Cheney Shooting Coverup?

OpinionJournal: The press corps is outraged that the White House waited 20 hours or so to disclose that Vice President Dick Cheney had shot a hunting companion, and we can see why. Don't these Bush people understand that the coverup is worse than the crime?

In the name of media solidarity, and in the interest of restraining the Imperial Presidency, we have put together the following coverup timeline with crucial questions that deserve to be answered:

• 5:30 p.m., Saturday (all times Central Standard Time). Mr. Cheney sprays Harry Whittington with birdshot, and the Secret Service immediately informs local police. Who is Harry Whittington and whom does he lobby for? Does he know Scooter Libby?

• 6:30 p.m. White House Chief of Staff Andy Card informs President Bush that there's been a hunting accident involving the Vice President's party. Did Mr. Bush ask follow-up questions? Was he intellectually curious?

• 7 p.m. Karl Rove tells Mr. Bush that it is Mr. Cheney who did the shooting. Why was this detail withheld for a full 30 minutes from the President? Who else did Mr. Rove talk to about this in the interim? Was Valerie Plame ever mentioned?

• 5 a.m., Sunday. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan learns that Mr. Cheney is the shooter. He also fails to alert the media. Did he rush to write talking points or fall back to sleep?

• 11 a.m. Katharine Armstrong, owner of the ranch where the shooting took place, blows the story sky-high by giving the news to the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. According to Ms. Armstrong, Mr. Cheney told her to do what she thought made sense. Has Ms. Armstrong ever worked for Halliburton?

• 1:30 p.m. The Texas paper posts the story on its Web site, after calling the Veep's office for confirmation. Everyone involved confirms more or less everything, or so the official line goes. Their agreement is very suspicious.

• 11:27 a.m., Monday. Mr. McClellan finally holds a press conference and gets grilled. One reporter actually asks (and we're not making this one up), "Would this be much more serious if the man had died?"

For the record, Mr. McClellan replied, "Of course it would." We hope the 78-year-old Mr. Whittington recovers promptly after his heart attack yesterday. As for the Beltway press corps, it has once again earned the esteem in which it is held by the American public.

Shooting at Stupidity

The Shooting Party by Tony Blankley: In the absence of any pressing news these days -- other than Iran's nuclear weapons development crisis, the election of Hamas terrorists in Palestine, ongoing worldwide Muslim riots and killing in reaction to a cartoon, Al Gore's near sedition while speaking in Saudi Arabia, the turning over of our East Coast ports to be managed by a United Arab Emirates firm, the criminal leaking of vital NSA secrets to the New York Times, Mexican military incursions across our southern border, the Iraqi crisis, Congress's refusal to deal with the developing financial collapse of Social Security and Medicare, inter alia -- the White House press corp has exploded in righteous fury over the question of the vice president's little shooting party last weekend.

As I understand the profound concern of the ever-alert White House reporters, they smell a constitutional crisis because the shooting party failed to alert the media of the accidental shooting down in Corpus Christi, Texas. Well, actually, they did alert the Corpus Christi media -- but that didn't count. Unless the exalted ones have been formally informed by an official government press secretary, no public communication has technically occurred.

I checked the bylaws of the White House press corp, and they are right. It seems that the bylaws refer to Article XXIII of the U.S. Constitution, which expressly designates that White House reporters with a minimum annual income of $375,000 (plus minimum stock options equal to not less than two-thirds their yearly salary, plus use of driver and long sedan during business hours, of which hours must include post-deadline dinner engagements of a semi-social nature) are the exclusive recipients of all government information.

If information isn't hand-delivered in gilt-edged paper to them while they are reclined on their chaise lounges, it hasn't been released to the public. And if they don't report a fact, it hasn't happened. This provision is vital to a vigorous and independent free press. [I should note, my copy of the Constitution must be outdated, because it doesn't have an Article XXIII.]
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I suppose most of us, as we rise in life, develop a sense of entitlement and pompous dignity. Doubtless we all think we are more important than we are. As Charles De Gaulle once sardonically observed, "The graveyards are full of indispensable men."

But the Washington press corp, and particularly the White House press corp, has developed, as an institution, a grossly dilated view of itself. Most of us can tolerate arrogance if it is accompanied by extraordinary capacity and virtuosity. The brilliant scientist, the war-winning general, the great artists are entitled to their pride.

But the hallmark of the Washington Press corp these days is mediocrity, groupthink, a lack of curiosity and rampant careerism. These attributes were all on show in the shooting party incident. But this is just a trivial incident -- except for the poor, shot gentleman who suffered a heart attack, may he recover fully and quickly.

We live at a moment of revolutionary change in the international order. The rise and violence of radical, possibly caliphate-forming Islam and the huge, culture-changing, unexamined consequences of rampant globalization make the present one of the least predictable moments to be alive.

Both government officials and citizens are in desperate need of a national press corp that is alive to the change and digging to find factual hints of the near future. We need the kind of future-oriented intellectual vigor, curiosity and genuine iconoclasm that typified American reporters in the first half of the last century.

Instead, as the shooting party incident exemplified, we have in the White House at the most elite level of American journalism, self-absorbed, self-important men and women who stand on their prerogatives even over marginal and inconsequential matters.

Should they ever have a truly daring, creative, productive, hard-researched idea about what is going on in this dangerous world, they should alert the media.

Curse of the Moderates

Curse of the Moderates by Charles Krauthammer: ....What passes for moderation in the Islamic community -- ``I share your rage but don't torch that embassy'' -- is nothing of the sort. It is simply a cynical way to endorse the goals of the mob without endorsing its means. It is fraudulent because, while pretending to uphold the principle of religious sensitivity, it is only interested in this instance of religious insensitivity.

Have any of these ``moderates'' ever protested the grotesque caricatures of Christians and, most especially, Jews that are broadcast throughout the Middle East on a daily basis? The sermons on Palestinian TV that refer to Jews as the sons of pigs and monkeys? The Syrian prime-time TV series that shows rabbis slaughtering a gentile boy in order to ritually consume his blood? The 41-part (!) series on Egyptian TV based on that anti-Semitic czarist forgery (and inspiration of the Nazis), ``The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,'' showing the Jews to be engaged in a century-old conspiracy to control the world?

A true Muslim moderate is one who protests desecrations of all faiths. Those who don't are not moderates but hypocrites, opportunists and agents for the rioters, using merely different means to advance the same goal: to impose upon the West, with its traditions of freedom of speech, a set of taboos that is exclusive to the Islamic faith. These are not defenders of religion, but Muslim supremacists trying to force their dictates upon the liberal West.

And these ``moderates'' are aided and abetted by Western ``moderates" who publish pictures of the Virgin Mary covered with elephant dung, and celebrate the ``Piss Christ'' (a crucifix sitting in a jar of urine) as art deserving public subsidy, but are seized with a sudden religious sensitivity when the subject is Muhammad.
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The mob is trying to dictate to Western newspapers, indeed Western governments, what is a legitimate subject for discussion and caricature. The cartoons do not begin to approach the artistic level of Salman Rushdie's prose, but that's not the point. The point is who decides what can be said and what can be drawn within the precincts of what we quaintly think of as the free world.

The mob has turned this into a test case for freedom of speech in the West. The German, French and Italian newspapers that republished these cartoons did so not to inform but to defy -- to declare that they will not be intimidated by the mob.

What is at issue is fear. The unspoken reason many newspapers do not want to republish is not sensitivity but simple fear. They know what happened to Theo van Gogh, who made a film about the Islamic treatment of women and got a knife through the chest with an Islamist manifesto attached.

The worldwide riots and burnings are instruments of intimidation, reminders of van Gogh's fate. The Islamic ``moderates'' are the mob's agents and interpreters, warning us not to do this again. And the Western ``moderates'' are their terrified collaborators who say: Don't worry, we won't. It's those Danes. We're clean. Spare us. Please.

More at Fark.Com

The True Face of Radical Islam

The cartoon war and the latest "we're just as bad" moral relativists encouraged me to recycle this post from last June.

The great thing bout the blogworld is how various sources of information that would never be available from "mainstream media" (which translates to liberal/socialist/Democrat) are passed around from one blogger to the next. Flopping Aces had a report on wife murder and women forced to swallow bleach because their men-folk felt dishonored.

Next, I checked in with Razor Sharp Claws, where I fret about the imposition of socialism she suffers under after the ballot box fraud in Washington States gubernatorial election. A curious photo of a monkey with a gun led me to follow the link to Little Green Footballs, who posts a video of a Saudi cleric discussing how monkeys stoning adulterous female partners is an apt lesson for Moslems today. I thought I was watching an old Saturday Night Live skit at first. The realization that Wahhabist Moslems would equate their behavior with a subhuman species is a startling admission.

From Little Green Footballs, I proceeded to the source for the video: The Middle East Media Research Institute TV Monitor Project. MEMRI has quite a sampling of video, much of it broadcast on official state television in Middle East nations. Here are a few examples of what Moslems in the Middle East watch on television:

The links below take you to the transcript. But to get the full understanding of the problem, you have to see the video which includes the translation. Visit the site link above to do so.

#727 - Bahraini Cleric Abdullah Latif Aal Mahmoud on the Rules of Wife Beatings in Islam has the rules for wife beating, including the admonition to "not do it in front of the children."

#726 - "Hitler - A Madman or a Genius?" Egyptian Journalist Muhammad Said Claims that Talk of Weak Points in Nazi Leader's Personality Is Exaggerated

#671 - Egyptian Rapist on Death Row: She Wore a Short Dress

#708 - Egyptian Historian Zaynab Abd Al-'Aziz: Vatican Delegated the US to Carry Out 9/11

#679 - Iraqi Cleric Ahmad Al-Qubeisi: Wife Beating In Islam is an Alternative to Calling the Police - But not in the Face!

#710 - Jordanian Professor Ghazi Rabab'a: Muslims Will Return to Cordoba and Granada

#662 - Lebanese Cleric Muhammad Al-Jozo: Muslims Had Nothing to Do with 9/11

#650 - Captured Iraqi Terrorist 'Adnan Elias: We Beheaded a Policeman, Filled His Corpse with TNT, and Used It to Blow Up Others

#571 - Syrian Intelligence Officer and Top Iraqi Terrorist Reveal Beheading Training in Syria (Short Version)

#647 - Sheik Ibrahim Mudeiris in a PA Friday Sermon: Muslim Prisoners Are Forced to Convert to Christianity in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine

Well at least we're not converting the detainees at Gitmo to Christianity!

I wonder what liberal feminists have to say about the rules for wife beating? Oh I can probably guess... They'll just start spouting some moral equivalency garbage about Bush and right wing Christians being "just as bad." Makes me wish I could give them all a one way ticket to Saudi Arabia.

What Will Europe Really Do?

Another absolutely brilliant analysis by Victor Davis Hanson. Here's a sample:

What Will Europe Really Do? by Victor Davis Hanson: "Nothing is quite as surreal as the Islamic world's fury at the liberal and innocuous Danes. How could anyone wish to burn their embassies and kill their citizens, when they have always offered all the politically correct, multicultural platitudes and welcomed in any and all from the Middle East?

Now the furor over the cartoons, coming on the heels of the bombings in Madrid and London, the French rioting, the murders in Holland, and the failed European negotiations with the Iranian theocracy have shaken Europe to its foundations.

If the most liberal and tolerant states in Europe such as Holland and Denmark have the most problems with Islamic radicals, then what does that say about the continent as a whole? Why were not the calculating jihadists singling out a more unapologetic Catholic Poland that has larger contingents in Iraq and is far prouder of its Christian roots?

Do the Europeans sense that the more open, free-wheeling and non-judgmental the culture, the more it is hated by the jihadists? If Europe as a whole is more pro-Palestinian than the United States, disapproved of Iraq, and yet is still hated as much, is magnanimity at last exposed as appeasement, earning only contempt from an emboldened enemy?
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Finally, the Europeans who despised the unilateral and preemptory George Bush will start to grate at his new multilateral side even more. Be careful what you wish for, especially when an American leader may now not necessarily be such an easy target of caricature—or may not always do the dirty work of fighting jihadists from Pakistan to the Sunni Triangle.

Instead, by letting the Europeans take the lead with the Iranian negotiations, and keeping nearly silent about the cartoon hysteria, the United States essentially has told the Europeans, “Here is the sort of restrained sober and judicious global diplomacy that you so welcome.”

Because of slated troop withdrawals from European bases, and a new American weariness with the old anti-Americanism, some Europeans are beginning to recoil at the idea that they might well be on their own—and in a war against fanatical enemies that they have appeased and without rational friends that they have estranged.

In response, we may see less of the anti-American rhetoric and a return to the Cold War slogans of a “strong Atlantic Alliance” and “an essential Nato,” as nuclear jihadists replace the fear of 300 Soviet divisions.

So now Europe is being thrust right into the middle of the so-called war against Islamic fascism. Once threatened, it will either react with a newly acquired Churchillian maturity to protect its civilization, or cave, in hopes that even more Chamberlain-type appeasement will satisfy the Islamists.

It should be a fascinating spring ahead.

You will want to read the whole thing here.

Katrina "Victims" Doing the Town Right

Democrats keep demanding we talk more about the Katrina disaster. You would think that the continued exposure of the total failure of Democrat socialism and corruption in New Orleans would not be in their best interest. But I don't mind helping them anyway.

Katrina "Victims" Fraud Scandal:

From Inter Press: The report presented by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests that the 2.3-billion-dollar programme to provide emergency relief money for evacuees was a victim of extensive fraud.

The GAO's examination of the Expedited Assistance programme determined that FEMA failed to take even the most basic steps to confirm the identifies of about 1.4 million people who sought urgent cash assistance, leaving the system vulnerable to the "significant fraud and abuse."

The report says FEMA itself found that 900,000 of the 2.5 million applications for all forms of individual assistance were "potential duplicates."
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Testimony charged that much of the money disbursed by FEMA was inappropriately used -- for such things as bail bonds, payment of prior traffic violations, driver's license reinstatement, tattoos, massage parlors, alcoholic beverages, condoms, and adult erotica products.

Democrats Force Hackett to "Cut and Run" from Ohio Senate Race

I almost feel sorry for Paul Hackett. You remember Hackett. He's the Marine Iraq war vet who lost a close race against Jean Schmidt in that special congressional election in Ohio last year. Schmidt later made her claim to fame by telling Congressman Murtha on the floor of the House of Representatives that Marine's "don't cut and run."

Well, she might have been wrong to say that... for more than one reason.

Iraq vet Hackett drops out of Democratic Senate race, blames party: Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, who gained popularity among bloggers as an alternative candidate and for his staunch criticism of Bush, has dropped out of the Democratic race for U.S. Senate in Ohio.

Hackett told The New York Times for Tuesday's editions that the same party leaders who urged him to run for Senate after his sensational political debut in a House race last year had turned on him.

'This is an extremely disappointing decision that I feel has been forced on me,' Hackett said, noting that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and New York Sen. Charles Schumer recently had asked him to withdraw.

Hackett captured Democrats' attention last summer by blasting President Bush's war policies, raising huge sums on the Internet and capturing 48 percent of the vote in one of the country's most conservative House districts. He declared his candidacy for Republican Mike DeWine's Senate seat after Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown had declined to run.

Brown changed his mind shortly after that, however, and national Democrats privately began urging Hackett to step aside. On Sunday, some national Democrats made those requests publicly.

'For me, this is a second betrayal,' Hackett said. 'First, my government misused and mismanaged the military in Iraq, and now my own party is afraid to support candidates like me.'

Gee Paul: I almost feel sorry for you. But you go and do the Bush bash in the middle of your whine and I'm looking for the cheese.

Democrats have been bragging about recruiting veterans as candidates in a bid to deflect the "weak on defense" label; the truth of which continues to haunt their electoral chances during a time of war.

Hackett is a media darling and loved by the lefty blogworms. Left with a choice between this young, attractive candidate with veteran credentials and a party hack like Congressman Brown, Democrats sided with Brown.

With friends like Reid and Schumer: who needs enemies?

Cheney Misfires...Press Seeks Smoking Gun?

Reuters.com: "WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush knew hours after Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow quail hunter but the White House came under fire on Monday for not making the information public until the next day.

The victim, Harry Whittington, 78, took pellets in his cheek, neck and chest when Cheney fired his shotgun while aiming for a bird during a hunt in southern Texas on Saturday, and was in stable condition at a Corpus Christi hospital.

Whittington was in intensive care as a precautionary measure because he was 'peppered by shotgun spray,' said Peter Banko, administrator of Christus Spohn Hospital. His condition is 'not critical, not serious. It's just stable at this time.'
The accident happened around 5:30 p.m. on a private ranch about 200 miles south of San Antonio, where the vice president has hunted previously. Whittington was treated on the scene by Cheney's traveling medical detail before being taken by helicopter to the hospital.

The accident was not reported publicly by the vice president's office until Sunday afternoon and then only after an account provided by the ranch's owner appeared on the Web site of the Corpus Christi Caller-Times -- the local newspaper.

SO WHAT! We're in a war, with life and death issues that desperately cry out for understanding by the American people and the press boo-hoos about a hunting accident?

Come on! What's next? BREAKING NEWS: Laura Bush breaks a nail?

Al Gore's Treasonous Dhimmitude

Note: I'm bumping this up a bit higher in the rotation. After reading the post below, this one fits right in with the plan.

What is it with these people? Gore, like Clinton, goes to the Middle East and trashes his countries foreign policy. Do Democrats only remember the adage "Politics stops at the water's edge" when THEY are in power?

We already saw a classless Democrat display at the recent King funeral. But THIS type of stunt isn't just an insult. It undermines our national unity and encourages our enemies.

How long will it be before Al Zawahiri mentions this in his next tape?

Gore Laments U.S. 'Abuses' Against Arabs: Former Vice President Al Gore told a mainly Saudi audience on Sunday that the U.S. government committed 'terrible abuses' against Arabs after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and that most Americans did not support such treatment.
Gore said Arabs had been 'indiscriminately rounded up' and held in 'unforgivable' conditions. The former vice president said the Bush administration was playing into al-Qaida's hands by routinely blocking Saudi visa applications.

'The thoughtless way in which visas are now handled, that is a mistake,' Gore said during the Jiddah Economic Forum. 'The worst thing we can possibly do is to cut off the channels of friendship and mutual understanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States.'
Gore told the largely Saudi audience, many of them educated at U.S. universities, that Arabs in the United States had been 'indiscriminately rounded up, often on minor charges of overstaying a visa or not having a green card in proper order, and held in conditions that were just unforgivable.'

"Unfortunately there have been terrible abuses and it's wrong," Gore said. "I do want you to know that it does not represent the desires or wishes or feelings of the majority of the citizens of my country."

Hey Al: Did you take your bible with you to Saudi Arabia? Did you have a chance to attend church there on Sunday? No? And you want to talk about how nasty your country is? Do us all a favor and stay over there.

The Decline and Fall of Europe's Economy

Ah, the wonders of socialism! We talk recently about the hope that Europeans will wake up to the reality of the Muslim immigration invasion of their countries in time. But even if they do, will they have the means necessary to deal with the problem?

Maybe not:

Zakaria: The Decline and Fall of Europe - Newsweek: International Editions - MSNBC.com: "The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, headquartered in Paris, released a report, Going for Growth, that details economic prospects in the industrial world. It is 160 pages long and written in bland, cautious, scholarly prose. But the conclusion is clear -- Europe is in deep trouble. These days we all talk about the rise of Asia and the challenge to America, but it might well turn out that the most consequential trend of the next decade will be the economic decline of Europe.

It's often noted that the European Union has a combined gross domestic product that is approximately the same as that of the United States. But the EU has 170 million more people. Its per capita GDP is 25 percent lower than that of the U.S. and, most important, that gap has been widening for 15 years. If present trends continue, the chief economist at the OECD argues, in 20 years the average U.S. citizen will be twice as rich as the average Frenchman or German. (Britain is an exception on most of these measures, lying somewhere between Continental Europe and the U.S.)

People have argued that Europeans simply value leisure more and, as a result, are poorer but have a better quality of life. That's fine if you're taking a 10 percent pay cut and choosing to have longer lunches and vacations. But if you're only half as well off as the U.S., that will translate into poorer health care and education, diminished access to all kinds of goods and services, and a lower quality of life. Two Swedish researchers, Frederik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag, note in a monograph published last year that "40 percent of Swedish households would rank as low-income households in the U.S." In many European countries, the percentage would be even greater.

In March 2000, the EU's heads of state agreed to make the EU "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy by 2010." Today this looks like a joke. The OECD report goes through the status of reforms country by country, and all the major continental economies get a B-minus. Whenever some politician makes tiny, halting efforts at reform, strikes and protests paralyze the country. In recent months, reformers like Nicolas Sarkozy in France, Jose Manuel Barroso in Brussels and Angela Merkel in Germany have been backtracking on their proposals and instead mouthing pious rhetoric about the need to "manage" globalization. EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson's efforts to liberalize trade have been consistently undercut. As a result of the EU's unwillingness to reduce its massive farm subsidies, the Doha trade-expansion round is dead.

A few years ago in London, I was watching a political discussion on morning television. An older man in the audience kept pointing out that the great loving arms of socialism had promised him care "from cradle to grave." Socialism may not be able to live up to that promise. But with the threat of a Muslim jihad in Europe, the grave may be coming sooner than expected.