Best of the Web Today - April 7, 2006
By JAMES TARANTO
Quick, Call a Plumber!
If you'd told us earlier this week that the Valerie Plame kerfuffle was about to turn even sillier, we wouldn't have believed you. But it has. This story appears on the front page of today's New York Times:
President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney in July 2003 to permit Mr. Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., to leak key portions of a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to Mr. Libby's grand jury testimony.
The testimony, cited in a court filing by the government late Wednesday, provides the first indication that Mr. Bush, who has long assailed leaks of classified information as a national security threat, played a direct role in the disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq at a moment that the White House was trying to defend itself against charges that it had inflated the case against Saddam Hussein.
Well, here is how the filing (PDF) by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald describes what happened (page 23):
Defendant [Libby] testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE [National Intelligence Estimate]. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document.
In other words, this was an authorized disclosure of information, the opposite of a leak. Yet the Times, the Washington Post and even the New York Sun (albeit only in a headline) call it a "leak."
These reports have served as pornography for the Angry Left, which has constructed an elaborate fantasy world around the Plame kerfuffle. One reader shared with us his reverie about how this is actually a signal that Fitzgerald plans to indict Vice President Cheney.
In fact, it is nothing more than a battle over procedure. Libby is seeking to compel the prosecution to turn over certain information to the defense; Fitzgerald is resisting. Among the information Fitzgerald has so far refused to turn over, by the way, are the two facts supposedly at the center of the case: whether Valerie Plame was a covert agent (extensive evidence on the public record comes close to proving that she was not), and who "leaked" Plame's identity to columnist Bob Novak.
More than anything else, the whole kerfuffle is a reflection on the way anti-Bush animus has fed into the adversarial culture of post-Watergate journalism in America. First the New York Times beat the drums for a special prosecutor to investigate who provided accurate information to reporters, albeit supposedly in violation of the law. Among the results: A Times reporter went to jail.
Now we witness the astonishing spectacle of newspapers trying to spin a scandal out of a legal disclosure of information to the press. GayPatriot aptly describes it as "the Orwellian worldview of Bush-haters where releasing facts means having something to hide." Maybe we can't expect better from political partisans, but journalists are supposed to stand for the neutral principle of the public's right to know. If they pervert that principle in the pursuit of a partisan program, they will find it harder to assert it when it serves their purposes, whatever those purposes may be.
Lewis Libby and Libby Lewis
We're hoping some Angry Left paranoiac will develop a conspiracy theory out of this amusing coincidence: National Public Radio has a reporter named Libby Lewis covering the Lewis Libby story. John Robinson of the Greensboro, N.C., News-Record looked into it and assured us there's no relation. But doesn't it at least create the appearance of an interest of conflict? Shouldn't Lewis's NPR bosses encourage her to scoot over to another beat?
A Rather One-Sided Debate
The Harvard Crimson has an update on the controversy over Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer's anti-Israel screed. There's not much new or interesting here, but the juxtaposition of the opening and closing lines of the article is hilarious: "The debate over a Kennedy School administrator's paper criticizing pro-Israel activists in the U.S. is heating up. . . . Walt and Mearsheimer did not return repeated requests for comment."
Meanwhile, BU Today has a report on Wednesday's Boston University debate, in which the antidemocratic side, led by Mearsheimer, was ruled the winner. There's a link at the bottom to watch the debate.
Oh, Well, Never Mind Then
Today's New York Times carries this correction (third item):
An article on Feb. 9 about the military's recruitment of Hispanics referred incompletely to the belief of some critics that Hispanics in the Iraq war and blacks in the Vietnam War accounted for a disproportionate number of casualties. Statistics do not support the belief. Hispanics, who are about 14 percent of the population, accounted for about 11 percent of the military deaths in Iraq through Dec. 3, 2005. About 12.5 percent of the military dead in Vietnam were African-Americans, who made up about 13. 5 percent of the general population during the war years. The error was pointed out in an e-mail in February; the correction was delayed for research after a lapse at The Times.
That "belief of some critics" is a false and widely held one--at best a myth, at worst a lie. You'd think refuting it would be worth a full-fledged story in the Times, not just a hundred words in the corrections column.
Citizens Who Might Never Become Citizens!
From a New York Times report on the Senate immigration bill:
And the compromise was promptly assailed as just that--an amnesty--by conservatives in the Senate and in the House. Meanwhile, critics on the left, including the A.F.L.-C.I.O and some immigrant advocacy groups, said the compromise would create a vast group of second-class citizens who might never become citizens and depress wages and take jobs from Americans.
Can someone explain to us why we should worry that people who are already citizens might not become citizens?
Matadors Need Not Apply
NewsFactor Magazine, based in the San Fernando Valley, is seeking a managing editor. But not just anyone can apply, according to the MediaBistro.com job listing:
Ideal candidates will have previous magazine experience, a degree from a top-notch journalism school (think USC or Medill, not Cal State Northridge) and be able to pass a copy-editing test with flying colors.
We'd just like to say a word in defense of Cal State Northridge. To be sure, it is a mere third-tier Western university. But that doesn't mean it is without prominent alumni.
Women's Lib: Cui Bono?
Here's an interesting report from the New Scientist:
What do women want from a man? In the past, surveys have overwhelmingly shown that women want a rich man, and men want a good-looking woman. While not much has changed for men, as women's financial independence has increased, it seems that their preferences have changed.
Fhionna Moore and colleagues at the University of St Andrews, UK, analysed questionnaires from 1851 heterosexual women between the ages of 18 and 35. They found that as a woman's level of "resource control" increases--in other words as they become more financially independent--so does their preference for physical attractiveness in potential partners.
Women who had low levels of control over their cash rated the financial status of a man over his looks. Those with a decent source of income rated physical attractiveness more highly.
This is good news for handsome devils like us.
Though if You're Breastfeeding at 14, There May Be Other Risks
"Breastfeeding Does Not Increase the Risk of Asthma at 14 Years"--headline, Pediatrics, April 2006
And It Tastes Just Like Coca-Cola
"Kinks in Canada Drug Pipeline"--headline, New York Times, April 6
'OK, Janet, That's T-R-U-S- . . .'
"Ftn. Hills Spells Out Trust Land Annexation for Governor"--headline, Arizona Republic, April 7
What Would We Do Without Schools?
"Stay in Class, Schools Urge"--headline, lead story, front page, Arizona Republic (PDF), April 6
What Would Cows Be Without Scientists?
"Scientist: Let Cows Be Cows"--headline, Stuff (New Zealand), April 6
Experts: Let Chicken Chickens Be
"Experts Say You Can Eat Chicken Without Fear of Bird Flu"--headline, WLNS-TV Web site (Lansing, Mich.), April 7
How Do You Stop a Fish From Smelling?
"Fish Holds Breath for Months"--headline, LiveScience.com, April 7
Bottom Story of the Day
"Playboy's Indonesia Edition Carries No Nudity"--headline, FoxNews.com, April 6
Can We Make an Appointment to See Him Yesterday?
If you've ever doubted that chiropractors are serious medical practitioners, read this Associated Press dispatch from Columbus, Ohio:
A chiropractor who claims he can treat anyone by reaching back in time to when an injury occurred has attracted the attention of state regulators.
The Ohio State Chiropractic Board, in a notice of hearing, has accused James Burda of Athens of being "unable to practice chiropractic according to acceptable and prevailing standards of care due to mental illness, specifically, Delusional Disorder, Grandiose Type."
Burda denied that he is mentally ill. He said he possesses a skill he discovered by accident while driving six years ago.
"My foot hurt and, knowing anatomy, I went ahead and I told it to realign and my pain went away," Burda said Thursday.
Burda calls his treatment "Bahlaqeem."
"It is a made-up word and, to my knowledge, has no known meaning except for this intended purpose. It does, however, have a soothing vibrational influence and contains the very special number of nine letters," Burda's Web site says.
Burda's Web site, Bahlaqeem.com, features this testimony from one "DaisyMae":
I am a 10 year old Bassett Hound and I have been in a lot of pain in my neck area. I would even wake up during the night and yowl from the pain. My owner called Jim Burda and described the way I was moping around and walking with my head down. Over the phone he was able to work on me. He found the area in my vertebrae that was out of place and was able to manipulate it into place. I am feeling much better and I hold my head up high again. There hasn't been a reason to yelp now for several weeks! Thank you.
Well, sorry, Burda, but color us skeptical. Besides, we can think of another nine-letter word with much stronger curative powers. As PlayLouder.com notes, " 'Kerfuffle' sizzles and pops like bubble and squeak in a very hot pan, and while it may constitute a hotchpotch of re-heated foods, it's well worth risking a coronary for."
So if you want to ease the pain, click here to buy a "Kerfuffle" T-shirt. |
