Via Radley Balko comes this fascinating WaPo story of some ranchers, a bull, and a deadly blood feud.
Archives for May 2005
Media Slander
I am hard pressed to find anything wrong with this mission statement:
The goal of Media Slander is to hold journalists and bloggers to high ethical standards regarding coverage of the War on Terror and other military-related issues. We plan to achieve this by highlighting bias, rumor and falsehoods that have been creeping into military coverage under the guise of objective news.
We by no means advocate censorship or the deliberate suppression of well-researched and relevant stories about the war and the military.
As much as journalists feel that they are the guardians of the First Amendment, its true protectors are standing watch in Iraq, Afghanistan and places no one will ever hear about. Journalists owe it to the true gatekeepers of our liberties to be fair, balanced, relevant and accurate in covering them.
Signed,
The entire staff of MediaSlander.com
I hope they remain true to the statement, because then they will be performing a valuable service. But, and this is a big but, if it devolves into silly arguments like ‘all they reported was the seven dead and they ignored the mosque that got built,’ it will quickly devolve to farce.
I think it is important to document everything that is going well, but at the same time, I think it is a BIGGER deal if 5 soldiers get killed in IED attacks today than it is that a school opened somewhere today. While broad overviews of everything that is going right, much like the great Arthur Chrenkoff round-ups, are important, and, I believe woefully lacking, it would be silly to demand that every story of a soldiers death be required to be countered with another story about a school opening.
That wouldn’t be a demand for media balance- that would be tantamount to demanding the suspension of reality in the dictation of news judgement. That is a road I am not willing to travel.
And, let’s face it. These are my guys getting shot. It may be selfish and petty, but personally, I care more about our guys getting shot and the rate they are getting shot than I do about feel-good items like schools being re-painted.
At any rate, I have confidence in Black Five, who is a class act, and I shall be reading Media Slander.
Creationism Update
Reason (via Instapundit):
Who needs to make monkeys out of the Kansas Board of Education when its members are doing such a good job of it themselves?
Members of the Kansas board convened hearings this month to hear testimony from proponents of the theory of intelligent design that the theory of evolution is bunk. How deliciously wacky of the board to hold their kangaroo court on evolutionary theory on the 80th anniversary of the arrest of Tennessee high school teacher John T. Scopes for illegally teaching biology to his students. And like the Tennessee court back in 1925, the Kansas education officials in the 21st century have found evolutionary theory guilty again.
“Heh.”
I’ll Take That Challenge
Will Collier writes:
Yet another post-Newsweekgate tendentious defense of the MSM today, this time from Terry M. Neal in the Washington Post. Most of it is now-familiar “fake but accurate” claptrap, and I was about to quit reading halfway through when Neal popped of with this howler:
Some conservative bloggers have suggested that the media should never criticize or raise critical questions of the military in wartime. Some have extended that criticism, conveniently, to cover the president’s wartime policies.
Oh, really? Which ones? Can you provide a quote, a link, a reference to a single blogger who’s said any such thing, or are did you just prop up an imaginary straw man?
I’ll take that bet. Numerous people stated outright that this should not be reported even if it were true. LaShawn Barber (#18 in the ecosystem) even said it twice:
Regarding my
They Get Their Scalp
And Nancy Grace and the wingnut brigade get their scalp- a Duluth Grand Jury just indicted a mentally ill woman for running away from her marriage and scaring the delicate sensibilities of the mainstream media.
Jennifer Wilbanks now faces up to 6 years in prison because for 3-4 hours, folks in Georgia were under the impression she was kidnapped but escsaped.
That is what she is charged with, because she did nothing wrong the four days she was simply missing.
I hope you thugs are proud of yourself. Law and order, idiot style.
By the way, if I may, let me speak for the law and order thugs everywhere. I am thrilled that the Duluth DA has taken his duties seriously, and after much soul searching, has decided that in his infinite wisdom, prosecutorial discretion dictates that this great evil not be left alone. We will all be safer with Jennifer Wilbanks off the street, and I hope he does not delay the swearing out of the warrant. This woman must be stopped before she has another mental breakdown and disappears, sending Wolf Blitzer and Nancy Grace and the rest of idiot nation into the vapors again.
SHE MUST BE TAUGHT A LESSON!
*** Update ***
If you think this is justice in action, and not, as I contend, nothing more than grandstanding by a DA and a cheap and transparent attempt at extortion, ask yourself why she was indicted on a felony and a misemeanor charge. The only reason is to offer dropping the felony for repayment of the funds they chose to spend while she was off in Vegas not breaking any laws and suffering from a pretty obvious mental breakdown.
But the mob must have justice. At least they didn’t dress her up as a witch:
CROWD: Burn her! Burn! Burn her! Burn her!
BEDEVERE: How do you know she is a witch?
VILLAGER #2: She looks like one.
CROWD: Right! Yeah! Yeah!
BEDEVERE: Bring her forward.
WITCH:I’m not a witch. I’m not a witch.
BEDEVERE: Uh, but you are dressed as one.
WITCH: They dressed me up like this.
This is mob justice and catering to the lowest common denominator, pure and simple.
All Your Computers Are Belong To Us
Uh oh. Someone set us up the bomb:
A Minnesota appeals court has ruled that the presence of encryption software on a computer may be viewed as evidence of criminal intent.
Ari David Levie, who was convicted of photographing a nude 9-year-old girl, argued on appeal that the PGP encryption utility on his computer was irrelevant and should not have been admitted as evidence during his trial. PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is sold by PGP Inc. of Palo Alto, Calif.
But the Minnesota appeals court ruled 3-0 that the trial judge was correct to let that information be used when handing down a guilty verdict.
“We find that evidence of appellant’s Internet use and the existence of an encryption program on his computer was at least somewhat relevant to the state’s case against him,” Judge R.A. Randall wrote in an opinion dated May 3.
Randall favorably cited testimony given by retired police officer Brooke Schaub, who prepared a computer forensics report–called an EnCase Report–for the prosecution. Schaub testified that PGP “can basically encrypt any file” and “other than the National Security Agency,” nobody could break it.
So, basically, according to this article, if you use encryption to protect financial files or other personal records, and the man is investigating you for anything, the simple use of common encryption software could be used as evidence of you guilt.
This is truly frightening.
*** Update ***
As with all things law, I am not a lawyer, so there is the very distinct possibility that there are fine points that I simply do not understand and am thus getting my panties all in a bunch over something that already is a quite commonplace practice. I am after all, an idjit.
At any rate, more here on why maybe I am understating the case. And more here from Corante, and here from TechDirt.
I don’t think I am wrong.
Paris Ad
I, too, am outraged by the Paris Hilton ad.
Just as Ben Shapiro would, I watched the ad 20 times myself, several times in full screen mode and in slow-motion, just to make sure I was appropriately offended. It was, after repeated close inspections, worse than I thought, and I intend to watch it a few more times to let my thoughts gel, and then I will fire off a righteously indignant letter to Jim Sensenbrenner.