Happy New Year!

Joe Gandelman at the Moderate Voice has one plea for this new year: can we perhaps lower the tone a bit this year?

The piece goes on in this vein. It's a nice idea, that people could tone down the rhetoric and try to find consensus on a few issues. I think eventually that will happen as people become tired of the shrill, vulgarity-strewn nastiness, particularly from lefty sites. They'll just stop visiting them and then they will either be gone or insignificant.

But what interested me more was this section of Gandelman's piece:

Can this incredible opportunity, seldom witnessed in the history of mankind, where people sitting at home can write, publish, edit and distribute their ideas at little cost and in milliseconds, start to realize its potential — by weblogs running more original reporting? Can weblogs truly become home-base for citizen journalists versus what most of them (including this one) are now: home bases to citizen op-ed writers or citizen political activists?

I think what might happen if this became the standard for blogs would be more, smaller, community-based blogs than what you have now. The strange part about what is out on the web now is that you have literally millions of people trying to discuss national issues because that is the way they build readership. This is sort of the opposite of the way newspapers worked, where they started local and then would expand their readership as they gained subscribers in far-flung places.

I'm sure there will be people who start doing more real reporting about things happening in their neighborhood, at the city council meetings, school boards, community events. But right now, it's much easier to find stories on the web and comment on them (such as this one, for instance). And there's a certain fascination with pointing out weird takes on other journalists' work, such as Amanda's take yesterday on the Jesse Green piece in the New York Times on Patricia Heaton. I, for one, love reading some of the perverse takes someone can have on a simple feature profile of an actress starting a new endeavor. It helps explain to me why anyone would vote Democrat. :)

Media Bias in War Coverage

Media Research Center has this special report detailing media bias in coverage of the Iraq war.

The results show clear editorial differences between the three cable networks. CNN and MSNBC resemble the big broadcast networks, emphasizing a bad news agenda of U.S. misdeeds and mistakes, while FNC was better able to balance the bad news with news of U.S. achievements in Iraq. Key findings:

FNC was the most balanced network. All three cable news networks ran more stories reflecting bad news about the situation in Iraq than stories about coalition achievements. But FNC was the most balanced, with 20 percent of stories emphasizing optimism, compared with 30 percent that stressed pessimism.

CNN was the most pessimistic network. Fully three-fifths (60%) of all CNN stories on the war emphasized setbacks, misdeeds or pessimism about progress in Iraq, compared to just 10 percent that reported on achievements or victories. MSNBC’s tilt was closer to CNN, with four times more bad news stories (48%) than reports stressing good news (12%).

CNN and MSNBC sensationalized charges of U.S. wrongdoing. While FNC provided significant coverage to unproven claims of U.S. military misconduct in Iraq (12 stories), the other networks took a much more sensational approach to the story. MSNBC aired three times as much coverage of alleged misconduct as FNC (36 stories), while CNN aired a whopping 59 stories — nearly five times the coverage of FNC.

Fox News Channel aired more stories about coalition success in Iraq. FNC aired a total of 81 stories announcing coalition victories in Iraq, nearly as many as MSNBC (47 stories) and CNN (41 stories) combined. During the ten weeks of our study, most coverage of Iraq’s political process reflected optimism about the democratically-elected government, a topic that FNC also showcased more than either MSNBC or CNN (63 stories vs. 34 and 38 respectively).

Even on the best day, CNN and MSNBC found negative themes to promote. While all three networks presented news of Zarqawi’s death as a victory for the U.S. coalition, CNN chose that day to interview a Middle East journalist who complained, "There’s no good news in Iraq. There’s no corner that’s been turned, there’s no milestone....I just feel very depressed and hopeless." Over on MSNBC, the network took time away from covering the breaking news of Zarqawi’s death to feature positive profiles of United States military deserters.

But this wouldn't affect public opinion about the war, would it?

Get Your Hands Off the Gay Sheep!

Via the Raw Story, this story about political correctness and science:

SCIENTISTS are conducting experiments to change the sexuality of “gay” sheep in a programme that critics fear could pave the way for breeding out homosexuality in humans.

The technique being developed by American researchers adjusts the hormonal balance in the brains of homosexual rams so that they are more inclined to mate with ewes.

I've heard rumblings against finding the so-called "gay gene" before. It's understandable, given the fear that people would exercise their right to abortion by killing off their gay offspring in utero. Still waiting to hear from those pro-choicers who will say, "Stop trying to enforce your moral standards on us!"

Evidently, former tennis star Martina Navratilova has waded into the frenzy to defend gay sheep.

Navratilova defended the "right" of sheep to be gay. She said: "How can it be that in the year 2006 a major university would host such homophobic and cruel experiments?" She said gay men and lesbians would be “deeply offended” by the social implications of the tests.

But others herald the study, saying it will allow parents greater freedom to raise the children they want.

Michael Bailey, a neurology professor at Northwestern University near Chicago, said: "Allowing parents to select their children’s sexual orientation would further a parent’s freedom to raise the sort of children they want to raise."

For the record, I'm against aborting gay babies--er, fetuses--er, embryos, as well as straight ones.

UPDATE: Now there is a study out of Denmark which evaluates social factors in sexual orientation.

Conyers Accepts "Responsibility" for Ethics Violations

Phew! I know everybody was really worried that Democrat John Conyers wouldn't accept responsibility for his staffers baby-sitting for him, running personal errands, and doing political work for the Congressman.

"The House ethics committee concluded its three-year inquiry into incoming Judiciary Chairman John Conyers on Friday, voting to take no punitive action against the Michigan Democrat but warning him not to use Congressional staff for any campaign or personal purposes in the future," Susan Davis reports for Roll Call.

"The inquiry was self-initiated by the ethics panel following news reports in December 2003 that Conyers had on multiple occasions demanded his Congressional staff do both political work outside of their official duties as well as personal errands and favors for the lawmaker and his wife, such as babysitting and tutoring his children," the article continues.

However, The Hill notes, "The finding by the ethics panel could spark debate, and perhaps eclipse, the first week of the incoming-Democratic majority’s plans to change the House ethics rules, as well as raise questions about Conyers’ standing to chair the Judiciary Committee."

It's easy to accept "responsibility" when there are no consequences--er, punishment. I keep forgetting that, for conservatives, consequences is just code language for punishment. At least, that's what I've been told.

"her un-wingnutlike desire for conciliation"

More unbiased reporting from the New York Times. The above quote is from a story about Patricia Heaton, who played Ray Romano's wife in Everybody Loves Raymond.

The article is about the rough time Heaton has had finding good roles since the show ended two years ago. Reporter Jesse Green says that Heaton's outspoken conservatism, her honorary chairmanship of Feminists for Life, and her appearance in an anti-stem cell research ad have made life rougher than usual for the actress.

The Internet floodgates opened. Web sites weighed in on "Fox v. Heaton" and generally eviscerated her. On YouTube.com, April Winchell, a California radio personality, posted a 38-second remix of Ms. Heaton’s clip. It starts out saying, "I’m Patricia Heaton, and I’m a religious zealot who thinks she knows what’s best for everybody" and gets uglier from there: "I could give you the whole story, but I’d rather beat you over the head with my Bible. And besides it’s not like stem-cell research makes you look younger. I mean, if it did, I’d be all over it."

That was in reference to Heaton's plastic surgery after having four children.

The "un-wingnutlike desire for conciliation" comment comes directly after this paragraph. I guess Green assumes "wingnuts," the perjorative term liberals give for conservatives, don't like conciliation. If he thinks narrow-mindedness and harsh criticism are the sole property of the right, I guess he didn't get to this take on his Heaton story. I'd like to think he'd say it was an example of the "typical moonbat desire for division, hostility, and argument," but I'm not sure he'd actually notice it.

The Importance of God and Religion

Christian researcher George Barna has some interesting statistics and predictions from his 2006 study of religious attitudes in America.

(A)lthough large majorities of the public claim to be "deeply spiritual" and say that their religious faith is "very important" in their life, only 15 percent of those who regularly attend a Christian church ranked their relationship with God as their top priority.

I think this disconnect between being "deeply spiritual" and making God the most important part of one's life can be traced back to the narcissism regularly on display in our culture. The most popular churches are those least grounded in tradition and doctrine, but, rather, are built on emotions and experiences.

Barna describes three spiritual patterns evident in our society.

In his year-end review, Barna describes what he sees as three general spiritual patterns that are likely to gain prominence in the coming years. The first of these, he says, is diversity: along with new forms of spiritual leadership and expressions of faith, he predicts that ecumenism will expand as the emerging generations pay less attention to doctrine and more attention to relationships and experiences.

The second prediction from the head of Barna Research has to do with what he calls "bifurcation." He expects to see a widening gap between the intensely committed and those who are casually involved in faith matters. The difference, Barna says, will become strikingly evident between those who make faith the core of their life and those who simply attach a religious component onto an already mature lifestyle.

Barna's third prediction deals with the use of media. He says new technologies will significantly reshape how people experience and express their faith, as well as the ways in which they form communities of faith.

"The latest debate centers on whether simulated intercourse is an appropriate dance style for the high school gym."

A father complains about the dances girls perform at a junior high talent show. (Via Ann Althouse):

The scene is a middle school auditorium, where girls in teams of three or four are bopping to pop songs at a student talent show. Not bopping, actually, but doing elaborately choreographed re-creations of music videos, in tiny skirts or tight shorts, with bare bellies, rouged cheeks and glittery eyes.

They writhe and strut, shake their bottoms, splay their legs, thrust their chests out and in and out again. Some straddle empty chairs, like lap dancers without laps. They don’t smile much. Their faces are locked from grim exertion, from all that leaping up and lying down without poles to hold onto. “Don’t stop don’t stop,” sings Janet Jackson, all whispery. “Jerk it like you’re making it choke. ...Ohh. I’m so stimulated. Feel so X-rated.” The girls spend a lot of time lying on the floor. They are in the sixth, seventh and eighth grades.

I know I'm middle-aged, but it is amazing to me what pre-adolescent girls are being told is normal behavior. At least when Starlight Vocal Band sang about Afternoon Delight, they used a few euphemisms.

Worse than the girls' behavior was the parents' reactions:

As each routine ends, parents and siblings cheer, whistle and applaud. I just sit there, not fully comprehending...

What surprised me, though, was how completely parents of even younger girls seem to have gotten in step with society’s march toward eroticized adolescence — either willingly or through abject surrender. And if parents give up, what can a school do? A teacher at the middle school later told me she had stopped chaperoning dances because she was put off by the boy-girl pelvic thrusting and had no way to stop it — the children wouldn’t listen to her and she had no authority to send anyone home. She guessed that if the school had tried to ban the sexy talent-show routines, parents would have been the first to complain, having shelled out for costumes and private dance lessons for their Little Miss Sunshines.

I’m sure that many parents see these routines as healthy fun, an exercise in self-esteem harmlessly heightened by glitter makeup and teeny skirts. Our girls are bratz, not slutz, they would argue, comfortable in the existence of a distinction.

My oldest daughter performed in a community youth association drill team when she was in first and second grade. The first year, they performed the sorts of routines I expected from 7-, 8-, and 9-year-olds: lots of stepping this way and that, moving arms in half circles, shaking little pom pons.

But the second year, the coach wanted the squad to be more competitive, and so she had a dance studio create a new, more "mature" routine, which included shimmying their non-existent breasts. I was appalled, particularly when the squad went to a state competition (yes, I let her stay in that long) and I saw that our squad's routine was tame by comparison with the vamping, strutting, and slinking around exhibited by other elementary school girls. That competition was the end of drill team for us, and I'm still ambivalent about allowing the youngest daughter into dance classes.

I like to encourage my daughters to be proud of themselves and their accomplishments, but I don't think teaching them that simulating sex for a talent show is the way to be proud of themselves.

Saddam Hussein Executed

According to this story by the Associated Press, Saddam Hussein was executed last night.

Saddam Hussein struggled briefly after American military guards handed him over to Iraqi executioners. But as his final moments approached, he grew calm.

He clutched a Quran as he was led to the gallows, and in one final moment of defiance, refused to have a hood pulled over his head before facing the same fate he was accused of inflicting on countless thousands during a quarter-century of ruthless power.

A man whose testimony helped lead to Saddam's conviction and execution before sunrise said he was shown the body because "everybody wanted to make sure that he was really executed."

"Now, he is in the garbage of history," said Jawad Abdul-Aziz, who lost his father, three brothers and 22 cousins in the reprisal killings that followed a botched 1982 assassination attempt against Saddam in the Shiite town of Dujail.

Not surprisingly, the moonbats have found a way to turn Saddam's actions into America's fault.

At Pandagon:

R.Mildred: the trouble is that saddam was no less barbaric than the british when churchill was in charge of the area, no less despotic...more humane and better for women than we are...

Weep for Saddam’s death, weep for the way his death and his joke of a trial is being used to obfuscate the role american politicians, many of whom are still running the government, played in putting saddam in charge of iraq, put the weapons he used into his hands, funded his wars and suppression of uprisings, how htey told the kurds to rise up with the promise of american support during Iraq I and then chickened out at the last minute, how every single badness that has happened ot iraq for the past 20 years can be traced to one or more current standing politician, civil servant or plutocratic businessman with an ear in congress or the senate or the white house.

Mark Foxwell: I mainly weep that he never got a chance (or didn’t have the inclination?) to spell out just how complict we Americans (the real powers behind his executioners) were in just about every vile offense against humanity he ever committed.

The nutjobs at DailyKOS were more explicit:

Kdoug: What should be the punishment for Bush?
He is responsible for the deaths of 650,000 Iraqis (Lancet); and nearly 3,000 Americans? Those looking for Justice ... what should be the punishment?

Bakabear: At the end of the war in Italy, Mussolini was executed on April 29, 1945, and his body, along with others, was hanged at an Esso gas station in Milan. As much as this would be so very appropriate for Bush, I'd rather see him in on trial in the Hague answering to charges against humanity.

vassmer: Of course, there will be those who are delusional and believe a man who was responsible for 9/11 was executed today (of course Bush will continue making connections to that fallacy."

Or the ones cheering are those that really get a kick out of murder/executions/war or killing darker skin people because somehow it makes them feel they are winning the war on terror.

Of course, tas at Liberal Avenger was a little more subtle:

Why has Saddam been sentenced to die for killing over 100 Shia? Did the Iraqi judicial system somehow forget about Saddam’s Anfal campaign wherein he used chemical weapons to kill over 100,000 Kurds? Why isn’t he being tried for this crime? Is it because the Reagan administration supplied Saddam with some of those chemical weapons, and Bush and his handlers don’t want the full extent of his Republican predessor’s involvement to become well known? And since George Hebert Walker Bush was vice president at the time, did he have direct involvement in our tax dollars being used to arm Iraq so Saddam could murder thousands? Or, to a lesser extent, did he know what was going on? Does Bush not want to see his Dad brought up for war crimes?

Just connecting the dots, maybe? asking. Speculating.

Because, you see, to the freakfest on the left, everything is eventually America's fault. Then they wonder why we question their patriotism.

UPDATE: More moonbat idiocy here.

Yes, Virginia, There Are Feminist Issues Other than Abortion!

After reading Amanda's post at Pandagon and the comments after it (which stated unequivocally that abortion is the defining issue of feminism), I decided to go look at some other feminist sites to see if there were other defining issues of feminism. Not surprisingly, I found a ton of them.

At feminist.com, there were numerous issues discussed:

--Aging
--Building self-esteem in young girls
--Health (including issues about breast cancer and depression)
--Violence against women
--Work and career

It was encouraging to discover that abortion didn't seem to be the issue that defined these feminists. In fact, it was encouraging to discover feminists who didn't define themselves solely by their wombs, but who considered a variety of issues to be important to women. What a refreshing notion!

But there are other feminist organizations who seem to be interested in more than abortion.

There's feminist.org, which contains information about a variety of issues affecting women (not just abortion!).
The National Council for Research on Women includes a variety of female health issues (not just abortion!)
Centre for Women's Research includes articles about issues facing women around the globe (not just abortion!)

It is understandable that Teh Sex is the most important part of feminism for some feminists and that abortion available 24/7/365 is critical. Whenever someone states that abortion is the defining feminist issue, however, they should really bother consulting feminists. Most of them consider contraception and abortion to only be two issues of concern. After all, most feminists recognize that we are more than a sum of our body parts.

Weird Contraceptive Advertising

Dawn Eden has this post about new T-shirts being promoted by Planned Parenthood of Connecticut.

I don't imagine many women who would buy this T-shirt from Margaret Sanger's organiztion would really "♥" taking four-to-40 times the amount of hormones in one birth-control pill within a 12-hour period. Nor do I believe they would ♥ tripling their odds of a potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy. Nor would they ♥ it so much if they knew that, based on studies in Scotland, Sweden, and the states of Washington and California, even after shelling out to Planned Parenthood for their EC, they're just as likely to return there for an abortion as they would have been had they not bought the pill.

Funny, I don't see any mention of those risks on Planned Parenthood of Connecticut's site, nor on any Planned Parenthood site — with the notable exception of Planned Parenthood Federation of America's helpful chart showing how many birth control pills equal one complete dose of EC. (It ranges from four Ovrals to 40 Ovrettes.

According to the comments, there's more to the shirt:

This "I heart EC" t-shirt is for the true activist! This is a standard unisex t-shirt. The message on the back message [sic] reads, "Birth control is basic healthcare."

Then there's the fitted version of the shirt:

This adorable fitted "I heart EC" t-shirt will make heads turn! Show people how much you care about "EC", Emergency Contraception. The back says "You have 5 days" which indicates how many days after unprotected sex, a condom breaking, or sexual assault, a woman can take EC to prevent pregnancy.

I have to wonder about the person who would wear such a thing, but, then again, the same people who like this shirt hate the I Love My Boyfriend T-shirts.

It's Christmas--Time to Mock the Christians

This may be a few days late (hey, it's the fifth day of the 12 days of Christmas, though), but Frank Lockwood has this thought-provoking blog post about mocking Christians at Christmas.

It's a point my husband pointed out in a slightly different context the other day. Christianity seems to be the only religion in the U.S. that it is perfectly acceptable to mock, denigrate, and try to ban its discourse from the public sphere. Since tolerance is the most important virtue, supposedly, the intolerance shown to Christians, particularly at Christmas, is astounding.

When was the last time you saw news stories or columns, entertainment pieces or documentaries dissecting and dismantling Muslim or Buddhist theology? I doubt you have because if such things do exist, they are rare.

My husband calls it persecution. I'm not willing to use that term yet, but there is definitely an effort to discredit Christianity at the very least.

Ethics Complaint Filed Against Duke Lacrosse Prosecutor

Via law.com:

North Carolina's association of lawyers filed ethics charges Thursday against the prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case, accusing him of breaking four rules of professional conduct when speaking to reporters about the sensational case where a black woman said she was raped by three white men.

The punishment for ethics violations can range from admonishment to disbarment.

Among the rules District Attorney Mike Nifong was accused of violating was a prohibition against making comments "that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused"...

Another rule Nifong was charged with breaking forbids "dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation." The association said that when DNA testing failed to find any evidence a lacrosse player raped the woman, Nifong told a reporter the players might have used a condom.

The association said Nifong knew that assertion was misleading because he had received a report from an emergency room nurse in which the accuser said her attackers did not use a condom.

This isn't surprising at all, given that Nifong's behavior damages the credibility of rape cases in general, racially motivated rape cases in particular, and tarnishes the reputation of all prosecutors.

I'm trying to find feminists who condemn what happened to the Duke lacrosse players. So far, what I'm finding looks more like this, defiance in the face of reality. The writer claims she is still "agnostic" about whether the rape happened. Even blogs dedicated to this rape case seem to have disappeared (I wonder why no concluding post about Nifong's incompetence?). More defense of ruining white boys' lives if it advances the matriarchy here, here, and here.

The Duke rape case is illustrative of two overarching problems in our country: sensationalism and victimization.

The MSM has become addicted to high-profile, sensational stories, many of which shouldn't even get the national attention they do (remember Chandra Levy?). This isn't to say that stories of child kidnappings, rapes, murders, et al are not newsworthy. They simply aren't worthy of the wall-to-wall coverage particularly cable news outlets give these stories. And when it comes to sensitive issues of race and sex, the propulsion of a questionable rape charge to the front pages of major newspapers and the top of the broadcast on television and radio is unconscionable.

For months, the Duke lacrosse players have been subject to a high-tech lynching, as Clarence Thomas once characterized it. Because of American sympathy for victims, there was only tepid skepticism about this victim's story. To question her motivations for accusing these white men of raping her was tantamount to racism and sexism, a double-shot accusation few people are willing to stand up against.

I don't know what happened at the frat party that night, but, frankly, the story told about what happened that night is falling apart. It's time for those who supported it the most when it suited their agendas to admit they were wrong.

UPDATE: Mary Katherine Ham tells us who the Duke lacrosse players really are.

There are no feminists who think it’s wrong and immoral for a woma(n) to make her own decisions about her own body"

So says our old pal Jesurgislac on this thread at Pandagon.

The Pandagonistas are up to their old tricks, mainly stating that anyone who doesn't think sticking a fork in a baby's head on his/her way to birth is a good idea can't be a feminist.

I always enjoy the comments on a Pandagon thread, especially when someone has the audacity to disagree with the regulars. Usually, it only takes two comments before they want the interloper to leave, given that the Pandagonistas use circular logic and strawmen arguments in support of most of their points. Anyone who questions this "logic" is liable to be ridiculed in the most scathing way they know how: to be labelled as favoring the patriarchy! (big gasp)

I had to laugh at the exchange Jes had with commenter Robert. Robert gave up in disgust after Jes repeatedly refused to actually read and comprehend his points before commenting on them. Of course, I've had lots of experience with that, as well.

But the most intriguing part of the exchange was the quote I used as a headline for this post:

There are no feminists who think it’s wrong and immoral for a womam [sic] to make her own decisions about her own body and to have control over her own fertility. That’s bedrock feminism, and anyone who claims that they’re a feminist but women mustn’t be allowed to make decisions is, as Amanda has been carefully explaining, lying through their rotten teeth.

The link she uses takes you back to Amanda's various disengenuous posts about Feminists for Life and what their "real" agenda is. I have no problem with Amanda arguing for abortion or why it is part of the feminist agenda. But most of the posts Jes linked to are chock-full of hyperbole and extremely low on logic or real points.

What was truly bizarre in this statement is the idea that abortion is THE defining issue of feminism. That would come as a big surprise to a lot of pro-life feminists, not just Feminists for Life, but this site, or this site, or this one.

It comes as quite a surprise to me, as well. I consider myself a feminist. I'm all for equal wages, opportunities, education, and protection under the law. I don't think women who get raped are asking for it or that women are the property of their husbands or fathers. I'm all for women having the same rights and responsibilities under the law that men do.

It sounds silly to have to articulate those things as feminist positions, but, according to the Pandagonistas, those things don't matter. Abortion is the only issue that defines feminism. If you think motherhood is good and children are a blessing, that raising one's children is the most important task you'll be given in life, then you must want a return to 1950's patriarchy. Only if you agree that a woman's "right to choose" to kill her fetus is the most fundamental right there is can one be a feminist.

Of course, this extreme position doesn't take into account the pro-life feminists who favor contraception but don't think a 12-year-old should get an abortion without either parental notification or consent. Or the pro-lifers who think adoption is good, but don't want abortion illegal just so there will be more white babies for adoption (I can't make this stuff up).

It's sad, really that so many so-called feminists are so obsessed with keeping abortion legal for any and every reason that they can't find issues with which they can agree with pro-life feminists. It isn't that both sides don't deserve to be called feminists. It's that there seems to be only one issue that can define feminism for some people.

UPDATE: I just discovered that Jes has a blog! And for someone who spends a great deal of time in her comments talking about me (see here, here, and here), her site is just more of the same creepy stuff only worse. What's most interesting is the amount of time she spent (say, here, here, and even here) replaying arguments from my blog, not unlike a teenager thinking up zingers long after her boyfriend broke up with her. I really do feel sorry for Jes. If she'd only stop lying about what other people post and stop repeating herself, she just might write something interesting some day. But I really doubt it.

"(T)he best of the blogs do a better job than the best of the mainstream media"

So says Hugh Hewitt while conducting an interview with Joseph Rago, the Wall Street Journal assistant editorial features editor who said blogs were "written by fools to be read by imbeciles." (Via Ann Althouse)

Hewitt does an excellent job of skewering Rago, hoisting him on his own petard that journalists do a better job covering stories than bloggers because, well, they're journalists.

Rago suffers from that self-importance journalists are loathed for (I know because I was one). Rago argues that most blogs are awful and that the MSM (a term he hates) does a better job of covering events.

It's understandable that the 23-year-old Rago would be defending his chosen livelihood so fiercely. With the precipitous drop in readership of newspapers, most of the lifers at the WSJ are probably calculating what they can get if they retire now.

The problem confronting Rago, and all print journalists, is that, while blogs aren't necessarily written by journalists and go through four editors who nitpick for style and comma errors, many of them are written by people who are experts in a given area, be that area law or military affairs (including people actually on the ground in Iraq and not hiding out in the green zone), or medicine. In fact, there are so many blogs out there that individual readers can, in a sense, become their own reporters, gleaning facts and opinions from a variety of sources.

There are numerous constraints on print journalists that don't happen in the blogosphere. Blogs aren't constrained by space limitations, nor are they beholden to advertisers who might yank all those car ads if you run a piece on how consumers can get a better deal on their car. Bloggers also don't have to stick with one "beat" day after day, trying to find a new angle to a story they might tell annually (like about the state fair). And bloggers don't have to get their stories approved by editors who might not like them (either the reporter or the story).

Are there awful blogs? Sure. Most blogs are personal blabberings created to satisfy the egos of the creator, and those blogs may last a few days, weeks, or months. But most of the blogs that follow the news, that do interviews, that cover events, are at least as good as anything you can read in a newspaper.

Part of the reason bloggers are outperforming print journalists is that journalists have done such a crappy job with major stories like Iraq or politics that readers don't trust them. At least with bloggers, you know up front what their biases are. They aren't afraid to wave the flag or burn the flag (metaphorically speaking). Readers are much more forgiving of someone who is honest, even if they don't write real pretty every day.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.

UPDATE: Hot Air has responses from WSJ readers.

The Lonely Senator

Hot Air has this story about how John Kerry is a lonely man in Iraq.

Sen. Kerry found himself all alone while he was over here. He cancelled his press conference because no one came, he worked out alone in the gym w/o any soldiers even going up to say hi or ask for an autograph (I was one of those who was in the gym at the same time), and he found himself eating breakfast with only a couple of folks who are obviously not troops.

Full story at Powerline and more at Ben of Mesopotamia.

UPDATE: It turns out Kerry was not being shunned by soldiers, but was simply waiting for an interview. My apologies for jumping to conclusions.

The Katrina Boondoggle

Michelle Malkin has an excellent piece on the bipartisan Katrina boondoggle. That is, the billions of dollars wasted on behalf of the Hurricane Katrina victims.

Malkin points out:

Federal investigators now estimate the total for Hurricane Katrina waste could exceed $2 billion next year. Some $1 billion in aid has already been squandered on everything from unused trailers to empty cruise ship cabins, junkets, and disaster aid debit cards that covered strip club and champagne expenses. Investigators reportedly will release the first of several audits examining more than $12 billion in Katrina contracts next month.

But when the Democrats take control of Congress next month and start their "oversight" (read: Republican bashing), it is doubtful that they will be concerned about $68,000 for dog booties or the $5.3 million FEMA gave away to registrants claiming P.O. boxes as their addresses. Nope. they'll focus on big companies with GOP ties.

When they hold their windy hearings and press conferences decrying wastefraudandabuse, they'll bray about countless hurricane contractors with GOP ties. They'll turn over the microphone to corporate shakedown hypocrites such as Jesse Jackson to moan about favoritism in government contracting. And they'll assail the Republican culture of corruption while looking the other way at Katrina's Democrat profiteers.

You will hear a lot about the Shaw Group, for example, which snapped up major disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Mainstream media outlets and Democrat mau-mauers have zeroed in on Shaw's "ties to the Bush White House" and the multibillion-dollar conglomerate's status as a "major corporate client of Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

But then, there's always a flip side to all these stories.

What Nancy Pelosi and company will not mention, though, is that the Shaw Group was founded by major Louisiana Democrat player Jim Bernhard -- a former chairman of the Louisiana Democrat Party who worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Bernhard was palsy-walsy with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group's corporate jets to on numerous occasions. Another Shaw executive was Blanco's campaign manager.

Whenever I get accused of being a partisan hack because I love pointing at Democrat hypocrisy, I just pull out stories like this one. All skullduggery is bipartisan. The quicker the real partisan hacks (those who think only Republicans run big businesses) realize that the muck runs deep, the sooner we can start cleaning up the messes they leave.

St. Louis Judge's Book Causes Furor

In the Impartial Juror file, we find this story about Circuit Judge Robert H. Dierker Jr. and his new book, The Tyranny of Tolerance: A Sitting Judge Breaks the Code of Silence to Expose the Liberal Judicial Assault.

Dierker's book, which is set to be released next week, is causing quite a furor among his colleagues, who say he may have violated judicial ethics codes in publishing the book, and from targets of the book, namely liberals and feminists whom Dierker calls femifascists. I guess Rush Limbaugh has a copyright on feminazis or something.

I can understand the concern from anyone likely to end up in front of a judge who has written a book that is so pointedly opinionated. We have, however, heard for years about how, for instance, Ruth Bader Ginsberg's work for the ACLU wouldn't necessarily reflect on her impartiality on the bench. I suppose it would only be fair and just if a sitting judge were allowed to do the same.

Some choice quotes from the book:

— "Just as we saw with the femifascists, illiberal liberals don't want equality; they want to make some people more equal than others. And they've made it happen through their dominance of the courts over the past seventy-five years. Liberals have converted the courts from the 'least dangerous' branch of government envisioned by the Founding Fathers to the most dangerous." (from a chapter titled "Making some Americans more equal than others" about the 14th Amendment and equal protection under the law)

— "This is liberal law in a nutshell. History and tradition count for nothing; the language of the Constitution itself counts for little; the only criterion is whether a ruling will advance the liberal agenda." (from the chapter "Ozzie and Harriet are dead" about abortion and the attack on the traditional family)

— " ...The Constitution died on April 18, 1990, as a direct result of the liberal pursuit of racial 'equality.'" (from the chapter "Taxation for Tolerance" about school desegregation and desegregation rulings that allow judges to impose taxes)

It sounds similar to sentiments expressed by a variety of conservatives, both legal and nonlegal, for quite some time. I can't wait to see what the rest of the book is like.

President Gerald Ford Dies

Former president Gerald Ford died today at age 93.

Ford ascended to the presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon. He pardoned Nixon, an act that was unforgivable to a large portion of the American population, who wouldn't forgive Ford and instead elected the peanut farming noob Jimmy Carter as president in 1976.

Ford had the distinction of being the only president to never be elected.

Comparing Apples with Oranges

Or comparing innocent people killed in a surprise attack with soldiers in a volunteer army killed in a war.

I'm not sure which part of the A.P.'s story is more despicable: the trivializing of the deaths for a cheap shot story or that they've been waiting to file this one for a while now. Either way, it's just another notch in the belt for those "objective professionals" called journalists.

About that Sex Survey

You know which one I'm talking about. This one from the Alan Guttmacher Institute which says that 99% of people have sex by the time they are 44 and that 95% had sex before marriage. You know, the one some people believe because it fits their built-in biases.

I suppose it isn't surprising that liberals who think a condom in every Christmas stocking was a terrific gift idea (or maybe it was an IUD...I forget which) would see these results and not use 1/10th of the skepticism they use on, say, screeds on Feminists for Life.

But, no, they haven't. There are other groups who are a bit more skeptical of results so skewed, however, according to this piece from Agape Press:

Dr. Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America (CWA) sees Finer's report as a ploy to cast doubt on the need for abstinence-until-marriage programs. "My eyebrows went up when I first saw the numbers," she recalls, "and I thought that the results were a bit too pat because they fit so specifically into the agenda of Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute."

For that reason, Crouse says she is "quite suspicious" about the numbers cited in the Institute's report. "They are so extreme," she contends, "I think you'd have to have another study done to replicate those results before I would buy into them."

One reason the CWA spokeswoman feels the credibility of this report on Americans and premarital sex needs to be questioned is that Finer works for a group which she believes actually favors both extramarital sex and abortion. The Guttmacher Institute, a private New York-based think tank that investigates sexual and reproductive issues, is an organization that strongly discourages government-funded abstinence-only programs and instead promotes so-called "comprehensive sex education," which is condom-based and emphasizes the concept of "safe sex."

I've looked at the Guttmacher site and can't find a list of the questions they asked. I am highly skeptical of any research that says 99% of anybody has done anything other than breathe (the 1% not breathing are liberals). For one thing, I was interested to know what the Guttmacher definition of sex was. Are they talking only intercourse or are they talking about the whole variety of activities that Bill Clinton insisted weren't sex?

Secondly, what is "premarital sex"? Does that include a person who has been divorced but has sex before they remarry? And isn't that a different category from people who have never been married but have sex before marriage?

Finally, is it really amazing that 99% of people (supposedly) have sex by the time they are middle-aged? I don't find it unbelievable at all that halfway through life most people had sex at some point. This could include people who are now chaste but had sex at some earlier point in their lives.

In short, without the questions asked and a better breakdown of the information, the conclusion that has been touted by so many liberal blogs is, shall we say, unsubstantiated.

Cross-posted at Common Sense Political Thought.