I suggest voting for the following (links are to ballot pages; you can vote in each category every 24 hours after your preceding vote; voting ends on January 13; this post will be usually be carried forward daily until then):

• (Prime Directive) SOBer Thurber’s Thoughts as Best Political Coverage Blog.
• (Prime Directive 2) SOBer Justin Higgins’s joint venture with Tommy Jardon, Shots on the House, for Best Blog Design.
• (Others) Hot Air, Best Blog; The Anchoress, Best Individual Blogger; Day by Day, Best Comic Strip; American Thinker, Best Conservative Blog; Michael Yon, Best Military Blog; Volokh Conspiracy, Best Law Blog; Pundit Review Radio, Best Podcast; Ms. Underestimated, Best Video Blog.

To say that President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic is not liked by Euro-elitists is a grand understatement.

European media has generally bent over backwards to give European Union politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels respect and the benefit of the doubt. If there is a voter referendum that enhances EU power, the press is for it, and those in countries like Ireland who reject its advances towards smiley-faced socialism are unenlightened.

Even France’s widely disliked Nicolas Sarkozy received favorable treatment from the Europhile press during his 2008 stint as EU President.

That has changed now that Klaus, a fervent advocate of democracy and ardent opponent of statism, whatever its disguises — including “climate change” — has taken over that office.

David Charter, Europe correspondent for the UK Times Online, led the charge last Friday (the picture and caption above is from the Times’s story page), and reported that things are getting quite testy between Klaus and the Europe uber alles crowd:

EU’s new figurehead believes climate change is a myth

The European Union’s new figurehead believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.

The views of President Vaclav Klaus of the Czech Republic, 67, have left the government of Mirek Topolanek, his bitter opponent, determined to keep him as far away as possible from the EU presidency, which it took over from France yesterday.

The Czech president, who caused a diplomatic incident by dining with opponents of the EU’s Lisbon treaty on a recent visit to Ireland, has a largely ceremonial role.

But there are already fears that, after the dynamic EU presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy - including his hyper-active attempts at international diplomacy over the credit crisis and Georgia as well as an historic agreement to cut greenhouse gases - the Czech effort will be mired in infighting and overshadowed by the platform it will give to Mr Klaus and his controversial views.

Czech diplomats in Brussels insist that Mr Klaus is not a big part of their plans and are trying to limit him to one speech to the European Parliament in February and chairing one international summit, either the EU-Canada or EU-Russia meeting.

….. Tensions recently erupted between Mr Klaus and Brussels when a private meeting with senior MEPs descended into a slanging match after they presented him with an EU flag and said that they were not interested in his Eurosceptic views.

Mr Klaus responded: “No one has spoken to me in this style and tone in my six years here. I thought these methods ended for us 18 years ago. I see I was wrong.”

This led to a counter-attack from Mr Sarkozy in the European Parliament. He told MEPs: “The president of the European Parliament should not be treated like this and Europe’s symbols should not be treated like this, whatever people’s political engagement.”

What should not be lost in all of this is that Klaus is likely in better touch with the mood and outlook of average Europeans than the insulated bureaucrats and elitist politicians in Brussels. It’s no secret that the blowback against radical steps to fight the non-problem of “climate change” is continent-wide, and growing ever more fierce.

In fact, as CCNet’s Benny Peiser noted in the Wall Street Journal in mid-December, Europe has gone wobbly while the administration of the new president-elect of the US may be poised dive headfirst into the globaloney pool:

Participants at last week’s United Nations climate conference in Poznan, Poland, were taken aback by a world seemingly turned upside-down. The traditional villains and heroes of the international climate narrative, the wicked U.S. and the noble European Union, had unexpectedly swapped roles. For once, it was the EU that was criticized for backpedalling on its CO2 targets while Europe’s climate nemesis, the U.S., found itself commended for electing an environmental champion as president.

Thus, Klaus arrives at his supposed “figurehead” position at the EU just as European public opinion has swung dramatically his way. No wonder Europe’s media is going out of its way to aspersions on him. Expect US media either to follow suit or to somehow forget one of its favorite mantras — “we should be just like Europe” — for at least a while.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

Why can’t everyone just settle down, get out of the way, get rid of the “distractions,” and let Barack Obama do his magic? That seems to be a recurring media meme during this presidential transition period.

Here are just a few examples in just the past 30 days:

• In a December 12 “analysis” piece at Reuters, Steve Holland opened by telling readers that “A political scandal that led to the arrest of Illinois’ governor has become an unwelcome distraction for President-elect Barack Obama as he tries to keep his focus on preparing to run the country.”
• Amanda Paulson’s Christian Science Monitor report on December 23 about Obama’s internal investigation of contacts between his team and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich fretted that “As the saga of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his alleged “political corruption crime spree” has played out over the past two weeks, it’s been an unwelcome distraction for another politician from Illinois: President-elect Obama.”
• And yesterday, Brent Baker of NewsBusters caught ABC World News Tonight anchor Dan Harris worrying that Bill Richardson’s unexpected withdrawal as Commerce Secretary nominee might be “a distraction in the key early days.”

AFP’s Jitendra Joshi offered up the latest example yesterday:

In distraction for Obama, chaos stalks new Senate

The new US Senate is set to convene in a swirl of allegations of corruption, voter fraud and dynastic nepotism that threatens to dog the early days of Barack Obama’s presidency.

….. The senatorial to-and-fro is an unwelcome distraction for Obama as he prepares to take office on January 20, reliant on a focused Congress to enact his ambitious plans including a mammoth economic stimulus package.

Republican blocking tactics in the Senate could undermine that agenda, especially if the Democrats’ provisional working majority of 59-41 is weakened by court challenges.

The circus surrounding Burris — and more specifically around Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich — is a distraction closer to home for the president-elect following his weekend move to Washington from Chicago.

You see, it’s such a shame that unimportant things like criminal investigations and election disputes are happening. Apparently, nothing should get in the way of Barack Obama and his appointed agenda.

By taking up precious column inches and bandwidth bellyaching about “distractions,” the press is also able to avoid explaining how different the agenda of Obama the president-elect appears to be in comparison to the agenda of Obama the candidate, and how remarkably fluid it seems to be on a nearly day-to-day basis.

Not so coincidentally, if that agenda, whatever it is, fails to materialize or to become law, the press can cite the distractions it has been dutifully qualifying as convenient excuses. After all, discussing what might have been wrong with the agenda in the first place would be so, well, distracting.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

“Citgo pulls $100M in oil donations to Citizens Energy” (HT Lucianne) — I guess the PR value for Hugo Chavez is no longer worth the cost. Instead of begging Chavez to change his mind, Citizens Energy head and dictator-coddling useful idiot Joe Kennedy should start doing what he should have been doing all along: working on helping us get more affordable domestic energy resources. It’s out there; we just have to have the national will to get it.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for media condemnation of Chavez for being so heartless smack dab in the middle of winter.

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Bankruptcy filings were up by a third in 2008 over 2007 — The dirty little secret of the day is that VP-elect Joe Biden (D-MBNA at the time, now D-Bank of America) was a big supporter of so-called bankruptcy “reform” in 2005. This “reform” has made filing more difficult in the sense of introducing time delays (mandatory pre-bankruptcy counseling and the like) and costly (increased fees to file).

It believe that these delays have in many cases given mortgage lenders time to foreclose, whereas under the old law many of those in financial distress filed for bankruptcy ahead of such filings. If I’m right, Slow Joe and others (mostly Republicans, but with quite a few Dems besides Biden) threw a bit of kindling onto an already-smoking fire, and have caused some who might otherwise have kept their homes to lose them.

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“Some US cities drop criminal-history question from job applications” — Let’s stipulate for the moment that maybe we’re too harsh on those who have served their time for their crimes, especially nonviolent offenders. That does NOT mean you don’t ask the necessary questions. You change hiring policies.

That said, ex-cons need to accept the idea that employers, including government employers, are naturally risk-averse, and that, all things being equal, a person with a criminal record will always have a harder time getting work than someone without one. Sorry.

The crazy thing is that an employer, government or otherwise, who doesn’t ask questions about criminal background is a sitting duck for lawsuits by fellow employees, customers, clients, or whoever is affected if the employee commits a criminal act on the job. Relying on background checks is not foolproof. And of course, when it becomes known that a given employer will hire ex-cons, that employer becomes an ex-con magnet.

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USA Today’s Understatement of the Day — “(former Clinton White House chief of staff) Leon Panetta is arelative outsider in the intelligence world.”

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Proving that he is among the prominent of the defeated defeatists, Harry “the war is lost” Reid is now Harry “Petraeus is a genius” Reid.

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Magically, Vaclav Klaus, this year’s EU President, who “just happens” to be a major globaloney critic, is now being called a “figurehead.” I don’t ever recall last year’s EU Prez Nicholas Sarkozy of France, ever getting that tag.

Klaus (as paraphrased by the link’s author) “believes that climate change is a dangerous myth and has compared the union to a Communist state.” Klaus is correct, and eloquent (see “Update and Elaboration” at link).

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• I think Michelle Malkin was quite right to do this in-your-face reaction to Michael Goldfarb’s contention at the Weekly Standard about the supposed lack of original reporting on right-of-center blogs. I appreciate being mentioned in Michelle’s mix for this post on Jeremiah Wright’s church bulletins last year. Someone needs to tell me where so much supposedly original reporting is taking place on left-side blogs. Someone also needs to ask Michael Goldfarb when the Weekly Standard will be hiring bloggers to supplement its bloviators.
• Apparently Barack Obama’s now-former Commerce Department Secretary nominee was not the Bill Richardson he thought he knew.
• Must-read: Patrick Poole’s “Top 10 Ohio Terrorism-Related Stories of 2008.” From here, it seems that the Strickland Administration has been hopelessly complacent, if not worse, while all this has been going on. Franklin County, the City of Columbus, and the Columbus Dispatch have been weak too.
• Al Gore, call your office (HT No Oil for Pacifists) — “Filling the atmosphere with Greenhouse gases associated with global warming could push the planet into a new ice age, scientists have warned.”
• There’s no accounting for why Biz Weak’s Business Exchange believed that an item about a supposed bailout for accountants by Warner Todd Huston at Stop the ACLU was real. But they did.
• James Hansen of NASA has finally admitted that globaloney is about spreading the wealth.
• Advice Barack Obama won’t take: Keep the tax cuts (pending review of specifics). Can the stimulus. Update: The best spectator sport of the next four years may be watching the far left slowly but surely (HT to an e-mailer) go nuts as Obama, who has morphed (for the moment) into a guy who cares about political survival more than any set of beliefs and appears to have absolutely no guiding set of principles, “proposes” (i.e., steals) conservatives ideas like tax cuts — an idea he derided as “selfish” just days before the election.

From Scunthorpe, Lincs, UK:

Last Updated: 4:37PM GMT 31 Dec 2008

A mother who was twice advised to have an abortion by doctors has gone on to have a ‘perfectly’ healthy son.

Gaynor Purdy was warned her first child could have a fatal chromosome defect and a life threatening heart condition.

But she rejected two suggestions to terminate the pregnancy and she and her husband Lee are celebrating life with their “perfect” ten-month-old son.

Mrs Purdy, 28, a quality control inspector, said: “We refused to give up on him, and decided throughout the pregnancy that as long as he was fighting, we would continue fighting with him.”

The couple from Scunthorpe, Lincs, were delighted when they discovered they had conceived shortly before their first wedding anniversary.

Four months into the pregnancy doctors told them that part of their unborn child’s heart was narrow and underdeveloped and would mean open heart surgery if the baby was born.

They were warned the condition could worsen and around Christmas last year, an immediate termination should be considered.

Further tests conducted a few days later on New Year’s Eve suggested the baby could also have Edwards Syndrome - the presence of an 18th chromosome - with a life expectancy of only up to four months if birth is survived.

Consultants again recommended the couple consider aborting the baby, fearing he would little to no quality of life once he was born.

For the second time, Mrs Purdy and her husband, a 29 year old forklift driver, declined the suggestion.

Kai was born six weeks premature on March 5 at Scunthorpe General Hospital weighing just 2lb 6oz and immediately admitted to intensive care, but was discharged within six weeks.

One side of his heart was slightly bigger than the other which may need an operation to correct in the future, but regular tests have been showing the condition is constantly improving.

The chromosome disorder, which affects growth, is also being closely monitored and he is due to undergo some corrective cosmetic surgery in the New Year.

Mrs Purdy added: “Doctors told us he was a little miracle baby. They said his heart must have been mending itself. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

From Washington:

Monday, December 22, 2008

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.

Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.

On Monday, the president is set to make a more common public trip - with reporters in tow - to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, home to many of the wounded and a symbol of controversy earlier in his presidency over the quality of care the veterans were receiving.

But the size and scope of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort.

“People say, ‘Why would you do that?’” the president said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Times on Friday. “And the answer is: This is my duty. The president is commander in chief, but the president is often comforter in chief, as well. It is my duty to be - to try to comfort as best as I humanly can a loved one who is in anguish.”

Mr. Bush, for instance, has sent personal letters to the families of every one of the more than 4,000 troops who have died in the two wars, an enormous personal effort that consumed hours of his time and escaped public notice. The task, along with meeting family members of troops killed in action, has been so wrenching - balancing the anger, grief and pride of families coping with the loss symbolized by a flag-draped coffin - that the president often leaned on his wife, Laura, for emotional support.

“I lean on the Almighty and Laura,” Mr. Bush said in the interview. “She has been very reassuring, very calming.”

Mr. Bush also has met privately with more than 500 families of troops killed in action and with more than 950 wounded veterans, according to White House spokesman Carlton Carroll. Many of those meetings were outside the presence of the news media at the White House or at private sessions during official travel stops, officials said.

The first lady said those private visits, many of which she also attended, took a heavy emotional toll, not just on the president, but on her as well.

“It is just so unbelievably emotional to be with the families, for everybody involved. I mean for us and for them and for everyone,” she said in a telephone interview with The Times on Saturday. “I’m very aware of how emotional it is and how draining it is for the president and for me, too. Both of us. But I think we do support each other, not by saying anything so much, but just by the comfort of each other’s presence, both when we are with the families and then afterward when we are alone.”

Mr. Cheney similarly has hosted numerous events, even sneaked away from the White House or his Naval Observatory home to meet troops at hospitals or elsewhere without a hint to the news media.

For instance, Mr. Cheney flew to North Carolina late last month and met with 500 special-operations soldiers for three hours on a Saturday night at a golf resort. The event was so secretive that the local newspaper didn’t even learn about it until three days after it happened.

Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, also have hosted more than a half-dozen barbecues at their Naval Observatory home for wounded troops recovering at Bethesda Naval Hospital and Walter Reed and their spouses and children.

The vice president said Mr. Bush “feels a very special obligation to those who he has to send in harm’s way on behalf of the nation, and a very special obligation to their families, especially the families of those who don’t come home again.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

From Washington, via the Catholic News Agency:

Washington DC, Dec 19, 2008 / 09:01 pm

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Thursday issued a final regulation explicitly clarifying the rights of health care providers to decline participation in services to which they object in conscience. The rule will help protect those individuals and institutions in the medical field who object to abortion.

An HHS press release reported that several statutes have been enacted by Congress to “safeguard the freedom of health care providers to practice according to their conscience.”

“The new regulation will increase awareness of and compliance with these laws,” it continued.

“Doctors and other health care providers should not be forced to choose between good professional standing and violating their conscience,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said. “This rule protects the right of medical providers to care for their patients in accord with their conscience.”

“Many health care providers routinely face pressure to change their medical practice – often in direct opposition to their personal convictions,” said HHS Assistant Secretary of Health, Admiral Joxel Garcia, M.D. “During my practice as an OB-GYN, I witnessed this first-hand. Health care providers shouldn’t have to check their consciences at the hospital door.”

According to the HHS press release, the final rule clarifies that non-discrimination protections apply to institutional health care providers as well as individuals who work for recipients of HHS funds. Under the rule recipients of certain HHS funds will be required to certify their compliance with conscience protection laws.

The HHS Office for Civil Rights has been designated as the entity to receive violation complaints. If a state or local government or entity is in violation of the statutes, HHS officials may assist them in becoming compliant. If such efforts fail, the entity may be penalized by termination of funding and may be required to return funding already received.

The HHS also encourages providers to disclose to patients what services they do not provide.

Describing remarks received concerning the proposal, the HHS press release said “the comments consistently bore out the necessity of the regulation to implement the statutes enacted by Congress.”

“Many commenters exhibited a lack of understanding of these laws. Others articulated a general knowledge that conscience protections exist for providers, but the scope of these protections was not always widely understood. Still other comments came from health care workers relating personal experiences of what they perceived to be discrimination on the basis of their personal or religious beliefs.”

Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the 16,000-member Christian Medical Association (CMA), on Thursday welcomed the regulation, saying it will “protect patients and patient access to physicians who adhere to life-affirming ethical standards.”

“By protecting physicians and other healthcare professionals who still adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and other objective standards of medical ethics, this regulation serves to protect patients who want access to conscientious and compassionate care from life-affirming physicians,” he continued, adding “this regulation insures that physicians and others won’t be run out of the profession for upholding those standards.” …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised any more when a Bush-bad, Dems-good meme refuses to die in the face of withering facts.

Ken Ward Jr. played a now-familiar tune about mine safety at the Charleston Gazette-Mail yesterday:

Sago families look to Obama
Three years after fatal mine blast, reformers turn to new administration

….. Three years ago this morning, an explosion ripped through International Coal Group’s Sago Mine, located outside Buckhannon in Upshur County.

Within hours, the national media had focused on 13 missing miners. Twelve of those workers died before rescuers could reach them 40 hours later. Only Randal McCloy Jr. survived.

The disaster - West Virginia’s worst in nearly 40 years - was the first of four major coal-mining accidents over the next 18 months. Three weeks later, two more miners died in Massey Energy’s Aracoma Alma No. 1 Mine.

In May 2006, five workers died in an explosion at the Kentucky Darby Mine. In August 2007, nine miners died in a cave-in at Murray Energy’s Crandall Canyon operation in Utah.

In response, there’s been a flurry of new laws, tougher regulations and demands for increased inspections and enforcement. Much progress has been made. Last year, for example, the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration for the first time completed all of its mandated quarterly inspections of underground coal mines nationwide.

Sen. Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., pushed for additional funding to replace MSHA inspection jobs that had been cut by Bush.

….. And despite improvements, many critics say MSHA remains a troubled agency damaged by Bush administration budget cuts and efforts to replace tough enforcement with industry-friendly “compliance assistant” programs.

“President-elect Obama needs to re-orient MSHA entirely,” said Nathan Fetty, a mine safety lawyer with the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment. “MSHA needs leadership who wants to tackle the biggest health and safety problems facing miners without waiting for a court or Congress to tell the agency to act.”

This is about as clear-cut a case of not letting facts get in the way of a good story as you’ll ever see. It has been beaten to within an inch of its life at several BizzyBlog posts over the past few years, particularly this one from a couple of days after the Sago tragedy in January 2006.

Suffice it to say that there has never been a visible let-up in inspection effort, and the Bush record, when compared to the Clinton record in this hastily-assembled graphic, proves it:

Clinton responsibility goes through 2001 because his last budget controlled what the MSHA could do that year (if you gave 2001 to Bush, the Clinton record would look worse). Similarly, Bush will still have responsibility for 2009.

Not shown: 2008’s nearly-finalized total of 51 fatalities in all mining activities (29 coal; 22 metal/non-metal) is the lowest on record.

I have similar data with similar results relating to non-fatal injuries, and will have more to say on this topic in the coming days.

Parting shot: Didn’t the “someone” that the Sago families are looking to for “help” say something about bankrupting new coal mines? Why, yes he did.

Well, miners will certainly be “safe” if they’re not working, won’t they?

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UPDATE: While I’m in the neighborhood, let me remind Mr. Fetty that a federal government agency should only be doing things Congress has authorized it to do, not sit around dreaming up all kinds of things it might want to do.

UPDATE, Jan. 5 — Source data is from this page at the MSHA for coal fatalities and this one for metal/non-metal.
This is the detail, inelegantly presented:

From Great Britain (video is at link):

Jan. 2, 2009

A British couple has defied the odds again by giving birth to a second set of black and white twin girls.

“I was as blown away as the rest of them, you know, there is no easy way to explain it all. I feel like I’m still in shock myself even though the first ones were seven years ago. It’s amazing, but we just love them the same,” says Dean Durrant, the father.

As CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, Alison Spooner and Durrant welcomed daughters Lauren and Hayleigh into the world seven years ago. Lauren takes after her white mother, while Hayleigh, takes after her father.

When the couple announced earlier this year that they were having another set of twins, they didn’t think lightening would strike twice.

“I honestly didn’t think that it would happen again.I thought that we’d have two of the same. Well I didn’t think that we’d have twins again for a start,” Spooner says.

This time, baby Miya has her father’s dark skin, while Leah looks like her mother.

Doctors say the phenomenon is so rare, that there are no statistics to illustrate the probability of it happening. …..

Go here for the rest of the story.

Thurber’s Thoughts is a finalist in the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best Political Coverage Blog.

Her blog is of course most deserving of this recognition, and I am pleased to have nominated her.

The voting page is here. There’s some pretty heavy competition, but vote early and often (if the rules are the same as last year, you can vote once every 24 clock hours from your preceding vote), and who knows?

Voting begins at 12:00 midnight Tuesday (when Monday turns into Tuesday), unless their counter is off by a day, and continues until January 12.

Vote once a day to keep Thurber in play!

Note: This column was posted at Pajamas Media on Wednesday, which was New Year’s Eve. Update, Jan. 3: I’m pleased to report that this column has spent most of the past few days in PJM’s “Most Popular” List.

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My 2002 e-mail to Medea Benjamin — and how it looks after a successful 2008.

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As 2008 ends, two things should not be forgotten.

First, it was the year that the war in Iraq became successful to the point where many started calling it victory. Perhaps cynics can dismiss writers like Zombietime or opinionated editorialists like those at Investors Business Daily as pollyannas. But they have nowhere to run or hide when an observer on the ground like Michael Yon, who had the independence to tell us we were in danger of losing not all that long ago, comes out and says “The war is over …. the civil war has completely ended.”

Second, this victory (or, if you must, “the end of the war with Iraqi and US forces firmly in control”) is a major setback for those who worked tirelessly for defeat. At every opportunity, the defeatists employed or extended tactics that had ultimately “succeeded” in bringing about the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia’s killing fields (but which also led to Carter Era weakness, which finally caused enough disgusted Americans to elect Ronald Reagan).

But this time, they didn’t work. The US has achieved a military victory in a long war against a persistent enemy. What’s more, unlike Vietnam (which was a military victory; Vietnam was lost when our military wasn’t there), this victory is being handed over to a successor administration of the other party.

The defeated defeatists include many senators, congressmen, and elitists in Washington. They include Harry Reid, who said “I believe ….. that this war is lost” in April 2007. They include many members of the incoming administration, up to the president-elect himself. Though the defeatists are in control, they know full well that if they allow Iraq to go the way of Vietnam, this time they will get the blame — and the blowback.

The defeated defeatists include the US and worldwide news media, whose journalistic malpractice in this war could fill volumes of books (and hopefully someday will).

Deliciously, the most decisively defeated defeatists are radical leftists like Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin.

We received a preview of the tactics the media and the radical left (but I almost repeat myself) would try to employ in September 2002. While Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee about the importance of ousting Saddam Hussein, Benjamin and another demonstrator interrupted the hearing, “began chanting ‘Inspections, not war’ and unfurled a banner bearing the slogan before Capitol police removed them from the hearing room.”

The entire sequence could not have lasted more than two minutes. The newsworthiness of the protest was at best debatable. Yet the next day, in a brazen act of radical solidarity, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all pictured Benjamin and her comrade on their front pages.

Brit Hume of Fox News observed in his “Grapevine” segment the next night that:

That brief outburst during Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s testimony in the House yesterday may not have amounted to much. The New York Times story on the hearings summed up the incident in two sentences inside the paper. But on the front page, there the protesters were in living color. And the Washington Post did not mention them in its news story, but on that front page, a color picture as well. The Los Angeles Times even made the outburst the lead photograph in the paper. And MSNBC invited the women on as prime time guests.

That MSNBC interview ended up being an indicator that what worked in the 1960s and 1970s might not fly decades later. Instead of the softball interview the pair expected, the Media Research Center reported that Ashleigh Banfield, not a conservative by any stretch, reminded the women that “70 percent of Americans say they believe that if we don’t take military action against Saddam, we’re going to end up just like those 3,000 people who I happened to witness a year ago down at Ground Zero.”

Benjamin’s protest also led your humble servant to respond. I located an e-mail address for Ms. Benjamin at Global Exchange, the home of her decades-long romance with Cuban-style collectivism (Code Pink began two months later), and sent her the following:

Subject: I see that you’re a “celebrity” now

Gosh, front-page photos in the New York Times and the Washington Post. You’ve made the bigtime. I am so impressed (NOT).

Don’t let it go to your head, but anyone who examines the tripe you believe comes away shaking their heads in wonder that anyone can be so ignorant. You have hurt your cause more than helped it. Even ultra-liberal Ashleigh Banfield couldn’t stomach your point of view when you were on Podunk’s News Channel (MSNBC would probably get a bigger audience if they ran a test pattern instead of programming).

You see babe, the NYT and WaPo don’t set the agenda any more, like they did in the 60s. There is now competition in the arena of ideas, the interpretation of events, and the determination of what really is news–and your side is losing. Your tired Vietnam-era tactics never did work in the long run; otherwise, Ronald Reagan would never have become president and we’d be speaking Russian today. Now they don’t even work in the short run. Fox News, Rush, Michael Savage (who likened your chant to a pair of sick dolphins-HA), the Media Research Center, and countless others have exposed you as complete fools, all within 48 hours. Anyone with a pulse and a brain knows what you’re about now, and rejects it.

Congratulations, and keep up the good work.

I’m not naive enough to think that Ms. Benjamin gave a rip about what I had to say. But it was nonetheless a cathartic taunt. It also turned out to be a bit prophetic.

Old Media, and Old Medea, threw everything they had at George Bush and the military in their quest for failure. They can arguably be blamed for encouraging Iraq’s terrorists to keep fighting when they might otherwise have quit, extending the war, and costing us hundreds of billions of dollars. But ultimately, and fortunately, it is they who failed, and the hated George Bush and the Iraqi people who prevailed.

That result is deserves a hearty New Year’s Eve toast. Bottoms up.

The Cincinnati Enquirer’s coverage of a local press conference and demonstration relating to the Israeli-Hamas conflict in Israel and Gaza has been atrocious. I suspect that the Enquirer is not unique in its egregious journalistic failures.

The two stories involved, both by Rebecca Goodman, are (original Cincinnati reference HT to Atlas Shrugs):

– Dec. 31 — “Area groups call for an end to Gaza conflict”
– Jan. 1 — “Ecumenical group calls for end to fighting in Gaza Strip”

Any more, you can almost work up a checklist on stories such as these, and expect to be able to check off the majority of, if not all, of the items on the list. The checklist follows the jump:

(more…)

“Boomer,” a commenter at Michelle Malkin’s place, reacted to her post on the Aspen man who “killed himself in a botched bank robbery/mass murder attempt” mentioning “a (different) story I saw earlier today about a ski instructor in Aspen being murdered by a nut job because he admitted to his Catholic faith.”

After more searching than should have been necessary, I found a reference at Mary Major’s blog that had the specifics:

“Catholic” “wrong answer” to gunman
Here is the latest of the Colorado ski resort shooting.

http://www.dailycamera.com/news/2008/dec/31/eldora-back-open-after-shooting/

snip

During a standard morning meeting Tuesday, Derik Bonestroo, a 24-year-old lift operator, pulled out a gun, fired a shot into the ceiling and threatened his co-workers, mentioning something about religion. When general manager Brian Mahon entered the room, Bonestroo asked him what religion he believed in.

When Mahon said “Catholic,” according to witness accounts, Bonestroo then shot him twice, sending his fellow employees fleeing out doors and windows.

Mahon died at the scene and Bonestroo fled in a vehicle. He was chased by officers and eventually got into a fire fight with a Boulder County sheriff’s deputy. The deputy shot and killed Bonestroo, and the resort remained closed for the day.

That Daily Camera link no longer contains a reference to Mahon’s Catholic profession, because when you put in that link, you get taken to another. Thankfully, Google cache has the original containing the excerpted language; now, so does my web host.

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Department is not reporting Mahon’s profession of faith, despite the multiple witness accounts in a room that had 18-20 people in it. The word “Catholic” is not in any of the Sheriff Department’s three press releases (here, here, and here), nor is there any reference to eyewitness accounts saying that the alleged killer fired after Mahon answered his question about his faith. Instead, we get “The suspect confronted him immediately, shooting him twice before fleeing the scene,” and “his motive remains unclear.”

Why the suppression? Is it because this murder has “hate crime” written all over it, and the sheriff wants to avoid classifying it as such?

UPDATE, Jan. 3: Here is a rendition of what happened that is NOT first-hand –

An employee who was in the room at the time of the shooting told the Boettchers (a couple who were NOT there — Ed.) that Bonestroo had fired a gun toward the ceiling during a morning meeting and said, “Anybody that’s not my religion is going to die today,” John Boettcher said.

Bonestroo had started asking people about their religion when the general manager entered the room.

“He asked him what religion he was, and he said, ‘Catholic,’” Boettcher said. “Then he shot him in the head and in the chest.”

….. But I Don’t Have Any Time For:

• Rich Karlgard at Forbes — “It seems like a distant memory now, but the recession’s first ten months were so mild that between December 2007 and September 2008 there was an annual growth rate of 0.8%. Outside of housing and financial services, the economy was downright healthy, growing nearly 2.5% during that period.” Good description, but bad premise: What’ he’s describing as a “so mild” recession wasn’t a recession at all, at least not continually, no matter what the pinheads at the National Bureau of Economic Research say. It represented problems in a couple of sectors that nonetheless failed to keep the overall economy from growing.
• It goes on …. and on …. and on — “The U.S. Treasury threw the door open to taxpayer financing for a widening array of companies and industries by drafting broad guidelines on aid to the auto industry.”
• Jack Cashill — “‘Dreams (of My Father)’ may prove to be the most consequential literary hoax of our time.” Indeed. Meanwhile, I have yet to see any attempt to refute this UK Daily Mail portrayal of Barack Obama’s father, covered in previous BizzyBlog posts here and here.
• Sammy Wilson, Democratic Unionist Party environment minister for Northern Ireland, gets it on globaloney and the globalarmists who push it — “Spending billions on trying to reduce carbon emissions is one giant con that is depriving third world countries of vital funds to tackle famine, HIV and other diseases.”
• Speaking of globaney, here are “The 12 Days of Global Warning” (HT Pundit Review):

  The graphics make it worth watching, but for those who don’t have time to view the whole thing, here are the lyrics:

  12 new ways of taxing,
  11 light bulbs banning,
  10 droughts a happening,
  9 hurricanes blowing,
  8 rivers flooding,
  7 oceans rising,
  6 glaciers melting,
  5 drowning polar bears.
  4 dollar gas,
  3 failed automakers,
  2 melting ice caps,
  and a fear-mongering documentary.

• Update: Do not miss Patterico’s annual compilation of journalistic and other malpractice at the Los Angeles.

Michelle Malkin called it, as did several NewsBusters commenters. Their prediction was that newspapers on the brink would be asking for government bailouts.

It came to pass in late November that seven Connecticut legislators asked the state’s Department of Economic and Community Development for help in keeping the New Britain Herald and the Bristol Press afloat. A JPEG of the full letter with three of the seven signatures is here. Alleged GOP Governor Jodi Rell is apparently sympathetic.

A Wednesday “analysis” piece by Robert MacMillan of Reuters reports that the state agency is indeed “offering tax breaks, training funds, financing opportunities and other incentives for publishers, but not cash.”

Here are other key paragraphs from MacMillan:

Relying on government help raises ethical questions for the press, whose traditional role has been to operate free from government influence as it tries to hold politicians accountable to the people who elected them. Even some publishers desperate for help are wary of this route.

Providing government support can muddy that mission, said Paul Janensch, a journalism professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, and a former reporter and editor.

“You can’t expect a watchdog to bite the hand that feeds it,” he said.

….. The lifeline comes as U.S. newspaper publishers such as the New York Times, Tribune and McClatchy deal with falling advertising revenue, fleeing readers and tremendous debt.

….. Many media experts predict that 2009 will be the year that newspapers of all sizes will falter and die, a threat long predicted but rarely taken seriously until the credit crunch blossomed into a full-fledged financial meltdown.

….. “I truly believe that no democracy can remain healthy without an equally healthy press,” said Fiedler, now dean of Boston University’s College of Communication. “Thus it is in democracy’s interest to support the press in the same sense that the human being doesn’t hesitate to take medicine when his or her health is threatened.”

Connecticut does not see trying to find a buyer and offering tax breaks as exerting influence on the press, said Joan McDonald, the economic development commissioner.

….. Connecticut’s actions are not the first time government has helped newspapers. The U.S. Postal Service has offered discounted postage rates. Several cities have papers running under Joint Operating Agreements, created following the congressional Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970 to keep competing urban dailies viable despite circulation declines.

On the whole, MacMillan’s piece comes across as sympathetic to newspaper bailouts. Two unexcerpted paragraphs quote a journalist who says government help wouldn’t affect his independence, but he misses the point. Government involvement would, eventually, either lead to government control or, as is the case with the BBC and NPR, ultimately untouchable, highly-subsidized entities that are free to disseminate their non-stop, heavily-biased reports without worrying about whether enough readers or advertisers care enough to pay for it.

The last thing we need is a hundred, or a thousand, little BBC clones running around setting the news agenda without regard to reader or viewer interest, in the process drowning out New Media. Perhaps because these entities would be receiving government money, the government would see it as its duty to keep New Media on the sidelines.

I believe that if New Media ends up inheriting the task of daily news reporting, clever entrepreneurs will figure out a way to do it, and well. It’s less likely to happen if they know that their failing competitors in print will be propped up ad infinitum.

2009 should be the year when failing media enterprises give up the ghost, even if it means that some cities and towns have no newspapers. I suggest that we see what pops up to replace them. I’ll go further (I’m not clear on what the answer is this question, so I’ll throw it open for discussion):  If the answer is “nothing,” what’s wrong with that?

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

To a blessed 2009:

It’s here.

The subheadline:

My 2002 email to anti-war activist Medea Benjamin — and how it looks after a successful 2008.

Thanks to PJM editors David Rusin and Aaron Hanscom for getting the column up in a bit of a hurry.

Let the games begin.