Jack Schafer asks the important question.
Short answer: Because it always has.
Daily Plame Flame Thread
Walter Pincus delivers the goods:
The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV’s trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who is looking into whether a crime was committed with the exposure of Valerie Plame, Wilson’s wife, as a covert CIA employee.
After he went public in 2003 about the trip, senior Bush administration officials, trying to discredit Wilson’s findings, told reporters that Wilson’s wife, who worked at the CIA, was the one who suggested the Niger mission for her husband. Days later, Plame was named as an “agency operative” by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who has said he did not realize he was, in effect, exposing a covert officer. A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip…
The full Senate committee report says that CPD officials “could not recall how the office decided to contact” Wilson but that “interviews and documents indicate his wife suggested his name for the trip.” The three Republican senators wrote that they were more certain: “The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.”
Just do it in the comments.
Another Insurgent Down
Hooray! Radley Balko reports that another insurgent was gunned down in the struggle of our times, the War on Drugs War on Your Neighbor® Global Struggle Against Killer Weed®:
Police seized 2 ounces of marijuana at the home of Anthony Diotaiuto after shooting him 10 times, according to information on the drug raid released Tuesday.
Also Tuesday, while many friends and relatives of the 23-year-old bartender and student mourned him at a Davie funeral home, others appeared at a Sunrise City Commission meeting to demand an explanation for the fatal raid.
Unfortunately, patriots everywhere were upset that he was not “dragged out into the street and beaten slowly to death before a warmly applauding audience.” Like this guy:
Israeli Eden Natan Zada’s , hands bound, face bloodied, moments before being beaten to death in the street by an angry mob for killing four Palestinans.
Authorities have been instructed to make all future drug war killings public, slow, painful, and if at all possible, open for audience participation. To make a point about how bad drugs are, you see.
Click 4 Cathy
Would you all do me a favor and click the button below…
Graphic stolen shamelessly from Wizbang!blog.
*** Update ***
D’oh! Clicking the link helps cancer patients. Guess I should have told you that.
Diversity Bookbags
And then you read stories like this and understand completely why Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council are so popular:
Massachusetts law provides that parents must be notified when children are going to be taught about sex and specifically homosexuality, so the parents may pull the kid out of that class if they choose. Seems reasonable.
Well, five year olds were given “Diversity Bookbags” which included a book showing some families having two mommies and two daddies. Parents were not informed.
The school takes the curious position that depicting same-sex coupling is not, in fact, any sort of mention of homosexuality that would trip the law. So they refused to notify parents.
One parent showed up to demand to know if he’d be informed of any future such non-mentions mentions of homosexuality for his kindergartener.
He wouldn’t leave until he had that assurance, which they wouldn’t give. They were nice enough, however, to have him arrested for criminal trespass, and thoughtfully arranged for him to spend the night in jail.
More here.
*** Update ***
Well, score one for the wingnuts- they fooled me and Ace. This isn’t as cut and dried as the two news stories make it- this guy is clearly an activist with an agenda.
Personally, any way you slice it or dice it, I don’t think the schools need to be sending home ‘diversity bags’ with reading material that may offend parents. Especially not with kindergartners. But there is more to this than meets the eye. I will try to have a summary of what is going on later.
Lies, Damned Lies, and NARAL
NARAL’s new ad is simply despicable (here for the ad), and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania tells us why:
An abortion-rights group is running an attack ad accusing Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers “supporting . . . a convicted clinic bomber” and of having an ideology that “leads him to excuse violence against other Americans” It shows images of a bombed clinic in Birmingham , Alabama .
The ad is false.
And the ad misleads when it says Roberts supported a clinic bomber. It is true that Roberts sided with the bomber and many other defendants in a civil case, but the case didn’t deal with bombing at all. Roberts argued that abortion clinics who brought the suit had no right use an 1871 federal anti-discrimination statute against anti-abortion protesters who tried to blockade clinics. Eventually a 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court agreed, too. Roberts argued that blockades were already illegal under state law.
The images used in the ad are especially misleading. The pictures are of a clinic bombing that happened nearly seven years after Roberts signed the legal brief in question.
I defy anyone to find a more strongly worded condemnation by FactCheck, a group that, IMHO, really is as ‘fair and balanced’ as they come.
And see also this re: Planned Parenthood.
*** Update ***
Just got this e-mail from someone at Feminist.org:
You failed to mention that as Solicitor General, Roberts did not have to sign an Amicus brief siding with the violent extremists. This was a voluntary action and unique. The government did not have to weigh in at all. You had a federal judge who issued an injunction to keep the harassing protesters away from women trying to enter clincs. This was the only remedy at the time. Roberts advocated against the use of a federal civil rights statute to protect women seeking abortion services a form of discrimmination against women in his own words "even though only women can have abortions." His brief from the White House may have influenced the Supreme Court at thetime which decided 6 to 3 to let the protesters use extreme tactics. O'Connor dissented.
There are not many amicus briefs that I am aware of where the government sides voluntarily with a convicted clinic bomber, Michael Bray, who is also the leader of the domestic terrorist group "Army of God." Check with the FBI. Using Emily Lyons is justified. Her bomber, Eric Robert Rudolf is a self proclaimed Army of God member. (click June 9th press release) The Army of God first appeared on the anti-abortion scene in 1984 by Michael Bray and his first bombing of a clinic.
You may want to also check the amicus brief itself, Feminists for Life signed on too. Was Robert's wife on the board at that time or a member of FFL? I do not know. But if so, did her ideology influence her husband's voluntary participation in the amicus brief?
NARAL's ad is not misleading - it is right on target. Was Robert's decision to sign on the result of ideology instead of pragmatism? Ideology would explain the fact why this Supreme Court nominee blindly decided to voluntarily pursue this case and not check the backgrounds of the people he was defending.
I am not going to disclose the name, as it was private correspondence, but the letter is there for you to read. Personally, I don’t think there is anything misleading. A flat-out lie, sure. A smear? Absolutely. A weak attempt at guilt by association? You betcha.
But misleading? Not at all. The ad says exactly what they want it to say, and it is contemptible. And this letter is more of the same. I particularly enjoy her dragging Mrs. Roberts into this…
The RINO Creed
Morton Kondracke pens what should become the RINO creed:
Political moderates predominate in the U.S. electorate, but the two parties are increasingly captives of their extremes. Will the moderates ever rise up and assert themselves?
In the Republican Party, they ought to do so by defending Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) against right-wing attacks for bucking President Bush (and Christian conservatives) over embryonic stem-cell research.
Republican moderates also ought to start speaking up for “emergency contraception” before the right makes banning it a litmus test of party loyalty. Someone in the GOP ought to tell Bush that “intelligent design” is not a true scientific theory on a par with evolution. And moderates need to fight at the state level to prevent “ID” from being required teaching in biology classes.
Except for Log Cabin Republicans and the Republican Unity Coalition, does anyone in the GOP dare to come out for civil unions for homosexuals and to resist the party’s reliance on gay-bashing to win elections?
It’s almost impossible for a pro-choice candidate to get the GOP presidential nomination, but anti-abortion mania could be the undoing of the party in the long run if Bush installs a U.S. Supreme Court that actually overturns the Roe v. Wade decision, as the religious right expects him to do.
Guess I am a ‘moderate.’ Dunno when that happened. I thought I was a conservative until the last few years of lunacy. And to be quite honest, I really don’t care if Roe is overturned, if it is overturned for appropriate legal arguments. I have yet to find a compelling argument that Roe was good law (with the usual caveat that I am just a loudmouth and not a lawyer).
(via Bill)