The Debate.

I watched the debate and then went off to Thursday night Communio. My thoughts about the debate, as I reported to the Communio group, was that Kerry won on points. Kerry seemed assured and confident. He seemed to be articulate and in command. Bush. on the other hand, seemed somehow out of control and less assured. Frankly, I was disappointed because I wanted to see Kerry fumble and end the race.

But now it's an hour later and I'm reflecting that Kerry's answers to specific questions are absolutely damning to his chances of success. Kerry seemed to be "making shit up," which according to William Weld was his debate forte. As I note in the post below, Kerry seemed to be relying on internet urban legend e-mails for some of his debating points.

I think Kerry's transcripts are going to be mined for gold over the next day and should be endlessly embarrassing for Kerry's election chances. For example, Hugh Hewitt writes:

Because as group three notes: "America will never elect a man who believes in (1)"global tests," or (2)that we can't be trusted with 'bunker-busters.'" Kerry trotted out vintage nuclear freeze thinking tonight, arguing that the United States' development of a new generation of nukes is a bad thing. No, it is not, because we are a good and responsible country. End of debate, because Kerry's distrust of our weaponry is really a distrust of our national purpose. As the president kept saying, it is about the core of the candidates, and at Bush's core is a certainty about America's purpose in the world and its essential goodness. At Kerry's core, despite many protestations to the contrary, is a deep suspicion of America with its nukes, its weapons, its preemption and its resolve to go it alone if necessary.

That's right. I did hear Kerry blather about how we couldn't control nuclear proliferation when we were developing new weapons. Well, why not? Aren't we the good guys? Can't an America under the guidance of the miraculous John F. Kerry - whose every criticism of President Bush ended with the imperious claim that "I would not make that mistake" - not be prudent in its control of nukes? Wouldn't that America be trusted by the coterie of foreign leaders who are just waiting for President Kerry to invite them into this "diversion" so that they can reduce the percentage of American casualties by increasing the percentage of French and German casualties.

The basic point is that Kerry just announced things, which didn't make what he announced true or consistent or coherent. As his statements are picked apart, probably by bloggers, he's going to have a great deal of explaining to do.

I think Kerry may have won the spot decision, but in the long term he's going to be crippled by more reflective analysis.

Kerry Urban Legends.

Lack of Body Armor? The only building guarded was the Oil Ministry building?

Predators.

As a father of three daughters, I found this David Morrison post on internet predators to be extremely disturbing. Go to his post and look at the photo of the absolutely normal-looking young man who schemed and groomed his way into a meeting with a "twelve year old girl" who he just knew he was going to molest. Apropos of my "other minds" post below, there's absolutely no external clue that this guys mental state would include that kind of evil. I mean, looking at him, would you think that his mind would operate that way?

The "twelve year old girl" was in fact an adult male who was pursuing a sting operation on behalf of a site known as "Perverted Justice." Morrison links to the Perverted Justice site. Perverted Justice ("PeeJ") is devoted to exposing internet predators. I found the site to be absolutely chilling. Perverted Justice posts the Instant Message and e-mails of converstation. You get to see the photos of normal looking men together with transcripts of their IMs. The transcripts show "grooming" strategies and the disgusting appetites of these perverts.

If you're a parent, you need to check out the site. Because of the problem of projection, I don't think that persons not sharing the orientation of these creeps could reasonably be expected to think that there actually are men who do nothing but plot and scheme and obsess over raping their children. This site shows that these predators exist.

I wonder about the legal issues involved in this site. Presumably, IMs are not confidential and if the "outing" is truthful, defamation should not be a viable cause of action. But if a mistake is made in identifying someone, the damage award would be crippling.

New Sport.

Fisking Sermons.

Borders and Unfit for Command.

My brother e-mailed this link which appears to be a bulletin on the website for the Borders union. If you go there, you will see various Borders' employees describe their guerilla war against the First Amendment, as part of which they hide Unfit for Command, tell customers that the book is not in stock and return loads of the book back to the publishers as "damaged." Admittedly there are a couple of employees who object to this guerilla war against the "wingnuts."

Here is the website for the union. If you track through this site, you will find that someone has attempted to bar the general public.

Hey, just like they're doing with Conservative books at the bookstore.

General Loan and Eddie Adams - A moment when "nuance" might have mattered.

Lane Core has a moving post on the forgotten "backstory" of a famous photo.

Target tells Salvation Army to "Ho Ho Ho Yourself."

David Morrison posts that the Target mega-chain has told the Salvation Army that they will no longer allow bell-ringers on their property. Morrison provides an e-mail address for folks to let Target know that playing Scrooge will not help it to compete with Wal-Mart.

"When your adversary is making off-the-wall accusations about you, the chances are he's probably doing whatever he is accusing you of doing."

That's my Fourth Ineluctable Truth in the practice of law. In other words, if your opponent is accusing you of, say, hiding documents, it's time to push for the documents he's hiding. After years of pondering why this heuristic principle is ineluctable, I've decided that it stems from the psychological tendency we have of "projecting" our intentional states onto others: other minds are a mystery, the only mind we have concrete knowledge of is our own, and therefore we "map" our intentional states onto other people's behaviors.

Other minds are such a mystery that the problem has its own name, to wit "The Problem of Other Minds." The problem is that while we experience our own minds, that's a "one of a kind" experience: we can never experience another's mind. We see the behavior of other's and we make a leap of logic that other people's behavior reflects a mental state similar to our own when we engage in similar behavior. While this assumption generally works, it can go woefully awry, particularly when one is dealing with psychopaths, schizophrenics or even others with less alarming conditions.

Which leads to this chilling, or humorous, or strange advertisement described in the American Thinker where MoveOn.Org has taken a full-page ad in the New York Times which claims that CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls are faulty because Mr. Gallup is an "evangelical Christian."

Mark Shea offers that this is another example of "projection." The good folks at MoveOn.Org would manipulate data in a good cause, and, so, they honor their adversaries as having identical ethics. Shea cites Titus 1:15 as follows:

"To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure. In fact, both their minds and consciences are corrupted."

Interesting summary of the conclusions of modern philosophy.

Earthquake

Ith provids a link to the USGS site which has a nifty earthquake map.

Another advantage the blogs have over MSM is response time. If I wanted any information from the Fresno Bee site, I would be waiting until tomorrow.

Earthquake!!!

Definite shaking at 10:16 a.m.

Where was the epicenter?

Hurricanes and Earthquakes. Hey, maybe the fundies are right.

Update:

Ith, who is in Monterey, and is the closest non-Fresno Bear Flag blogger to Fresno "as the crow flies", says it was "6" with the epicenter near Parkfield.

I'm going to e-mail someone I know in Paso Robles to find out how that town rode out the quake.

Way to go Jimmy, Bill.

North Korea turns plutonium fuel rods into weapons.

That treaty process is really effective, particularly when the treaty is with ideological mass murderers.

What was it about North Vietnam's breach of the Paris Peace Accords that you didn't understand?

Ha! Yankee Ingenuity Triumphs over Decadent Euro-Socialism.

Thanks to someone 'googling' Peter + Bradley, I learned that due to the American work-effort, and, of course, all of you, I am now the highest rated "Peter Bradley" on Google, sending this Labour Party hack to fourth place. On the other hand, in some weird kind of "separated at birth" phenomenon, this Peter Bradley specializes in Sci Fi and Fantasy art.

If this last dude's a redhead, Dad's got some 'splaining to do.

The end of the ancien regime.

Victor Davis Hanson - the one bit of national reputation that Fresno is not ashamed to acknowledge - notes that a host of liberal institutions - the media, the UN, academia - are in trouble, and all from the same root cause:

If we wonder why CBS is in trouble, why no one trusts the universities or the U.N., or why the Democrats may soon lose the Senate, the House, the presidency, and the Supreme Court, the answer has a lot to do with arrogant hypocrisy — the idea that how one lives need have nothing to do with what one professes, that idealistic rhetoric can provide psychological cover for privilege and preference, and that rules need not apply for those self-proclaimed as smarter and nicer than the rest of us. But none of us — none — get a pass simply because we claim that we are more moral, educated, or sophisticated than most.

Fresno Alert.

Jay Manifold posts on a group that picketed a Billy Graham organizational meeting for being soft on sin in Fresno. In Fresno?!?!

We've got heinous murders, a dump that's a historic monument and 40% of the manufacturing of crack/crank in the nation. Now we've got clowns who think Billy Graham is a threat to the national soul?

Terrific.

Biased Media Alert No. CLXIV.

[Via Relapsed Catholic.] Reuters Admits Appeasing Terrorists.

The Culture of Death.

Patterico posts on what appears to be the conclusion of the Terry Schiavo matter.

Let me amplify Patterico's point. I think that the evidence supporting the Court's determination that Terry expressed a desire to have life-support terminated under the situation she finds herself now to be in does not meet the "clear and convincing evidence" standard required by the law. Except under the most unusual circumstances, people in their 20s (or 30s or 40s) simply do not idly mention in passing their views about being incapacitated. (I took a Biotechnology and the Law class in my 20s and so I personally know how unusual those circumstances have to be, i.e., you have to be confronted from the outside with the possibility of your own mortality.) That the evidence is put forward by a person with a vested financial and personal interest in seeing the termination of Terry's life should by itself raise enough doubts to prevent it from clearing the "clear and convincing evidence" standard.

What we are seeing in Terry's case is that our society and its legal aristocracy have invested deeply in the "Culture of Death." The notion is that since Terry's life is by rational judges as not worth living, it ought to be ended. This pragmatic rationale flips the presumption that nominally exists in Florida law which asserts that every doubt should be exercised in favor of life, and is just one more step down a slope, at the end of which people will say "how could we have known."

The Good Faith Defense.

Beldar inks an incisive essay on why Dan Rather's "good faith defense" is subject to a motion for a directed verdict.

"Given his frequent boasts that he knows how to reach out to America's allies, it's remarkable how often he feels the need to insult them: Britain, Australia, and now free Iraq."

Mark Steyn on graceless politicians and clueless journalists.

More AP "News."

Powerline posts on another obvious bit of partisanship at AP. (Recall that AP was responsible for ginning up the fake "evil Republicans boo stricken former President" story back before we learned that CBS was in the business of using poorly fabricated documents and suspicious partisan sources.

But there's no bias. Surely, this is probably an oversight. Except that the "reporter" is married to a person identifed on the Kerry website as a supporter.

Early Birthday Present.

Lileks pushes the geek-o-meter with an extensive post on the music of the classic Star Trek episode with the death machine.

Incidently, my "value added" is to point out that that episode was an homage to Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.

There, that ought to fairly well peg the meter.

Anyhow, my brother grooves on Star Trek and science fiction musical clues, so Happy Birthday, Dave.

Cool Site.

Red State/Blue State Electoral College Map.

The Amazing Power of the Blogosphere unveils the mujer de misterio behind the Killian memos.

The Mighty Barrister scoops CBS.

You know his life as a useful tool is ended ....

When Slate reveals that "Rather isn't a liberal hack. He's bonkers."

Really?

Rathergate begins to look like Watergate.

Balloon Juice lays out the suspicious-looking connections between the Kerry campaign and CBS.

There was a time when brave journalists would have pursued these leads into the fetid and dangerous swamps of investigative journalism. (Cue music for "All the President's Men.")

On the other hand, remembering that Watergate was a "third-rate burglary" which occurred during the campaign and became important because it involved the election of the president, CBS may want to switch streams and start campaigning as actively against Kerry's election as they've been campaigning for his election. Presumably, if Bush wins, this brouhaha declines to kerfuffle status.

Condemning Jimmy Swaggart.

Eugene Volokh calls upon Christians to condemn Jimmy Swaggart for saying that he would murder any homosexual who "looked at him the wrong way."

OK. Fine. Here it is. Jimmy Swaggart is a poor example for a Christian. Wrath is a sin. Murder is a sin. Being homosexual is not a sin. My church teaches that homosexuals "must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity."

Volokh's call for Christians to ceremonially condemn Swaggart leaves me of two minds. On the one hand, I agree that communities must police their own. Consequently, I have condemned Catholics and Conservatives who traffic in anti-semitism or political extremism.

On the other hand, I have to wonder why Jimmy Swaggart is my problem. Last time I checked Jimmy Swaggart trafficked in virulent anti-Catholic canards, including proclaiming prior to his downfall that "Catholics were not Christian." [A view I found to be alarmingly current with a former partner who explained his position that Catholics were "transitional pagans" without ever once considering that his calm, settled analysis might be even a little insulting to me. Truly, it was a bizarre exchange.]

So, I have to consider Volokh's demand to exhibit an element of stereotyping. Apparently all Christians look alike, even where one Christian would deny the other that status.

But, hey, it's easy to condemn Jimmy Swaggart, and kind of fun.

Update: Bill Cork makes the point that Jimmy Swaggart has been completely marginalized since his public denial and then confession of sin, which is kind of great to know because he was a major pain in his day.

Second Update: Part of the problem here obviously involves the degree of importance that you assign to Jimmy Swaggart. As Professor Volokh notes in his follow-up, if you view Swaggart to fill the same niche as Lyndon LaRouche, the need to condemn his outrageous statements becomes de minimis. Obviously, I do, and the demand to condemn Swaggart struck me as being vaguely insulting. It seemed as if the buried point was that Swaggart represented a real point of view in the "Christian Community." That approach - which is clearly not what the Professor intended - smacks of a monstrous interbreeding of "straw man" and "guilt by association" arguments, such as demanding that Democrats issue regular condemnation of the abortion policies of Communist China.

Update Re: Well, if you put it that way... Southern Appeal's condemnation is way better than mine.

Also, it appears that the "demand that Democrats condemn abortion policies of Communist China" strategy is not so far-fetched as Andrew Sullivan is equating this anti-Catholic, marginalized, whore-chasing bigot with the "forces that this president is riding toward victory on."

How about hearing John F. Kerry condemn abortion policies in Communist China? Don't you think he ought to distance himself from that?

Geez, get a life.

Calvinist Update: Bear-flagger Michael Williams responds to Professor Volokh's demand.

The good news is that he condemns Jimmy Swaggart as "hideously depraved."

The bad news is that, apparently, every single one of us is "hideously depraved" and "deserving death as our punishmnent."

Boy, those Protestants sure know how to bring the mood down a notch. Can we just lighten it up a bit and remember that we're all created in the image and likeness of God and that God's creations are good.

By the way, is anyone actually defending Swaggart anywhere on the web?

A short course in Natural Law.

[Via Mark Shea.] Father Bryce Sibley, who is, inter alia, a Communio Circle organizer in Louisiana, provides a post on his debate on abortion, which underscores the sad state of intellectual discourse in contemporary society. On the other hand, his outline of his opening speech notes is worth the price of admission.

Rather Interview.

Man Without Qualities has a wmv file of the softball CBS interview of Dan Rather on the memo fiasco. Musil is absolutely correct in describing the interview as "painful", "unwatchable", "supine" and communicating the idea that the pretty blonde journalist knows that her job is gone if she lays a glove on the CBS icon.

CBS Concedes that "memo story was a mistake."

The CBS Website acknowledges that the "Bush Memo Story was a 'mistake.' Dan Rather issued an 'apology' for the 'mistake in judgment'.

Unfortunately, Rather also claims that the mistake was made in 'good faith.' And there's the rub.

Rather has a history of making similar "mistakes." These "mistakes" always seem to favor a particular political viewpoint. He also has a history of obnoxiously going out of his way to editorialize in suposedly objective news story in such a way as to favor one political party, such as when he reiterated that President Bush was "selected and not elected." Likewise, note the gratuitous smear at Foxnews when he was subjected to the same "ambush interview" he helped to perfect (which I still consider to be an obnoxious tactic):

VIDEO CLIP [DAN RATHER AND FOX REPORTER]:
DAN RATHER [CBS NEWS]: Glad to be in Dallas. Glad to meet you. Glad to see you're with Fox.
REPORTER: Glad to have you back.
RATHER: Thank you. Always a pleasure to be back.
REPORTER: Do you feel like you were duped at all?
RATHER: I'm very glad to see you. Do you feel like you were duped at all, by the way, working at Fox as you do, you feel that way?
REPORTER: There's times where I have.
RATHER: There are times when I have as well. Nice to see you; take care of yourself. Thank you, hope your head's OK. Take care of yourselves; good to see you. Bye-bye.

What's with this cliche and gratuitous shot about Foxnews? Could it be that Rather is endorsing the false notion that Fox is a creature of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy? Is there any question about whether the most famous talking head journalist sitting in the chair sanctified by Walter Cronkite has not declared which side he's enlisted in the "culture war"?

The importance of the "Rathergate" affair is that it, along with the "AP Boo" story, instantiates the moment when media bias could no longer be shrugged off as an artifact of overworked imaginations.

The difference between treason and patriotism.

Captain's Quarters posts on John Kerry's sister's comments to the Australian public during an Australian election that the "Howard Government's support for the US in Iraq has made them a bigger target for international terrorists."

Is this merely an exercise of free speech or does it implicate something more sinister?

As officially the last Catholic on Earth to discover G. K. Chesterton, I was stunned to read this passage in Orthodoxy:

A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it.

Claiming a privilege of "free speech" is not an explanation. What exactly was Diana Kerry's purpose in making the claim she made? The prima facie answer isn't that she has a dispassionate concern for the good of the Australian electorate. It's not her country. Given her stake in the United States, what with her brother running for President and all, one has to suspect that she's using her freedom to have some kind of effect on her country. But as Chesterton notes:

Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

Diana Kerry was not warning her country "from a cliff." She was in fact using "the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag."

Chesterton would have called that kind of thing "treason." Certainly, the rest of us are permitted to question Diana Kerry's patriotism and take some umbrage at her efforts to do the rest of us some injury.

Great! This kind of thing is bound to bring my law firm more business!

[Via Noli Irritare.] Get Religion posts on a "Wiccan/Methodist" services at Trinity United Methodist Church in Austin, Texas. While this appears to be Trinity's effort to put the "Open Hearts, Open Doors, Open Minds" slogan into effort, it really underscores Chesterton's point that those who believe in nothing end up believing everything.

Putting aside the fact that "Wiccanism" has the historical depth of linoleum, this kind of thing, and the refusal of the UMC hiearchy to protect appropriate docrinal boundaries, is part of the reason that the UMC is hemmoraging members like a severed artery. Furthermore, since the very last thing that a Methodist of, let's say, thirty years ago would have expected would have been interfaith services with nature-worshipping witches with the intellectual pedigree of my cat, this kind of thing underscores the moral imperative of allowing local churches to cut the tie with a denomination that has itself fallen out of trust with its traditions as was affirmed in this well written decision.

Arrr, me hearties...

Don't forget, today is Talk Like a Pirate Day.

"Words written on the transient phosphorescence of a computer screen."

Edward Mendelson sent me a nice e-mail about our "common interests" together with this link to an essay he wrote which reflects on the significance of linkages between texts, specifically texts in the Bible and on the World Wide Web. This paragraph is worth considering:

The vision of coherence and connectedness that gave rise to biblical cross-references can plausibly be credited with one of the greatest social transformations of all time: the 19th-century abolition of slavery. The movement to ban first the slave trade and then slavery itself in the British Empire came from Quakers and other religious-minded men and women who understood the link between Exodus and Corinthians to mean that they were morally obliged to repeat the work of Moses as long as any individual people were enslaved, that every individual -- not only one or another group of people -- had been promised liberation by God. The slaves themselves, in their campaign for freedom, found in this connection both a promise of deliverance and an unanswerable rebuke to the slaveholders, who so manifestly failed to practice the religion they professed. To accept slavery was to sign up with Pharaoh. To fight against it was to obey the same imperatives that Moses obeyed.

I've never thought about that possibility, but it makes sense. The human mind and human reason works by analogy. Making an analogy accessible - such as by the cross-references which I routinely ignore in my Bible - creates new ways of thinking about commonplace things.

It was a very nice and polite correspondence, which highlights an attractive feature of the internet - the opportunity we have to communicate with those people who share our interests and have insights we lack.

However, by the process of linkage and reflection, the letter also highlights a darker feature of the internet. If you go here, you will see that I said some uncharitable things about Mr. Mendelson's recent essay at PC magazine, and by extension about him, things which on reconsideration I regret and which Mr. Mendelson could properly take personal offense over.

The darker side of the internet, and e-mail communications as well, is that it allows instant unreflective reaction and it permits its users to depersonalize the subjects of their communication. I know that I've been insulted when I have been referred to as a "right wingnut." The people writing that don't know me and since the subject involved my fairly moderate views on the "structure of scientific revolutions" I felt disrespected on a very personal level.

This aspect of internet communications is a constant of the modern world. We all send e-mails that reflect the kind of things that we would say in person. But our verbal expressions are truly transient. The things we put on the internet - either on our web sites or via our e-mails - can truly live forever.

I didn't know Mr. Mendelson when I wrote the post. I don't know him today. But I do know that he is a person and that my ethical system considers detraction, rash judgment and calumny to be violations of our duty to respect the reputation of others, (Catechism section 2477.). I do sincerely regret my transgressions and thank Mr. Mendelson for opportunity to remember where the appropriate lines need to be drawn.

A further point is in order about the internet world. It is not inconceivable that Mr. Mendelson received volumes of "hate mail." Things are tense right now. Conservatives like me have spent a lifetime seeing blatant media bias and being told that we're simply hallucinating the things we truly see.

Nonetheless, we are not called in this world to expect perfect justice. We are, in fact, required to do works of charity to our fellow imperfect human beings. A first order of charity might be to remember that the people who put up essays and posts on the internet are human beings just as we are. The second order of charity may be to reflect on a question asked by Mark Shea about a recent political broadside by Garrison Keillor:

What is the good that he sees and is fighting for that we would do well not to ignore?

That's not a bad thing to think about in the moment between feeling an emotional reaction and issuing a response. No one is given the entire possession of the truth. Since there is nothing more sublimely embarassing than venting your spleen about the lies of your opponent only to realize one day that your opponent was right, we would all do well to ask Shea's question before we send off that hate mail or engage in the seductive practice of detraction, rash judgment or calumny.

How to forge a document - Part 3.

The Washington Post provides a detailed side-by-side comparison of the forged TANG documents and authentic TANG documents. In my experience, the "forged" documents are clearly revealed to be forged because of the myriad of small discrepancies in the format of dates, titles and headings. Here's my experience.

Years ago, I had a case where the opposing party had the remarkable ability to furnish a letters purportedly written years before to a person who was no longer subject to subpeona by virtue of having died. These confirming documents were crippling to my client's case.

I thought that there was something odd about the content of the letters. They were just too good to be true. So, I subpoened the former secretary for the letter's putative author. I showed her the letters and asked if she had typed them, since the letters indicated that she was the secretary who had typed the letter. She said "no." No equivocation. No "I don't remember." She forthrightly said "no."

I was flabbergasted. I had expected the usual round of "I don't remember because it was so long ago and I have typed thousands of letters since then." I asked her how she could be so definite in her testimony. She pointed to the address line where the the abbreviation for the state had a lower case letter followed by a period, for example, "Wa.", instead of two capital letters, such as "WA". She said she would never have typed the former. This was such a small discrepancy, which the true author certainly never even noticed when the documents were being created, but it was strong evidence that the provenance of the letters was fictitious.

Incidently, for readers under 30 - who might be interested in "re-creating" accurate looking documents for the period prior to 1977 - state abbreviation were originally in the format "Ca." or "Fla."; the two capital letters format came out sometime during the 1970's to facilitate sorting at the Post Office. The suggestion here is that the author of the documents probably was an older citizen who hadn't done the physical work for typing correspondence since the late 70's, but here I speculate. (See, history can be practical.)

There are small, unconscious habits in any complex physical process. People are not in perfect control over those habits. It's the little things that are often the most revealing.

Rathergate - A word of caution about the new defense strategy.

CBS and CBS defenders appear to floating a new spin. Their argument seems to be something like the Memos are fake but accurate." Apparently, the argument will be that someone knows what the truth was and, to ensure that the truth not get lost in the details, "reconstructed" documents which are substantively true or which actually existed before being destroyed.

Take it from someone who has "been there, done that and gotten the T-shirt" on at least three cases where I was submarined by forged, altered or backdated documents. That tactic just never works. (I've actually used a version of the "the documents may be fake but they are accurate" argument.) It's amazing but no matter how compelling the independent witnesses are, no matter how strong the corroborating documents are, no matter how strong the logic of your position is, no matter where the equity of the case stands, once a judge figures that your client was involved in constructing a forged document you lose.

Period. Paragraph.

It's an absolute death sentence for your client's case.

I guess the judicial logic is that one thing they can be certain of is that if your client forged a document, your client is a liar and can't be trusted for anything. Also, courts are simply unwilling to accept mitigating reasons for forgery. People don't create forgeries in the heat of the moment. Forgeries require premeditation. And if your cl;ient can engage in that kind of mendacious premeditation, what the heck else has your mendacious client concealed or lied about? The usual easy-going extension of the benefit of the doubt goes right out the window.

Moreover, let's face it, if your client has forged a document, he's got to have a reason for doing so. Courts usually reach the conclusion that the reason is that his underlying case is spurious.

I think there's also an implicit penalty feature underlying the reaction of judges to forged documents. It's kind of accepted that parties spin, fabricate, embroidery and otherwise engage in various kinds of re-creation of memory. That's all pretty much par for course. But to actually and premeditatedly forge signatures or backdate documents seems to go so far beyond the rules of the game that judicial horse-back justice requires the imposition of a death sentence.

One of the ironic things is that the forgeries are usually unnecessary. The underlying facts typically go a very long way to making out the client's case. It's just that the client feels that the documents might give the case that extra oomph to get it past the finish line.

Just a few reflections.

Update: Beldar who is a practising Texas attorney definitely channels the judicial attitude I was alluding to above:

Nothing — not even Lt. George W. Bush using TANG aircraft to traffic in cocaine sales to minors — could justify what CBS News has done.

Yup. That's what I was talking about.

Of Charity, Chastity and Commmunity.

Christopher Blosser offers some words of support for David Morrison. As Christopher points out, Morrison is the author of "Beyond Gay" and a founder and moderator of the Courage mailing list. As Christopher also notes, Courage is "an internet community "for men and women living with some degree of same sex attraction who wish to do so chastely" [in conformity to the teachings of the Catholic Church]."

Morrison has come under attack from New Oxford Review for advising Christians to show charity to their homosexual neighbors. New Oxford Review apparently views that kind of thing as endorsing sin. It even has a passage from the Bible to support its position (As if that kind of approach is going to have any effect on a Catholic population. I mean it's not like they're quoting from Aquinas, after all.)

Morrison makes his case at his blog. The essay he writes, and the comments following it, are worth reading.

But, as one of the hundreds of readers who are described by Morrison as "his seventeen readers," I've long found Morrison worth reading on a regular basis. Because of his background and ministry, he's one of the few writers I'm aware of who is dealing with the subject of what it means to be unmarried and to aspire to fidelity to the teachings of the Church. Although Morrison often writes from the perspective of his experience with "same sex attraction", the issues he addresses are directly transferable to people with "different sex attraction." Heterosexuals are not excused from the moral call to chastity, however much that heterosexuals may want to turn a blind eye to the moral significance - from an orthodox Christian standpoint, the "perversion" - of the pre-marital or extra-marital sex which is celebrated in our sex saturated culture. For that matter, the Five Goals of Courage are a good starting point for heterosexuals who seek to "live chaste lives in accordance with the Roman Catholic Church's teachings" on sexuality.

And that last observation leads to an insight which would blow the minds of the writers at the New Oxford Review. Morrison's ministry is not limited only to those living with some degree of "same sex attraction." The example and insights of Morrison, and those courageous others who find a way to live a life of chastity and dignity in the face of their "same sex attraction," provides a prophetic call to straights, normal folks, heteros who think that their own promiscuity is no big deal since, after all, they are normal, straight and hetero.

I think that this underscores the thesis that I was exploring several posts below in my discussion of Augustine and Victorinus. Because Christianity is not mere assent to intellectual propositions, no one can be a Christian in isolation. Christianity requires a community, or an Ecclesia - a church. The Catholic community recognizes that those who live with "same sex affection" are human beings who are entitled to full human dignity (albeit homosexual acts themselves are "disordered.") By incorporating those living with "same sex affection" into the Catholic community, the Catholic community incorporates a powerful voice and reminder that the virtue of chastity is a virtue of the community, not simply a taboo to be imposed on outcasts and pariahs.


Update: Mark Windsor provides his reflections on the subject of "loving the sinner and hating the sin." Mark's post is well worth reading.

Update 2: Some things leave me amazed. Christine at Laudem Gloria writes on her reflections about David Morrison's essay. What leaves me amazed is the fact that Christine reviews criminal appeals for her state's highest court of appeal and makes it her habit to pray for the sould of those defendants who case appears before her, notwithstanding the obvious guilt of some of those defendants. I'm not sure I could do that. I'm fairly sure that the thought of that habit would never have occurred to me.

Methodist Trust Clause Decision.

A Reformed Listserv sees an opportunity.

The Adversary System.

Litigation is popularly known as an "adversary system." It's generally accepted within that system that each side will strive mightily to prevail. Although parties may not knowingly present perjured testimony, it's also the case that they are not required to bring out damaging evidence.

This leads to a certain games-manship in litigation, particularly when it comes to experts. For example, experts will be consulted by a party solely for the purpose of "burning" them for use by the other side, the general rule being that experts are a form of an attorney's work product and the opposing party cannot ethically have ex parte communications with such experts. Alternatively, experts who would otherwise provide damaging testimony can be "buried" by the expedient of not designating them for trial, at which point the expert is forever relegated to the status of untouchable work product.

Similarly, the "scope" of an expert's engagement might be oddly restricted, such as when an expert is retained to offer a narrowly defined opinion and told to ignore other - potentially relevant - areas of expert opinion.

We expect such tactics in litigation. The system relies on the adversarial process to arrive at the truth. It works in litigation because both sides are typically evenly matched and similar incentive and ability to engage in necessary discovery. The rules of litigation often go to great lengths to ensure that discovery is equally available to the rich and to the poor.

When I read the tactics of CBS as reported in the Kerry Spot I see nothing less than the ethos of the "adversary system" at work. Yet, who is CBS's adversary? The American public? The truth? The Republican party?

Ho Hum. I pointed out that Dan Rather's expert couldn't authenticate the TANG documents four days before the Washingon Post.

On September 10, 2004, I wrote:

Putting aside photoshopping a signature into a document, which could have occurred here, there are two ways to forge a signature. One way is to trace over the original signature. The other is to practice and "let fly" freehand. A real expert would insist on having originals of both the questioned signature and of an undisputed exemplar signature in order to compare whether the pen strokes in both signatures match up.

In short, CBS and the CBS expert - Marcel Matley - is blowing smoke insofar as he is being used to suggest that there is any expert support thqat the documents are genuine.

On September 14, 2004, the Washington Post finally got around to the following:

The lead expert retained by CBS News to examine disputed memos from President Bush's former squadron commander in the National Guard said yesterday that he examined only the late officer's signature and made no attempt to authenticate the documents themselves.

"There's no way that I, as a document expert, can authenticate them," Marcel Matley said in a telephone interview from San Francisco. The main reason, he said, is that they are "copies" that are "far removed" from the originals.

Gosh,I must be either lucky or gifted.

Actually, I'm neither. But I have been involved in cases where document experts were used. There's nothing like trying to think your way around an expert to learn the limitations of an expert's expertise. Moreover, in litigation, your knowledge is tested by the rigors of cross-examination on the spot and there is no room to spin.

CBS's shabby scam fell apart so quickly because the internet is chock-a-block full of people like me. We have folks with background in typography, military service, word processing etc. etc. Each of whom brings some eclectic bit of information to the interwoven threads of the internet. We're seeing the opening of a new world of information. The next five years should be interesting.

"Then do walls make Christians?"

Bill Cork links to a pair of columns by Michael Coren. In one, Coren recants his prior harsh review of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Coren writes that watching The Passion in private on DVD has caused him to connect to the sacramentality of Gibson's movie. He writes:

Months later, I have watched Mel Gibson's version of the death of Jesus Christ on the newly released DVD. I still believe that this work should have been different in various ways. Yet now I have seen, or allowed myself to see, what lies at the very core of The Passion. The Eucharist.

The epicentre, the quintessence of the Christian faith, was no symbolic act but a literal instruction. "Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you." And "Take this, all of you, and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all men so that sins may be forgiven."

What had been a barrier has now become a bridge. A connection between a broken, smashed and needy creature like me and his perfect and glorious creator. The great paradox of God. In so simple a matter as a wafer is the most wonderful gift in all the world. Given at a very great price indeed.

In the next column, Coren responds to readers with the confession Yes, I am a Roman Catholic. Coren writes:

As I write this column I realize that it is not only my spiritual life that may be affected. While I am hardly likely to become a pauper, it seems my income is going to take a beating. I do a great deal of speaking in evangelical churches and I fear that some of them may now cancel me, or decide not to book me in the future.

In fact one major speech, booked long ago, has already been thus treated. Let me emphasize that the person who contacted me from this particular Protestant organization was embarrassed by the cancellation and could not have been kinder.

There is nothing new under the sun. On the way home from court tonight I listened to a Teaching Company lecture on Book VIII of Augustine's Confessions.

In Book VIII Augustine spends a lot of time discussing the example of Victorinus. Victorinus was a very succesful rhetorician who lived during the age of Julian the Apostate. Victorinus was a secret Christian out of fear that his disclosure of his Christian faith would jeapardize his position as a teacher of rhetoric. When asked by his friends about his refusal to make a public confession of faith, Victorinus would quip "Then do walls make Christians?" Victorinus, frankly, knew that a public embrace of Christianity would spell the end of his career and his social position.

Yet, according to Augustine:

But he steadily gained strength from reading and inquiry, and came to fear lest he should be denied by Christ before the holy angels if he now was afraid to confess him before men. Thus he came to appear to himself guilty of a great fault, in being ashamed of the sacraments of the humility of thy Word, when he was not ashamed of the sacrilegious rites of those proud demons, whose pride he had imitated and whose rites he had shared. From this he became bold-faced against vanity and shamefaced toward the truth. Thus, suddenly and unexpectedly, he said to Simplicianus--as he himself told me--"Let us go to the church; I wish to become a Christian." Simplicianus went with him, scarcely able to contain himself for joy. He was admitted to the first sacraments of instruction, and not long afterward gave in his name that he might receive the baptism of regeneration. At this Rome marveled and the Church rejoiced. The proud saw and were enraged; they gnashed their teeth and melted away! But the Lord God was thy servant's hope and he paid no attention to their vanity and lying madness.

5. Finally, when the hour arrived for him to make a public profession of his faith--which at Rome those who are about to enter into thy grace make from a platform in the full sight of the faithful people, in a set form of words learned by heart--the presbyters offered Victorinus the chance to make his profession more privately, for this was the custom for some who were likely to be afraid through bashfulness. But Victorinus chose rather to profess his salvation in the presence of the holy congregation. For there was no salvation in the rhetoric which he taught: yet he had professed that openly. Why, then, should he shrink from naming thy Word before the sheep of thy flock, when he had not shrunk from uttering his own words before the mad multitude?

So, then, when he ascended the platform to make his profession, everyone, as they recognized him, whispered his name one to the other, in tones of jubilation. Who was there among them that did not know him? And a low murmur ran through the mouths of all the rejoicing multitude: "Victorinus! Victorinus!" There was a sudden burst of exaltation at the sight of him, and suddenly they were hushed that they might hear him. He pronounced the true faith with an excellent boldness, and all desired to take him to their very heart--indeed, by their love and joy they did take him to their heart. And they received him with loving and joyful hands.

Great story, but why was it necessary for Victorinus to make a public confession of faith? After all, do walls a Christian make?

According to the Teaching Company lecture, Augustine's answer was basically "yes." For Augustine, being a Christian was not a private exercise in holding to certain points of faith. Rather, being a Christian meant belonging to a Christian community and belonging to a community means really belonging, such as by standing up in public and stating one's membership.

In later chapters of Book VIII Augustine seems to make a radical shift to a theory of addiction. Augustine writes:

For this was what I was longing to do; but as yet I was bound by the iron chain of my own will. The enemy held fast my will, and had made of it a chain, and had bound me tight with it. For out of the perverse will came lust, and the service of lust ended in habit, and habit, not resisted, became necessity. By these links, as it were, forged together--which is why I called it "a chain"--a hard bondage held me in slavery.

Now, what's that doing following a discussion of Victorinus?

I think the answer is that Augustine believes that we are what we choose. Freedom for Augustine was not having the ability to make a choice between two things; rather, freedom is choosing the good and the true. People become what they choose. For Augustine, Victorinus' choice of Christianity became a habit which became a necessity which became freedom.

Victorinus figures prominently in the first part of Book VIII. By the end of Book VIII Augustine hears the voice of a child saying "tolle legis" - "pick up and read" - which we all know signals the sublime moment of his own conversion. Victorinus' example in other words is an important milestone on the road to Augustine's conversion because Augustine realized that the time for thought and study was over. That it was now the time to form habits.

Do walls make Christians? The Catholic answer has always been "yes" because no one can be a Christian in isolation by mere assent to a set of belief. Christians become Christians by being Christians. Christianity, therefore, requires a community. Sometimes a quarrelsome and disputatious community. Often a community of sinners and lousy failures like any other commmunity. But despite all that a community nonetheless, which is why this community should say "Welcome home, Michael."

Jungianism and Marriage.

My Communio group has two obsessions - well, ok, more than two if you include phenomonology - Jungianism and nuptiality. We're against the former and in favor of the latter.

Now, thanks to Santificarnos these two great topics come together in one essay.

True Values.

Rich Galen pens a moving piece on the things that really matters.

Who you gonna believe? The 'experts' or your lying eyes?

Add PC Magazine to the list of media sources with embedded moonbat leftists. Little Green Footballs and his commenters demolish a PC Magazine attempt to claim that the TANG memos might be - maybe could be - genuine.

One of the stunning things is that the PC Magazine writer, Edward Mendelson actually links to the far leftist blog The Daily Kos as an example of a "better informed perspective" before he claims that he is politically neutral.

What the heck is someone who doesn't have an investment in furthering the leftist position doing even knowing about the Daily Kos. Outside of the fever swamp of the radical left, that blogsite is hardly known. Mendelson didn't find the Daily Kos by accident and he didn't write his column out of an impartial desire to serve the truth. All of which probably explains how he could write such a bone-headed defense and underscores how the left has been undermined by its coordination with the media. As Mark Steyn observes:

After the 2002 election, I wrote, ''Remind me never to complain about 'liberal media bias' again. Right now, liberal media bias is conspiring to assist the Democrats to sleepwalk over the cliff.''

The media and the Democrats sustain each other's make-believe land. Dan Rather tells his staff, ''Kerry's told me there's nothing to this Swiftvet thing.'' Kerry tells his, ''Rather's assured me this Swiftvet story's going nowhere.''

George W. Bush ought to wake up every morning and thank the Lord the media aren't on his side.

Update: [Via The Ombudsgod] Illuminaria has done an awful lot of work to show that the type on the TANG memos were kerned, i.e., that they were not created on typewriters.

Another demonstration of the power of the blog.

File this under under Kerry Campaign/Media Bias/the Politics of Fear/Another Example of Susan Estrich's claim that the Democrats are too nice.

John Kerry tells supporters that he "won't stand" for Republicans suppressing minority voters.

Not, of course, that this is an example of the traditional Democrat smear that all Republicans are racists. Not that this is another example of the Democrats blatantly shoving the most toxic claim that can be made in modern American politics - that your opponent is a racist. Not that this is an attempt to pander to fear and irrational hatred in American politics.

Not that we would hear any critiques of this strategy from the MSM.

By the way, Chris Wallace on Foxnews made an observation on something that has been setting my teeth on edge for days. Wallace observed that Kerry's quip that "'W' stands for 'wrong'" is like saying "'P'" stands for 'pnuemonia.'"

Among other things, John F. Kerry clearly has a tin ear.

The Real Issue in the "TANG" documents.

Peter Duncan has a great website which neatly summarizes the facts on the CBS forged document fiasco.

Duncan is absolutley correct about what is at stake here. It's not whether George Bush completed his ANG requirements. That is small stuff compared to the fact that a major media outlet is systematically and intentionally trying to game the election with forged and fraudulent documents.

Methodist Trust Clause - Developments.

St. Luke's decision has implications for ECUSA according to Canon Law Institute.

Bush's Guard Service.

According to the Hill, President Bush met his service requirements.

No wonder there's no story here.

Authentication based on Photocopies.

NRO reports that the CBS authentication of the "Rathergate" documents was based on a review of photocopies.

Amazing!

I have been involved in cases with handwriting/document experts. The experts I have used insist on having the original in order to examine the sequence in which the various strokes that mkae up the signature were put down. Putting aside photoshopping a signature into a document, which could have occurred here, there are two ways to forge a signature. One way is to trace over the original signature. The other is to practice and "let fly" freehand. A real expert would insist on having originals of both the questioned signature and of an undisputed exemplar signature in order to compare whether the pen strokes in both signatures match up.

In short, CBS and the CBS expert - Marcel Matley - is blowing smoke insofar as he is being used to suggest that there is any expert support thqat the documents are genuine.

In the practice of law, everyone knows that there are some experts who can be counted on to supply congenial answers. These experts take a game-playing approach to their duties and feel that they are not constrained by any system of ethics other than the idea that they shouldn't get caught. These kinds of experts are referred to as "whores," as in "Dr. X is a defense whore." On which point, I always become a mite concerned when an expert writes an article on how to question witnesses so as to delay the trial "until the cavalry arrives."

Update: Mark Steyn does a merciless comparison of the Main Stream Media ("MSM") approach to the Swiftboat story and this story based on mysterious documents that are penned by a dead guy and disputed by his family members in light of Thomas Oliphant's vaunted standard of journalistic proof:

A few weeks ago, Thomas Oliphant of the Boston Globe was on PBS' ''Newshour'' explaining why the hundreds of swift boat veterans' allegations against John Kerry's conduct in Vietnam was unworthy of his attention. "The standard of clear and convincing evidence," he said, talking to Swiftvet John O'Neill as if he were a backward fourth-grader, ''is what keeps this story in the tabloids -- because it does not meet basic standards.''

Last week, we got a good idea of what Thomas Oliphant's ''basic standards'' are. Dan Rather and the elderly gentlemen at ''60 Minutes'' were all atwitter because they'd come into possession of some hitherto undiscovered memos relating to whether George W. Bush failed to show up for his physical in the War of 1812. The media had been flogging this dead horse all spring, but these newly ''discovered'' memos had jump-started the old nag just enough to get him on his knees long enough for the media to flog him all over again.

Steyn summarizes the comparison as follows:

Killian is no longer around to confirm his extraordinary Magic Typewriter, but his son denied the stuff was written by his dad, and his widow said her late husband never typed. So, on the one hand, we have hundreds of living veterans with chapter and verse on Kerry's fantasy Christmas in Cambodia, and, on the other hand, we have a guy who's been dead 20 years but is still capable of operating Windows XP. It took the savvy chappies at the Powerline Web site and Charles Johnson of ''Little Green Footballs'' about 20 minutes to spot the eerily 2004 look of the 1972 memo, and various Internet wallahs spent the rest of the day tracking down the country's leading typewriter identification experts.

Score this as another MSM "self-inflicted wound."

Rather the Source of the "Rathergate"Documents?

Powerline offers an educated guess about how obviously questionable documents could be put on the air with being vetted.

As Mark Shea is prone to observe, "sin makes you stupid." Sin makes you stupid because sin always involves a departure from truth. Sin involves substituting the world we want for the world as it exists. As Aristotle observed so many years ago virtues and vices are habits that form character and follow from character. A person who falls into the habit of sin will find themselves slowly and imperceptibly departing from truth into a cloud-cuckoo land which has no substantial contact with reality.

Pride is a sin. As The OmbudsGod notes Dan Rather is now insisting that he be believed because, well, he's Dan Rather. Sin makes you stupid and it appears that consistent with the Shea's Axiom, Dan Rather has completely lost touch with the objective reality where the rest of us live.

By the way, The OBG has a link to a site providing a visual depiction of the reasons for being very suspicious of the "newly-discovered" documents.

State of California will confiscate 75% of Punitive Damages Award.

SoCal Law Blog reports that California has enacted a statute on punitive damages.

Lawsuits filed after August 16, 2004 which are reduced to a final judgment by July 1, 2006 will have a unique tax applied. Senate Bill SB 1102 requires that if such judgments include a punitive damages, a new trust set up by the State shall receive seventy five percent (75%) of the punitive damages award.

This enactment completely slid under the radar screen. I didn't know it until I read SoCal's post, and I've spoken to several attorneys who likewise haven't heard of this radical piece of legislation.

I think that this pretty much spells the end of punitive damage awards in California. This is effectively a 75% tax on punitive damages award. (Actually, punitive damages would be taxed at a higher effective tax rate since the 25% left to plaintiffs would then be taxed as income.) As a plaintiff's attorney, I would have very little incentive in spending my time and money in a nasty fight over punitives, and the inclusion of a request for punitives does lead to nasty fights.

Moreover, punitive damages do not collect themselves. Punitive damages are not paid for by insurance and they cannot legally be made the subject of indemnification agreements. I would be extremely reluctant to spend my time or money in collection proceedings working for the government so that the government could 75%, my client could receive 2/3s of 25% less costs, and I could receive 1/3 of 25% (and then turn around and pay 40% of the recovery back to the government as taxes.)

Plucky Rebel Alliance attacking Big Media Death Star.

CBS may have used forged documents to smear Bush. And the forgery is one that would raise questions in the mind of any person with experience typing in the era before word processors.

If this story bears up, then CBS should be discredited as being anything other than a house organ for liberal causes.

Kerry Campaign is the Thrall of Clinton.

Rich Galen explains how the recent "shake-up" of the Kerry campaign has resulted in the "layering" of every Kerry person with a Clinonista. According to Galen, " If you are layered you get to keep your title, but someone else gets to do your job and make the decisions you used to make." Galen also explains something that the talking heads didn't think was important to discuss - who leaked the story that, prior to his surgery, Clinton spent 90 minutes lecturing Kerry "like a guidance counselor scolding an underperforming student?"

War and Remembrance - American Vets Discuss John Kerry.

[Via Mark Shea.] This will be absolutely devestating to Kerry's presidential ambitions if it gets more air time. A site called Stolen Honor has Media Player oral histories provided by different POWs with respect to Kerry and his claims.

For example, former POW James Warner talks about his treatment in Vietnamese custody and how, after being repeatedly told by the Vietnamese that he was a "war criminal", he was confronted with Kerry's public testimony that American servicemen were in fact war criminals. Warner makes several key points, including the fact that Kerry's call for unilateral withdrawal would have led to the execution of American POWs, if that policy demand had been acted upon. Warner also notes that Kerry's public position amounted to an abandonment of his "band of brothers."

Thomas J. Sterling makes a damning point about the claim of an American policy of atrocities. Sterling points out that there were tremendous efforts to avoid the targeting of schools and hospitals, which rules of engagement were used by the Communists to inflict casualties on American troops. Sterling notes that Jane Fonda gullibly accepted the Communists' claim that anti-aircraft guns were not situated at hospitals at a time when he was in a hospital and could see the AA that Fonda was telling America werent' there.

I don't think we Americans have been fully allowed to understood the barbarity of the treatment of our POWs by the Communists. Like visual images of 9/11, Americans have been sheltered from the truth of the torture inflicted on our pilots so that we don't become angry. I know that until Penner forced me to see Return with Honor, a truly moving film about American POWs in Hanoi - something I strongly resisted because Vietnam is such a depressing topic - I didn't have a real understanding of what had been done to our POWs. The movie was depressing, and it was inspirational to think that these Americans had endured such horrors with such honor because of their love of their country. It's a powerful and painful movie.

I think one of the most effective things we can do to help our understanding of what Kerry's testimony meant to our Vets is to watch Return to Honor and then play a tape of Kerry's testimony before Congress.

O'NEILL: You're screaming because you can't afford the truth, that's why you're screaming...

Speaking of incoherent hatred, check out this transcript of James Carville descending into petty abuse and incoherent ranting in an "interview" with John O'Neill of the Swiftboat Vets for Truth. Of course, this doesn't qualify as hatred or meanness worthy of navel gazing introspection by the mainstream press. I remember hearing something vague about it, but it received no where near the attention that Zell Miller's comparatively temperate interview with Chris Matthews received. This part of the exchange is a gem:

O'NEILL: Because most -- a good deal of what you're saying is not the truth.

CARVILLE: Oh, it's not?

O'NEILL: With respect to my involvement with John Kerry, there are more than 60 people that served with John Kerry that contributed to this book. There are 250...

CARVILLE: I'm talking about Corsi...

O'NEILL: Just a second here.

CARVILLE: I didn't ask you about that.

NOVAK: Let him answer.

CARVILLE: He won't answer the question because he can't. He comes on here (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a presidential candidate, he can't answer the question. What about Mr. Corsi? What about Corsi, Mr. O'Neill, answer for your co-author and your friend of 30 years?

O'NEILL: I understand why you're screaming, you're screaming...

CARVILLE: I want you to answer for it.

O'NEILL: You're screaming because you can't afford the truth, that's why you're screaming...

CARVILLE: You can't afford -- and you can't answer for Corsi. You never met John Kerry. You never met him. I've got no use for this man.

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

NOVAK: Lanny Davis...

CARVILLE: Take over, Lanny. Man can't answer a question.

(LAUGHTER)

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

ROBERT NOVAK, CO-HOST: Lanny -- Lanny Davis...

CARVILLE: Take over, Lanny. The man can't answer a question.

NOVAK: If you will shut up, I will ask him a question.

CARVILLE: Answer a question. The man can't answer a question.

And this:

NOVAK: I'm going to ask you a question.

The whole answer to this book -- I've seen you shouting on other shows. I've seen James shouting disgracefully. And this is James' most disgraceful performance on this show.

(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)

NOVAK: And I say that to my co-host.

If you read the transcript, Carville doesn't allow O'Neill to answer a single question.

60 Day Window Period Closes Down Political Speech by Unions and Incorporated Entities.

The Command Post has the story.

We live in an Alice-in-Wonderland World. This regulation involves political speech which should be entitled to the highest level of protection. The Constitution, after all, does say that "Congress shall make no law ....abridging the freedom of speech...."

Political speech is simply the life-blood of democracy. It's not like it involves a core value like "virtual child pornography" or slander, like calling someone's mother a prostitute. Those issues are easily seen to be protected by the Constitution. Why, when the Founding Father's were framing the First Amendment, they clearly had in mind the necessity of protecting Larry Flynt's business fortunes. They couldn't have intended that people could engage in spirited, unregulated and messy discussion of public issues, like, say, who should run the country.

Yet because John McCain and the Good Government types decided that political speech was "messy" and "unregulated" and "hateful", and we get this droit de seigneur by the political class against outsiders.

Thank you, John McCain.

"Homelessness on the Rise under Bush" Alert.

Watching a Democratic strategist on Fox I've seen another example of another nostalgic Democratic "talking point" making a return from exile since 1991 - the jobs created under Bush are "poor quality." Remember the great economic expansion under Reagan and Bush during the '80's? Remember how media talking heads would run down all the new jobs being created as nothing more than jobs at McDonalds? Of course, during the Clinton era this claim was quietly buried. It would appear that no jobs created under Clinton were in the no-benefits/minmum wage category. I've seen this hit and run sneer being subtly laced in other venues. I guess we should expect a lot more of this kind of thing before November.

Kafka Alert.

MT Politics links to this story by Shawn Macomber, a writer for the American Spectator, who was incarcerated with leftie protestors despite cooperating with the police and showing his press credentials.

While the NYPD is to be commended for not letting the protesters monkey-wrench democracy, this story is absurd. How could the NYPD not release the guy who wasn't wearing grimy "F*** Bush!" with press credential at the time of the arrest? Was it some cops idea of a gag on a guy with a suit?

Archbishop Romero's killing results in verdict.

This story strikes me as odd on so many levels. The Fresno Bee reports that relatives of El Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero obtained a verdict of $7 million compensatory and $10 million punitives from Judge Wanger, Eastern District of California, in a case venued here in Fresno. Romero was assassinated in 1980. Raul Julia played Romero in the movie of the same name.

The defendant was unrepresented and did not attend the trial. Apparently, the purpose of the lawsuit was to obtain grounds for Savaria's deportation. Savaria is a resident of Modesto.

All of which goes to prove my thesis that the only time the Central Valley gets attention is if it's for something truly embarrassing or involves a notorious murder.

Get well, Bill.

[Via Sneakeasy's Joint.] For the record, Speed of Thought has a post showing the generally restrained and charitable tone of rightist bloggers. Compare at your leisure the difference between the tone of the Free Republic thread and that on the leftist Democratic Underground. It takes a great deal of solipsistic egoism to think they're even remotely comparable, but I imagine it's possible by people who find Teddy Kennedy's attack on Bork and Bush to be merely "speaking truth to power."

It also explains the AP's bogus "booing" story. It was simple psychological projection. Leftists know that they would boo and jeer, so they assume that everyone else would as well.

Booknotes Note.

I watched a lot of the Booknotes program from the Strand bookstore today. A couple of observations.

First, I have no idea what Brian Lamb's politics are, and isn't that totally cool? The man is probably a lefty given where he lives and his profession but I have never seen him inject any political innuendo or insinuation into his comments. He is consummately fair and professional. After watching virtually all of the elite "objective" media spin into awful partisanship - which would be alright if they would simply admit their agenda - Lamb is a real treat.

Second, I was impressed by Adam Bellow. He comes across as balanced and intelligent. Describing himself as a "neo-conservative" in New York City must take rare courage.

Third, the discussion between John Fund and Amy Goodman was enlightening. If that show didn't show a glimpse of the beating heart of Stalinist intolerance that lives in the Left, I don't know what would. Initially, the audience decided to engage in Maoist political indoctrination by applauding Goodman and heckling Fund. Fund held up well and Brian Lamb did a good job of putting an end to that nonsense. To their credit, the audience did manage to mostly restrain itself thereafter.

The thing that really caught my attention was Goodman's attack on Foxnews as "obliterating our voice." She, and apparently her supporters in the audience, believes that by adding a new voice to the public arena, which is friendlier to conservative message is a threat to them. A threat, moreover, which oppresses them. That's illogical and weird. It also shows how far the Left has come in distancing itself from the "marketplace of ideas" philosophy which has shaped the judicial understanding of "free speech" for the last century.

A last point was the parochialism of Goodman and her supporters. Her biggest complaint was the failure of "corporate media" to give air time to the demonstraters at the RNC. She ascribed this dereliction to ideology. Fund's response was that there is a bias, but that it's based on class, not ideology. Fund argues that media is biased toward professional or governmental types with titles or to professors from Eastern universities.

Goodman heard this but never understood what it meant. Obviously, what it means is that if the bias that Goodman sees went away there would be more conservative, unwashed, bourgeousie voices in the public arena. Now this is a woman who believes that the addition of one cable channel which can be turned off at will "obliterates" and threatens legitimate voices in the public arena. Is that what she really wants? Does anyone think that she will be content with greater attention being given to the huge popular demonstrations against abortion which happen every year?

The left has come an awful far distance from the content-neutral approach it used to champion.

Update: Incidently, for a more direct experience with the beating heart of Stalinism, check out Brian's Open Letter to a Left-wing Jerk. [Hat tip to Ith. ]

Update Number 2: You know who else is cool? Nat Hentoff. He describes himself as an FDR Libertarian and says that the Democrat Party left him during the Clinton years. All of us social conservatives have to give Hentoff his due for his willingness to question the drive to extirpate Terry Schiavo. Hentoff may not always be correct, but clearly he's not someone who is honestly non-dogmatic.

Latest Media Self-Inflicted Wound on the AP Front. Also, reflections on the relativity of war crimes.

Just One Minute dismantles the AP "news report" attempting to discredit Arnold Schwarzenegger's claim that he witnessed Soviet power in Austria as a child.

Even more amazing is that if you surf through to the Matt Yglesia site which bought into this silly historical revisionism and wade your way through the comments, you'll find this gem by "Andy":

Anybody pause to reflect that, by any sense of tit for tat, the Austrians deserved to be decimated by the Russians, after Austria's swooning embrace of Hitler, Nazism, aggressive war, and genocide?

The "rape of Austria"?

Austria cheerfully banged Nazi Germany, and then after the Allied cops burst into the room, she started crying "Rape! Rape!"

So if poor Arnie DID see Soviet tanks, big deal. He's just lucky they didn't exterminate him and his entire village. You know, like the Austrians did in Russia.

As I note in Just One Minute's comments, I happen to know several people who were on the receiving end of Soviet justice. One Hungarian former seminarian told us a story several weeks ago about his contemplating how much effort he had to put into staying alive lest he be adjudged a suicide. The context was that he and his reserve military troop were trying to stay ahead of the Soviet forces inside Hungary. He was fatigued beyond belief and the order to move out came and he had to weigh - weigh! - whether from a Catholic perspective he could choose to stay warm for a few more hours with the certainty of being captured and killed by Soviet troops or whether he was obligated to get up and keep trudging to safety in the bitter cold. I also know another person's whose family can vividly remember the gang rape by Russian troops in Austria.

The man who taught me to fence sabre was a Polish artillery officer who had the good fortune - good fortune!!! - to be captured by the Germans and not by the Soviets. I remember the story he told of long lines of released Polish POWs marching West upon their release in order to stay out of Soviet hands.

Andy, you bleeding punk, did the Poles "cheerfully bang Nazi Germany?" Did they imaginatively scream rape when their best and brightest were liquidated in gangs of 250 per night by one very energetic mass murderer at the order of the Communists. Do you even have any idea about what I'm referring to?

I'd like to write Andy's comments off as a bit of immature hyperbole, but there are others who dwell on the idea that Arnold's father maybe deserved to be liquidated. Just another bit of evidence of the cheapening of rational discourse and the pre-eminence of egoistic moral solipsism.

Further, it often seems that to the Left, there is no such thing as a war crime unless it can be used to smear America.

Update: Maybe Andy thinks that the Russian children butchered by terrorists got their just deserts.

Re: Susan Estrich and Fighting Fair.

Professor Bainbridge sketches the many, many examples that rebut Susan Estich's "we're too nice to win" bleat.

More Trust Decision News.

The PCUSA News Service notes:

WASHINGTON — In what could be a landmark case in church property disputes, a California court has ruled that a breakaway Fresno congregation may keep its property after it decided to sever ties with the United Methodist Church.

and

St. Luke’s leaders said they had the right to alter the church’s incorporation documents. “We agree with St. Luke’s contention that it could and in fact did revoke the trust which had existed in favor of the United Methodist Church,” the court ruled.

But, of course, if they'd been keeping track of the blogosphere they would have known this weeks ago.

The same story appears in Religion Journal.

Of course, what cheeses me of is that when the Fresno Bee called the office, my partner and I were out on mediations and what-not, and, hence, no 15 minutes of fame across the internet. Sure, Bob Shannon gets his name plastered all over the internet, but we get zippo, nada. (Nothing except for the shameless self promotion of this blog.)

On a related front, I notice that the terms of discussion in this area are shifting. Christopher Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal is covering the Los Angeles Episcopalian "schism" and has the letter from the dissident church's attornies posted. I like this paragraph:

Bruno’s actions come weeks after the three churches disassociated from the Episcopal Church and the Diocese of Los Angeles, and aligned themselves with the Anglican Church of Uganda in order to maintain their ties to the worldwide Anglican Communion. The Episcopal Church is but one of 38 Provinces of the Anglican Communion and its rules have no effect on other Provinces such as Uganda. Furthermore, the three local churches are separate California religious corporations and Bruno has no right to interfere with their independent governance, nor to determine the ministers they employ.

And there you go - the next logical development in the deconstruction of the implied hiearchy doctrine in California. These are separate legal entities and, under the First Amendment, the Court's can't interfere in their religious practices.

If anyone can hook me up with Eric C. Sohlgren, Attorney at Law, Payne & Fears LLP, I'd be most appreciative.

Update: The Christian Post has an article.

You know, they're all basically the same article. One person writes something for the Fresno Bee and the "echo chamber" of mainstream news bounces the same story across the world. There is absolutely no creativity or individual thinking. There are no new angles. There's not even a google search that would dig up my really profound musings on the "big picture."

No wonder the mainstream media regularly gets its collective keister kicked by the blogosphere.

Howling at the Moon Alert.

Susan Estrich has gone off the rails in her frustration over the fact that Democrat lies and talking points can't derail the truth, which is that John Kerry is an empty suit. She promises that scurrilous charges about Dick Cheney's drinking or George Bush's infidelities will be featured in future ad campaigns.

Well, boo hoo. If the Dems had such ammunition, they surely would have used it before now. A world of noble Dems too good to sully themselves with personal attacks that Susan Estrich seems to live in simply doesn't exist. The Dems after all were willing to accuse the President of starting a war for base political reasons, unleash a stale drunk driving charge on the eve of the last election, run an advertising campaign accusing Bush of being responsible for a racist murder, creating homelessness and unemployment etc. etc. etc.

It's too bad. I remember giving credit for some statesmanship on various partisan issues in the last two years.

Update: Apparently, Estrich's allies in the prestige media have received their orders and are implementing the strategy of baseless lies and smears. AP has been caught making up a story that a crowd booed when it heard that President Clinton had been admitted for serious heart condition and that President Bush "did nothing to stop it." This "news" was mere fiction and was caught out in minutes by the Fresno-based Free Republic site. AP was forced to change the story.

Of course, you have to admire those professional journalists for their critical thinking and adherence to a code of professional integrity.

Salon journalist demonstrates that he's a complete tool.

Protein Wisdom has hooked a Salon journalist who in writing a sneering piece on bloggers at the Republican convention failed to note that at least one of the blogs he was criticizing was not at the convention and was parodying convention coverage. The best part is the comments where the "journalist," Mark Follman, responds to Protein Wisdom's post - which post reveals the joke - by ignoring the revelation. After several comments laughing at Follman's oblivious, Follman comes back with the claim that his article was simply an extended parody of the parody. One of Protein Wisdom's comment is spot on:

Yes. Rather than cherry-picking yet another example of what he thinks is shallow “journalism,” Follman sought out a satirical blog, didn’t identify it as such—all so he could make some meta-ironic point entirely dependent upon my decision to respond in the first place.

He’s that brilliant.

...Or, alternately, he’s a shoddy journalist who fucked up, and you are the only real tool around here.

Christ. Don’t you people ever just fess up to your mistakes? Or does Oprah forbid it?

What do they teach at J-school? It sure isn't critical thinking.

Liberal Intolerance.

As a sociological matter, one of the more interesting, and alarming, aspects of conservatives entering a liberal enclave like NYC is that it is clearly demonstrating how much hatred the Left has for anyone who dissents from their orthodoxy. What we see is a paradigm example of one group denying essential the humanity of another group in order to preserve their precious world view. As Neitzsche noted in one of his more quotable moments one must be careful about staring into the abyss because the abyss stares back. It's almost as if four decades of staring at originally real, then evaporating, and now virtually extirpated, bigotry has created in the Left the very conditions they most loathe.

One neat example is provided by David Morrison who links to an article about the unsettling reaction NYC protestors experienced when they met a real live, flesh and blood Republican who didn't fit their paradigmatic construct of hatred.

Likewise, Blind Pig Blog and Cool Blue Blog provide their eyewitness involvement with a bit of "consciousness raising" street theater which challenged the settled prejudices of Leftist protestors. The street theater involved joining street protest with "nuanced" signs subtly mocking Leftist positions. Not surprisingly, the protestors' response was not the model of tolerance.

Fish-out-of-water Report

John Derbyshire's befuddlement with those "wild and crazy" Republicans is worth reading.

Where is the Outrage?

Rich Galen wants to know why there isn't more media outrage over a "disingenuous filmaker" telling a former POW and veteran that he is a "loser."

Good question. But, really, wasn't said "disingenuous filmaker" disrespecting all veterans?