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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (31353)	2/25/2004 10:13:24 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 793690

Post editorial Debasing the Constitution Wednesday, February 25, 2004; Page A24 "Today, I call upon the Congress to promptly pass and to send to the states for ratification an amendment to our Constitution defining and protecting marriage as a union of a man and woman as husband and wife." WITH THESE WORDS, President Bush abandoned the Constitution to election-year politics. Until yesterday, he had said he believed in defending traditional marriage and would support a constitutional amendment if necessary -- but only if there were no other way to prevent judges from forcing gay marriage on an unwilling American public. Now, Mr. Bush has abandoned nuance. A federal definition of marriage, which has been governed primarily by state law since the beginning, would prevent any state, whatever the views of its residents, from recognizing the equality and legitimacy of same-sex marriages. The president's explanation of his reversal is unconvincing. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, he noted, "will order the issuance of marriage licenses to applicants of the same gender in May of this year." And, "In San Francisco, city officials have issued thousands of marriage licenses to people of the same gender, contrary to the California Family Code" -- as has one county in New Mexico. All true, and all controversial. We believe that extending the benefits and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples would be fair and beneficial; we understand that many Americans feel otherwise. But whatever one thinks of the Massachusetts courts or the San Francisco mayor, there is no evidence that state political systems are incapable of responding. Why can't California be trusted to sort out the situation in San Francisco, and Massachusetts legislators and voters to address whatever deficiencies they find in their own court's rulings? And if down the road the voters of some state opt for a legal regime different than that favored by Mr. Bush, why should the Constitution impede their democratic choice? The federal Defense of Marriage Act already guarantees that no state has to recognize a same-sex union performed in another state. Mr. Bush justified his resort to the constitutional process yesterday by worrying that "there is no assurance that the Defense of Marriage Act will not itself be struck down by activist courts." Perhaps not. But it is reckless to set about amending the Constitution to ensure victory in court cases that haven't yet been filed. The President closed his endorsement of the amendment by insisting that "our government should respect every person" and requesting that Americans "conduct this difficult debate in a manner worthy of our country . . . with kindness and goodwill and decency." In the context of a divisive proposal, this request didn't just ring hollow; it clanged.

To: Lane3 who wrote (31353)	2/25/2004 11:05:38 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793690

"Witness the complaints here about liberal bias in the media. Some of it, as I occasionally point out, is clearly oversensitive." Liberal bias in the media is as obvious as your bias toward those who see it for what it is. Below are two more examples hot off the press. Funny how we don't see an equal number of conservative biased stories in the media, let alone an occasional one. I don't doubt for a second that if it occurred at all, liberals would be all over it on every one of their blogs & reported widely on SI's political threads.......... Spin Buster AP Takes an Unwarranted Leap Consider this description from the second paragraph of the Associated Press' account of President Bush's speech at a fundraiser yesterday: [Bush] leveled his sharpest criticism yet at his rivals in a speech Monday night. Bush recalled terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, signaling his willingness to use the strikes for political gain, which his aides long had promised would not be done. Here's the passage the AP cites as evidence that Bush was "using the attacks for political gain": September the 14th, 2001, I stood in the ruins of the Twin Towers. I remember a lot that day ... As we all did that day, these men and women searching through the rubble took it personally. I took it personally," he said. "I have a responsibility that goes on. I will never relent in bringing justice to our enemies. I will defend America, whatever it takes." Is there political gain to be had in such remarks? Sure. But the president, or any candidate, also has a right to explain how, in his view, the attacks created the need for a more aggressive foreign policy. AP's opening paragraph sounds as if it were written by the Democratic National Committee. If this reporter, or any other, wants to impute political motivation to the president, he would have no trouble finding a political opponent to put it that way. <font size=4>But to declare that intent as fact isn't journalism; it's editorializing. AP has built its fragile reputation for impartiality by avoiding just that sort of unjustified characterization. <font size=3> --Z.R. campaigndesk.org ___________________________________________________________ While CBS’s Poll Shows Huge GOP Majorities Backing Bush, CBS Reporter Finds a “Fury” on the Right Anti-Bush Anecdotes Trump Pro-Bush Poll <font size=4> Last night and this morning, CBS White House reporter John Roberts claimed that President Bush is in trouble with “furious” Republican voters. Previewing Bush’s speech to GOP governors last night, Roberts warned that the President’s base was ready to bolt. “Many Republican voters are furious about the lingering situation in Iraq and the massive job losses under the President’s watch,” he told CBS Evening News anchor Dan Rather.<font size=3> Then this morning on CBS’s The Early Show, Roberts hit the same point in a post-speech wrap-up: “President Bush wants to be seen as the only candidate who can effectively defend America, but an increasing number of people who voted for him in the year 2000 are furious about the daily loss of life in Iraq and say they won’t vote for him this time around.” If true, that would be bad news for the President. But the most recent CBS News poll found Republican voters are actually strongly supportive of the President and his policies. <font size=4>A huge margin of Republicans (86 percent) say the U.S. “did the right thing in taking military action in Iraq,” compared with 13 percent who say we “should have stayed out of Iraq.” Similarly, 77 percent of Republicans approved of Bush’s handling of the economy, with only 18 percent saying they disapproved. (Independent voters also liked Bush’s handling of the economy and said the war in Iraq was worth it, but by smaller margins.) Overall, nine in ten Republicans told CBS pollsters they approved of the Bush’s job performance.<font size=3> <font size=4> If Republicans are so united, why would Roberts claim that GOP voters are defecting in “increasing” numbers? On Sunday, the New York Times published a story by reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal, who said she had randomly talked to “dozens” of “independents and Republicans who said they voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 [and now] say they intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year.” <font size=3> Rosenthal allowed that polls show “an overwhelming majority” of Bush voters would re-elect him, but she sought out a Kerry operative to justify her approach: “‘The strong Republicans are with him,’ a senior aide to Senator John Kerry said of Mr. Bush. ‘But there are independent-minded Republicans among whom he is having serious problems.’” While the Times quoted Democratic strategists, the Republicans were represented by angry malcontents. One voter even demanded anonymity as he vented his spleen: “It’s the lies, the war, the economy. We have very good friends who are staunch Republicans who don’t even want to hear the name George Bush anymore.” But there may not be as many voters abandoning Bush as CBS or the New York Times would wish. As Clay Waters of MRC’s TimesWatch.org noted yesterday, one of the Times’s angry citizens popped up three weeks ago in another Rosenthal-reported item. “I don't think I could vote for George Bush again when I think of the 500 people killed in Iraq and what's happened to the economy in this country,” George Meagher, a South Carolina independent, was quoted as saying in a February 3 story about veterans leaving Bush to support Kerry. Meagher got to voice the same objections in Sunday’s Times. <font size=4> Does CBS really consider an anecdotal re-hash of a few aggrieved Republicans more reliable than its own polls showing a united GOP base? If so, get ready for a really biased election year.<font size=3> — Rich Noyes mediaresearch.org NOTE: If Rosenthal actually randomly talked to “dozens” of "independents and Republicans who said they voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 [and now] say they intend to vote for the Democratic presidential candidate this year"; Why didn't she comment on the hundreds of independents & Republicans that she most certainly had to talk to who hold precisely the opposite opinions? They weren't worthy of any mention in this clearly biased article because the sheer numbers of folks expressing the exact opposite view would have been consistent with almost every poll showing that the overwhelming majority of these people still approve of Bush. She had to spike this inconvenient fact or her story falls completely apart.

To: Lane3 who wrote (31353)	2/25/2004 1:00:31 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793690

A recent report on the three major networks’ national news coverage, indicated that in the months of December and January, the coverage of John Kerry was 96% positive, Senator John Edwards 100% positive, and Presient Bush, 32% positive. Even Howard Dean, whose campaign was coming apart in January, received 58% favorable coverage during the period. <font size=4> The Media Have Already Chosen Sides<font size=3> The American Thinker Two major American newspapers - one in Philadelphia, and one in Chicago - have stories today about whether John Kerry's campaign will soon be hit with charges of infidelity with a young woman, a story raised publicly by the Drudge Report Thursday morning. Senator Kerry said there is nothing to talk about regarding all this on the Don Imus Show this morning, but used language vague enough to raise questions in the wake of the last Democratic President’s quibble over the meaning of “is.” While the internet was firing away on the story yesterday, the major news media and the national televison news networks took a pass. <font size=4> Compare this to the blanket coverage of the charges that President Bush was AWOL from his national guard unit in 1972 in Alabama. This sleaze campaign<font size=3>, first explored in the 2000 campaign by the Boston Globe, was begun anew by DNC chairman Terry McAulliffe, and has become a day-and-night saturation story. Jay Leno spent several minutes on it last night, which he would not do if he did not think the audience was aware of the story. When editorials, op-eds, and news stories address the issue every day, somebody or some people want it to be an important story. The AWOL charge is made, and the President is guilty until proven innocent. A recent report on the three major networks’ national news coverage, indicated that in the months of December and January, the coverage of John Kerry was 96% positive, Senator John Edwards 100% positive, and Presient Bush, 32% positive. Even Howard Dean, whose campaign was coming apart in January, received 58% favorable coverage during the period. <font size=4> As an example of the coverage on Bush, reports on the Kay report on WMD, never mentioned that Kay said the President made the right decision to go into Iraq, despite any bad intelligence he may have received, or that Kay said some WMD may have been moved to Syria. The focus was all on the bad intelligence, and that no WMD have been discovered yet. <font size=3> One might think there was a conspiracy underway to sink the President and lift up Kerry and the Democrats. Is that possible? <font size=4>Do the national media have a stake in all this? Do Washington correspondents care who wins? Does the fact that more than 90% or them admit to having voted for Clinton say something about their politics?<font size=3> Do Dan Rather or Peter Jennings, and Charles Gibson want Bush to lose? The release of the national guard story was designed to undermine the President's character, one area where polling shows he remains strongly connected to most voters. Add the Kay and WMD story, and its focus on Bush's credibility, and his misleading of the American people, and more damage on the character issue is done. <font size=4>This is not accidental. <font size=3> This promises to be a particularly ugly election year. The Republicans may be matched on campaign spending by the new left wing 527 groups, and George Soros's bankroll. <font size=4> But the free media counts for much more, and it is weighting in with invaluable assistance to the Democrats. To think this is unintentional is naive.<font size=3> We have come to expect NPR and the New York Times to be hostile to Bush, and they are. But the networks are not supposed to be quite that blatant in their partisanship. Those of us who have watched how the media frame the Middle East conflict have years of experience with Peter Jennings, and NPR and others who have taken sides. This year's Presidential election, has high stakes, and it will not just be left to the people to decide. Posted by Richard 02 13 04 americanthinker.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (31353)	2/25/2004 1:48:38 PM
From: Sully-	Respond to of 793690

Where, oh where, is our truth-loving press now? John Kerry, the anti-war antihero Brent Bozell February 25, 2004 The venerable Associated Press would not wish itself to be seen as a silly institution of stenographers, forwarding whatever hilarious charges politicians can concoct. But then how do you explain their Sunday report that John Kerry sent a letter to President George W. Bush, accusing him of using the painful topic of Vietnam for his "personal political gain"? Will someone please cue the laugh track and a full orchestra playing the "Looney Tunes" theme song? Is there anyone in presidential politics who's tried to use his Vietnam experience for political gain more than John Forbes Kerry? Is there no end to Kerry fending off every examination of his decades-long contempt for seemingly each and every new weapon in the American arsenal by suggesting, as AP reported, that Republicans who didn't serve in Vietnam are fighting a war against war heroes like him? When liberal journalists are asked why the American people were subjected to three weeks of "news" about Bush's honorable National Guard record, they quickly respond that Bush brought it on himself by landing a plane and walking around in a flight suit on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. If that is a provocation for three weeks of intense scrutiny (not to mention wild "AWOL" hearsay to boot), then what about Kerry? For weeks, he's marched from state to state with a phalanx of Vietnam veterans suggesting he, not Bush, knows something about veterans and about fighting for his country. And yet, he's also the one who returned home to America and wrote vicious books and gave vicious testimony before the United States Senate defaming his fellow American soldiers as raping, slaughtering beasts. Investigative reporter Marc Morano of CNSNews.com unearthed a copy of Kerry's 1971 book "The New Soldier," in which Kerry proclaimed, "We were sent to Vietnam to kill Communism. But we found instead that we were killing women and children." He also wrote, "in the process we created a nation of refugees, bomb craters, amputees, orphans, widows and prostitutes, and we gave new meaning to the words of the Roman historian Tacitus: 'Where they made a desert they called it peace.'" That's on top of his Senate testimony, in which Kerry claimed -- without citing any evidence -- that on a daily basis, and with the assent of their superiors, soldiers "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies (sic), randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside" of South Vietnam. <font size=4> Where, oh where, is our truth-loving press now? The truth is the media only want Kerry portrayed as a war hero, and not as an anti-war antihero.<font size=3> The dictionary defines antihero as a character in a story who is characterized by a lack of heroic qualities, such as idealism and courage. Kerry's anti-war record suggests not high idealism but crass calculation. It takes courage to come home and fight against the slander of your fellow soldiers in a hostile political environment. He did not use courage. Instead, he cynically led a radical America-hating parade of protest, and let his Viet Cong-loving protester buddies use him for sport. The clean-cut soldier changed teams to build a political career in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. <font size=4> The media are letting Kerry redefine the story in the most positive light, and the truth be damned. On CNN's "Inside Politics" Feb. 19, Judy Woodruff asked vaguely about how some veterans "are saying, in effect, you were accusing American troops of war crimes." He brazenly denied – no, let's just say it, he lied about -- what's on the public record. "I never said that. I've always fought for the soldiers." Instead of pressing further, instead of challenging this dishonesty, instead of showing viewers a clip or snippet of Kerry's actual remarks, Woodruff quietly witnessed this lie, and in a moment of blatant favoritism or sheer ignorance, responded by changing the subject.<font size=3> How about that John Edwards? Ronald Reagan never had to dodge bullets in a combat zone. But he called fighting communism in Vietnam a "noble cause," and in 1980, that was considered a grave political gaffe. In 2004, after decades of communist dictatorship in Vietnam and the collapse of despotic communism in most of the world, shouldn't Kerry's radical-left trashing of that war be today's grave political gaffe? <font size=4>After three weeks of sleazy "AWOL" heavy breathing after Bush, if the media fail to spend three weeks delving into John Kerry's half of the Vietnam War, then they cannot be defended as having the slightest care for fairness, balance, or the truth.<font size=3> Brent Bozell is President of Media Research Center, a Townhall.com member group. ©2003 Creators Syndicate, Inc. townhall.com Ö¿Ö