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Politics : Err America: They Report, They Decide -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (775)	6/14/2006 1:51:58 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1513

Perhaps you think your blatant dissembling, your pernicious calumny & politics of personal destruction cancels out all contrary facts & credible evidence. Here in the real world most folks just shake their heads & wonder what disabling malady you suffer from.

To: American Spirit who wrote (775)	6/14/2006 5:53:24 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1513

Hating Bush Means Never Having to Prove Your Point Posted by GayPatriotWest June 14, 2006 Just as some crazy conservatives confidently predicted Hillary’s imminent indictment in the 1990s, up until today, Bush-haters were salivating at the approaching indictment of their bête noire, Karl Rove. Today, those angry leftists are gnashing their teeth. They were all convinced that because they so hated Karl Rove, he had to have committed a crime. They pinned their hopes of the legend of Fitzmas, that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald would indict this top advisor to President George W. Bush, the man they really, really, really hated. As we learned yesterday, that will not come to pass. Karl Rove is not the crook they made him out to be. Lacking evidence of a Republican’s crimes, however, has yet to stop these leftists from imagining the worst of their ideological adversaries. All over LA, I continue to see bumper stickers accusing the president of lying. And although three major investigations have yet to produce a single scrap of evidence that he deceived the American people (and the world) in the run-up to the liberation of Iraq, allegations of the president’s dishonesty remain an article of faith for Bush-haters. When you talk to some of these left-wingers, they sound just like their bumper stickers, repeating the mantra that “Bush Lied.” When confronted with with facts, they don’t respond with arguments, but with angry accusations against the president and his team (and even against the president’s defenders). They don’t “need” any evidence to back up their claims. They just know the president’s dishonest. One such smug individual is former CBS News Producer Mary Mapes. She continues to attack the conservative bloggers who questioned the authenticity of the documents she used in her 60 Minutes II report alleging that then-Lt. George W. Bush shirked his National Guard Service. Alleging that there “never has been any definitive proof that they [the documents ] were forged or falsified in any way,” she attempts to change the focus of the story. (Via Best of the Web.) Those bloggers — and experts in the authentication of documents — made a solid case that they were forgeries. And she failed to rebut the evidence they provided. The real issue is that it wasn’t their responsibility to provide such “definitive proof;” it was her responsibility as a journalist to prove the authenticity of the documents. Although she failed to do that, she ran the story claiming they were authentic. Mapes has so far failed to trace the documents to their supposed author, the late Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, then-Lt. Bush’s squadron commander in the Texas National Guard. She got them from a dubious source, perennial Bush critic, Bill Burkett, who claims that he got him from a “Lucy Ramirez.” Mapes has yet to identify this woman. As I said in March, if Mapes really wanted to prove that these documents were genuine, she would go to the Holiday Inn in Houston (where Ramirez allegedly gave Burkett the documents) and see what she could find out. Perhaps, we conservatives should set up a fund to send her to Texas to trace the chain of control of these documents back to Burkett Killian. I’ll pony up a few hundred if other bloggers are willing to join me. We’ll put our money where our mouths are, so certain are we that she will never be able to find that Ms. Ramirez. For Ms. Mapes, the MSM’s poster child, while critics of the president don’t need to prove their points, conservatives who take issue with such critics need “definite proof” of our arguments. And it’s they who define what that definite proof is. When the investigation does not yield the results Bush-haters want, they will redefine the terms of the inquiry — and the standards of proof. (They seem to want investigations only to prove what they already believe.) For the left, as Lorie Byrd puts it, echoing a point John Leo made, assertion has replaced truth: When assertion replaces truth, language no longer has definite meaning assigned to it, and civility becomes a thing of nostalgia, the table is set for a dysfunctional debate that not only fails to educate the public, but misleads and misinforms them continually. (Via Mary Katharine Ham @ Hugh Hewitt.) It because Bush-haters are so misinformed that they continue to claim (without any proof) that the President is a liar while heralding as a hero a Democrat discredited as dishonest (by a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report). -Dan (AKA GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com UPDATE: I just loved how Lorie Byrd titled her piece, linking this post: WE WILL KNOW LIBERALS ARE IN SEARCH OF TRUTH WHEN THEY START LOOKING FOR LUCY RAMIREZ. Thanks, Lorie. And readers, check her stuff out at her new home: Wizbang! gaypatriot.net gaypatriot.net gaypatriot.net huffingtonpost.com huffingtonpost.com opinionjournal.com gaypatriot.net gaypatriot.net gaypatriot.net examiner.com examiner.com hughhewitt.com gaypatriot.net wizbangblog.com