Annals of bad strategy: Newsweek is a well that never runs dry

Jack Shafer has a smart piece on the non-synergistic relationship between print and cable news:

TV or Not TV?

Newsweek makes the publisher's case for not sending print journalists onto TV news shows.

I've hit this point a number of times.

Newspaper killers mourn the passing of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

ESPN is killing newspapers in other ways. For instance, they, like many primetime cable news programs, “cover a story” by talking to the beat reporters who are actually covering the story. In essence, they let newspapers bear the cost while ESPN or Nancy Grace shares in the benefit.

(I’ve long found it puzzling that publishers and editors let their reporters give away their expensive product to the competition. Don’t they know about unsold cows and free milk?)



Cable news: get it fast, get it wrong

In the past, reporters and producers would conduct interviews, verify information and add context, write and edit the story, and then present the audience with a two-minute report. Cable, however, just fills air time with raw interviews. The audience has to do the work of verifying and assessing the information.

It is cost-effective because it is so cheap.

What i don't understand is why the respectable media plays along. Why do real reporters go on shows like "Nancy Grace" and provide grist for the mill? Many of these pseudo-newscasts would wither on the vine if they did not have real reporters doing their work for them.


Media's Shifting Business Model

There is a bleed-over for print journalism. Newsweeklies like Time will find it harder to maintain their niche-slower but more knowledgeable-when their reporters show up cheek-by-jowl with pundits and spinners on shows that specialize in raw talk.

Looking toward November

With apologies to Antoine Batiste and Davis McAlary....

Always remember that a Republican consultant could screw up a wet dream.

Annals of bad strategy: The MSM creates new competitors and alienates paying customers

Andrew Ferguson’s take on Jon Meacham and the sale of Newsweek is a sharp piece of press criticism. If A. J. Liebling is the gold standard for the genre, then Ferguson is pure 24K.

Don’t Give the Readers What They Want

Ferguson has no patience for the histrionic pity party Meacham threw for himself. (He’s been onto Meacham for quite some time.) What he sees clearly is that Newsweek’s woes have a lot to do with the poor decisions of the editors, most especially top editor Jon Meacham.


That Meacham went on the Daily Show in search of tea and sympathy is just more evidence that the MSM mandarins really do not understand their business or the nation they pretend to serve.

Like many of the dying dinosaurs of the Old Media, Meacham explains away his failure to save Newsweek by pointing to big external trends that are beyond his control. People do not want to pay for quality journalism anymore he whimpers. (As Ferguson notes, Meacham was happy to jettison half his subscribers who were still paying for Newsweek’s journalism.) That old evil internet is killing the institutions that stand between ignorance and democracy.

There is another big external trend that Meacham did not bring up on The Daily Show. A large chunk of the population thinks it can stay informed about the world without reading any thing at all. Among the younger demographics, The Daily Show and Colbert Report now stand in for newspapers, Newsweek, and Walter Cronkite.

If Meacham really cared about the battle between “ignorance and democracy”, this trend should scare the daylights out of him. As a simple matter of marketing, newsweeklies should draw sharp distinctions between themselves and these infotainment competitors. Instead, Meacham actually adds to TDS’s image as a legitimate journalistic outlet.

It’s not just his latest appearance that Ferguson analyzed. Newsweek has been hyping Jon Stewart as our new Ed Murrow for years. (See here ). Some wise guy even had the brilliant idea to let Stephen Colbert edit an issue of their magazine.


It’s hard to convince people to pay for your product when you yourself talk up the advantages of that competitor who charges less.

Any guy running a two pump gas station knows that. Why has that wisdom escaped the best minds of the traditional MSM?

VDH at his best

And that is very, very good indeed.

We Are Ruled by Professors

i hope i'm not giving too much away when i note that he does not think that's a good thing.

Hope you enjoy your big mug of Karma Mr. Wise

Washington Post Suspends Columnist for Twitter Hoax

See here:

Duke lacrosse: Not so wise guy

Food for thought

Brett Favre and Roger Clemens: Not The Odd Couple

There are a lot of parallels in the careers of Roger Clemens and Brett Favre. Both of them are good 'ol Southern Boys with right arms capable of throwing fireballs. While Favre got his championship out of the way early, Clemens had to wait 15 years for his first taste of title glory, however neither man has ever been mistaken for a reliable "CLUTZ" postseason performer. But the interesting parallels begin as both men entered the late 30s/early 40s portions of their careers.

RTWT.

Poland: First to Fight

The popular image of Poland in WWII is of a small nation that became the first victim of the Nazi blitzkrieg and the proximate cause of the war when Great Britain and France rallied to its side.

History records a different story. Poland fought Hitler’s Reich longer than any other nation. Her contributions to the Allied victory were significant and should be reclaimed from the memory hole.

First, about the defeat in September 1939:

The Polish Army-- almost completely unmechanized, almost without air support, almost surrounded by the Germans from the outset and, shortly, completely surrounded when the Red Army joined the aggression-- fought more effectively than it has been given credit for. It sustained resistance from September 1 until October 5, five weeks, which compares highly favorably with the six and a half weeks during which France, Britain, Belgium, and Holland kept up the fight in the west the following year
(John Keegan, The Battle for History)

Despite the defeats of 1939, the Polish nation never stopped fighting. Not only did the Home Army resist the Nazis inside of occupied Poland, but Polish forces fought on every major front of the European war.

The existence of a legitimate government in exile and of a strong army abroad--Poland, even in 1944, had the fourth largest number of men fighting German after the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom-- lent a powerful heart to the Poles, who produced few collaborators and no puppet chief, a unique distinction in the record of European response to German aggression.

Polish airmen filled whole squadrons in the Battle of Britain at a time when Britain barely had enough fighter pilots to hold off the Luftwaffe. (The Kosciuszko Squadron shot down more German planes than any other fighter squadron during the battle). Ground units fought heroically in key battles in Italy and France.

Perhaps the greatest contribution Poland made to the final victory was in the realm of intelligence. They played a vital role in breaking the Enigma cipher system used by the German high command and shared their discoveries with the French and British.

The Poles eventually designed a whole array of mechanical aids -- some of which they passes to the British, some of which the British replicated independently, besides inventing others themselves-- but their original attack, which allowed them to understand the logic of Enigma, eas a workd of pure mathematical reasoning. As it was done without any modern computing machinery, but simply by pencil and paper, it must be regarded as one of the most remarkable mathematical exercises known to history.
(John Keegan, Intelligence in War)

In the first desperate years of the war, Engima/ULTRA intelligence enabled Britain to hold off the Luftwaffe and then the U-boat menace.

The Nazis never discovered the ULTRA secret in five years of war. That is an amazing testament to the Poles and the French still on the Continent who knew the secret but never divulged it, not even under Gestopo torture.


The Polish Underground was the number one source of HUMINT in occupied Europe for the British. They provided vast amounts on information on the German V-1 and V-2 secret weapons, the movements of U-boats, and the German military preparations in advance of D-Day.

Witold Pilecki is a name every student should know. He carried out what the Times of London called “perhaps the bravest act of espionage of the Second World War”: he volunteered to go inside of Auschwitz. His reports documented the Nazi’s extermination campaign against the Jews.

Sounds about right

Instapundit

What the press found superlative about its Katrina reporting was the realization — very comforting post-RatherGate — that if they all agreed on a storyline and pushed it, they could still move the polls despite the alternative media. That the reporting was crap didn’t matter at all.

Making sense of the "Obama is a Muslim" poll

Tom Maquire has a must read take on the issue:

Now Poll On "Is Obama A Liar?"

Related thoughts here, here, here, and here.

Thomas Sowell: "Last of the Luddites"

He wears the title proudly.

The Passing of E-6

We (me and my fountain pens) salute him.

Three decades after the sunrise*

Poland Celebrates 30 Years Of Solidarity, Gdansk Accords

*

Howard Kurtz sounds positively frantic

The poll results on the President's religion has him on the brink of despair.

The ignorance factor: Obama, religion and the media

The chilling chunk of people who believe Barack Obama is a Muslim has caused some serious soul-searching in the news business.

How have journalists failed to adequately communicate that the president is a Christian? Or does it no longer matter what we report if people choose to believe something with no basis in fact?

My question on this whole issue is simple: why does this one piece of public ignorance matter so much?

So 18% of the public are wrong about the President's religion. Kurtz and Co. want the MSM to go pedal to the metal to correct this misconception. They also want Republicans to issue ringing testimonies to Obama's faith.

For over forty years, 70-80% of the public has believed that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone. Something like 30-50% of those people "think" that elements of the government had a hand in killing JFK.

Does Kurtz think that the MSM has a duty to correct this mistake in the public's knowledge of history?



Or what about the idea that the CIA invented AIDs to kill Africans and African-Americans?

I've missed the hyperventilation in the press about these examples of public ignorance and the political opportunists who exploit that ignorance.

The Ground Zero Mosque

Good piece by Nat Hentoff:

Am I also a bigot? Pols clueless on Ground Zero mosque

If you want to join Speaker Pelosi in investigating me, your honor, I'd be glad to oblige. I'm just doing my job as a reporter. I wish more reporters had gone beneath the shouting on both sides. There's another part of the First Amendment in addition to the free exercise of religion: The press is free to investigate the reasons for Imam Rauf's fixation on the 9/11 location of his mosque.

And why does this location make Hamas glow?

The last fugitive

Leo Frederick Burt--- Still free (maybe) 40 years after he bombed the Math building at Wisconsin--Madison.

The last radical - dead or alive?

FBI wanted poster here.

A cold-eyed look at BrettFavre

BrettFavre: the all-time leader in free passes

The problem with newspapers

Howard Owens thinks it might be self-inflicted.

Newspapers: Don't be the web

The effort to move newspapers toward color and fewer words has been destructive to the greatest value proposition of a newspaper: To be a product that thoughtful people spend time with. The endless chasing of "time-starved readers" has done nothing more than alienate core subscribers. And I also believe created a product that is even less interesting to younger generation of readers.

Can't they find a real expert?

With the indictment of Roger Clemens, ESPN has been using Lester Munson as their go to "legal expert".

It's worth remembering just how atrocious Munson's "analysis" was during the Duke lacrosse hoax and legal travesty. KC Johnson has chapter and verse here.

Six weeks that saved the world (II)

On the influence of individuals in history

The magnitude of their victory [in France] deceived the Germans. It seemed impossible that the British would consider further resistance. In fact, the change from Chamberlain to Churchill had created a very different atmosphere in London.

--

Churchill brought extraordinary leadership to the struggle... He nobly gambled the last resources of a fading empire in the belief that the struggle was not yet lost. He was right.

(A War to Be Won)

Seventy years later and it is still frightening to ponder the "what ifs" of 1940. How does our world look today if Churchill is not PM in June 1940? What if Britain follows Halifax's advice to make peace and "save the country from avoidable disaster"?

The revenge of the Beck-bots

A few days ago KC Johnson posted KC Johnson on cable's love affair with Wendy Murphy:

Wendy Murphy's Revival

KC made an altogether obvious and innocuous observation about the media landscape:

While I rarely watch cable news, I’m fully aware that—in the era of Glenn Beck—the medium is more “entertainment” than “news.”

It was not long before the Beck fans appeared in his comments to defend their hero who they felt was unfairly attacked.

Unfortunately for them, the facts are on Prof. Johnson's side. That Beck is an entertainer should be obvious to anyone who watches his show more than four or five times. That Fox News provides an outlet for the horrible, ill-informed Murphy is simply a fact.

Sadly, the “Right” flunked this test just as much as the “Left”. Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck still use Wendy Murphy as a “legal analyst” on their cable shows. O'Reilly even wrote the forward to her new book. This despite her disgusting performance during the lacrosse case.

Lastly, as noted years ago, Beck is a lot like Murphy and the Gang of 88. None of them let the truth get in the way of their preferred narrative.




See also:

Duke lacrosse: How important is the Gang of 88?

The smart guys are catching on

Cold Hard Football Facts

Wicker also finds that Hines Ward is one of the great big-game receivers of our time – a fact that goes a long way toward explaining why he’s so beloved in Pittsburgh, despite relatively humble regular-season numbers compared to some of the other great modern receivers.

Six weeks that saved the world

In this post, Rev. Donald Sensing makes a powerful case that 6 June 1944 is the most critical day in Western history:

The awful stakes of D-Day

There are many "pivot" days in human history, when the course of human events swung in a new direction because of discrete actions. It is hard to find another moment in all history when so much rested on an outcome of one day as rested on the success of the Allies' landings on Normandy. In military history, no other day in American history compares. The only single day that comes to mind for me right now is the day of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, when an Athenian army repelled a Persian landing force. The entire future of Western civilization and the idea of democracy itself lay in the balance. And yet even that may day not stand alone as D-Day does because the Persians persisted and the later battles of Plataea and Salamis were probably even more important. So there was no "one day" of paramount importance in the Persian War, even though it was almost certainly the most important war of ancient times.

The success at Normandy validated the strategic assessment of Churchill in the dark days of June 1940:

This is not the decisive point and this is not the decisive moment. That moment will come when Hitler hurls his Luftwaffe against Great Britain. If we can keep command of the air and if we can keep the seas open, we will win it all back for you.

It was an astute judgment but it seemed like wishful thinking to the French. Their generals assured the government that "in three weeks, England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." France made peace with Hitler and left Britain to stand alone.

There is no D-Day in 1944 unless Britain remains defiant and unconquered in the summer and fall of 1940. As Churchill understood, the first crucial battle in the liberation of Europe would take place in the skies over England.

The great French Army was very largely, for the time being, cast back and disturbed by the onrush of a few thousand armoured vehicles. May it not also be that the cause of civilisation itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen?

(Speech to Parliament 4 June 1940)

On 1 August 1940, Hitler issued Directive No. 17:

The Luftwaffe will use all the forces at its disposal to destroy the British air force as quickly as possible.

The RAF proved equal to the great challenge. Throughout the summer and fall they battled the Luftwaffe in hundreds of actions in the first great air campaign in history. The Germans never attained control of the air over southern England; without air superiority no invasion was possible.

On 15 September, Hitler put Operation Sea Lion-- the invasion of England-- on hold.

Der Führer had suffered his first strategic setback. Britain remained undefeated and unbowed. The great triumphs that came in the years that followed were only possible because of that momentous victory in 1940.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few

Like the battle of Midway, the Battle of Britain stands out from the most other military turning points in the modern era. Sedan, Verdun, Stalingrad and Normandy were struggles contested by armies numbering in the hundreds of thousands or even millions. The Battle of Britain was on an altogether smaller scale. A few thousand pilots and ground support personnel were the first and mainline of defense against Hitler and his war machine.

As Churchill put it:

The odds were great; our margins small; the stakes infinite

The free world can give thanks that England prevailed against those great odds.

This website let’s you follow the course of the campaign as it unfolded.

Battle of Britain Day by Day

This might be the best thing i've read on the Ground Zero mosque

Let us have a thought experiment...

Babe Ruth

by The Last Hollywood Star



On the 62nd anniversary of Ruth's death, Life Magazine releases several previously unpublished photos.

History

Today is the 90th anniversary of the Miracle on the Vistula

In free Poland it also marks Armed Forces Day.

Distorting history

Great post by Rev. Donald Sensing

"Hiroshima Day" - World Council of Churches gets it wrong again


It's past time for Western churches to stop treating Japan so sympathetically every Aug. 6 and 9.

My favorite post title of the day

Shirley Sherrod’s ill-fitting suit

When seconds count, the police are minutes (sometimes many minutes) away

'Deadly delay': Police wait while mother, sons slain

The District police department policy on forcible entry caused a "deadly delay" as officers waited for a supervisor outside an apartment while a mother and her two young sons were being stabbed to death inside, according to a lawsuit filed by the woman's family.

The policy that led to police taking nearly an hour to finally bust down the door and find the murdered family is at the center of a $60 million wrongful death lawsuit against the city and the officers involved.

Another triumph for criminal profiling?

If the Maryland police are right, then the FBI missed the boat once again:

Upper Marlboro man who police call a serial killer indicted

An FBI profiler concluded last year that the two slayings weren't connected, but police say Scott masked his crimes to throw off investigators.

Related:

The truth about criminal profiling

"Profilers can aid case, but they won't solve it"

I always knew Andrew Cohen was a dishonest hack*

but i had no idea he was such a twisted, self-dramatising jerk.

The Gift of Creepiness, On Your Wedding Day

UPDATE: Cohen doubles down.

*

When apologies were not in fashion

Since the MSM thinks apologies are the order of the day, Legal Insurrection has a few cases that deserve a mea culpa or three.

Still Waiting For Apologies

It's a lengthy list, but it only scratches the surface.

For example, since we now know that context is everything and editing video foortage is terrible, where are the apologies for the "Collateral Murder" propoganda from Wikileaks?

It's funny, in a sick kind of way, that Shirley Sherrod has become a martyr because she was went through a couple of days of bad press and unfair attacks. In terms of duration and viciousness, her "ordeal" is a day at the spa compared to what happened to the three falsely accused Duke lacrosse players.

So you might ask, how did the MSM handle their apologies back in 2007?

Short answer: grudgingly or not at all.

More than a few actually continued to attack the innocent players in order to cover for the media's failure.

Here is Terry Moran of ABC News

But perhaps the outpouring of sympathy for Reade Seligman, Collin Finnerty and David Evans is just a bit misplaced. They got special treatment in the justice system--both negative and positive. The conduct of the lacrosse team of which they were members was not admirable on the night of the incident, to say the least. And there are so many other victims of prosecutorial misconduct in this country who never get the high-priced legal representation and the high-profile, high-minded vindication that it strikes me as just a bit unseemly to heap praise and sympathy on these particular men

.
Mike Wise of the Washington Post:

Just because these players aren't felons, let's not instantly transform them into martyrs. It's okay to find middle ground in the good-and-evil spectrum, no matter what a certain D.A. tells you.

Media critic and Breitbart scourge Howard Kurtz:

The three players were not choir boys -- the team had, after all, invited a pair of strippers to a midnight party -- but they hardly deserved the national scorn of being loudly trumpeted as accused rapists.

Further examples can be found here for the Washington Post and here and here for Selena Robert of the New York Times.

Roberts provides another interesting insight into media double standards. Breitbart's mistake apparently puts him beyond the pale now and forever. Roberts's disgracefull performance brought out the protective side of her reporter friends.

A new form of failure laundering*

Many in the MSM are bashing Andrew Breitbart for his handling of the Shirley Sherrod video. Some of the criticism is probably deserved. Others, however, are trying to use this story to retrospectively justify their own mistakes and journalistic failures.

Patterico takes down one such effort here:

James Rainey: Breitbart Was Irresponsible for Doing What I Do All the Time

With this series of embarrassments as background, it’s little wonder that Rainey would seize upon the Sherrod episode as a way to suggest that Breitbart was the villain all along — and Rainey simply the truth-teller battling the wild-eyed partisan.

The fact that Rainey routinely slams his enemies without contacting them for comment (he also did it to Jill Stewart lends a rich layer of irony to this complaint about Breitbart:

[D]idn’t this self-styled truth-teller have an obligation to get the full speech or a response from Sherrod? He apparently did none of those things.

When Breitbart fails to contact someone for a response, that’s unforgivable sloppiness, according to Rainey. But when Rainey fails to contact Giles, or O’Keefe, or Breitbart, or Jill Stewart, that’s tip-top Big Newspaper Journalism.

Clarice Feldman takes a broader tour d'horizon on the meaning of the story.

Clarice's Pieces: Know When to Hold 'Em

Feldman actually read what Breitbart wrote when he posted the videos. That puts her ahead of about 90% of the fulminators on the issue.

It appears that the White House is hoping to run this story through the wash cycle a few times. They want Ag. Secretary Vilsack and Deputy Undersecretaty Cheryl Cook to shoulder all the blame for the quick firing of Sherrod. But as Jack Kelly notes, the WH praised the Ag department for their "decisive action" the day after Sherrod was ousted.


*Other examples of failure laundering can be found here, here, and here.

Dealergate

Michelle Malkin:

Dealergate, social justice & the Obama job-killing machine

But Neil Barofsky, the federal watchdog overseeing the bank-auto-insurance-all-purpose bailout fund, found that the White House auto industry task force and the Treasury Department “Auto Team” had no basis for ordering the expedited car dealership closure schedules. They relied on a single consulting firm’s internal report recommending that the U.S. companies adopt foreign auto industry models to increase profits — a recommendation hotly disputed by auto experts who questioned whether foreign practices could be applied to domestic American dealership networks.

Team Obama’s government auto mechanics also ignored the economic impact of rushing those closures. According to Barofsky, they discounted counter-testimony from industry officials that “closing dealerships in an environment already disrupted by the recession could result in an even greater crisis in sales.”

MM also points out that the the people responsible for these important decisions were hardly the best qualified to weild such power.

This is no surprise, of course, considering the amount of actual auto business expertise among Obama’s auto czars and key staff. That is: zero. Obama’s first auto czar, Steve Rattner, ran a private equity firm in New York before resigning his position amid a financial ethics cloud.

Rattner’s chief auto expert adviser, Brian Deese, is a 30-something former Hillary Clinton/Barack Obama campaign aide and law school grad with no business experience, who openly boasted that he “never set foot in an automotive assembly plant.”

I blogged about Rattner (here and here) and Deese (here) last year.

Giving Jonathan Alter his due

The whole review is a gem

Friends and Sources

"A mile above sea level," reads the first awful sentence by Newsweek's Jonathan Alter in his prologue to this book, "the thin Denver air refreshed the throngs as they waited in the summer darkness for their man to ascend. It was an electric evening for a nation yearning to believe in something or someone again. Barack Obama accepted his party's nomination for president on August 28, 2008, the forty-fifth anniversary of Martin Luther King's ‘I Have a Dream' speech at the Lincoln Memorial."
As far as we know, no loaves and fishes to feed the hungry multitudes, no water changed to wine. But otherwise, the symbols are all there -- the adoring throngs, the mountaintop, the ascension -- and the tone is set.

Coyne also understands how the guild works and how it takes care of its own:

But don't cry for Jonathan Alter and Jon Meacham. As Patrick Gavin writes in Politico, Meacham "has the great fortune of being part of an elite club of journalists who take care of their own." He quotes Peter Mirijanian, a Washington crisis communications expert: "Within the fraternity and sorority that is the journalist corridor between New York and Washington, I think he's fine..." And so is Alter. After Game Change and The Bridge, his Promise is third in a series of at least three more Obama books this year by that "elite club" of journalist/writers, topping off with Bob Woodward, who creates great fictional characters and will find at least one Deep Throat in the administration, unnamed of course, to pass him secrets in an unlit parking garage.

The story will change, the plot thicken, and Alter will be kept in book contracts for a few more years -- at least up through Year Four -- thus continuing to ensure him a place beside Jon Meacham at Charley Rose's table.

The philosophy behind gun control

Great post from Kevin Williamson at NR:

Coyotes in the State of Nature

Ignatius here is remarkably forthcoming: He is not worried about guns in the hands of criminals, but about guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, people who are willing to apply for a permit and jump through the bureaucratic hoops re­quired of gun buyers. His nightmare is not an America in which criminals run amok with Glocks, or even an America in which gun permits are handed out liberally, but an America in which “every American can apply for a gun license.” Never mind the approval of licenses, the mere application gives Mr. Ignatius the howling fantods. It is wonderfully apt that he references the “state of nature” in his criticism, imagining a Hobbesian version of life in these United States: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short, permeated by the aroma of cordite. Mr. Ignatius, like Thomas Hobbes, is casting his lot with Leviathan and makes no apology for it.

That is the essence of 21st-century progressivism: In matters ranging from financial derivatives to education to gun control, the Left believes that we face a choice between a masterful state and a Hobbesian war of all against all. For all of the smart set’s vaunted and self-congratulatory nu­ance, it is this absolutist vision, this Manichean horror, that forms the foun­dation of progressivism.....

Just as state schooling is not about education, but about the state, gun control is not about guns: It’s about control. A citizen who can fend for himself when the predators come or the schools fail is less inclined to look to the state for sustenance and oversight in other areas of life. To progressives, that’s an invitation to anarchy. To the men who wrote the Second Amendment, it was a condition of citizenship in a free republic. It’s what free men did, and do.

See also Jesse Walker's article on the "paranoid center" from last fall for a smart analysis of another facet of the problem.

Looking for the dark cloud behind the silver lining

When most normal people read that a serial killer has been captured, they view it as an unalloyed good.

A killer off the street, what’s the downside?

OTOH, MSM pundits and editors seem to take a perverse pleasure in finding the potential downside to every piece of good news.

Case in point--the capture of Lonnie David Franklin who is accused of being South Central LA’s “Grim Sleeper” serial killer. After years of frustration, investigators made their breakthrough when they used familial DNA analysis. Lonnie Franklin was not in the state’s DNA database so earlier searches came up empty. When investigators looked for close matches (i. e. family members of their unknown killer), they got a hit. Further investigation led them to Franklin. Undercover officers snagged his DNA from an discarded slice of pizza. That DNA proved to be to be a match with the evidence from the murders and an arrest was made.

What’s not to like?

MSM pundits and editors have found plenty not to like:

A Yellow Light to DNA Searches (NY Times)

The Grim Sleeper and DNA: There's much to be concerned about (LA Times)


Familial DNA analysis is promising but hazardous (KC Star)

Most of the arguments are either short on logic or light on facts. Or both. For example, the New York Times is fine with how California handled this case and thinks it should be a model for the nation. Yet, Jerry Brown has imposed a couple of bizarre restrictions on police:

Under rules set up by Attorney General Jerry Brown, familial searching cannot be used unless all other investigative leads have been exhausted. The crime must be murder or rape, and the criminal has to be an active threat to public safety still committing crimes.

Why must other, possibly less effective methods be “exhausted” before police turn to familial DNA analysis? In the case of serial murder and serial rapists this give the criminal more time to find more victims.

Similarly, why should cold cases be excluded? Just because a case seems to be cold, that does not mean the killer is no longer a threat. The “Grim Sleeper” got his nickname because he apparently stopped killing for fourteen years. In the case of BTK (Dennis Rader) police thought he stopped killing in 1978, but, in fact, he committed three murders in 2004 and 2005 that police did not link to BTK until Rader confessed to them after his capture.

I not sure what drives this obsessive desire to find a perverse angle to stories in the news. Is it merely a need to look clever and stand apart from crowd? That’s the most likely explanation. But I cannot help thinking about something David Gelernter wrote after he was almost killed by the Unabomber:

Between lawmen and reporters on the whole it is impossible, however, not to notice this difference: Most lawmen seem to hate criminals, and most reporters couldn't care less.

Behind the Pirates's woes

by The Last Hollywood Star


For those of you interested in how the Pirates got where they are, this Sports Illustrated article does a good job of explaining.

Not A Pretty Picture

With their rich heritage and jewel of a ballpark, the Pirates could be a major league treasure. Instead they're an object lesson in how a once-proud club can become the most futile franchise in sports

Case in point

There's no statute of limitations on counterespionage, none at all.

William Hood

Nor, is there any statute of limitations on writing about spy puzzles.

For example. Chapman Pincher returns to the "Fifth Man" question in his 2009 book Treachery. Tracking down the Cambridge Ring and their enablers has been good sport for British journalists since 1951.

The thing that amazes me is that Pincher was one of those journalists. The man was born in 1914. And yet, he is still chasing down leads and writing fat books as he nears the century mark. That is a worthy achievement in and of itself.

Pincher is convinced that former MI5 director Roger Hollis was a Russian mole. He has pursued that avenue for thirty years(since Their Trade is Treachery). His latest book has some new information that bolsters the case, but still no smoking gun.

What makes this book fascinating is that Pincher dishes a lot of inside information on how he got his scoops. Like Bob Novak's memoir, we get a close up look at how the sausage is made.

The essence of "Twilight"

Twilight Hit for the Same Reasons Knight and Day Flopped

A weaker novelist than Rowling, Meyer less understands the adolescent girl’s mind than shares it. Her Bella epitomizes teen self-obsession, the ambition to have every boy fight over you and every girl hate you for it.

Unlike Harry Potter’s world, which is so crisply-imagined that it’s a little limiting as metaphor, Meyer’s hazy imagination created a vampire cosmos where everything can symbolize anything. Sex, death, growing up, marriage, religion, race, family, whatever interests you, it will fit into Twilight’s cloudy cosmos.

Double standards are the only standards he's got

Last year Howard Kurtz was deeply troubled because ESPN was slow to jump on the sexual assault accusations aimed at Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger:

I've got one more ESPN controversy to throw at you, and that's the story involving Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who was suddenly confronted with allegations from a woman who filed a civil suit against him saying that he sexually assaulted her a year ago. She never went to the police. This is a year later. Who knows whether it's true.

Lots of news organization reported it. ESPN initially did not and told its talk show hosts not to talk about it.

Can you really ignore a story like that?

Funny thing, he sings a completely different tune when the target is Al Gore:

But, now, you have an accuser who, as I mentioned, her cooperation with the police was spotty. The police did not see any reason to launch an investigation.

Didn't that give you any pause about publishing?

LEVINE: Howard, it did not give us pause in the sense that this was something that had been buried. Was there some type of cover-up involving the police? We don't know.

I mean, I think our job was to bring it to the surface after we were able to corroborate certain facts of the story. And now there's public opinion on this story.

Let's look into the thing. Let's look into the evidence that's at hand. Let's hear from Al Gore in terms of his side of the story. He's officially issued a "no comment" about this, so I think there's still a lot that remains to be seen on this story.

KURTZ: You talk about Gore's side of the story, but you told me this week that "The Enquirer" did not call Al Gore's office for comment because you didn't want to lose the exclusive before your issue hit the newsstands.

Was that fair to the former vice president?

LEVINE: I think it was. You know, this was a competitive story.

You know, he could have gotten out in front of it by putting it in the hands of a news organization, to some degree, more favorable. We felt that we had the facts and we wanted to put that information out. Now is his time to come forward.

We thought our story was very fair in the sense that we said very high that the police had not charged him in any way. We also pointed out some things that we found out about the woman's past, that she had been involved in a previous domestic relations abuse case from 1998.

KURTZ: Right.

LEVINE: So we thought we laid all the information out.

KURTZ: Gore's office has not commented yet, and I put in a request as well. But isn't it possible, Barry Levine, that this woman is making this up and making a charge against a very famous person who is now being victimized?

(I discussed the media and the Roethlisberger allegations here)

The MSM puts great stock in the value of its insider status. They know things that we outsiders do not. That allows them to see context and nuance that the dirty masses are blind to. What the public might think is favoritism is just superior knowledge. Because they know that Joe Biden is smart and Sarah Palin is dumb, it is AOK for pundits to mock the latter while ignoring the missteps the of Veep.

Yeah, they know Biden is smart just as they know (knew?) that Al Gore was a good family man.

Uh-oh. In the wake of the divorce and the sexual assault allegations, maybe the insiders aren't so knowledgeable after all.

John Hawkins takes David Frum to the woodshed

Long story short, everybody has to make a living. But, I'm not interested in helping people like Frum play this little game where they try to cripple conservatives publicly while coming around on the back end to milk us for money. If Frum wants to be a dancing monkey for the Left, let them come up with the money to pay for the tune.

RTWT. You'll be glad you did.

Ace weighs in.


Little Miss Attila: "Hawkins is saying something that has needed saying for a long time".

Read it and weep for the Gulf coast

Avertible catastrophe

Why does neither the U.S. government nor U.S. energy companies have on hand the cleanup technology available in Europe? Ironically, the superior European technology runs afoul of U.S. environmental rules. The voracious Dutch vessels, for example, continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. Nearly oil-free isn't good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million -- if water isn't at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

What happens if some one blows the whistle and no one cares?

J. Christian Adams blows the whistle on the New Black Panther cover-up"

Inside the Black Panther case Anger, ignorance and lies


The New Black Panther case was the simplest and most obvious violation of federal law I saw in my Justice Department career. Because of the corrupt nature of the dismissal, statements falsely characterizing the case and, most of all, indefensible orders for the career attorneys not to comply with lawful subpoenas investigating the dismissal, this month I resigned my position as a Department of Justice (DOJ) attorney.
...
Based on my firsthand experiences, I believe the dismissal of the Black Panther case was motivated by a lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law. Others still within the department share my assessment. The department abetted wrongdoers and abandoned law-abiding citizens victimized by the New Black Panthers. The dismissal raises serious questions about the department's enforcement neutrality in upcoming midterm elections and the subsequent 2012 presidential election.

The Mumbai model

The bad news? Massad Ayoob think it might happen here:

An American Mumbai?

The good news? He believes that America is better prepared and is a much tougher target. Our police are better trained and equipped while our citizens are then the "unarmed and helpless" targets the terrorists found in Mumbai.

I've blogged about these issues a number of times:

Lessons and preparations


Lessons from Mumbai


Armed citizens and al Qaeda swarms

There is thin-skinned and then there is the MSM

Interesting article by Scott Rosenberg.

Why Can't Journalists Handle Public Criticism?

Why do so many journalists find it so hard to handle public criticism? If you're an athlete, you're used to it. If you're an artist, critics will regularly take you down. If you are in government, the pundits and now the bloggers will show no mercy. If you're in business, the market will punish you.

That's a big, fat juicy question that i've taken a wack at from time to time.

Here's one idea: MSM reporters have been coddled and sequestered for so long that they have become deluded about their popular standing.

The agony of the push media guild

In one episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy ends up with the power to read minds. This turns out to be a curse instead of a gift. The thoughts of those around her are raging cacophony of voices inside her head that drives her to madness and the brink of death.

That’s what the internet has done to the people who make their living in the old media. Once they lived in a quiet world where they talked and every one else listened. Their work was rarely criticized. Sometimes they heard whispered praise or demurrals from other guild members but it was all very civilized.



He joked his way to an important truth


I think most big-time media personalities labor under the same delusion. They think they are smart, funny, and wildly popular. The horrible thing about the new media is that they (sometimes) find out that it just ain't so.

Maybe they worry that word will get out that much of what passes for big-time journalism is just a sort of childish game. Much of the rest is playing a ventriloquist dummy.

Reporters might be troubled by the gap between the pretensions of their "profession" and the reality of their work.

Scott Shane of the New York Times described his work this way for a CSPAN audience in 2007:

I'm a jounalist whose job it is to explain to others things he does't understand himself.

And:

A typical reporter on deadline calls a couple of people and slaps something into the paper the next day.

It's no wonder that the the guild loves grifters like Conor Friedersdorf. He gives them a reason to ignore their critics ("they're close-minded") and to hope that their dwindling audience will ignore them as well. (See here for an example.)

I {heart} Mark Steyn

This post was good:

Honor-Rolled

But the caning he gave Conor Friedersdorf is not to be missed:

Correction Sought

Just One Minute weighs in judiciously (which is bad news for Conor "I'm a conservative who matters" Friedersdorf:

Bringing The 'Epic' To 'Epic Fail'

Three quick points;

1. The essential rightness of Steyn's argument is found in his comparison of Matthew Shepherd and Aasiya Hassan (and the media coverage of each murder).

2. When some one starts an argument by calling their opponent close-minded, unthinking, cynical and/or easily manipulated (which is the essence of Friederdorf's "epistemic closure"), they really aren't interested in an honest discussion. He seeks to mark his conservative opponents as unworthy of debate. His audience is the MSM who like his message (see next post) and like "conservatives" who smear popular conservatives (see Frum, David).

3 How can Friedersdorf claim any sort of high ground when he works with and seeks support from Excitable Andy, "The Chief Obstetrician"? Not even Glen Beck has ever been so consistently hysterical and loony.

What's black and gold and known the world over?

Peter King at the World Cup:

Random NFL Experience in South Africa

I'm here with my wife, and the other day, we were in a cab in Cape Town and the driver asked where we were from.

"I grew up in Pittsburgh,'' my wife said.

"The Steelers!!!!'' the fellow said.

"You know the Steelers?'' she said.

"Everyone knows the Steelers!'' he said.

Opportunity lost

by The Last Hollywood Star



Armando Galarraga, the Detroit Tiger pitcher denied a perfect game last week on a blown call at first base by umpire Jim Joyce, has missed his opportunity for immortality.

I’m not talking about Galarraga’s almost perfect game but rather his decision to remain an active major league pitcher instead of walking away at the peak of his popularity.

At no time in his future will Galarraga ever be as beloved as he was the instant that Joyce called the Cleveland Indians’ Jason Donald safe on an infield single while all of America saw that he was clearly out.

In the minds of baseball fans, his teammates, major league umpiring crews and front office personnel, Galarraga pitched a perfect game, no questions asked.

After the game, Galarraga’s grace in the face of his enormous professional set back won him the admiration of millions.

When Galarraga presented the line up card to Joyce before the next day’s game, the umpire was reduced to tears. Galarraga and Joyce hugged.

Galarraga forgave Joyce’s blunder. Everyone agreed with Galarraga: Joyce is a good man who made a human mistake.

By this time in his story, people who don’t know baseball from bowling had jumped on Galarraga’s band wagon. Moms and Dads, teachers, counselors, ministers all pointed to Galarraga as a paragon of virtue and an example of how to face adversity with grace.

At that moment when all the forces of good merged, Galarraga’s persona peaked.

And, also at that exact moment although he didn’t realize it, Galarraga also faced a choice. Should he retire and be known forever as the pitcher and gentleman who went out on top or continue his baseball career into ultimate obscurity?

Unfortuantely, Galarraga elected to press on.

Then a few days later on June 8, Galarraga went to the mound to face the Chicago White Sox. During five innings, he gave up seven hits and two earned runs.

Perfection ended. Galarraga is now on his way to becoming one of dozens of pitchers who were both perfect and near perfect that, unless you are an advanced fan, you cannot tell me a single thing about.

Among the perfect game pitchers you’ve never heard of are Addie Joss, Charlie Robertson, Len Barker, Mike Witt and Kenny Rogers. An additional ten pitchers had their perfect games spoiled after the twenty-sixth out. Among the names you don’t recognize are Milt Wilcox, Brian Holman and Ron Robinson.

Assuming Galarraga had taken my advice (too late now!),what career path could he have pursued?

Galarraga’s opportunities would have been many including some within baseball. And it’s probable that most of them would generate a higher income than his $400,000 major league.

Maybe the Detroit Tigers could have put Galarraga to work in its community outreach department. As a local hero, Galarraga would be an inspiration to troubled youth living throughout Detroit’s inner city.

Commissioner Bud Selig’s office has a similar community service job that extends throughout baseball’s network of cities. Galarraga, born in Venezuela, would be able to present himself not only as an on the field champion but also as an immigrant success story.

Galarraga could have signed on with General Motors. The auto giant gave Galarraga a 2010 Corvette convertible that advertising executives calculate is worth $8.9 million in media exposure. GM could give $1 million of that to Galarraga to make appearances on its behalf to sell cars worldwide.

How about this? Suppose Galarraga hired the William Morris Agency to book speaking engagements for him. If Bill Clinton made $51 million in 2008 speaking political gibberish on the rubber chicken circuit, surely Galarraga could rake in $5 million talking about the importance of character.

Galarraga’s alternate income possibilities are endless. Since he’s already 28 and not much more than a .500 pitcher, he should have seized the day when he could have.

In a fickle America, Galarraga is already yesterday’s news.

College coaches

I first posted this in April 2007. With the passing of John Wooden, i thought it might be worth a re-run.

Sports: Miscellaneous thoughts in search of a theme

Death came for Grambling’s Eddie Robinson right when the coaching carousel was in full swing for college basketball. Very few of those who praised him noted how different he was from the men they cover today.

It is easy to criticize modern players for their bad discipline and self-centeredness. (I know because I’ve done it on this blog.) Let’s recognize that their college coaches help teach those lessons.

The prevailing ethos among big-time college coaches is take the money and run. Most of those coaches still preach the value of discipline, team play, character, and self-sacrifice. As they do so, the larger message they send is “do as I say, not as I do.” All too many coaches who exhort young players to sacrifice for the team are willing to abandon those players and that team for a chance at a bigger payday.

Many of Robinson’s former players spoke about the big role he played in their lives. The sentiments were identical to those I heard after Woody Hayes passed. Both coaches kept a heavy hand on their players and the players came to love them for it.

A coach can only pull that off if their loyalty to the team and to school are absolute. In the case of Hayes and Robinson it was and it worked. When a modern coach applies the same tactics it is just exploitive and tyrannical.

Ricky Williams was roundly (and rightly) criticized for quitting on the Dolphins and letting down his teammates. Nick Saban quit on the Dolphins and did not receive the same level of criticism. It was, apparently, justified by the big pay check. How is it that we have adopted the ethics of whoredom“I did it for the money”?

In his masterful The Face of Battle, John Keegan reflects on the reasons for the British victory at Waterloo. The crux of the battle was simple enough. Napoleon had to break the British line somewhere and was unable to do so. As Keegan puts it:

The British still stood on the line Wellington had marked out for them, planted by the hold officers had over themselves and so over their men. Honour, in a very peculiar sense, had triumphed.

Eddie Robinson’s achievements had the same source as Wellington’s victory. At Grambling, as at Waterloo, honor and selflessness made everything else possible.

From the archives

A few old posts (loosely related)

Useful creativity

Knowledge

The downside of participatory management

Lest we forget

The awful stakes of D-Day

There are many "pivot" days in human history, when the course of human events swung in a new direction because of discrete actions. It is hard to find another moment in all history when so much rested on an outcome of one day as rested on the success of the Allies' landings on Normandy. In military history, no other day in American history compares. The only single day that comes to mind for me right now is the day of the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, when an Athenian army repelled a Persian landing force. The entire future of Western civilization and the idea of democracy itself lay in the balance. And yet even that may day not stand alone as D-Day does because the Persians persisted and the later battles of Plataea and Salamis were probably even more important. So there was no "one day" of paramount importance in the Persian War, even though it was almost certainly the most important war of ancient times.

Russ at Ace of Spades

You know what I did this morning? Maybe it would be better if I told you what I didn't do this morning.

I didn't have to spend over 12 hours on a transport ship in choppy water, then clamber down a cargo net into a plywood landing craft, all while carrying up to 100 pounds of gear on my back. Then, I didn't ride through the rough surf in that little plywood target, only to have the steel ramp (the only part of the little plywood boat that was even remotely bullet-resistant) flop down and drop me into the cold ocean water in front of a beach filled with steel obstacles, mines, flying bullets & exploding artillery rounds.

Blackfive has the text from Reagan's speech at Normandy in 1984.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them here. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air singed with your honor."

A giant passes

John Wooden, Who Built Incomparable Dynasty at U.C.L.A., Dies at 99

John Wooden, a staid Midwesterner who migrated to U.C.L.A. and became college basketball’s most successful coach, earning the nickname the Wizard of Westwood and an enduring place in sports history, died Friday at Ronald Reagan U.C.L.A. Medical Center, where he had been hospitalized since May 26. He was 99.

College sports need more coaches like him:

Abdul-Jabbar recalled that there “was no ranting and raving, no histrionics or theatrics.” He continued: “To lead the way Coach Wooden led takes a tremendous amount of faith. He was almost mystical in his approach, yet that approach only strengthened our confidence. Coach Wooden enjoyed winning, but he did not put winning above everything. He was more concerned that we became successful as human beings, that we earned our degrees, that we learned to make the right choices as adults and as parents.

Midway

First posted 4 June 2009

Today marks the anniversary of the battle of Midway. I wrote about the battle here and here. As the Rev. Don Sensing wrote several years ago, we must remember the men who fought that battle because "they saved the world. Not all by themselves, but they did save it, and you should know that."

If you have not seen it, make sure you get a copy of Battle 360 and watch with amazement. The producers interviewed dozens of veterans of the USS Enterprise. They are old men now and there are fewer of them every day. You owe it to yourself to hear their stories.

UPDATE:In From the Cold has a great post:

A Dawn Like Thunder

Smitty has a round-up and a report from the Navy Memorial.

ESPN just can't let it go

Duke won the NCAA lacrosse championship yesterday. As KC Johnson notes, the Worldwide Leader was not content to cover that story. They still want to slime the players with the false allegation from 2006.

What kind of church tries to use the FBI to shut down critics?

Robert Leslie Hymers, III, Sort-Of “Reports” Me to the FBI

See R. S. McCain's thoughts here:

Siccing the FBI on Little Miss Attila?

Memorial Day

by The Last Hollywood Star



Memorial Day symbolizes three things: summer’s official beginning, the baseball season’s swing into the heart of its schedule and the long weekend when we honor Americans who sacrificed their lives in our major conflicts.

Those three variable interact meaningfully.

During World War ll baseball, like other professions, lost many of its key personnel to the draft. The Selective Training and Service Act signed by President Roosevelt on September 16, 1940 required that every American male between the ages of 21 and 36 register for 12 months of military service "to ensure the independence and freedom of the United States."

By the end of 1941, the draft had put nearly two million men in uniform.

To research baseball’s relationship with World War II, I relied on two sources that I wholeheartedly recommend to fellow baseball fans and history buffs: Gary Bedingfield’s Baseball in Wartime and Graham Womack’s Baseball Past and Present

I’m moved by the enormous patriotism that inspired so many of the baseball stars who nobly served America. Although only two active major league players were killed during World War II, Elmer Gedeon and Harry O’Neill, many of the best players fought.

According to Bedingfield, more than 500 major league players “swapped flannels for khakis” during World War II, and such well-known stars as Stan Musial, Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams served their nation off the diamond.”

Another was Detroit Tiger future Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, drafted on May 7, 1941. "Hammerin' Hank" had played in three World Series and two All-Star games. In 1938, Greenberg hit 58 home runs (just two short of Babe Ruth's 1927 record) and in 1940 was the American League's Most Valuable Player.

Greenberg gave up his $55,000 yearly salary for $21 per month Army pay and reported to Fort Custer, Michigan. He told The Sporting News, "If there's any last message to be given to the public, let it be that I'm going to be a good soldier."

Baseball sacrificed at other levels, too. The military summoned 4,076 from the minor leagues which ranged in classification from “AAA” down to “D” . Players exchanged their uniforms to learn to fly planes, shoot weapons and maneuver tanks. No more than 12 minor leagues survived during the war years compared to 44 circuits that operated in 1940.

Even manufacturers of baseball equipment contributed to the war effort. Hillerich & Bradsby, who produced the famous Louisville Slugger baseball bats, converted their production lines into manufacturing stocks for the M1 carbine rifle.

In one of his blogs, Womack offered this starting line up made up of some of the best World War II veteran players. Included are:

Second Base: New York Yankee Jerry Coleman who saw combat in two wars. Coleman flew 57 missions in World War II and another 63 during the Korean War. In between, he finished third in the 1949 American League Rookie of the Year voting and was an All Star for the Yankees in 1950.

Shortstop: Washington Senator’s Cecil Travis is one of the few players who may have missed the Hall of Fame because of his World War II service. A .314 lifetime hitter, Travis entered the army at 28 following his best season, 1941, when he hit .359 with a league-leading 218 hits. Travis suffered frostbite on his feet during the Battle of the Bulge and played just three more seasons after the war concluded, never again hitting .300.

Outfield: Coleman’s Yankee teammate, Hank Bauer whose war credentials are almost as impressive as his 21-season long big league career. In 32 months of World War II combat, Bauer earned eleven campaign ribbons, two Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. Bauer debuted in the majors in 1948, was a three-time All Star with the Yankees who hit .277 with 164 home runs.

Outfield: Ted Williams, a flight instructor during World War II, who flew 39 combat missions during the Korean War and might have otherwise hit 700 home runs.

Pitcher: Cleveland Indians Bob Feller refused a World War II non-combat playing assignment but insisted on being sent into battle. Feller got his wish, serving 26 months as chief of an anti-aircraft gun crew on the battleship Alabama.

Although many of today’s major league players are of the age where they could have served in either Iraq or Afghanistan, the all volunteer military spared them.
If you watch baseball this weekend, don’t forget about our many heros who thrilled you on the diamond but also fought for your freedoms.

Little Miss Atilla has some thoughts on the mess in the Gulf

The Parallels with the RMS Titanic Continue

James O'Keefe

So his arrest in Sen. Landrieu's turned out to be something less than Watergate, Jr.

On the other hand, Patterico and Ace of Spades have a couple of posts on the interesting way the prosecutors handled things.

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words: Screenshots of the Government’s Admission That James O’Keefe Did Not Attempt to Tamper With Landrieu’s Phones



Shocker: Court Destroyed Evidence That Landrieu's Phones Were Working Fine, Just As O'Keefe Endeavored to Establish

Ace makes a good point about journalists, leaks, and the narrative:

This is very similar to the basic rules of leaks: If a leak damages a Republican, the leak is considered legitimate and the story is the content of the leak itself.

If, however, a leak damages a Democrat, the leak is considered illegitimate and not fit for public discussion and the story is instead about the lack of ethics and political maneuvering and general skullduggery that resulted in the leak.

(See also:On leaks, bias and truth)

Vacation all I ever wanted

Had to get away

Obama to Skip Wreath Laying Ceremony at Arlington on Monday

Obama will alter vacation plans slightly and travel to the Gulf on Friday in a desperate attempt to “plug the damn hole” in his approval ratings.

Obama Blows Off Arlington Visit on Memorial Day

Sad news from the city that doesn't work

Historic warship's future may be sunk


The old warship has been part of Philadelphia’s waterfront for 50 years and left lasting impressions on thousands of visitors who heard gripping stories of its role in the Spanish-American War.

Now the Olympia – the last surviving vessel from that 1898 conflict – could face an ignoble end as an artificial reef off Cape May if a new benefactor cannot be found.

HT: Wyatt Earp who rightly call this a national disgrace

Jack Cashill connects some dots

The Senator from Sandy Berger

Should Democrat Joe Sestak be elected the next United States senator from Pennsylvania -- he beat Arlen Specter handily on Tuesday -- he might best be known as the "Senator from Sandy Berger." Sestak owes his political career to Berger.

Bobby Jindal is not Kathleen Blanco

Louisana Gov. Jindal blasts Obama inaction, moves on sand booms

Related:

Hysterical Left Flipping Out Over Oil Spill While Obama Talks Hoops With Marv Albert
He's been refusing interviews with the White House press corps lately and won't answer a simple question, but he sure has plenty of time to talk hoops.


If Obama isn’t in Bed with Big Oil then what is his excuse for moving so Slow?


Obama Golfs as Oil Gushes

Who is Joe Sestak?

It seems he is either a preening liar or he is abetting a criminal cover-up.

Joe Sestak: Um, yeah, Obama tried to buy me off by offering me a job

This ain't gonna help at the trial

No bail for men charged in officer's death


His Facebook page — on which he refers to himself as "Payroll McGee" — lists his hobbies as "basketball, dice and robbin." In a box dedicated for a personal description, he wrote: "I hav no promlem wit pullin da trigger!!!!!"

Attention morons who want to be thugs....... social media is not your friend.

When she is good, she is very very good

Ann Coulter on the hapless Republican establishment:

Republicans on Track to Snatch Defeat From Jaws of Victory

Republican consultants are doing a wonderful job raising expectations sky-high for the November elections, so that now, even if Republicans do smashingly well, it will look like a defeat (and an across-the-board endorsement of Obama's agenda). Thanks, Republicans!

That's what happened in the 1998 congressional elections, nearly foiling Clinton's impeachment. It's what happened to the Conservative Party in Britain a week ago.

Ace on fire

A Little History For Rand Paul


But what does the Constitution actually say? It says to me -- in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments -- that slavery, vile from the outset, is finally, after long years and bloody civil war, finally outlawed.

I cannot believe that at this late date we're still having an argument over whether it was legally permissible to back-door it back in through Jim Crow.

Why on earth would we even have this argument? We've got live, critical controversies happening right now, but we have to keep an open mind over the question of whether the federal government has the power to eradicate slavery and its badges and incidents? Really?

An important distinction

From Beldar:

If I'm looking at my son Adam and I call him by his older brother Kevin's name, I've "misspoken." If I say to him, "Adam, I served in Vietnam," then I'm a liar.

Until yesterday, Richard Blumenthal was a well-educated lawyer praised for his ability to make cogent and powerful arguments in court. Now, he wants us to believe that he is a toungue-tied rube when he talks a about his military service.

BTW, did either Bushes, widely mocked for their tortured speaking style, ever make a similar mistake about their military service?

Maybe the best quote of the day from a commenter at Hot Air:

What’s the difference between Blumenthal and Jane Fonda? —- Fonda has actually been to Vietnam.

UPDATE: More at In from the Cold. Poor Blumenthal can't get out of his own way. At the press conference he brought along "Elliot Storm, a.k.a. William Joseph Trumpower, a veterans organizer for the Blumenthal campaign." Unfortunately, as noted at IftC, Mr. Storm has his own stolen valor issues.

Funny stuff

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

1957 - John Backus and IBM create FORTRAN. There's nothing funny about IBM or FORTRAN. It is a syntax error to write FORTRAN while not wearing a blue tie.

HT: Michael Williams

Good take on the birth certificate mystery

Kenya Believe it? NY Times Toddling Towards Truth On Obama's Birth Certificate

So why won't Obama just release the file? My guess is that there is nothing of interest or consequence in the file, but that Obama is concealing it simply because he conceals everything. His political success is centered on his biography and he controls the presentation of that biography the way the Walt Disney people control Mickey Mouse. As a matter of brand management Obama won't release his birth files, his college transcripts, his law firm billing records, or anything else - go buy a copy of "Dreams From My Father" and he will tell you his story, and thanks for asking.

Related:

Soothing the MSM's fears about the birthers

"JaMarcus Russell reminded Mel Kiper Jr. of John Elway"

Worth remembering when ESPN's pompous draft "expert" holds forth on the WWL:

Three years from now you could certainly be looking at a guy who is certainly one of the elite top five quarterbacks in this league . . . Nobody has an arm like JaMarcus Russell. . .
Obviously, he'll need a little time. But you're talking about a 2-3-year period. Once he's under center, look out, because the skill level he has is certainly John Elway-like.

A forgotten classic and the future of journalism

The Reporter Who Time Forgot
How Cornelius Ryan’s The Longest Day changed journalism


Meanwhile, The Longest Day was reissued in 1994 for the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day. It still sells—a fact that belies the glaring omission of Ryan’s work from so many anthologies of literary journalism, and also offers a powerful lesson for a trade trying to figure out what people will pay to read. There is nothing, it turns out, like a densely reported story propelled by the palpable sense of a reporter chasing his story.

It makes for interesting reading in light of print's economic woes.

For one thing, i wonder if a big part of Newsweek's problems stem from a "cool kids" syndrome. Back in 1989, Newsweek tried to reinvent itself by emulating Spy magazine (which itself went under in 1998) Last year, its preferred role model was The Economist. Were these the best models for Newsweek given its current and potential readership? Or did they reflect a desire by the staff to improve their street cred within the guild?

A comment at the CJR suggests the latter.

Some very astute points. Narcissism, to some degree . . . NEWSWEEK was not alone in wanting to tell us what its writers were interested in, but the tone belied the title of the publication. After the 1960s a lot of magazines went after a demographic that didn't get much of its news from, you know, 'reading', while stiffing the demographic that did. So you had younger, pop-culture drenched writers trying to tell older, more conservative news consumers a lot of stuff that the latter knew to be rubbish, and calling it 'news'. I still don't think the inbred NY/DC media-political echo chamber gets itself .

As the article on The Longest Day notes, Ryan got his backing from "the least hip of all magazines, Reader’s Digest."

So the unhip magazine helps create "new journalism" and produces a work that sold at tens of millions of copies (and still sells to this day.) Yet that model of journalism languishes.