican Representative Michele Bachmann, whom she referred to as a "moron," and, after she seemed to perceive that King was uncomfortable with the insult as he noted that Bachmann has been on the show before and is a "strong, conservative person," Griffin shot back: "Oh, boy, I didn't know it was 'Be Kind to Bachmann Day' because my word for that is 'idiot.'"
Below is a transcript of relevant portions of the Friday, June 11, Larry King Live on CNN:
9:28 p.m.
KATHY GRIFFIN: Have you been to Wasilla?
LARRY KING: No.
GRIFFIN: It blows. I’m not gonna lie.
KING: Yeah?
GRIFFIN: It blows chunks, yeah. It’s not what we want the country to be like, when Sarah Palin said, you know, I would run the country, you know, you betcha, the way I run Wasilla, that’s not what we want. It’s a lot of boredom and then some crystal meth. Hey, go ahead, write your letters, I don’t care anymore. Go ahead, Tweet me about it.
KING: What’s your attraction to Levi?
GRIFFIN: I get him in a way that Bristol never did. And also, every time that I’m with Levi and put him in the public eye, I feel that it’s my very subtle middle finger to Sarah Palin. Yeah, go ahead, Tweet me, Palin freaks, I don’t care anymore.
KING: Have you been intimate with Levi?
GRIFFIN: Yes, I have. I’ve seen his Johnston. Have you?
KING: No.
GRIFFIN: It goes on and on-
KING: Yeah?
GRIFFIN: -for days.
KING: Do you love him?
GRIFFIN: Yeah.
KING: He’s younger than you.
GRIFFIN: Like a, like 30 years, not even that much.
KING: Would you be serious with him?
GRIFFIN: Yeah, that’s right, I would be very serious, in a committed, monogamous relationship.
KING: Well, how’s it going, then?
GRIFFIN: It’s, well, you know, now that I got a painting from Erik Menendez, I feel that I’m seeing other people. I mean, I’m torn. It’s like the Thornbirds, you know what I mean? It’s like a forbidden love.
...
9:32 p.m.
KING: You took the show to Washington for an episode. What was that like for you?
GRIFFIN: It was fantastic because I learned a lot about how things work on the Hill, and I’m, you know, doing whatever I can to help repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. I have many, many friends in the military after having been to Iraq and Afghanistan and Kuwait and all those places.
KING: I know. You’re a game girl.
GRIFFIN: And I met with Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, and Barney Frank, and it was very educational. I did get in a little trouble with a moron named Michele Bachmann. Go ahead-
KING: She’s been on the show, she’s been on the show.
GRIFFIN: -act like I’m not your guest. You’re acting like you’re having an out of body-
KING: Michele Bachmann is a very strong, conservative person.
GRIFFIN: Oh, boy, I didn’t know it was "Be Kind to Bachmann Day" (KING LAUGHS) because my word for that is "idiot." Anyway, and I got into a little couple of words with her.
KING: Tiff.
GRIFFIN: A little tiff with Michele Bachmann. And also, I sort of got kicked out of my first Senate hearing because I’d said something to Saxby Chambliss that she didn’t like, and I didn’t know that these hearings aren’t interactive. I thought they were more like a Q&A situation, not so much.
Representative Peter Roskam tries to offer an amendment that makes sure that the executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t make more money than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Naturally the Democrats would rather pay millions to the executives that are still running Freddie and Fannie into the ground than accept even [...]
In the upside down world of unions, if you aren’t on their side you are an enemy to the country… even if you are U.S. Marine of 20 years service and have been a highly recognized teacher in a ROTC program for 14 years. Because he refused to become a union member and has accrued [...]
Congressman Phil Hare (IL, 17th District) is the perfect example of the sort of congressman no one should want. He’s arrogant. He’s dismissive. He’s self-important. He’s easy to anger. And worst of all he has disdain for his own voters. The man is simply a creep.
In April we had video of this arrogant cuss saying [...]
Because there weren’t already enough reasons to crush on America’s Sweetheart, Sandra Bullock - ….
People.com [emphasis added]:
There to accept the “Troops Choice” Award...
The Best Years of Our Lives was on TCM today.
Even when the Good Guys and Bad Guys all seemed incontestably defined, World War II still created a certain amount of what we now call “post-traumatic...
This Memorial Day, comedian Sarah Silverman was a guest on “The View.” Sarah has quite a large following, as well as a new book she’s promoting, and after catapulting into the scene...
The subject of the Gaza-bound "Freedom Flotilla" organized by pro-Palestinian activists that attacked Israel Defense Forces as they boarded a cargo boat, was the subject of Charlie Rose's talk show Tuesday night.
Rose's roundtable included Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem bureau chief of the Times, who accused Israel of acting with "disproportionate force" and for causing "increasing disillusionment in the world." As if using superior force is somehow unfair to those who are attacking you.
Here's Bronner, 17 minutes into the show:
I think what's been very interesting over the last sort of six or eight years is that Israel has taken the view that military activity works and diplomacy has not actually worked all that well. And in the short term, you could argue that it has. It has stopped terrorism from the West Bank, it has stopped rockets from Gaza, stopped rockets from Hezbollah in Lebanon and so on. But the problem is, that every time it acts with this disproportionate force in order to carry out a military and security goal, what it gets is increasing disillusionment in the world. And the question is, where does the advantage of one stop and the disadvantage of the other grow so that it overwhelms it. And I think that what may be happening is that we are at that tipping point, even from an Israeli perspective.
Bronner also emphasized the "dark truth" about Israel's successful use of force in an October 2009 Times story:
As the Obama administration tries to broker a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a dark truth lurking: force has produced clearer results in this dispute than talk....Meanwhile for many Israelis, the past decade looks like a model of the primacy of military action over diplomacy.
Bronner has lamented Israel's security blockade previously, in a January 2009 news analysis, when Israel was attacking Hamas positions in Gaza. He has also described Jewish settlers as being on an "angry rampage" against Israeli police -- insulting language that the Times rarely if ever applies to genuine violence on the part of Palestinians and anti-Israeli activists.
A related front-page story in Wednesday's Times by Sabrina Tavernise and Michael Slackman, profiling the anti-Israeli Turkish group that organized the flotilla, left out a lot about the 2003 Rachel Corrie incident in Gaza, a flashpoint in the Israel-Palestine propaganda wars:
In 2003, an Israeli Army bulldozer crushed to death an American woman, Rachel Corrie, who had kneeled in the dirt to prevent it from destroying a Palestinian home.
The subject of the Gaza-bound "Freedom Flotilla" organized by pro-Palestinian activists that attacked Israel Defense Forces as they boarded a cargo boat, was the subject of Charlie Rose's talk show Tuesday night.
Rose's roundtable included Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem bureau chief of the Times, who accused Israel of acting with "disproportionate force" and for causing "increasing disillusionment in the world." As if using superior force is somehow unfair to those who are attacking you.
Here's Bronner, 17 minutes into the show:
I think what's been very interesting over the last sort of six or eight years is that Israel has taken the view that military activity works and diplomacy has not actually worked all that well. And in the short term, you could argue that it has. It has stopped terrorism from the West Bank, it has stopped rockets from Gaza, stopped rockets from Hezbollah in Lebanon and so on. But the problem is, that every time it acts with this disproportionate force in order to carry out a military and security goal, what it gets is increasing disillusionment in the world. And the question is, where does the advantage of one stop and the disadvantage of the other grow so that it overwhelms it. And I think that what may be happening is that we are at that tipping point, even from an Israeli perspective.
Bronner also emphasized the "dark truth" about Israel's successful use of force in an October 2009 Times story:
As the Obama administration tries to broker a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is a dark truth lurking: force has produced clearer results in this dispute than talk....Meanwhile for many Israelis, the past decade looks like a model of the primacy of military action over diplomacy.
Bronner has lamented Israel's security blockade previously, in a January 2009 news analysis, when Israel was attacking Hamas positions in Gaza. He has also described Jewish settlers as being on an "angry rampage" against Israeli police -- insulting language that the Times rarely if ever applies to genuine violence on the part of Palestinians and anti-Israeli activists.
A related front-page story in Wednesday's Times by Sabrina Tavernise and Michael Slackman, profiling the anti-Israeli Turkish group that organized the flotilla, left out a lot about the 2003 Rachel Corrie incident in Gaza, a flashpoint in the Israel-Palestine propaganda wars:
In 2003, an Israeli Army bulldozer crushed to death an American woman, Rachel Corrie, who had kneeled in the dirt to prevent it from destroying a Palestinian home.
On Thursday evening, ABC’s World News and the NBC Nightly News both marked the passing of retired Navy Lieutenant John Finn, who was the oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor, which he earned defending America during the attack on Pearl Harbor. While ABC’s George Stephanopoulos read a short item on Lieutenant Finn, NBC’s Brian Williams devoted an full report to his heroism.
On the May 27 World News, substitute anchor Stephanopoulos informed viewers: "You might not know his name, but an American hero died today. Retired Navy Lieutenant John Finn was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, and the first from that war to receive it. On December 7, 1941, as kamikazes zeroed in on Pearl Harbor, Finn manned a machine gun, firing on Japanese planes even after he was gravely wounded. Lieutenant Finn was 100."
On the NBC Nightly News, Williams recounted the story of Finn’s persistence in fighting the enemy even while seriously wounded: "Chief Petty Officer John Finn ran through smoke and fire and commandeered a .50 caliber machine gun. He took aim at the planes overhead and started firing. ... Waves of Japanese planes were flying overhead, and yet he stood there and kept firing for two hours. ... John was hit by shrapnel 21 times. He was shot through one foot. His left arm was numb, and yet he stayed in the fight."
Below are complete transcripts of the reports from ABC’s World News and the NBC Nightly News, which ran on Thursday, May 27:
#From ABC’s World News:
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And you might not know his name, but an American hero died today. Retired Navy Lieutenant John Finn was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, and the first from that war to receive it. On December 7, 1941, as kamikazes zeroed in on Pearl Harbor, Finn manned a machine gun, firing on Japanese planes even after he was gravely wounded. Lieutenant Finn was 100.
#From the NBC Nightly News:
BRIAN WILLIAMS: We also learned today that this nation has lost a genuine hero. John Finn died today. John was 100 years old. He quit school after the seventh grade, and at age 17 he joined the Navy. That was in 1926. Well, there he was in Pearl Harbor, living in military housing with his wife on the morning of the attack. His life changed that day. The whole world changed that day. And what John did in that early confusion earned him the Medal of Honor. He was the oldest living recipient of the medal until his death today.
RETIRED LIEUTENANT JOHN FINN, U.S. NAVY: I hadn't got out of bed yet when I first heard those planes.
WILLIAMS: It was a Sunday morning, and John Finn couldn't figure out why he could hear airplanes and gunfire that morning, Sunday, December 7, 1941.
FINN: I looked up, and he made a wing over, and there was that dirty old horrible colored red Japan circle. I said, "Sully, this is the real McCoy."
WILLIAMS: Chief Petty Officer John Finn ran through smoke and fire and commandeered a .50 caliber machine gun. He took aim at the planes overhead and started firing.
FINN: And I grabbed that gun and mount and everything, right out into the open.
WILLIAMS: Waves of Japanese planes were flying overhead, and yet he stood there and kept firing for two hours.
FINN: Now, I stayed right there with that gun, and I was bleeding here, there and everywhere.
WILLIAMS: John was hit by shrapnel 21 times. He was shot through one foot. His left arm was numb, and yet he stayed in the fight. It was still so early in the fight we didn't yet know we were in World War II. Nine months later, he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
FINN, READING LETTER: "For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service and devotion above and beyond the call of duty."
WILLIAMS: There was just the sign out on the road to mark John's California ranch. The scrappy desert lifestyle seemed to match his personality.
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: Come on, John. Come on.
FINN: Inside?
WOMAN: Yes.
FINN: Okay.
WOMAN: We're trying to get you-
FINN: Are we going to go into the bedroom?
WOMAN, LAUGHING: John!
WILLIAMS: John was the last survivor in his group of friends and fellow vets. He lived long enough to visit the Oval Office last year and meet President Obama. He loved the attention in his later years, but he missed the past, especially his beloved late wife, Alice.
FINN: And I can still remember that beautiful woman. I always figured, "Who in the hell cares about me or who should know about me?" I'd just be John Finn, and I was only doing what I'd been paid to do and practiced to do all those years.
WILLIAMS: We're going to miss John Finn. And as this nation prepares for Memorial Day observances across the country, John Finn's death now leaves 90 living recipients of the Medal of Honor.
Memorial Day is a suitable time to tip your hat to Ray Sorensen, who turned a graffiti-stained rock into a tribute to our troops:
On a tip from Oiao. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.
I hate to interrupt our Memorial Day observations, but this news story is too immediate to ignore.
The Old Media is already misreporting the bloody incident off the Gaza coast between a flotilla of Muslim “peace activists” and the Israeli Defense Force. They are, of course, making Israel out to be the bad guys and while [...]
These may not be the best known or most famous of WWII films, but they deserve to be. Keep an eye out. You’ll be glad you did.
1. Command Decision (1948) – Made just after WWII, this Air...
It is very, very easy to forget that the members of our American military even exist. Unlike other peoples we don’t live in a nation where the members of our military are skulking around our streets, automatic weapons in hand, glaring menacingly at each citizen and they pass by during their daily activities. We don’t [...]
It is very, very easy to forget that the members of our American military even exist. Unlike other peoples we don’t live in a nation where the members of our military are skulking around our streets, automatic weapons in hand, glaring menacingly at each citizen and they pass by during their daily activities. We don’t [...]
Several years ago, as part of a 9/11 commemoration, I wrote the following words in connection with a post I did about Lt. Brian Ahearn, one of the New York fire fighters who perished on that day:
My son, who is seven, is obsessed with superheroes. His current favorite is Superman. After all, [...]
Tavis Smiley has apparently been asleep for the last ten years. That, at least, is the only logical explanation for his claim that Christains engage in terrorism far more often than Muslims. He also thinks the Tea Party is a comparably dangerous force to radical Islam.
"There are so many more examples of Christians who do that," Smiley claimed, referring to terrorism, "than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country where you live and work." He was discussing terrorism with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born writer and former member of the Dutch Parliament.
Ali claims it is her mission to "inform the West about the danger of Islam," but Smiley was more concerned with the danger posed by Tea Party protesters, who "are being recently arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people 'nigger' as they walk into Capitol Hill, for spitting on people." None of those claims are true, but then again the segment was replete with falsehoods (Full video and transcript below the fold - h/t Greg Hengler).
For her part, Ali pushed back against Smiley's absurd claims. Though she acknowledged that some have used Christianity to justify violence, she insisted that mainstream Christians are "accepting of other religions and tolerant."
As for Smiley's claims regarding the Tea Party, I am unaware of any protester being arrested for threatening an elected official. Perhaps he is referring to the Hutaree Militia, but they had exactly zero connections to the Tea Party movement (in fact, one militiaman is a registered Democrat). The n-word/spitting claims have been thoroughly discredited elsewhere.
Of course Smiley is hardly a paragon of journalistic objectivity. Most notably, he dubbed President Bush a "serial killer," but he has a long history of toeing the liberal line on virtually every issue.
Transcript of the segment, with Smiley's most outrageous remarks in bold:
SMILEY: When you were last here - I'm here every day - (laughter) when you were last here we were starting to have a conversation about your view of Christianity. We'll come back to that a little bit later in the conversation because I want to pick up on that conversation. I've been waiting for months to continue that dialogue.
Before we do that, though, in this book, the new one, you say unapologetically and rather frankly that your mission here is to inform the West about the danger of Islam. What danger do we need to be made aware of?
ALI: And when I say "Islam" I'm talking about Islam as a theology and as a political theory. Islam has different aspects. It has a spiritual aspect but it also has a political and a social aspect.
The spiritual aspect of praying and fasting, I have no problems with that. The political and social aspects have to do with concepts such as jihad - waging a holy war to either persuade people to become Muslim or to kill them.
The social aspect has to do with the treatment of women, and given the fact that we are now living in a world that is fast globalizing - people are coming from all different parts of the world, living here; people are leaving here and going elsewhere - I think it's very, very important to note that not only are people moving but ideas are also moving.
So people with ideas who feel that they should introduce Sharia law, a theocracy based on Islam such as Iran, such as what the Taliban have attempted in Afghanistan, that these people with these ideas, resources, convictions, can sometimes be successful.
What I tried to do with the book as an individual who grew up with Islam and I was once myself - considered myself a member of the Muslim brotherhood, I want to say that these ideas are really not only dangerous but a lot of people are subscribing to theSMILEYm.
SMILEY: I guess no one would argue that jihad is a dangerous and deadly political philosophy to have and to engage. I guess the question is whether or not jihad is the only way that that political involvement is expressed. Isn't it just an example of how policy, of how people engage politically and not the whole of the activity, politically?
ALI: Well, it's very important to note that not all Muslims subscribe to jihad.
SMILEY: Precisely, yeah.
ALI: That's really important. I don't ever want to make the impression that all Muslims are potential terrorists or potential jihadists. But there is a movement that wants to have Islamic Sharia or Islamic war introduced, through persuasion sometimes, without using violence, and sometimes by using violence. The society that they're aspiring to is a society that is modeled around a place like Saudi Arabia or Iran.
The point I want to make in this book is the majority of Muslims don't even read the Qur'an. They've just been told what is in there is good, it's God's word, it's perfect. The majority of Muslims don't know what Muhammad exactly said.
So these people who are coming to them are building - the agents of radical Islam, the agents of jihad, the agents of Sharia are just building on the fact that most Muslims have only been told the Qur'an is great, Muhammad is infallible, and then radicalizing them. It's very important for us to realize that.
If we do realize that, we are then able to compete with the radical agents of Islam, with the agents of jihad, for the hearts and minds of individuals who identify themselves as Muslim.
SMILEY: We compete by doing what? By, as you suggest in the book, converting them as Christians?
ALI: Well, I'm not a Christian. I would like to introduce to them critical thinking and the enlightenment and secular thought. But I've also met, through my last years here, a number of Christians, and I've realized that their concept of God differs very much from that of Islam. I've had people who've read "Infidel" and who write to me saying, "I just cannot be, I just can't fathom being an atheist. I can't. There is a force out there, it's a good force. I don't want to be with Allah or Muhammad, but I just need a different kind of -" and most of them convert to Christianity.
SMILEY: Are you at all concerned or are you ever concerned, put another way, that the mission, to use your word, that you are on is turning people against Islam, turning people against Muslims, because you're so - I don't want to say radical, but so aggressive in your approach?
ALI: Well, the mission is not to turn people against Muslims. My mission is to include Muslims into finding out that there are alternative sources of morality other than what the jihadists are offering them.
A lot of money made from oil in Saudi Arabia, in other parts in the Middle East that have that money, are using a very violent narrative, a very human-unfriendly narrative, and they're taking it to people who are sometimes poor, sometimes middle class, and people are subscribing to those ideas.
Right now there's no competition. There isn't a competing propaganda. We talk about it only in terms of national security. We talk about military means, we talk about what the FBI can do, but we don't talk about what you and I can do. Why can't we just reach out to Muslim-Americans living here and say, "Hey, do you really believe in practicing what is in chapter 4, verse 34 of the Qur'an - "Beat the disobedient wife?" I'll tell you most Muslims don't want to beat their wives and don't want to compel them to do that.
But with that justification, with that narrative, with that propaganda, more and more men are finding a reason to justify to themselves something that is truly abominably wrong.
SMILEY: As I got into reading your story, and it's obviously a very powerful narrative, I was left ultimately with this question, Ayaan, which is on the one hand you have moved away, for your own reasons, as you've expressed here now, you've moved away from practicing Islam. You don't practice the Muslim faith on the one hand, so you moved from that.
On the other hand, you, to my mind, at least, and I could read any number of passages to point this out, to my mind, again, you almost idealize Christianity on the other hand. But here you are in the middle an atheist, and I'm trying to juxtapose all that.
You don't want to practice the Muslim faith, you idealize Christianity, and yet you remain an atheist. That's the part of your journey I don't quite get. Maybe you can enlighten me.
ALI: It's a bundle of contradictions.
SMILEY: Yeah, it is. (Laughs)
ALI: Like all human individuals, I am a bundle of contradictions. I was very much, after I had written "Infidel," very much on the side of people who say all religions are the same and all religions are inherently evil. But again, what I learned from the enlightenment is when the fact change, change your mind, and the evidence I'm seeing - and this is what I admire about some Christians, not all of them. I'm not blind to extremist Christianity.
But what I admire about Christians today is - and I would like it for the Muslims too - is that many of them have come to grapple with their faith, have come to acknowledge that there are things in the bible and things that the institution, that different churches have done that are hostile to humanity, that are hostile to gay people, hostile to women, have justified slavery, for instance.
They have come not only to grapple with it and to understand it and to acknowledge that it's all in there, but they've also learned to distance themselves from that. That's what I admire about moderate Christians. I say in the book right now we cannot speak of moderate Muslims because they still cling to the absolute idea that everything in the Qur'an is the true word of God and cannot be changed by human beings, and that the prophet Muhammad, the founder of Islam, left a moral guidance behind and all we can do is follow it, not question it.
SMILEY: Where is the evidence for you that, for those Muslims who live in the West, that we need to challenge them, we need to convert them, we need to change them? If what we're afraid of is jihad, all of that, at least until this present time, all of that attack, that terrorist activity, has come inside of this country from persons connected to that faith.
I guess I'm trying to understand where the evidence is that suggests that all of us who happen to be Christians or enlightened in some other way need to take on Muslims here in the West.
ALI: Okay, I think first and foremost what we have to acknowledge is we're not going to get a monster with horns, blue in the face, looking like a dragon called jihad coming in and terrorizing us. The people who are engaged in terrorist activities look like you and me. They look like everybody else here.
Major Nidal Hasan, the military guy who in November shot 13 of his colleagues and injured 32, he's going to be on trial pretty soon, I think this week, the young man, Faisal Shahzad, in Times Square who tried to blow innocent people that he doesn't know up, these guys are acting on conviction. Somehow, the idea got into their minds that to kill other people is a great thing to do and that they would be rewarded in the hereafter.
SMILEY: But Christians do that every single day in this country.
ALI: Do they blow people up (unintelligible)?
SMILEY: Yes. Oh, Christians, every day, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that's what Columbine is - I could do this all day long. There are so many more examples of Christians - and I happen to be a Christian. That's back to this notion of your idealizing Christianity in my mind, to my read. There are so many more examples, Ayaan, of Christians who do that than you could ever give me examples of Muslims who have done that inside this country, where you live and work.
ALI: Well, I think you and I disagree, not so much on is there extremism in Christianity - I fully acknowledge that. There are people who want to take the bible and use passages from the bible as justification for violent behavior. I'm not denying that in the least. But mainstream Christians in the 21st century are more like you.
I'm an atheist, I'm not a Christian, but they are more like you - accepting of other religions and tolerant. The latest example, "South Park," where Jesus Christ was made fun of, watching pornography, people, Christians, maybe have been annoyed by it but the producers of "South Park" were not threatened by Christians.
They were not threatened by Buddhists. They showed Buddha snorting cocaine. Muhammad, whose picture wasn't shown, there was a line saying "censored" and he was imagined to be in a Teddy bear, some of the followers of Muhammad got very angry. A few of them posted threats about the producers, and this is very mild.
There are today - I don't want to say, and it's been established, not all Muslims are terrorists, we must emphasize that, but almost all terrorist activities that take place today in our time are done and justified in the name of Islam.
Now to acknowledge that, the point I'm trying to make is is it possible, is it imaginable, that we can compete with the radical jihadists for the hearts and minds of young men like Faisal Shahzad or like Nidal Malik Hasan, and I believe we can, before they get to that stage.
SMILEY: I hear that point and I accept it. The only point I'm making is there are folk in the Tea Party, for example, every day who are being recently arrested for making threats against elected officials, for calling people "nigger" as they walk into Capitol Hill, for spitting on people. That's within the political - that's within the body politic of this country. So I accept your point and my time is up so we won't debate that.
Let me ask as an exit question, and this is no secret; I just was reading about this in "The New York Times" the other day, an interview you gave to the magazine, so it's no secret here, but you travel with security because there is a constant cloud, at least, of a threat against your life because of your outspokenness. Is it worth it, living under these conditions? Is it worth it?
ALI: I ask myself that question every day, and I think it's worth fighting those who intimidate me. Those who threaten, those who try to kill people who disagree with them, I think it's worth it. I think it's worth continuing to fight.
SMILEY: I accept that. It's the new book from perennial now "New York Times" best-selling author Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The book is called "Nomad: From Islam to America, a Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations." Ayaan, always glad to have you on this program.
ALI: Thank you so much, Tavis. Thanks for having me.
Congress finally gets something right: "don't ask, don't tell" is on the way out. Since 1993, the military has discharged 13,000 gay and lesbian service members, including invaluable Arabic translators.
The law claims that openly homosexual military personnel might create an "unacceptable risk to the armed forces’ high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion." Conservative Congressman John Shimkus (R-Ill.) says the repeal would be "devastating to the war fighters and the combat infantrymen."
Please. There's no evidence that openly gay service members have a negative effect on cohesion or performance. Countries like Israel, England, Canada, and Australia allow gays to openly serve -- and report that their armed forces don't suffer. A 1993 study by the RAND Corp. found no evidence of any negative effects from openly gay service. The American Psychological Association states that "empirical evidence fails to show that sexual orientation is germane to any aspect of military effectiveness including unit cohesion, morale, recruitment and retention."
It makes no sense to get rid of perfectly capable soldiers simply because of their sexual orientation -- especially during two wars. For this, Congress deserves some applause.
CNN.com's opinion page has clearly sided with those supporting President Obama's proposed repeal of the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring open homosexuals from the ranks. During the first five months of 2010, the website has published four columns pushing for the repeal and none from supporters of the policy. Two came from the executive director of a homosexual activist group.
The first of the editorials on CNN's website came on January 28, the day after the President's State of the Union address. Alexander Nicholson, the executive director and founder of Servicemembers United, a "national organization of gay and lesbian troops and veterans and their allies," praised Mr. Obama for doing "exactly what he should have done...in this venue" in making the repeal of the policy "a priority for his administration in 2010." He also labeled this call during the speech a "watershed moment." Later in the column, Nicholson disclosed that in 2002, "just six months after the September 11 attacks, I was honorably but involuntarily discharged" due to don't ask, don't tell.
CNN.com published a second column by the executive director on Thursday, titled "'Don't ask don't tell' deal is good for the country." Nicholson praised the recent deal "between the White House, the Pentagon, gay rights groups...and pro-repeal champions on Capitol Hill" as a "workable solution...[that] will get us where we need to go." He labeled the policy, which was codified into law by Congress during the 1990s, as "outdated and onerous."
The two other CNN.com columns in favor of the repeal of don't ask, don't tell were also written by open homosexuals. Joan E. Darrah, a retired U.S. Navy captain, told of her "secret life under 'don't ask, don't tell'" in a February 4 column, outlining how she and her "partner" of 19 years "had learned to deal with the policy and make the requisite sacrifices." She later disclosed how "the events of September 11, 2001...caused me to appreciate fully the true impact of 'don't ask, don't tell'" on her life and that of her "partner." Darrah concluded that she has "great love and respect for our country, but I know we can do better than 'don't ask, don't tell.'"
L.Z. Granderson, a columnist for ESPN.com and an "out sportswriter for years," devoted most of his April 19 column beseeching President Obama to repeal the "unjust" policy. While Granderson praised Obama for his April 15 memo asking the Department of Health and Human Services to write a regulation barring hospitals from denying the visitations of same-sex "partners" of homosexual patients, he asked the Democrat to extend his "compassion and companionship" to homosexuals inside the military:
The discussion of "don't ask, don't tell" is more than who feels comfortable sleeping in the same barracks as a gay guy. And it shouldn't be about strategizing when a demographic pawn should be moved in the partisan chess game that is Washington politics.
As you calculate the pros and cons of vigorously leading a repeal, I ask that you expand your equation to include the unjust toll this law has on the families of the men and women who voluntarily serve this country. Not just intellectualize, but allow your heart to truly empathize with the spouses and partners who do not get to hug or kiss their loved ones goodbye at the airport for what could be their last time together.
Close your eyes and feel the frustration of loved ones who recognize symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder but do not seek proper medical attention for their partner for fear of outing them. Allow your heart to feel for the children who lost a parent in a war zone but do not have access to the soldier's long-term pension to help support them in their absence because, well, the military could not know the fallen soldier's family even exists.
Like hospital visitation, don't ask, don't tell isn't a gay rights issue, it's a human rights issue. What is happening under your watch is no different from the times when black entertainers such as Gladys Knight or Otis Redding were not allowed to eat at the restaurants where they performed.
The cynic in me believes Thursday's memo is just a crumb to quiet the gay community's rumbling. The optimist in me still has the audacity to hope Washington hasn't changed you.
While CNN.com has certainly reported on conservative opposition to the repeal of don't ask, don't tell (such as their Wednesday article on the Family Research Center's report highlighting "homosexual misconduct" inside the military and how overturning the DADT policy would result in its increase), it certainly seems like they can't be bothered to ask supporters of the policy to contribute to their opinion section.
Military guys have been overwhelmingly against this when I’ve talked to them, but I’ve noted that Israel hasn’t had problems with openly gay guys. What do you think?
Should the Feds lift Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?
Yes
No
pollcode.com free polls
The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat.
This is a major shift for a nation with a proud military tradition. In the past 100 years, the United States has fought two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Gulf War. American servicemen and women fought in the Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and many more. Given the nature of the terror threat America faces, more countries probably will likely join that list.
The three major broadcast networks have ignored this issue since Obama's May 10 nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Kagan does not have any military experience and is considered by some as anti-military. Yet, out of 17 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC since Kagan was named, not one has even mentioned the issue of wartime experience.
This, despite liberal arguments that a judge's experience is key to his or her decisions, and that the most lionized of progressive Supreme Court justices was an emphatically proud veteran of the Civil War, whose tombstone lists his war service before his court tenure.
Two current Supreme Court judges, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy, have military service on their resume. Kennedy served in the National Guard "in 1961," according to his Supreme Court biography. Alito underwent Army ROTC training during the Vietnam War, and subsequently served on active duty and in the Reserves as a Signal Corps officer. Neither justice served in a combat zone.
While many in the media haven't noticed, conservatives have.
Eagle Forum founder and syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly explained on Townhall that, "Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience."
Schlafly pointed out that even Justice John Stevens, who is retiring, agrees wartime service is important. Stevens is currently the only justice with war experience. He is a veteran of the Navy and served in the Pacific as an intelligence officer, earning a bronze star for his part in breaking the code that led to the killing of Japan's most important naval officer. Stevens said, "Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the court who had military experience. I sort of feel that it is important. I have to confess that."
Since Stevens announced his retirement, however, CBS and NBC have failed to even mention his quite notable war service. Only ABC's "This Week" on April 11 discussed it.
To the networks, a Supreme Court full of justices without wartime experience is nothing to report on. From May 11 to 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC ran 17 stories about Kagan on the morning and evening news programs. Not once did the networks mention that if Kagan were confirmed the Supreme Court would not have any war veterans.
The lack of coverage is puzzling, because liberals tend to emphasize life experience as a qualification for members of the judiciary. When considering replacements for Justice David Souter last year, President Obama said:
"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It's also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives - whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation."
His eventual nominee, Sonia Sotomayor rather infamously said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
So, should Kagan be confirmed, the Supreme Court of the world's only remaining military superpower would be left without a single justice who can look beyond "some abstract legal theory" and channel "the richness of her experiences" in judging cases dealing with war.
Kagan's Past
Kagan has never served as a judge so her stance on many issues has been difficult to determine. But her record raises questions about how she views the military.
She has been serving as the Solicitor General since January 2009. A Harvard law school graduate, Kagan clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after graduation and later for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She practiced as a private attorney before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
She worked in the White House for part of President's Clintons' term as Associate White House Counsel. She was also the deputy director of the Domestic Policy and Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
After Clinton's presidency, Kagan became a professor at Harvard Law School and eventually the school's first woman dean. It was in that position that, in defiance of the Solomon Act, she supported not allowing military recruiters on campus because of her opposition to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on allowing homosexuals to serve.
Kagan stated that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is "a moral injustice of the first order." Perhaps, but she may have violated the law in denying military recruiters access to Harvard Law School. Further, the nation is fighting two ground wars and a Global War on Terror, encountering many difficult legal issues. Kagan denied the military the opportunity to recruit some of the nation's brightest young legal minds.
Even the broadcast networks have noticed that this may hurt her in the nomination process. On "Good Morning America" May 11 during an interview, George Stephanopolus questioned, "And Sen. Sessions, you heard Vice President Joe Biden there. He sees nothing wrong with the actions Elena Kagan took at Harvard, banning those military recruiters from campus. You called it unacceptable."
On the same day, "Today's" Savannah Guthrie stated, "She's expected to again face tough questions on her decision as Harvard dean to continue the school's ban on military recruiters in protest of the Pentagon's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.'"
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gringrich has not being shy about expressing his dislike of Kagan's past anti-military actions. ABC's This Week" reported him stating on May 16, "She, as dean of the Harvard Law School, took an effort to block the American military from the Harvard campus all the way to the Supreme Court, during a war. And that is an act so unbecoming an American she should be disqualified from the beginning."
Kagan's actions on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," coupled with the impending lack of war experience on the Court, should have raised red flags - or at least interesting questions - for reporters.
Model Justice/Military Hero
Modern liberals owe their ideas about the role of empathy and experience in judging at least in some part to a man who was most influential Supreme Court Justice of the 20th century and a lionized progressive judge. In his book "Common Law," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935) wrote that, "The life of the law not been logic; it has been experience."
However, the experience the "Great Dissenter" valued above all was his service in the Civil War.
Holmes served with the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. (In a twist of historical irony, given Dean Kagan's attitude toward military recruiters in Cambridge, the 20th Mass. was known as "The Harvard Regiment.") Holmes fought in some of the war's most famous and bloody battles, surviving three wounds. Eventually, he rose to the rank of Captain. Holmes also served as Brevet Colonel and aide-de-camp on the staff of Sixth Corps General Horatio Wright.
He was active in veterans groups the rest of his life, delivering several legendary speeches on the war, including an address on Memorial Day, 1884, in which he asserted that, "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire."
Evidence of the importance of his war service to Holmes can be found on his tombstone in Arlington Cemetery. "Captain and Brevet Colonel, 20th Mass. Volunteer Infantry" appears above "Justice Supreme Court of the United States."
Since the left views the progressive Holmes as a forerunner of the ideal Supreme Court Justice for liberals, wartime experience should count for something - especially at a time when U.S. troops are fighting and dying overseas.
The media, and particularly the networks, should show some curiosity about whether America's highest court can use the perspective of a former warrior in a nation at war.
The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat.
This is a major shift for a nation with a proud military tradition. In the past 100 years, the United States has fought two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Gulf War. American servicemen and women fought in the Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and many more. Given the nature of the terror threat America faces, more countries probably will likely join that list.
The three major broadcast networks have ignored this issue since Obama's May 10 nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Kagan does not have any military experience and is considered by some as anti-military. Yet, out of 17 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC since Kagan was named, not one has even mentioned the issue of wartime experience.
This, despite liberal arguments that a judge's experience is key to his or her decisions, and that the most lionized of progressive Supreme Court justices was an emphatically proud veteran of the Civil War, whose tombstone lists his war service before his court tenure.
Two current Supreme Court judges, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy, have military service on their resume. Kennedy served in the National Guard "in 1961," according to his Supreme Court biography. Alito underwent Army ROTC training during the Vietnam War, and subsequently served on active duty and in the Reserves as a Signal Corps officer. Neither justice served in a combat zone.
While many in the media haven't noticed, conservatives have.
Eagle Forum founder and syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly explained on Townhall that, "Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience."
Schlafly pointed out that even Justice John Stevens, who is retiring, agrees wartime service is important. Stevens is currently the only justice with war experience. He is a veteran of the Navy and served in the Pacific as an intelligence officer, earning a bronze star for his part in breaking the code that led to the killing of Japan's most important naval officer. Stevens said, "Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the court who had military experience. I sort of feel that it is important. I have to confess that."
Since Stevens announced his retirement, however, CBS and NBC have failed to even mention his quite notable war service. Only ABC's "This Week" on April 11 discussed it.
To the networks, a Supreme Court full of justices without wartime experience is nothing to report on. From May 11 to 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC ran 17 stories about Kagan on the morning and evening news programs. Not once did the networks mention that if Kagan were confirmed the Supreme Court would not have any war veterans.
The lack of coverage is puzzling, because liberals tend to emphasize life experience as a qualification for members of the judiciary. When considering replacements for Justice David Souter last year, President Obama said:
"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It's also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives - whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation."
His eventual nominee, Sonia Sotomayor rather infamously said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
So, should Kagan be confirmed, the Supreme Court of the world's only remaining military superpower would be left without a single justice who can look beyond "some abstract legal theory" and channel "the richness of her experiences" in judging cases dealing with war.
Kagan's Past
Kagan has never served as a judge so her stance on many issues has been difficult to determine. But her record raises questions about how she views the military.
She has been serving as the Solicitor General since January 2009. A Harvard law school graduate, Kagan clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after graduation and later for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She practiced as a private attorney before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
She worked in the White House for part of President's Clintons' term as Associate White House Counsel. She was also the deputy director of the Domestic Policy and Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
After Clinton's presidency, Kagan became a professor at Harvard Law School and eventually the school's first woman dean. It was in that position that, in defiance of the Solomon Act, she supported not allowing military recruiters on campus because of her opposition to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on allowing homosexuals to serve.
Kagan stated that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is "a moral injustice of the first order." Perhaps, but she may have violated the law in denying military recruiters access to Harvard Law School. Further, the nation is fighting two ground wars and a Global War on Terror, encountering many difficult legal issues. Kagan denied the military the opportunity to recruit some of the nation's brightest young legal minds.
Even the broadcast networks have noticed that this may hurt her in the nomination process. On "Good Morning America" May 11 during an interview, George Stephanopolus questioned, "And Sen. Sessions, you heard Vice President Joe Biden there. He sees nothing wrong with the actions Elena Kagan took at Harvard, banning those military recruiters from campus. You called it unacceptable."
On the same day, "Today's" Savannah Guthrie stated, "She's expected to again face tough questions on her decision as Harvard dean to continue the school's ban on military recruiters in protest of the Pentagon's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.'"
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gringrich has not being shy about expressing his dislike of Kagan's past anti-military actions. ABC's This Week" reported him stating on May 16, "She, as dean of the Harvard Law School, took an effort to block the American military from the Harvard campus all the way to the Supreme Court, during a war. And that is an act so unbecoming an American she should be disqualified from the beginning."
Kagan's actions on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," coupled with the impending lack of war experience on the Court, should have raised red flags - or at least interesting questions - for reporters.
Model Justice/Military Hero
Modern liberals owe their ideas about the role of empathy and experience in judging at least in some part to a man who was most influential Supreme Court Justice of the 20th century and a lionized progressive judge. In his book "Common Law," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935) wrote that, "The life of the law not been logic; it has been experience."
However, the experience the "Great Dissenter" valued above all was his service in the Civil War.
Holmes served with the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. (In a twist of historical irony, given Dean Kagan's attitude toward military recruiters in Cambridge, the 20th Mass. was known as "The Harvard Regiment.") Holmes fought in some of the war's most famous and bloody battles, surviving three wounds. Eventually, he rose to the rank of Captain. Holmes also served as Brevet Colonel and aide-de-camp on the staff of Sixth Corps General Horatio Wright.
He was active in veterans groups the rest of his life, delivering several legendary speeches on the war, including an address on Memorial Day, 1884, in which he asserted that, "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire."
Evidence of the importance of his war service to Holmes can be found on his tombstone in Arlington Cemetery. "Captain and Brevet Colonel, 20th Mass. Volunteer Infantry" appears above "Justice Supreme Court of the United States."
Since the left views the progressive Holmes as a forerunner of the ideal Supreme Court Justice for liberals, wartime experience should count for something - especially at a time when U.S. troops are fighting and dying overseas.
The media, and particularly the networks, should show some curiosity about whether America's highest court can use the perspective of a former warrior in a nation at war.
The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat.
This is a major shift for a nation with a proud military tradition. In the past 100 years, the United States has fought two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Gulf War. American servicemen and women fought in the Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and many more. Given the nature of the terror threat America faces, more countries probably will likely join that list.
The three major broadcast networks have ignored this issue since Obama's May 10 nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Kagan does not have any military experience and is considered by some as anti-military. Yet, out of 17 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC since Kagan was named, not one has even mentioned the issue of wartime experience.
This, despite liberal arguments that a judge's experience is key to his or her decisions, and that the most lionized of progressive Supreme Court justices was an emphatically proud veteran of the Civil War, whose tombstone lists his war service before his court tenure.
Two current Supreme Court judges, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy, have military service on their resume. Kennedy served in the National Guard "in 1961," according to his Supreme Court biography. Alito underwent Army ROTC training during the Vietnam War, and subsequently served on active duty and in the Reserves as a Signal Corps officer. Neither justice served in a combat zone.
While many in the media haven't noticed, conservatives have.
Eagle Forum founder and syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly explained on Townhall that, "Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience."
Schlafly pointed out that even Justice John Stevens, who is retiring, agrees wartime service is important. Stevens is currently the only justice with war experience. He is a veteran of the Navy and served in the Pacific as an intelligence officer, earning a bronze star for his part in breaking the code that led to the killing of Japan's most important naval officer. Stevens said, "Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the court who had military experience. I sort of feel that it is important. I have to confess that."
Since Stevens announced his retirement, however, CBS and NBC have failed to even mention his quite notable war service. Only ABC's "This Week" on April 11 discussed it.
To the networks, a Supreme Court full of justices without wartime experience is nothing to report on. From May 11 to 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC ran 17 stories about Kagan on the morning and evening news programs. Not once did the networks mention that if Kagan were confirmed the Supreme Court would not have any war veterans.
The lack of coverage is puzzling, because liberals tend to emphasize life experience as a qualification for members of the judiciary. When considering replacements for Justice David Souter last year, President Obama said:
"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It's also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives - whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation."
His eventual nominee, Sonia Sotomayor rather infamously said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
So, should Kagan be confirmed, the Supreme Court of the world's only remaining military superpower would be left without a single justice who can look beyond "some abstract legal theory" and channel "the richness of her experiences" in judging cases dealing with war.
Kagan's Past
Kagan has never served as a judge so her stance on many issues has been difficult to determine. But her record raises questions about how she views the military.
She has been serving as the Solicitor General since January 2009. A Harvard law school graduate, Kagan clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after graduation and later for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She practiced as a private attorney before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
She worked in the White House for part of President's Clintons' term as Associate White House Counsel. She was also the deputy director of the Domestic Policy and Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
After Clinton's presidency, Kagan became a professor at Harvard Law School and eventually the school's first woman dean. It was in that position that, in defiance of the Solomon Act, she supported not allowing military recruiters on campus because of her opposition to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on allowing homosexuals to serve.
Kagan stated that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is "a moral injustice of the first order." Perhaps, but she may have violated the law in denying military recruiters access to Harvard Law School. Further, the nation is fighting two ground wars and a Global War on Terror, encountering many difficult legal issues. Kagan denied the military the opportunity to recruit some of the nation's brightest young legal minds.
Even the broadcast networks have noticed that this may hurt her in the nomination process. On "Good Morning America" May 11 during an interview, George Stephanopolus questioned, "And Sen. Sessions, you heard Vice President Joe Biden there. He sees nothing wrong with the actions Elena Kagan took at Harvard, banning those military recruiters from campus. You called it unacceptable."
On the same day, "Today's" Savannah Guthrie stated, "She's expected to again face tough questions on her decision as Harvard dean to continue the school's ban on military recruiters in protest of the Pentagon's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.'"
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gringrich has not being shy about expressing his dislike of Kagan's past anti-military actions. ABC's This Week" reported him stating on May 16, "She, as dean of the Harvard Law School, took an effort to block the American military from the Harvard campus all the way to the Supreme Court, during a war. And that is an act so unbecoming an American she should be disqualified from the beginning."
Kagan's actions on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," coupled with the impending lack of war experience on the Court, should have raised red flags - or at least interesting questions - for reporters.
Model Justice/Military Hero
Modern liberals owe their ideas about the role of empathy and experience in judging at least in some part to a man who was most influential Supreme Court Justice of the 20th century and a lionized progressive judge. In his book "Common Law," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935) wrote that, "The life of the law not been logic; it has been experience."
However, the experience the "Great Dissenter" valued above all was his service in the Civil War.
Holmes served with the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. (In a twist of historical irony, given Dean Kagan's attitude toward military recruiters in Cambridge, the 20th Mass. was known as "The Harvard Regiment.") Holmes fought in some of the war's most famous and bloody battles, surviving three wounds. Eventually, he rose to the rank of Captain. Holmes also served as Brevet Colonel and aide-de-camp on the staff of Sixth Corps General Horatio Wright.
He was active in veterans groups the rest of his life, delivering several legendary speeches on the war, including an address on Memorial Day, 1884, in which he asserted that, "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire."
Evidence of the importance of his war service to Holmes can be found on his tombstone in Arlington Cemetery. "Captain and Brevet Colonel, 20th Mass. Volunteer Infantry" appears above "Justice Supreme Court of the United States."
Since the left views the progressive Holmes as a forerunner of the ideal Supreme Court Justice for liberals, wartime experience should count for something - especially at a time when U.S. troops are fighting and dying overseas.
The media, and particularly the networks, should show some curiosity about whether America's highest court can use the perspective of a former warrior in a nation at war.
The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat.
This is a major shift for a nation with a proud military tradition. In the past 100 years, the United States has fought two World Wars, the Korean and Vietnam Wars and the Gulf War. American servicemen and women fought in the Philippines, Grenada, Panama, Somalia and Bosnia and many more. Given the nature of the terror threat America faces, more countries probably will likely join that list.
The three major broadcast networks have ignored this issue since Obama's May 10 nomination of Solicitor General Elena Kagan for the Supreme Court. Kagan does not have any military experience and is considered by some as anti-military. Yet, out of 17 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC since Kagan was named, not one has even mentioned the issue of wartime experience.
This, despite liberal arguments that a judge's experience is key to his or her decisions, and that the most lionized of progressive Supreme Court justices was an emphatically proud veteran of the Civil War, whose tombstone lists his war service before his court tenure.
Two current Supreme Court judges, Samuel Alito and Anthony Kennedy, have military service on their resume. Kennedy served in the National Guard "in 1961," according to his Supreme Court biography. Alito underwent Army ROTC training during the Vietnam War, and subsequently served on active duty and in the Reserves as a Signal Corps officer. Neither justice served in a combat zone.
While many in the media haven't noticed, conservatives have.
Eagle Forum founder and syndicated columnist Phyllis Schlafly explained on Townhall that, "Veterans in the U.S. Senate should make sure that such an embarrassment does not occur. Cases concerning the military appear every year before the Supreme Court, and our nation will not be well-served by a court lacking in military experience."
Schlafly pointed out that even Justice John Stevens, who is retiring, agrees wartime service is important. Stevens is currently the only justice with war experience. He is a veteran of the Navy and served in the Pacific as an intelligence officer, earning a bronze star for his part in breaking the code that led to the killing of Japan's most important naval officer. Stevens said, "Somebody was saying that there ought to be at least one person on the court who had military experience. I sort of feel that it is important. I have to confess that."
Since Stevens announced his retirement, however, CBS and NBC have failed to even mention his quite notable war service. Only ABC's "This Week" on April 11 discussed it.
To the networks, a Supreme Court full of justices without wartime experience is nothing to report on. From May 11 to 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC ran 17 stories about Kagan on the morning and evening news programs. Not once did the networks mention that if Kagan were confirmed the Supreme Court would not have any war veterans.
The lack of coverage is puzzling, because liberals tend to emphasize life experience as a qualification for members of the judiciary. When considering replacements for Justice David Souter last year, President Obama said:
"I will seek someone who understands that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a casebook. It's also about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives - whether they can make a living and care for their families, whether they feel safe in their homes and welcome in their own nation."
His eventual nominee, Sonia Sotomayor rather infamously said: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman, with the richness of her experiences, would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."
So, should Kagan be confirmed, the Supreme Court of the world's only remaining military superpower would be left without a single justice who can look beyond "some abstract legal theory" and channel "the richness of her experiences" in judging cases dealing with war.
Kagan's Past
Kagan has never served as a judge so her stance on many issues has been difficult to determine. But her record raises questions about how she views the military.
She has been serving as the Solicitor General since January 2009. A Harvard law school graduate, Kagan clerked for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia after graduation and later for liberal Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. She practiced as a private attorney before becoming an assistant professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
She worked in the White House for part of President's Clintons' term as Associate White House Counsel. She was also the deputy director of the Domestic Policy and Council and Deputy Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy.
After Clinton's presidency, Kagan became a professor at Harvard Law School and eventually the school's first woman dean. It was in that position that, in defiance of the Solomon Act, she supported not allowing military recruiters on campus because of her opposition to the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on allowing homosexuals to serve.
Kagan stated that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" is "a moral injustice of the first order." Perhaps, but she may have violated the law in denying military recruiters access to Harvard Law School. Further, the nation is fighting two ground wars and a Global War on Terror, encountering many difficult legal issues. Kagan denied the military the opportunity to recruit some of the nation's brightest young legal minds.
Even the broadcast networks have noticed that this may hurt her in the nomination process. On "Good Morning America" May 11 during an interview, George Stephanopolus questioned, "And Sen. Sessions, you heard Vice President Joe Biden there. He sees nothing wrong with the actions Elena Kagan took at Harvard, banning those military recruiters from campus. You called it unacceptable."
On the same day, "Today's" Savannah Guthrie stated, "She's expected to again face tough questions on her decision as Harvard dean to continue the school's ban on military recruiters in protest of the Pentagon's ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' policy.'"
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gringrich has not being shy about expressing his dislike of Kagan's past anti-military actions. ABC's This Week" reported him stating on May 16, "She, as dean of the Harvard Law School, took an effort to block the American military from the Harvard campus all the way to the Supreme Court, during a war. And that is an act so unbecoming an American she should be disqualified from the beginning."
Kagan's actions on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," coupled with the impending lack of war experience on the Court, should have raised red flags - or at least interesting questions - for reporters.
Model Justice/Military Hero
Modern liberals owe their ideas about the role of empathy and experience in judging at least in some part to a man who was most influential Supreme Court Justice of the 20th century and a lionized progressive judge. In his book "Common Law," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841 - 1935) wrote that, "The life of the law not been logic; it has been experience."
However, the experience the "Great Dissenter" valued above all was his service in the Civil War.
Holmes served with the 20th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment. (In a twist of historical irony, given Dean Kagan's attitude toward military recruiters in Cambridge, the 20th Mass. was known as "The Harvard Regiment.") Holmes fought in some of the war's most famous and bloody battles, surviving three wounds. Eventually, he rose to the rank of Captain. Holmes also served as Brevet Colonel and aide-de-camp on the staff of Sixth Corps General Horatio Wright.
He was active in veterans groups the rest of his life, delivering several legendary speeches on the war, including an address on Memorial Day, 1884, in which he asserted that, "the generation that carried on the war has been set apart by its experience. Through our great good fortune, in our youth our hearts were touched with fire."
Evidence of the importance of his war service to Holmes can be found on his tombstone in Arlington Cemetery. "Captain and Brevet Colonel, 20th Mass. Volunteer Infantry" appears above "Justice Supreme Court of the United States."
Since the left views the progressive Holmes as a forerunner of the ideal Supreme Court Justice for liberals, wartime experience should count for something - especially at a time when U.S. troops are fighting and dying overseas.
The media, and particularly the networks, should show some curiosity about whether America's highest court can use the perspective of a former warrior in a nation at war.
In the past week, the Obama administration and fellow Democrats have let their true feelings for America known more than ever before. Well, at least more blatantly. They aren’t even bothering to hide it now and have lost all shame. No longer content with merely worshipping at the altar [...]
"Psycho Talk" is a regular segment on Ed Schultz's regular MSNBC show. But after his bizarre outburst this evening, you really have to wonder whether Ed's the one ready for the rubber room . . .
Interviewing a liberal Dem congressman, Schultz expressed concern that the 1,200 National Guard troops that Pres. Obama has ordered to the Mexican border may have been issued "shoot to kill" orders.
Ed, have you forgotten who's Commander-in-Chief? If you're truly worried that the president has issued shoot-to-kill orders on illegal immigrants, then PBO is certainly in much worse political shape than even the most pessimistic observers have imagined.
Schultz indulged his paranoid fantasy while chatting with far-left Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Illinois).
ED SCHULTZ: Let's move now to Illinois congressman Luis Gutierrez, member of the Hispanic Caucus. Congressman, how do you feel about the troops being on the border, and give us some clarification: what are they there for? . . . Are they going to be doing a law-enforcement mission, or are they doing a military mission, and are they going to be involved in some real high-tech operations? I think there's a real disconnect. We understand border security, but, I mean, is this shoot-to-kill? What is this?
What is this? I'd say it's Schultz going way off the deep end. I'd say rather than shoot-to-kill, it's more likely PBO would order the troops to greet illegals with the Arizona equivalent of leis: "aloha, pilgrim!"
NewsBusters Publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the May 25 "Fox & Friends" to discuss the media's double standard when it comes to politicians lying about their military records.
The Media Research Center president noted the most apt parallel to Richard Blumenthal was Bruce Caputo, a Republican who ran for U.S. Senate in the 1980s, only to drop out after Tim Russert -- then a staffer for Daniel Patrick Moynihan -- found that Caputo had falsely claimed to have been drafted during the Vietnam War.
At that time, "the media were relentless" against Caputo after the revelation and "it was the end of his career," Bozell noted, contrasting that with last week's Blumenthal story which to the mainstream media came and went as a "one-night story."
For the full interview, click play on the embed above at right.
Joe Scarborough was on fire this morning, his ire trained on twin targets: Dick Blumenthal, and the New York Times' John Harwood, who casually dismissed the candidate's lies about having served in Vietnam as just a case of getting "a little carried away." At one point, Scarborough claimed he wasn't calling Blumenthal a "scumbag"—but it sure sounded like it.
Harwood began his Blumenthal defense with a barroom analogy: "the occasions where he was loose is more akin to a guy who had a few too many at the bar and hit on somebody rather than somebody actually trying to slip a mickey into the girls drink." He later added this lame defense: that even if Blumenthal lied to the veterans groups about his record, they weren't deceived by it. "Were all those veterans groups fooled by it?", asked Harwood, implying they weren't. "You're a reporter, you go ask them," snapped Scarborough.
Scarborough later pointed out that Blumenthal lied and trafficked on the valor of others on precisely those occasions when, appearing before veterans groups, it would benefit him politically. Harwood miscast Joe's criticism of Blumenthal as a demand that all candidates explain why they didn't serve. A peeved Scarborough called Harwood out: "John, I don't know show, what feed you're listening to."
At the end of the segment, Scarborough came very close to calling Blumenthal a "scumbag."
JOE SCARBOROUGH: The only reason I'm so upset is so many Americans fought and died in that war and suffered in that war and still carry those scars. This little political . . . blank, is using their valor to pick up some cheap votes at some meetings. As a politician, as a former politician, I know you don't make these sort of mistakes, and if you do, you're a scumbag. I'm not saying he is. That's all I'll say. I'm checking out.
Scarborough's suggestion that Harwood actually go out and do some reporting was particularly striking. For Harwood indeed sounds like someone who instead of reporting contents himself to pass along the idle cocktail-party chatter of the MSM set.
Note: Mark Halperin of Time essentially sided with Harwood, saying Blumenthal's lies weren't a big deal since on many occasions he had told the truth about his record. Andy Server of Fortune took a surprisingly hard line: "I just don't buy it at all. I think the guy should not run. I think he should resign." Serwer also surmised that there were other Blumenthal lies out there, as yet undiscovered.
Drudge has an interesting little snippet concerning President Obama’s recent speech before the graduating class at West Point. It is a short headline about what was cut from Obama’s speech, a cut that really says a lot about the arrogance of team Obama as well as his utter lack of spontaneity and sincerity and his [...]
In an interesting development the House Armed Services Committee unanimously approved of legislation that would block Gitmo, Illinois from coming to fruition. In fact, they’ve blocked any Gitmo terrorist from being transferred anywhere into the interior of the USA. This is a blow to Obama’s desires to shut Gitmo down and to bring terrorists to [...]
Editor's Note: This post originally appeared at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.
The political thriller Fair Game premiered at Cannes today. (Pause for giant, collective yawn from Big Hollywood readers…)
The Sean Penn-Naomi Watts “starrer” (hey, it’s fun using unnecessarily awkward Variety-speak!) revisits the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal, an episode I’m not even going to bother recapping, because to do so would simply be coma-inducing for all of us. Besides, I already summed up the affair and dissected the screenplay’s political slant for Big Hollywood here. Suffice it to say, it’s a tale the Hollywood Left is hell-bent on getting Americans to care about.
As are its water-carriers in the media. In a deceptive puff piece an article last week for the Los Angeles Times, Rachel Abramowitz discusses the film and interviews its director Doug Liman. The first clue that we’re about to be sold a crockpot of hooey comes when she describes Valerie Plame as “the undercover CIA operative whose name was leaked to the media by the Bush White House in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.”
Notice how matter-of-factly those lies are delivered. Matter-of-fact because the left-dominated entertainment industry clings to its anti-Bush narrative about the affair as received wisdom: courageous patriot Joe Wilson dared speak truth to power by exposing the lies neocons used to promote a “war of choice,” and then the wicked Bush and his flying monkeys Rove and Cheney plotted vengeance against him from their White House lair.
Once again, people: there is no evidence that the “Bush White House” conspired to leak Plame’s name to the media, or that it was done to discredit her husband or expose her identity. Even the Obama Justice Departmentdismissed the Wilsons’ attempt to sue Rove, Cheney, and Libby, stating flatly that Joe Wilson had provided no evidence that the three officials had caused him harm.
But back to the media sleight-of-hand. Ms. Abramowitz then refers to “the eventual trial and conviction of ‘Scooter’ Libby, a top aide to then-Vice President Dick Cheney,” without clarifying what he was convicted of. Her phrasing, and the screenplay itself, suggest that Libby was guilty of the leak (and Cheney as well, via guilt-by-association). No, Libby perjured himself to investigators by concealing what he knew and when he knew it; it was State Dept. official Richard Armitage, by his own admission, who leaked Plame’s name. And he did it not in retaliation for her husband’s criticism of the administration, but inadvertently, claiming he didn’t realize she was covert. But as I wrote before at Big Hollywood, his name does not appear in the script. That’s because it would utterly suck the wind out of the movie’s already limp sails to admit that “the Bush White House” did not conspire to punish the Wilsons.
Abramowitz says that, according to Liman, “events in the movie follow the facts.” Yes, if after “the facts” you add “according to the anti-war Left’s willful delusion.” Having thus established for her readers that the film is “true-to-life,” Ms. Abramowitz then gets to the article’s astonishing central claim: that in Fair Game, “ Liman pushed the politics of the events into the background.”
Yes, if by “background” she means “foreground.” The Valerie Plame story is political in its very essence. The whole point of the Wilsons’ story is their claim that they were targeted for retaliation for challenging the administration’s justification for war. Removing that linchpin by “pushing the politics into the background” would simply cause the entire story to vanish.
The filmmakers “leave the political debate largely off screen,” Abramowitz continues, “and much of the activity of the Bush White House officials is presented in news clips.” True, as I noted in my previous piece, top figures like Bush and Cheney are presented in Fair Game only in film footage; but those clips are carefully selected to suggest a White House cover-up, and the script itself hammers that theory home. The scenes that do fictionally depict White House officials show Rove’s and Libby’s characters conspiring to “out” Plame’s CIA identity.
Liman chimes in, describing how producer Janet Zucker “was particularly impassioned about the behavior of the Bush administration… It was actually very helpful to have this incredibly strong-willed, liberal-minded producer in the mix because it put me in a very reactionary mood, which ultimately drove the politics out of the movie.” (A liberal-minded producer in Hollywood? Who knew?!)
Drove the politics out of the movie? Not the movie I read. Liman is claiming that he and Zucker balanced each other out and created a compromise in which politics is merely a walk-on character. I find it impossible to believe that an “incredibly strong-willed, liberal-minded producer,” whose driving motivation for pursuing this story was to expose Bush wrongdoing, would accept such a compromise. I also find it impossible to believe the Wilsons themselves would be happy having the crux of their story redacted from the film (the real Valerie Plame, by the way, went to Cannes to promote it).
And what about the star Sean Penn? Raise your hand if you believe that the openly far-left activist Penn would cheerily go along with a politically neutral take on this affair… Uh huh. As I expected, not a single hand.
In all fairness, I haven’t yet seen the movie, so perhaps it now bears little resemblance to the openly partisan script I previously examined on Big Hollywood. But based on that screenplay, to say that the movie is about the Wilsons’ strained relationship and only marginally about politics is, well, let’s be charitable and call it disingenuous. After all, no sooner does the Times article claim that Fair Game is a politics-free zone, when Liman contradicts himself with a revealing analogy to Spielberg’s Jaws: “The shark is a lot scarier when you see less of it. I decided to apply that approach to the White House.” Sounds like the politics hasn’t so much been driven out of the movie as elevated to a central, ominous presence.
Lest one question why we shouldn’t take Liman at his word, he helpfully points out that “I’m used to manipulating people. That’s one of the main criteria of making it as a director in Hollywood… You have to be a con artist.” With this in mind, one can’t help but wonder if he and L.A. Times enabler Rachel Abramowitz are trying to pull off a con themselves: to reassure readers that Fair Game isn’t just another leftist, politicized attack on the Iraq War – because they know, as I have written before, that that would be met with even greater audience indifference than wasMatt Damon’s dud The Green Zone (Abramowitz herself raises the fearsome specter of that movie’s failure.)
Audience indifference except at Cannes, of course, where international cinema sophisticates gather to congratulate themselves on their anti-Americanism, and among the media leftists like reviewer Jeffrey Wells, who giddily predicts Cannes-and-Oscar glory for a ”film which exposes right-wing scumbaggery.”
They eagerly embrace Fair Game’s political slant – a slant the L.A. Times denies the movie has.
Seeing “Saving Private Ryan” again is enough to make one forgive star Tom Hanks’ ill-conceived comments regarding racism and World War II.
The 1998 film, just released on Blu-ray for the first time,...
Earlier this morning, I was minding my own business, reading this unbylined Associated Press roundup of yesterday's elections, when I got to the report's final few paragraphs. They involved "other concerns" the two major parties have. After noting yesterday's resignation by Republican congressman Mark Souder, the report's final paragraph read as follows:
Well, that's rich. I wonder how the folks at the New York Times, which prepared the 2,100-word article ("Candidate’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History") to which the AP refers, feel about their august publication being called merely "a newspaper"? Or about the Blumenthal campaign press release disguised as a news report the wire service's Susan Haigh put forth yesterday? Or is there more going on?
As to Blumenthal's "dispute," here's a clue for both the AP and the Nutmeg State's AG: There is no "dispute." There are only these facts and direct quotes:
"We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam,” Mr. Blumenthal said to the group (veterans and senior citizens) gathered in Norwalk (CT) in March 2008."
... In 2003, he addressed a rally in Bridgeport, where about 100 military families gathered to express support for American troops overseas. “When we returned, we saw nothing like this,” Mr. Blumenthal said. “Let us do better by this generation of men and women.” (Returned from where? The PX? -- Ed.)
... In at least eight newspaper articles published in Connecticut from 2003 to 2009, he is described as having served in Vietnam.
... And the idea that he served in Vietnam has become such an accepted part of his public biography that when a national outlet, Slate magazine, produced a profile of Mr. Blumenthal in 2000, it said he had “enlisted in the Marines rather than duck the Vietnam draft.”
It does not appear that Mr. Blumenthal ever sought to correct those mistakes.
These Times-delivered facts and quotes are not subject to "dispute." They are part of the historical record.
But before anyone goes overboard handing out props to the Old Gray Lady, one can't help but notice that the report's timing "just so happens" to be quite helpful to Blumenthal. That's because, as the AP's Haigh notes, "(Connecticut) Democrats (will) meet this weekend to endorse a candidate for the seat." With only four days to think about it, will party bigwigs dare to withhold or deny an endorsement to its highest state officeholder? That doesn't seem likely.
Once endorsed, Blumenthal's false claims about Vietnam will instantly turn into "old news" that can't be brought up again without the establishment press characterizing any such effort as an "unfair attack." Blumenthal's road to victory in November, while of course not assured, nonetheless looks pretty comfortable, in no small part because of the pathetic-looking crop of potential GOP opponents.
Brilliant. It's almost as if the whole thing's coordinated. Nah -- the AP and the Times wouldn't do that ... would they?
The Obama White House, so filled with Harvard graduates, is obviously more interested in teaching than in learning.
“Teachable moments,” remember?
Why the Obama Nation should retain so many...
While viewers might have expected to see the latest on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Tuesday's electoral primaries, CNN's Campbell Brown devoted the first two segments on her program on Monday to highlighting the apparent religious bigotry inside the U.S. Army - specifically, the upcoming lawsuit of a Muslim who alleges he was harassed and ridiculed due to his religion.
Brown played the interview of the soldier, Specialist Zachari Klawonn, during the first full segment, which began 2 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour. Klawonn was joined by his lawyer, Randal Mathis, as well as the commanding officer of his battalion, Colonel Jimmy Jenkins. As she introduced the segment, the anchor emphasized how the specialist is "a model soldier," "exactly what the Army says it is looking for," and how he "has an exemplary service record, and has earned the praise of both his commanders and his Army buddies."
During the interview, Brown asked Klawonn about the alleged anti-Muslim harassment he has received, and questioned his commanding officer about the actions he took to solve the issue. After the specialist gave some general examples of the offending behavior, Colonel Jenkins detailed his responsibility as brigade commander: "...My sole goal is to make sure he and the other 2,200 soldiers in the brigade- their safety is paramount. I'm charged with the combat readiness of the brigade, and if my soldiers don't feel safe, then I have failed. So, I have worked personally with Specialist Klawonn on a quite a few occasions to see what I could do to make him feel safer."
The specialist also mentioned during the interview that he was "working with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation" in filing his lawsuit. The CNN anchor brought on the founder and president of the MRFF, Michael Weinstein, along with Thomas Kenniff, a former Army JAG, during the second segment.
Brown mentioned Weinstein's role with the MRFF, but omitted his connections to past lawsuits against the military. Earlier in 2010, the president demanded the military remove the "Bible codes" on rifle scopes used in Afghanistan and asked the Army to change the emblem of the Evans Army Community Hospital in Colorado, which has the motto "For God and humanity" written in Latin, as well as a cross.
More egregiously, The Philadelphia Jewish Voice newspaper interviewed Weinstein in February 2008, and the MRFF president used anti-Christian language several times in his answers. He referred to Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" as the "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre" and denounced the Officers' Christian Fellowship and the Christian Military Fellowship as "variances of this Christian Taliban and the Christian al-Qaeda." He even compared the "Christian Taliban" supposedly inside the military to the members of the Nazi Party who supported Hitler, or the Communist Party members who aided Stalin. Brown didn't bring up any of this during her interview of Weinstein.
Kenniff, the anchor's other guest, on the other hand, expressed his concerns over the specialist's lawsuit:
KENNIFF: One thing that concerns me, though, is what I see as- you know, somewhat of a lack of specificity in the allegations made by Specialist Klawonn. You know, for instance, he cites numerous cases of harassment. What I would like to know is- you know, does he have the names of the soldiers who are harassing him? Was it reported? Did he name names? Was there an investigation? Because the type of conduct that he at least alleges in some of the complaints- I mean, the destruction of his Koran, the threatening note left on his door or on his truck- I mean, that would certainly give rise, if not to full-blown criminal conduct within the military, then to non-judicial punishment....
The transcript of Brown's interview of Weinstein and Keniff, which began 12 minutes into the 8 pm Eastern hour of Monday's Campbell Brown program, starting with the anchor's first question to the MRFF president:
BROWN: So, Michael, it's not exactly in the Army's interest here to have soldiers being harassed. So, I mean, what possible motivation, I guess, do they have to not act to protect their soldiers?
WEINSTEIN: Well, I think part of the problem is, is that there is such a tremendous inherent- you know, bias against Muslim-Americans in the military. We see it every day with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. For instance, at some military installations, when you walk into the military clothing store, the only books that they're selling, religious books, are the camouflage Bible and then another book called 'The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam,' which is an absolute slam on the entire faith.
BROWN: So- so-
WEINSTEIN: When you hear- wait. Let me just say one other thing.
BROWN: Yeah.
WEINSTEIN: When you hear soldiers running in formation- you know, they're often- they will have marching chants or running chants. They'll use the word 'hajji,' which is a- as negative to a Muslim-American as the N-word is to an African-American or the K-word to a Jewish-American or an S-word to an Hispanic-American, and it's done with reckless and complete- total abandon. And- you know, fish in an aquarium never see the water.
BROWN: So, let me ask you both this question, and here's the challenge- is during a time when we are fighting two wars in Muslim countries, and when we face a threat of Islamic terrorism, how much can the Army really do to control what soldiers think of Muslims or Islam? Tom, you answer first.
KENNIFF: Yeah- you know, I think that's a great question, Campbell. It's also one of the concerns I had with- you know, Mikey's client's lawsuit, because a lot of the allegations seem to rail against a hostile culture within the military. And, look, I don't doubt for one second- in fact, I can speak firsthand to the fact that that does exist in certain instances with respect to Muslim-Americans within the military. I would hope that it's the exception and not the rule, and I know Mikey may have a different take on that. But- you know, it's very difficult in the context of a discrimination lawsuit, which is what I think this probably is.
WEINSTEIN: No.
KENNIFF: Okay. Well, you can tell us what it will be, because I- frankly, I haven't seen the complaint. I don't even know that it's filed yet.
WEINSTEIN: Right.
KENNIFF: But- you know, exactly what is the remedy that your client seeking? I mean, if it's a situation where- you know, there's hostility within the enlisted ranks or the officer ranks among fellow soldiers, that's one thing. If it's a situation where it's a top-down- you know, pattern of discrimination meant to oppress- you know, Muslim-American soldiers, then I think that's quite another.
BROWN: All right, Mikey?
WEINSTEIN: Well, and, Tom, let me be specific. What we're looking at doing is filing a federal mandamus action. We believe that all of the internal regulations and instructions and laws within the Pentagon are already fine. They're just being ignored with impunity and there's no penalty for that. What we want to do-
BROWN: But, again, go back to the question of how you get the military to address this, given the world that these soldiers are living in.
WEINSTEIN: Let me make it very clear. You never get anybody to change their minds, Campbell, because they suddenly see the light. They have to feel the heat. We need leaders that will impose the laws that currently exist. This is old-school prejudice, old-school discrimination, old-school bigotry, and it cannot be allowed-
BROWN: Gentlemen, we are going to have to leave it there. Tom Kenniff and Mikey Weinstein, I do appreciate both of you joining us tonight- really interesting conversation. Thanks so much.
Although James Blunt hit the big time with his hit, “You’re Beautiful,” I had never paid much attention to him until he guest starred in the “Las Vegas” finale singing “Same Mistake.” It...
Although James Blunt hit the big time with his hit, “You’re Beautiful,” I had never paid much attention to him until he guest starred in the “Las Vegas” finale singing “Same Mistake.” It...
Since the very beginning of the war on terror, we’ve had overly restrictive rules on engagement for our troops. Those rules of engagement are the only reason Mullah Omar and Osama Bin Laden are alive today. We had both of them in our sights, but the Pentagon lawyers forced the troops to hold fire and [...]
In light of the recently released “Iron Man” sequel, I recently re-watched the first “Iron Man” movie starring Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges and Gwyneth Paltrow. Although many...
In many ways George Ciampa is like any other documentary filmmaker. He’s passionate about his work and constantly searching for funds to complete his next film. But Ciampi also is racing against...
No one makes greater sacrifices for our country and the principles of liberty it embodies than the brave men and women of our military. In return, our liberal rulers heap scorn on them — starting from the very top.
Comrade Obama’s latest Supreme Court choice — the ultra-Left’s answer to Harriet Miers — has the advantage [...]
Through key intelligence sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan, I have just learned that reclusive Taliban leader and top Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Omar has been taken into custody.
According to...
On Monday's GMA, ABC's George Stephanopoulos dealt with the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination by interviewing former Obama official Greg Craig, but no one from the conservative/Republican side as a guest. The anchor did raise potential threats to Kagan's nomination, but failed to follow through when Craig omitted a key detail about the nominee's anti-military record as dean of Harvard Law School.
Stephanopoulos led off the interview, which began 8 minutes into the 7 am Eastern hour, with a softball question: "What's the single thing that impresses President Obama most about Kagan?" After the former White House counsel and former Clinton administration official played up Kagan's allegedly "extraordinary" amount of experience, the ABC anchor then asked, "What do you think is the single greatest threat to her nomination- to confirmation?"
Craig raised Kagan's vocal support for Harvard Law School's policy of banning military recruiters from its campus during her tenure as dean in his answer: "Well, you know, to be quite honest with you, I can't identify a single greatest threat. The Solomon Amendment dispute was a very serious dispute. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals found the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional. It wasn't until after that it was declared unconstitutional did recruiters not come to Harvard Law School." Stephanopoulos replied incorrectly that "that was her keeping the ROTC off Harvard [Law] campus because she opposed gays- the don't ask, don't tell policy." Craig then answered, "Yeah, it had nothing to do with the ROTC, so much it was recruiters that were violating the nondiscrimination policy at the university."
What Craig failed to mention is that the dispute when beyond the Third Circuit Court, all the way to the Supreme Court. The highest court of the land unanimously upheld the constitutionality of the Solomon Amendment in the 2006 Rumsfeld v. Forum for Academic and Institutional Rights decision.
Perhaps Stephanopoulos didn't know about this decision, but it's a definite oversight on his part. The former White House counsel later raised Kagan's time at Williams & Connolly, "one of the great law firms in America," but he didn't mention (nor did Stephanopoulos) that he was a longtime employee of the firm as well, and was there when the nominee worked there between 1989 and 1991.
ABC's Terry Moran also was interviewed, and White House correspondent Jake Tapper offered a brief on the Kagan nomination later in the program just after the top of the 8 am Eastern hour, but the morning program didn't bring any further guests to discuss the issue.
The full transcript of George Stephanopoulos's interview of Greg Craig on Monday's Good Morning America:
STEPANOPOULOS: Let's get more on this now from Greg Craig. He was President Obama's first White House counsel, part of the team for last year's nomination of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Good morning, Greg. Thanks for joining us today-
CRAIG: Good morning, George.
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you were there last year- the President interviewed Elena Kagan last time around. She was probably the runner-up. What's the single thing that impresses President Obama most about Kagan?
CRAIG: Well, I would say that it's her personal and professional qualifications. She's a solid, hard-working, intelligent- really smart lawyer who has had an extraordinary amount of experience in the law, even though she hasn't been a judge. He is a constitutional lawyer, and so is she. I think it's a terrific appointment from the personal point of view, from the professional point of view- and politically, I think she's also mainstream as they can get. So, there may be opposition, but I cannot believe it would be serious opposition, given her qualifications.
STEPHANOPOULOS: But- in the White House, you internalized the lesson that these nominations are won and lost in the first 48 hours-
CRAIG: That's right-
STEPHANOPOULOS: So give us an insight on how you expect this to unfold over the next 48 hours. And what do you think is the single greatest threat to her nomination- to confirmation?
CRAIG: Well, you know, to be quite honest with you, I can't identify a single greatest threat. The Solomon Amendment dispute was a very serious dispute. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals found the Solomon Amendment unconstitutional. It wasn't until after that it was declared unconstitutional did recruiters not come to Harvard Law School-
STEPHANOPOULOS: That was her keeping the ROTC off Harvard [Law] campus because she opposed gays- the don't ask, don't tell policy-
CRAIG: Right. Well, it was recruiters.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Right.
CRAIG: Yeah, it had nothing to do with the ROTC, so much it was recruiters that were violating the nondiscrimination policy at the university.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You say you can't imagine a threat, but you're already seeing some criticism of Elena Kagan. You have conservatives, David McIntosh saying she is one of the most inexperienced nominees to the U.S. Supreme Court in recent memory.
CRAIG: Well, I just disagree with that. I think that's just so wrong. If you look at her record, it is extraordinary record. She has- worked in the private sector. She worked with Williams & Connolly in Washington, DC, one of the great law firms in America. She then taught at two of the great law schools in America, [University of] Chicago and Harvard. She ran Harvard Law School brilliantly, everybody says. She brought a consensus together with a faculty that was deeply divided, and she served in the government. She served in all three branches of the government with distinction, most recently as the representative of the government of the United States, the people of the United States in front of the Supreme Court. So I think you don't have to have judicial experience to be a highly qualified candidate, and I think most people would agree with that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Another conservative activist e-mailed me just earlier this morning, saying that her closeness to President Obama could be an issue, that the White House is looking for someone to rubber stamp President Obama's big government agenda. Now, I don't expect you to agree with that, but how big a consideration is the notion that a lot of the President's laws, like the health care plan, are going to be coming before this court?
CRAIG: Well, there's no question about that, but- you know, no one would say that Elena Kagan is a rubber stamp for anybody. She is her own person. She's an independent force of nature. She works hard, and- you know, she'll be a good judge- no question about it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: One final question- she will probably have to recuse herself from a number of issues because she served as solicitor general, and there's likely to be a call to release a lot of her papers from her time in the White House. Do you think the White House should give on that?
CRAIG: Well, I think the White House is prepared to release all the papers that the [Senate] Judiciary Committee needs to make its decision, and she has a long record of service in the government, and I'm sure that they'll be available to the Judiciary Committee to review, and I can't imagine that there's any problem with it.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Okay, Greg Craig, thanks very much for your insight this morning.
Fresh and innovative, Patrol Base Jaker is a captivating retelling of the remarkable history of Afghanistan from the Russian invasion to the current U.S. counterinsurgency operation. Walk in the...
Please keep Matthew McCabe in your thoughts. Today begins his court martial trial. From Support Seals:
Matthew McCabe’s trial date is currently set to begin Monday, May 3, 2010 at Naval Station Norfolk in Norfolk, VA. Just this past week in separate trials at Camp Victory in Iraq, SO1 Julio Huertas and SO2 Jonathan Keefe were [...]
Veterans and citizens both have become alarmed at the Navy’s plans to name a new amphibious ship after disgraced Revolutionary War General Benedict Arnold. The Navy’s newest vessel, a 684-foot, San Antonio class landing-ship, will be named the USS Benedict Arnold said Navy officials.
Arnold was initially a hero of the Revolution before turning against his [...]
—–
Smoking Gun:
The video, which can be viewed above, was the brainchild of Aaron Melcher, a married 24-year-old soldier who graduated in 2004 from North Carolina’s Gramercy...
CNN and CNN.com highlighted opposition to Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law on Monday and Wednesday by focusing on sob stories from a soldier of Latino decent whose family entered the U.S. illegally when he was two, and from Latino businesses apparently "already feeling the effects" of the law.
Correspondent Thelma Gutierrez's interview of Private First Class Jose Medina first aired during the 6 am Eastern hour of Monday's American Morning program. Anchor Kiran Chetry noted that "Thousands of people staged a peaceful protest outside the state capitol in Phoenix....An immigrant soldier [Medina] about to ship out to the war zone was among yesterday's [April 25] protesters." Gutierrez continued that the soldier "sat down with us to talk about his feelings and fears over this new immigration law in Arizona that could affect his family."
During the interview, PFC Medina recounted that when he first entered the military, people who ask him where he was from: "I was proud to say I'm from the great state of Arizona, because I was raised here, I grew up here. I don't know if I can say that so proudly. I don't know if I want to live here any more." The CNN correspondent highlighted how the passage of Arizona's SB1070 was "personal" for the soldier, and asked him slanted questions about the legislation.
GUTIERREZ (on camera): Why do people feel indignant about being asked to produce an I.D. that they ought to have?
MEDINA: It's an insult, almost- because the color of your skin, because you're not white.
GUTIERREZ: Is this that you resent the fact that you could be stopped and asked for your papers while you're fighting for this country? Is that what angers you?
MEDINA: It's not so much anger, it's hurt that- you know, that could happen to me, it could happen to my family, my friends.
Gutierrez also highlighted Medina's pre-deployment going-away dinner, which she was invited to. At the end of her report, she stated that "Medina says that as a soldier, one of his biggest concerns is that under this law, somewhere in Arizona, a Gold Star mother who lost a child could be racially profiled and detained. He says that would be the ultimate insult."
On Wednesday, CNN.com's Emmanuella Grinberg zeroed in on the apparent immediate impact of Arizona's anti-illegal immigration law in an article titled "Latino businesses feel pinch of new immigration law." Grinberg quoted extensively from business owners who were reportedly suffering a downturn in activity during the days leading up to and following the signing of the bill. She only briefly mentioned how "supporters say the law will temper the negative effects of immigration, such as crime and the misuse of taxpayer dollars to fund health care and education needs of illegal immigrants."
Hector Manrique takes a look around his taqueria and sighs. It's 3:30 in the afternoon, and usually around this time at least five or six tables are occupied by day laborers fresh off work, or schoolchildren and families in search of a torta or taco after school.
But today, Taqueria Guadalajara's plastic lawn chairs and tables are empty, and so is the tip jar on the counter. Street traffic in this predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of Phoenix, Arizona, is also lighter than usual, says Manrique, who opened the casual Mexican eatery in 2003.
Not even a week has passed since Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law tough measures targeting illegal immigrants, but Manrique and others who own businesses that cater primarily to Phoenix's large Hispanic community say they are already feeling the effects....
Manrique says customers started to become scarce a few weeks ago, when news surfaced that the bill was likely to pass. Then came Friday, the day Brewer signed the legislation.
"The streets just went empty. Usually on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we're packed. But this weekend was empty like I'd never seen it before," Manrique said.
Across town, Jose Rivas' bodega offers customers a money wiring teller, a butcher counter and a wide variety of Mexican brands of cookies, beverages and household goods. He said his business also is taking a hit, and that the effects could be long-term.
"Ours is a culture that consumes a lot -- food, drinks, clothes, you name it," said Rivas, periodically stopping to greet or wave at a customer. "If no one's out shopping, how can I afford to employ my workers? They're all here legally. What happens to them?"
Ernesto Tercero, a first-generation Arizonan whose family is from Mexico, owns a meat distribution company that supplies dozens of stores in Phoenix. He says SB 1070 is a slap in the face to the Hispanic community.
"These people came here because they were told that there were jobs. They were brought here under promises of work, the American dream, and for many years we kept the dream alive," he said.
Tercero, a tall, outspoken man whose gregarious manner underscores his deep connection to the community, noted that Hispanics both legal and illegal are considering leaving Arizona to avoid confrontations with law enforcement....Growing up in Phoenix, Tercero recalls a time when Spanish was discouraged from being spoken in schools and Hispanics were limited in the jobs they could pursue and the places they could live.
With the release of the Department of Defense's report on the November Fort Hood massacre, two tends are becoming increasingly clear: the administration does not want to talk about Islam's violent elements, and the mainstream media is more than willing to play along.
The administration's position clear to anyone examining official documentation. The Fort Hood report, the FBI's counterterrorism lexicon, and the 2009 National Intelligence Strategy do not even use the words enemy, jihad, Muslim, or Islam. The original 9/11 Commission Report, in contrast, used those words a combined 632 times.
The media's attitude towards radical Islam's role in this particular attack is evident in its reluctance to attribute Maj. Nidal Hasan's motives to jihad. The members of the media who share this attitude obfuscate the threats facing the nation.
Shortly after the shooting at Fort Hood, the Culture and Media Institute released a report that highlighted three telling facts:
Networks Decide Attack Wasn’t Terror: 85 percent of the broadcast stories didn’t mention the word “terror.” ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news referenced terrorism connections to the Fort Hood attack just seven times in 48 reports.
ABC, CBS, NBC Follow White House Line: Before Obama's Nov. 10 speech, 93 percent of the stories had ignored any terror connection. But after Obama hinted at what ABC called “Islamic extremist views,” all three networks mentioned terrorism.
Alleged Attacker’s Muslim Faith Not Important Either: Slightly more than one-fourth (29 percent) of evening news reports mentioned that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim. Of those, half (7 out of 14) defended the religion or included experts to do so.
Chris Matthews was even said that Hasan's attempts to contact al-Qaeda were not necessarily cause for action. "That's not a crime to contact al-Qaeda, is it?" Matthews asked.
"The Christian religion has its full helping of nuts too," Bob Scheiffer made sure to note. That comment was indicative of the larger trend in the media's coverage of the incident. That "don't jump to conclusions" attitude stands in stark contrast to much of the media's condemnations of Christianity.
Boykin was reprimanded for voicing personal religious views regarding the war on terror at his church. The Washington Post reported that the General was issued "a 'complete exoneration' that ultimately found Boykin responsible for a few 'relatively minor offenses' related to technical and bureaucratic issues."
The liberal media disagreed. CBS carried a segment (found via Nexis) on Boykin entitled "Holy Warrior." NPR's Nina Totenberg hoped "he's not long for this world," quickly clarifying that she meant "in his job, in his job, please, please, in his job."
The Washington Post and New York Times -- among many other newspapers -- lamented that Boykin's comments would be construed as endorsing a holy war against Islam.
Meanwhile, swaths of the mainstream media danced around Islam's holy war (the direct translation of "jihad") against all of Western civilization. While the American left was opining about the inference of holy war, an actual holy war had already been declared!
The horrible plight that Muslims in the military were sure to suffer at the hands of their bigoted, light-skinned comrades in arms never materialized. Meanwhile, 14 Americans had just been killed by a man screaming "Allahu Akbar" as he pumped round after round into his unarmed victims.
If the liberal media -- and their ideological counterparts in the federal government -- continue their Orwellian campaign against the use of religiously-charged words in national security documents, we may forget that a real war is going on, and start worrying about a hypothetical one.
From Baghdad to Beijing, Warrior Champions tells the emotional and inspiring story of a group of severely wounded American Soldiers, as they fight to turn nightmares of war into Olympic dreams....
I don’t have much to say, and won’t until Episode Four.
This episode certainly speaks for itself, but there’s one thing I should note. If you found the first episode a little...
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.
Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."
In a press release, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins called the Army's decision "further evidence that the leadership of our nation's military has been impaired by the politically correct culture being advanced by this Administration. Under this Administration's watch we are seeing the First Amendment, designed to protect the religious exercise of Americans, retooled into a sword to sever America's ties with orthodox Christianity."
Graham's comments could certainly be considered inflammatory, but it should be noted that the Obama Administration hasn't always backed away from controversial religious leaders.
An April 17 front page Washington Post article by Krissah Williams on Rev. Al Sharpton detailed how he has been an "ally" to Barack Obama since the 2008 election:
Sharpton has been among the president's chief defenders against criticism from television host Tavis Smiley that "black folks are catching hell" and that the president should do more to specifically help blacks.
"We need to try to solve our problems and not expect the president to advocate for us," Sharpton said on his radio show. "It is interesting to me that some people don't understand that to try to make the president do certain things will only benefit the right wing, who wants to get the president and us."
Williams also noted several times in the article the link between Obama cabinet officials and Sharpton, with officials speaking at his National Action Network conference and regularly appearing on his radio program.
But Sharpton is not without his own controversies, to say the very least. Earlier this spring he told Fox News "The American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama."
Last fall Sharpton played a role in blocking Rush Limbaugh's ownership bid of the NFL's St. Louis Rams, going so far as to send a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The letter read in part, "Rush Limbaugh has been divisive and anti-NFL on several occasions, with comments about NFL players, including Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb, and his recent statement that the NFL was beginning to look like a fight between the Crips and the Bloods without the weapons was disturbing."
Furthermore, Sharpton, the race huckster, owes his current status to his involvement in a string of contemptible incidents in New York. In the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, he slandered an innocent man in the course of defending an infamous "race crime" hoax. He was sued and lost a judgment for $345,000, without ever retracting or apologizing for his accusation. His race demagoguery resulted in violence and deaths on more than one occasion.
Safe to say, Franklin Graham's remarks about Islam, however objectionable, didn't incite murder.
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation expressed its concern over Graham's involvement with the event in an April 19 letter sent to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. MRFF's complaint about Graham, the son of Rev. Billy Graham, focused on remarks he made after 9/11 in which he called Islam "wicked" and "evil" and his lack of apology for those words.
Col. Tom Collins, an Army spokesman, told ABC News on April 22, "This Army honors all faiths and tries to inculcate our soldiers and work force with an appreciation of all faiths and his past comments just were not appropriate for this venue."
In a press release, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins called the Army's decision "further evidence that the leadership of our nation's military has been impaired by the politically correct culture being advanced by this Administration. Under this Administration's watch we are seeing the First Amendment, designed to protect the religious exercise of Americans, retooled into a sword to sever America's ties with orthodox Christianity."
Graham's comments could certainly be considered inflammatory, but it should be noted that the Obama Administration hasn't always backed away from controversial religious leaders.
An April 17 front page Washington Post article by Krissah Williams on Rev. Al Sharpton detailed how he has been an "ally" to Barack Obama since the 2008 election:
Sharpton has been among the president's chief defenders against criticism from television host Tavis Smiley that "black folks are catching hell" and that the president should do more to specifically help blacks.
"We need to try to solve our problems and not expect the president to advocate for us," Sharpton said on his radio show. "It is interesting to me that some people don't understand that to try to make the president do certain things will only benefit the right wing, who wants to get the president and us."
Williams also noted several times in the article the link between Obama cabinet officials and Sharpton, with officials speaking at his National Action Network conference and regularly appearing on his radio program.
But Sharpton is not without his own controversies, to say the very least. Earlier this spring he told Fox News "The American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama."
Last fall Sharpton played a role in blocking Rush Limbaugh's ownership bid of the NFL's St. Louis Rams, going so far as to send a letter to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The letter read in part, "Rush Limbaugh has been divisive and anti-NFL on several occasions, with comments about NFL players, including Michael Vick and Donovan McNabb, and his recent statement that the NFL was beginning to look like a fight between the Crips and the Bloods without the weapons was disturbing."
Furthermore, Sharpton, the race huckster, owes his current status to his involvement in a string of contemptible incidents in New York. In the 1987 Tawana Brawley case, he slandered an innocent man in the course of defending an infamous "race crime" hoax. He was sued and lost a judgment for $345,000, without ever retracting or apologizing for his accusation. His race demagoguery resulted in violence and deaths on more than one occasion.
Safe to say, Franklin Graham's remarks about Islam, however objectionable, didn't incite murder.
The Navy plans to allow women into the Submarine Force and ban smoking by submariners. How have those changes been greeted by the rank-and-file? File this under: Which way is it? Two headlines from Thursday, April 22:
So President Obama faced a few hecklers yesterday, who went after him about the “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” policy.
Take a gander, gander takers:
Watch the latest news video at...
While mainstream media reporters are generally pretty supportive of the Obama administration, they bristle, and rightly so, at incidents where the administration is less than transparent or actively seeks to impede journalists from working.
Police chased reporters away from the White House and closed Lafayette Park today in response to a gay rights protest in which several service members in full uniform handcuffed themselves to the White House gate to protest "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
People who have covered the White House for years tell me that's an extremely unusual thing to do in an area that regularly features protests.
A reporter can be seen in the YouTube video above calling the move "outrageous" and "ridiculous."
Don’t let the scum floating on the top convince you that America has gone rotten. Here’s what the scum is floating on:
He has no legs and no eyesight, but Marine Cpl. Matthew Bradford has four more years of military service ahead of him after becoming the first blind double-amputee to re-enlist.
The rifleman was injured in [...]
[I gave an abbreviated version of this speech at a Tea-Party in Lake Forrest, California yesterday.]
It’s so nice to be back in Orange County where I grew up. And it’s great to be surrounded by all...
Yesterday at his nuclear conference, Obama said the following (via Gateway Pundit):
“Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”
Whether we like it or not. That’s like what Mommies say when telling you to eat your yucky vegetables. Would he prefer that we be vulnerable and weak? Heck [...]
Marc Thiessen is perhaps the nation's most prominent advocate of enhanced interrogation. He routinely debunks the left's myths regarding detention and interrogation policy, and has done battle with some of the loudest Bush-bashers of the legacy media along the way.
Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter and author of Courting Disaster, argues that the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques stopped terrorist attacks; saved American lives; and provided our military, intelligence services, and law enforcement officials with vital and actionable intelligence on the enemy.
That is heresy in liberal circles, Old Media chief among them. New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer penned a scathing review of Courting Disaster, in which she accused Thiessen of trying to "rewrite the history of the CIA’s interrogation program." Thiessen responded in National Review, and demonstrated just how desperate the liberal media is to paint Bush-era policies in a negative light.
His thorough rebuttal is quite long, and I encourage you to read the whole thing just to get a better grasp of how some on the left twist facts, take quotes out of context, and throw up straw men in an effort to retroactively and erroneously remove the justifications for an effective, if controversial, policy.
Portions of Mayer's misinformation, Thiessen states, "really makes one wonder how much she read of the book she presumes to critique." Though I won't venture a guess, Mayer's total disconnect not only from the facts surrounding the CIA's interrogation program, but even the facts contained within Thiessen's defense of that program is truly astounding.
A thorough defense of CIA enhanced interrogations was impossible while those interrogations were taking place, as Thiessen notes both in his book and his most recent National Review piece.
The CIA interrogators and Justice Department officials who crafted the interrogation policies employed during the last administration were duty-bound to refrain from responding to the salacious accusations against them, as so much of their work was highly classified.
Their inability to defend themselves allowed liberals from Congress to the media to academia to spread misinformation regarding the interrogation program. Mayer was one of the foremost offenders in that regard. But her work, Thiessen notes,
is largely dependent on sources who were opposed to the president’s policy or were on the periphery of the CIA interrogation program. By depending on such sources, she got this story wrong. And if her account of the writing of a presidential speech was so defective, how can we trust her accounts of what supposedly happened in CIA black sites thousands of miles away?
Indeed, this is the reason why Mayer and others on the left are attacking my book: I have brought facts to the table, information that undermines the torture narrative they have made careers of spinning. For years, critics like Mayer could level any unfounded accusation they wanted against the CIA, confident that those who could challenge them were powerless to respond — because the answers were classified. But then Barack Obama declassified reams of documents revealing the secrets of the CIA program. He did enormous damage to our national security, but he also liberated those of us familiar with the intelligence on CIA interrogations to speak out. As a result, Mayer is no longer free to make baseless accusations without challenge or consequence.
Editor's Note: Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell released the following statement earlier today -- available here on his official Facebook page. The NewsBusters publisher praised Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank for denouncing the "clinic" that President Obama put on "for some of the world's greatest dictators in how to circumvent a free press" in his April 14 column, "Obama's disregard for media reaches new heights at nuclear summit":
It's a rare occurrence that the MRC and the typically left-leaning Dana Milbank agree, but this time he is spot on. Indeed, President Obama must have made world leaders feel as if they were transported back to a ‘Soviet-era Moscow' for the media restricted nuclear energy summit instead of arriving in the capitol of the free world."
But are we really surprised? After all, this is the same President who has won lavish praise from some of the world's most brutal dictators including Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro."
And this certainly isn't the first time Obama has flat out blocked a supposed ‘free press' from covering issues of great national and international importance. C-SPAN and Fox News would be among the first to acknowledge that. The press pool may also have something to say about that considering he blew them off last weekend to go watch his daughter's soccer game."
My question to the rest of the media is this:
Will you ever blow the whistle on this Administration's dishonest promise? Just like the health care bill and everything else done in secrecy and behind closed doors, their vow of ‘transparency' for an ‘open government' is a calculated lie."
Thank you, Dana Milbank, for your keen observations.
I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the...
In the winter of 1950, 15,000 U.S. troops were surrounded and trapped by 120,000 Chinese soldiers in the frozen mountains of North Korea. Refusing surrender, the men fought 78 miles to freedom while...
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Tagline: Right and wrong no longer exist.
IMDB: “A psychological thriller centered around a black-ops interrogator and an FBI agent who press a suspect terrorist into divulging...
The script of the upcoming remake of the infamous America-conquered-by-Commies movie Red Dawn (1984) raises an intriguing question – can Hollywood actually still produce a movie where it takes...
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On Wednesday's Today show, NBC's Chuck Todd touted President Obama's "swiftness" in dealing with the controversy surrounding General Stanley McChrystal comments in Rolling Stone magazine as a "commander-in-chief moment," and hinted that it was a blessing in disguise, given the executive's tanking approval ratings.
No general should criticize his or her commander, and Gen. Stanley McChrystal is no exception. But the mainstream media is primarily concerned with the political fallout of McChrystal's apparent insubordination as revealed by 
“Who was Bob Hope?” To anyone over 35 that seems like such a strange question. Bob Hope, everyone knows, was one of the greatest American entertainers of the 20th century, and whose greatest public service was his decades-long commitment to U.S. troops all over the world for many decades, which earned him the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, among other honors. 
Catching up from Friday night, on the last Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO until September, Maher insisted “I’m not trying to be a conspiracy theorist,” but then proceeded to assert the Defense Department “uses more oil than anywhere else to kill people in the Middle East to get fuel to fight wars,” so “I do think there’s something -- just the way the pharmaceutical companies sometimes come up with a pill before they come up with the disease -- I think maybe we need a war all the time so we can wear out equipment and buy oil.”
The subject of the Gaza-bound "Freedom Flotilla" organized by pro-Palestinian activists that attacked Israel Defense Forces as they boarded a cargo boat, was the subject of Charlie Rose's talk show Tuesday night.
On Thursday evening, ABC’s World News and the NBC Nightly News both marked the passing of retired Navy Lieutenant John Finn, who was the oldest living recipient of the Medal of Honor, which he earned defending America during the attack on Pearl Harbor. While ABC’s George Stephanopoulos read a short item on Lieutenant Finn, NBC’s Brian Williams devoted an full report to his heroism.
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: And you might not know his name, but an American hero died today. Retired Navy Lieutenant John Finn was the oldest living Medal of Honor recipient from World War II, and the first from that war to receive it. On December 7, 1941, as kamikazes zeroed in on Pearl Harbor, Finn manned a machine gun, firing on Japanese planes even after he was gravely wounded. Lieutenant Finn was 100.
FINN, READING LETTER: "For extraordinary heroism, distinguished service and devotion above and beyond the call of duty."
Tavis Smiley has apparently been asleep for the last ten years. That, at least, is the only logical explanation for his claim that Christains engage in terrorism far more often than Muslims. He also thinks the Tea Party is a comparably dangerous force to radical Islam.
The United States is fighting two wars - in Iraq and Afghanistan - so it's natural that the nation's leaders have a solid understanding of what war is about. But President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court has no wartime experience and if she is confirmed, that would mean no member of the highest court would have served in the military in or near combat. 
Editor's Note: This post originally appeared at Andrew Breitbart's Big Hollywood.
While viewers might have expected to see the latest on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Tuesday's electoral primaries, CNN's Campbell Brown devoted the first two segments on her program on Monday to highlighting the apparent religious bigotry inside the U.S. Army - specifically, the upcoming lawsuit of a Muslim who alleges he was harassed and ridiculed due to his religion.
BROWN: So, Michael, it's not exactly in the Army's interest here to have soldiers being harassed. So, I mean, what possible motivation, I guess, do they have to not act to protect their soldiers?
On Monday's GMA, ABC's George Stephanopoulos dealt with the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination by interviewing former Obama official Greg Craig, but no one from the conservative/Republican side as a guest. The anchor did raise potential threats to Kagan's nomination, but failed to follow through when Craig omitted a key detail about the nominee's anti-military record as dean of Harvard Law School.
CNN and CNN.com highlighted opposition to Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law on Monday and Wednesday by focusing on sob stories from a soldier of Latino decent whose family entered the U.S. illegally when he was two, and from Latino businesses apparently "already feeling the effects" of the law. 
With the release of the Department of Defense's report on the November Fort Hood massacre, two tends are becoming increasingly clear: the administration does not want to talk about Islam's violent elements, and the mainstream media is more than willing to play along.
The Pentagon rescinded the invitation of evangelist Franklin Graham to speak at its May 6 National Day of Prayer event because of complaints about his previous comments about Islam.
