Best of the Web Today - July 21, 2004
By JAMES TARANTO
McKinney Wins, but There's Good News Too
The biggest headline from yesterday's Georgia primary is a depressing one: Cynthia McKinney, the anti-Semitic nutjob who lost her seat two years ago, staged a comeback, winning the Democratic primary for Georgia's Fourth Congressional District with 51% of the vote. Since the district is heavily Democratic, she's all but assured of returning to Congress.
In April 2002 McKinney famously accused President Bush of having foreknowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks--a fringe position, but one toward which her party has increasingly gravitated since its November 2002 losses. With Democratic leaders embracing Michael Moore, figuratively if not literally, McKinney's position no longer seems so far out of the Democratic mainstream--though unlike Moore, McKinney is a champion of the Saudi regime.
McKinney will replace Rep. Denise Majette, the woman who beat her two years ago. Majette turned out to be a disappointment to those of us who hoped she'd be a force for moderation. As it turned out, she has had a left-wing voting record that puts her in line with most other members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
Majette finished first in the Democratic Senate primary, with 41% of the vote; she'll face a runoff with second-place finisher Cliff Oxford. The winner will likely lose in November to Rep. Johnny Isakson, who won the GOP primary outright, with 53%. Herman Cain, a former Godfather's Pizza CEO who ran to Isakson's right, failed to force a runoff. But Cain, a political newcomer who is black, may be a man to watch in Georgia politics.
As John Fund reports in today's Political Diary (subscribe here), two other black Republicans have a chance of winning congressional seats in November:
Former Bush White House aide Dylan Glenn yesterday clinched a runoff spot against state Rep. Lynn Westmoreland for a U.S. House seat in Georgia [District Eight]. Whoever wins the August runoff will almost certainly hold the strongly GOP Congressional district this fall. . . .
Up in North Carolina, another black Republican placed first in a GOP Congressional primary for a vacant U.S. House seat. Vernon Robinson, a city councilman in Winston-Salem, ran an unapologetically conservative campaign using the slogan: "Jesse Helms is back! And this time he's black."
Mr. Helms actually endorsed one of Mr. Robinson's rivals, Ed Broyhill, the son of a former U.S. Senator. Despite pouring $1.5 million of his own money into his campaign and serving as party-establishment favorite, Mr. Broyhill managed to finish third in the race. The runoff will instead feature Mr. Robinson and Virginia Foxx, a state senator who won last-minute support from a mysterious outside political-action committee run by moderate GOP operative Roger Stone. Mr. Robinson is favored to win the runoff.
North Carolina's Fifth District, whose current representative, Ron Burr, is running for the Senate, is solidly Republican, so if Robinson wins the runoff, he ought to prevail in November. As unfortunate as Cynthia McKinney's victory is, one can't help but be heartened by the increasing ideological diversity among black politicians.
The Inspections Are Working
"An upcoming report will contain 'a good deal of new information' backing up the Bush administration's contention that Saddam Hussein pursued weapons of mass destruction," Sen. John Warner, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, tells the Associated Press:
"I'm not suggesting dramatic discoveries," Warner told reporters, but "bits and pieces that Saddam Hussein was clearly defying" international restrictions, "and he and his government had a continuing interest in maintaining the potential to shift to production of various types of weapons of mass destruction in a short period of time."
Many opponents of Iraq's liberation, and even some erstwhile supporters, have cited the apparent lack of weapons stockpiles as justifying their position that America should have left Saddam Hussein in power. It's the equivalent of arguing that an armed robber should go free as long as his gun wasn't loaded.
Meanwhile, United Press International picks up a report we're inclined to view with skepticism:
The daily al-Sabah newspaper Wednesday had quoted sources as saying three missiles armed with nuclear warheads were discovered in a trench near the city of Tikrit, the hometown of ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
But a spokesman for the First Infantry Division in Tikrit says the story is false, and Reuters quotes a spokesman for Iraq's Interior Ministry, who calls the nuke claim "stupid."
Terrorism for Dummies
"A militant group said Wednesday it had taken two Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage and would behead them if their countries did not announce their intention to withdraw their troops from Iraq immediately," reports the Associated Press.
Just one problem: "None of those countries were part of the 160,000 member coalition force in the country." Whoops.
Tanks but No Tanks
Yasser Arafat, beleaguered ruler of the Palestinian Arabs, is trying to gin up a health scare, the Washington Times reports from Ramallah:
Arafat accused Israel of polluting the West Bank and Gaza Strip with depleted-uranium bullets, causing a sharp increase in cancer rates.
"They have caused cancer that is like Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Mr. Arafat said in an interview. . . .
Cancer specialists at two hospitals, one in Ramallah and the other in Bethlehem, said they had seen no increase in cancer rates during the current uprising, which began in September 2000.
The Palestinian leader was referring to dense bullets of depleted uranium that are sometimes used by U.S. forces to pierce tank armor. The Palestinians have no tanks.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Globe and Mail reports that Arafat has issued "a warning to Palestinian journalists to cease all coverage of the kind of street protests that rocked the Gaza Strip and some West Bank cities last weekend":
Reporters have also been threatened with severe punishment if they depict clashes between rival groups in the Gaza Strip, such as the gunfight in Rafah that injured 12 people on Sunday.
The ban effectively prevents international news outlets from covering these events, since they depend on Palestinian photographers, reporters and editors to produce news footage and written copy for broadcasters, print media and wire services.
The last time such threats were issued was in September of 2001, when Palestinian reporters were forced to suppress images of huge street celebrations in Nablus and Bethlehem after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. International news bureau chiefs for wire services including Reuters and Associated Press were warned that their cameramen would be in danger if their footage was broadcast in the West.
This, of course, is just the kind of censorship that delusional left-wingers accuse the American government of practicing.
Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.
Sayonara, Sandy
"Former national security adviser Sandy Berger, the subject of a criminal investigation over the disappearance of terrorism documents, stepped aside on Tuesday as an informal adviser to Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry," the Associated Press reports from Washington. The Berger scandal, dubbed "Trousergate" because of the claim that he stuffed classified documents into his pants, has led to much speculation as to why he purloined the papers.
Some Republicans, such as Pennsylvania's Sen. Rick Santorum, have suggested that he was spying for the Kerry campaign. We're surprised to find we agree with Josh Marshall that this is implausible. Andrew Sullivan, however, has a more believable theory. He notes this passage from a Washington Post report:
A government official with knowledge of the probe said Berger removed from archives files all five or six drafts of a critique of the government's response to the millennium terrorism threat, which he said was classified "codeword," the government's highest level of document security.
"Doesn't that sound like trying to cover your back?" asks Sullivan:
My best bet is that Berger was engaging in advance damage control--saving the drafts to help concoct a better defense of his tenure. If so, it's classic Clinton era sleaze--not exactly terrible but cheesy subordination of national security for partisan political advantage.
The Denver Post quotes Bill Clinton as expressing his amusement at the whole matter: "We were all laughing about it on the way over here," the ex-president says. "People who don't know him might find it hard to believe. But . . . all of us who've been in his office have always found him buried beneath papers."
The Associated Press reports that Ben Cohen, co-founder of the left-wing ice-cream purveyor Ben & Jerry's, "is on the road, towing a 12-foot-tall effigy of President Bush with fake flames shooting out of the pants." Maybe Sandy Berger should try on that outfit.
Exit Stage Right
The New York Times weighs in on the Linda Ronstadt kerfuffle, in which the songstress was booed and booted at Las Vegas's Aladdin Hotel after singing the praises of anti-American filmmaker Michael Moore. It's an uncommonly dopey editorial even by Times standards:
This behavior assumes that Ms. Ronstadt had no right to express a political opinion from the stage. It implies--for some members of the audience at least--that there is a philosophical contract that says an artist must entertain an audience only in the ways that audience sees fit. It argues, in fact, that an artist like Ms. Ronstadt does not have the same rights as everyone else.
In fact, no one has the "right to express a political opinion from the stage," assuming (as in this case) that the stage is privately owned by someone other than the speaker. If the New York Times declines to run an op-ed piece by someone with whom Gail Collins disagrees, it isn't assuming that the writer "does not have the same rights as everyone else." It is merely exercising editorial control over its own property. The Times seems to be arguing that its editors have more rights than the owners of the Aladdin.
Legends of Reuterville
Catherine Seipp has a nice piece on National Review Online about urban legends, in which she justly touts the indispensable Snopes.com:
My favorite Snopes sections chide professional news organizations for reporting urban legends as fact. Reuters had a nasty little item a few years ago about drug smugglers who hid their contraband in a girl's corpse. The wire service's source was the Gulf News, which said that smugglers had kidnapped and murdered a child in order to stuff her body with codeine. But an airport official "at the unnamed Gulf state" became suspicious and arrested the smugglers, according to a United Arab Emirates policeman quoted in the Gulf News piece.
The story, which was datelined Dubai, got picked up the next day by the Guardian in the U.K., among other publications. But the whole thing was an old urban legend, and a fairly obvious one to anyone who stopped to think about it for a moment. Wouldn't a doll or diaper bag be a lot handier than a hollowed-out corpse? I asked folklore professor Jan Harold Brunvand about the media's role in spreading such stories. Brunvand, whose latest book is Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid: The Book of Scary Urban Legends (out in October), said that actually the media have been pretty good about correcting these tales.
But Brunvand added that "Reuters is especially prone to circulating doubtful stories, especially those that have shown up in newspapers in faraway places. The Reuters story will just say, 'as reported in the such-and-such,' which is true enough, but they apparently make no attempt to verify or investigate the item. Of course, now and then the other news services get burned too."
Oddly enough!
Where No Man Has Gone Before?
Yesterday was the 35th anniversary of the first moon landing, but blogger Tom McMahon notes that the Library of Congress's "Today in History" page for July 20 makes no reference to the milestone. Instead, it "goes on and on and on about the First Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York being convened for a second day back in 1848. And that, after their July 19 entry discussed it at length."
But the library doesn't completely ignore the space program. Its June 24 page does give a hat tip to Sally Ride, the first American woman in space.
One woman the Library of Congress does ignore is Mary Jo Kopechne, who took a fatal ride with Ted Kennedy on July 18, 1969. As Myrna Blyth notes in National Review Online, "the whole incident was overshadowed by the worldwide coverage of the moonwalk." Not to mention the 121st anniversary of the First Women's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls.
57th Heaven
"The United Nations has ranked Russia the 57th best country to live in, calling it 'remarkable progress' from last year's ranking of 63rd," reports the St. Petersburg (Russia) Times. Russia still must look enviously at Bulgaria, which boasts the 56th spot, but Libya, at No. 58, tries harder.
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Homelessness Rediscovery Watch
"If George W. Bush becomes president, the armies of the homeless, hundreds of thousands strong, will once again be used to illustrate the opposition's arguments about welfare, the economy, and taxation."--Mark Helprin, Oct. 31, 2000
"Subtle changes mark a 95-degree day. The restaurant patios are a little emptier at lunch time, the lines at the pools are a little longer, and the homeless at Omaha's Gene Leahy Mall cluster a little closer together to sit in the shade of the trees."--Omaha World-Herald, July 21
What Would We Do Without Experts From Two Men and a Truck?
"Do Your Homework Before Hiring a Moving Company; Experts at Two Men and a Truck Advise Checking References, Asking Questions"--headline, press release, Two Men and a Truck International, July 20
'Baa, Get Him Off Me!'
"Prisoner Still on the Lamb"--headline, WTWO-TV Web site (Terre Haute, Ind.), July 19
Operation Illiteracy
Here's a story to cheer you up the next time you need major surgery: "Four learning-disabled students sued the organization that administers the medical school admission test, alleging they were denied extra time to take the exam in violation of California's disability laws," the Associated Press reports from Oakland:
The discrimination lawsuit, filed Monday in Alameda County Superior Court, argues that students who have trouble reading can learn to practice medicine if they receive enough time and a distraction-free setting in which to complete the Medical College Admission Test.
The lawyers must be trying to drum up more malpractice business. Which reminds us of a joke:
What do you call a medical-school graduate who can't read?
"Doctor." |
