Running at the Mouth

All I Need to Know About Alito

Admittedly, I haven't been following very closely the Alito nomination or that which was the Harriet Miers debacle.  Before today, all I knew about both was that bloggers whose opinions I trust and respect were high on Alito, and much less so on Miers.  Today, I read two pieces about the man that tell me all I need to know about the man, and convince me that he will be an excellent, thoughtful jurist.

This NYT piece demonstrates that Alito is careful about substituting his own judgment for that of the trial court's factfinder, and for that of the very participants in the case at issue.  Since appellate judges are not to invade the province of the factfinder, this obviously sits well with me.  It also sits well with me that when Alito dissented and the SCOTUS granted cert., Alito was usually right where his brethren were wrong.

Of course, that doesn't stop the NYT from from trying to make Alito out to be a neocon boogeyman:

In the several hundred cases he heard over 15 years on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, Judge Alito dissented more than 60 times, often taking issue with decisions that sided with criminal defendants, prisoners and immigrants.

He frequently voted in favor of the government and corporations in these dissents. He generally deferred to what he called the good faith judgments of other participants in the justice system, including police officers, prosecutors, prison wardens, trial judges and juries. He appeared particularly reluctant to order new trials over what he called harmless errors in the presentation of evidence or in jury instructions.

To recap:  he doesn't coddle criminals or prisoners, he favors punishing immigrants who commit crimes in this country, recognizes that the big, bad government and bigger, badder corporations have rights, and likes cops.  And the NYT thinks this is bad?  (Which is pretty much how I know it's good.)

The LA Times interviewed former Alito law clerks, all of whom are liberal or independent.  They all love Alito, and found him to be conscientious in applying the law to the facts, regardless of the outcome.  I love this quote from former clerk Kate Pringle:

"He was not, in my personal experience, an ideologue. He pays attention to the facts of cases and applies the law in a careful way. He is conservative in that sense; his opinions don't demonstrate an ideological slant," she said.

I also really liked this quote from former federal judge Timothy Lewis:

"Alito does not have an agenda, contrary to what the Republican right is saying about him being a 'home run.' He is not result-oriented. He is an honest conservative judge who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference."

Both of these quotes give stunning insight into how left-leaning people, and very smart, legally-trained ones at that who should know better, view the role of judges.  Judges aren't supposed to be idealogues.  They are supposed to apply the law to the facts regardless of outcome.  That Judge Alito is not an idealogue and is a careful jurist is what makes him a "home run."  Apparently, a judge in this mold would certainly not be a "home run" for the Left. 

To my mind, a judge "who believes in judicial restraint and judicial deference" is much more likely to read the Constitution and apply what it says, as opposed to applying those principles founded on "boy, I really wish the framers would have included this 'right' that I just made up, so I'll float some crap about penumbras or some such nonsense to get the outcome I like" jurisprudence that we've had so much of for the better part of three decades.  

Fisher DeBerry Chooses Words Poorly

Air Force football coach Fisher DeBerry is being unfairly pilloried by the media for some poorly-worded remarks he made concerning his team's loss on Saturday to TCU.  He's become the Larry Summers of college football.  Here is the full text of DeBerry's statement:

"It just seems to be that way, that Afro-American kids can run very, very well. That doesn't mean that Caucasian kids and other descents can't run, but it's very obvious to me they run extremely well," DeBerry said in remarks first broadcast Tuesday night by KWGN-TV in Denver.

I think DeBerry was trying to say that his team, overwhelmingly white, was slower than TCU, and, I grant you, he should have just said that, and not brought race into it at all.  But the AP and others, like ESPN's usually even-handed Pat Forde, are piling on DeBerry as though he's Robert Byrd . . . oops, bad example, but you get my point.

Here's what Forde had to say about DeBerry's remarks; see if you can spot the inference that isn't there:

So it's not like DeBerry was inventing something here -- or even saying something many coaches don't talk about in private. But given the decades of wrongly stereotyping black athletes as physically superior and mentally inferior -- run fast, think slow -- the coach was walking into a minefield.

"[R]un fast, think slow?"  He definitely said the first part, but he never said nor inferred the second.  That's what Golden Boy douchebag Paul Hornung said, and he was rightly lambasted.  And, had DeBerry pulled a Hornung, he'd deserve even more than the ration of shit he's gotten.

Second, there is nothing novel about the observation that African Americans are faster than caucasions.  Look at the racial breakdown of any professional football team.  Or the racial breakdown of a world-class 100m or 200m sprint final.  And the list goes on.  What DeBerry said is no more racist or controversial than saying that Kenyans and Ethiopians kick the caucasion world's collective ass in every distance footrace from the 1,500m to the marathon.  BFD.

The only other observation I would make, and if anyone wants to talk me off the ledge you're free to do so, is that the AP (first linked article) is purposely villifying DeBerry because he's a white Christian man.  I can't see any other explanation for including five paragraphs about an old, unrelated incident involving DeBerry's religious beliefs, i.e., hanging a Team Jesus Christ banner in the Air Force locker room.  Poor form by DeBerry?  Sure.  But how is that relevant now?  I think the AP just wanted to point at DeBerry and say, "See what an idiot he is?  On top of being a bigot, he believes in God!  What a buffoon!"  What a bunch of dicks.

The AP: Astonishing Prevarications

As you've all heard, Bill Clinton is in the hospital waiting to have open-heart surgery. President Bush offered his thoughts and prayers to the Clinton family in a speech given at a rally today. The Ass. Press described the crowd's reaction thusly:

Bush's audience of thousands in West Allis, Wis., booed. Bush did nothing to stop them.

Problem is, that never happened. The writer may have wished for it to happen; hell, a lot of folks probably wish it did happen. But it didn't. Listen to the audio. In fact, the crowd's reaction was exactly the opposite: expressions of sympathy at the announcement and cheers when the President sent our wishes for a speedy recovery. The AP has revised the story, omitting the above-quoted two sentences, but has not issued a correction.

This is alarming enough because publishing those two sentences is clearly actionable slander by the Ass. Press; I mean, when you consider that the boos were made up completely out of whole cloth (just listen to the audio), there's no doubt as to the malice requirement for slander of a public figure. What makes the lie -- no, the heinous, dispicable, jaw-dropping, not-to-be-fucking-believed, hate-filled lie -- so dangerous (and worse than Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair combined) is that it's spreading like Captain Trips all over the country. The indispensible Power Line, which has been all over this, has the full round-up.

UPDATE: A kind commenter has listed the writer's name and contact information, as well as that of his editor's. Instapundit notes that it's not the first time that writer has, ahem, taken poetic license to Bush's detriment. Drop them a note explaining -- civilly, of course -- what you think of what they did here. I already have.

Mass Media Meltdown

Tech Central Station has two terrific columns today concerning how egregiously the mass media misleads the public at large. In this piece, Glenn Reynolds provides stunning examples of how liberally biased the mainstream media has been, including open admissions of same. [Link via Power Line.] Nick Schulz pens a companion piece using Harper's editor Lewis Lapham's clairvoyance concerning the content of the speeches at this week's Republican National Convention as a case-in-point:

Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham is being appropriately mocked for a major pre-GOP-convention boner. In the September issue of his magazine, which has been on newsstands for over a week, Lapham writes about the "Republican propaganda mill" and the GOP convention:

"The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal -- government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer -- and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?"

That's right, Lapham wrote about the GOP convention speeches before anyone even stepped to the podium. Lapham has apologized for what he's calling a "rhetorical invention," use of "poetic license," and a "mistake."

But the only "mistake" Lapham made is in revealing for all to see what has long been known by anyone who pays attention to the news: the major media routinely bring to their coverage of significant political events a predetermined storyline -- you might want to call it a "Lapham". Facts that undermine the storyline are ignored or explained away as aberrations to The Truth.

The New York Post Online Edition has a related piece from Podhoretz, and Lileks puts in a good $.02 in the Bleat today (as opposed to yesterday's Bleat, whose suckage cannot be measured by existing technology).

A Peek Behind the Curtain

More from attorney / blogger / friend Don Burton. He rightly takes umbrage with the NYT assertion that Eartha Kitt was the "definitive embodiment of Catwoman" in its review of Halle Berry's interpretation of the Batman character, explaining that Julie Newmar is, of course, the definitive embodiment of Catwoman.

To my mind, the Times was doing one of two things here, both with racist undertones: either it desired to be so cravenly PC that it called Eartha Kitt the best Catwoman ever because it simply wouldn't do to say that Newmar (who's white) played the role better than Kitt (who's black), which is not only shameless pandering but also racist; or it couldn't bring itself to compare Berry to Newmar because white and black actors are simply too fundamentally different for comparisons, which is also racist. The fact is, everyone knows that Julie Newmar was the best Catwoman ever.

(Sports announcers do this all the time. For example, when have you ever heard Steve Young compared to Randall Cunningham? Both were very mobile with strong arms. Or Drew Bledsoe compared to Warren Moon? Both are pocket-passers with rocket arms. How many times have you heard the white receiver called "the possession receiver" even though he's on the field for all four downs, yet Keyshawn Johnson never draws Brian Brennan comparisons. Shameful.)

Poll Shows Liberal Media Accomplishing its Goal

The latest poll from NBC/WSJ shows, surprise surprise, that Kerry and Bush are virtually deadlocked, which MSNBC is touting as "Bush down but not out." I think that's accurate, but beyond this, the poll results show just how effective the relentless onslaught by the media to bury the President has been:

The poll shows that only 36 percent of respondents believe the nation is headed in the right direction, compared with 48 percent who say the country is on the wrong track. That's a slight improvement from the survey's results in May, however, when 50 percent said the nation was headed in the wrong direction.

"This is just a cranky and unhappy electorate," Hart said. And that could possibly be a tremendous liability for Bush if those numbers don't improve this fall, since experts believe that right direction/wrong track numbers provide one of the most accurate measures of whether or not an incumbent president will be re-elected.

Since the Administration can't rely on the press to report fairly and accurately, it has to do a much, much better job of disseminating all of the great news about the economy and job creation. We can't be on the wrong track with 1.4 million new jobs since last October and the strongest economic indicators since 1999.

What makes the MSNBC piece laughable, though, is that it not only repeats all of the boilerplate prevarications the NYT, et al. have been pushing for months, it wildly exaggerates the press coverage of certain events to absurdity. Peep this:

Many experts also believe that the recent death of President Reagan benefited Bush and his re-election campaign after Bush eulogized the former president at the Washington National Cathedral, and after the press (for the most part) glowingly highlighted Reagan's presidency.

"Glowingly?" "For the most part?" I call "bullshit."

But troubling news and damaging images — almost all of which are Iraq-related — have also plagued the administration, including the recent beheadings of 26-year-old American Nicholas Berg, American contractor Paul Johnson and a South Korean translator.

First, these barbaric murders were all but ignored by the media. Combine all of the coverage these sadistic slayings received, then compare that to any one day of Abu Ghraib coverage. It's like comparing Willie Shoemaker to Michael Moore. And why is that? Because Americans committed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The media can't let us forget, even for a second, that we're the bad guys and it's all our fault.

And the Sept. 11 commission found no clear collaborative link between Iraq and al-Qaida, challenging one of the administration's primary justifications for the Iraq war.

I can't believe this got past the editor. How many times must this lie be refuted?

Finally, I liked this, about which Kaus and Jeff Jarvis have thoughts:

Despite these negative numbers for Bush, the presidential horse race between Bush and Kerry is deadlocked, and the poll suggests one reason why: Voters still don't know much about Kerry, even though his campaign has spent tens of millions of dollars in TV advertisements. According to the poll, in fact, just 57 percent of the respondents say they know a lot or a fair amount about Kerry — a real drop from 68 percent in the NBC/Journal March survey.

Well, we know he was born in a VA hospital. The hospital in which a candidate was born is such a crucial factor in determining who is most fit to lead.

This Week's Sign the Apocalypse is Upon Us

A major newspaper admits its initial reporting of the 9/11 Commission interim report was woefully incorrect, and takes the television media to task for doing the same. (Link via Spoons.)

The WaPo Can't Bring Itself to Criticize Kerry

An unsigned editorial in the Washington Post today shows the extent of the paper's reluctance to criticize John Kerry or praise President Bush. To wit:

NINE MONTHS AGO, as a confrontation loomed between Iran and the United Nations over Iran's illicit nuclear programs, three European governments staged a preemptive operation. Flying to Tehran, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany struck a deal with Iran's Islamic regime: The Europeans would block a referral of Iran's violations to the U.N. Security Council and provide technical cooperation, and in exchange Iran would stop its work on uranium enrichment, fully disclose its nuclear programs and accept a new U.N. protocol giving inspectors greater access. (Only in the eyes of people naive enough to believe the mullahs -- ed.); some in Paris and Berlin smugly suggested that it had been given an object lesson by the Europeans in how "soft power" could be used to manage the rogue states in President Bush's "axis of evil."

This week, with the world's attention focused on the troubled situation in Iraq, the European version of preemption is yielding its own bitter -- if less bloody -- result. (Can you spot the non sequitur? I knew you could -- ed.) Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency have reported that Iran never honored its agreement; it has stalled and stonewalled the inspectors while continuing to work on elements of a nuclear program that could soon allow it to produce weapons. The Europeans have responded by drafting for approval by the 35-member IAEA board a stern statement demanding Iranian cooperation; Tehran has replied with threats to restart uranium enrichment and suspend negotiations with the West.

Probably there will be no such rupture, and IAEA inspectors and European officials will resume their efforts to obtain Iranian cooperation. But there can be no disguising the fact that the European strategy for handling one of the world's most dangerous proliferation problems is proving feckless.

Meanwhile, Kerry has been preaching from the "soft power" pulpit:

On the issue of Iran's nuclear program, Kerry said, "We should call their bluff, and organize a group of states that will offer the nuclear fuel they need for peaceful purposes and take back the spent fuel so they can't divert it to build a weapon. If Iran does not accept this, their true motivations will be clear." (Is he the last person in the world to not realize their motives?) But Kerry didn't say what would happen once those motivations were clear.

See also, this June 1 speech. So, you'd think the point of the editorial is that this should be an object lesson for the junior senator from Massachusetts. You would be wrong:

For now, military action is not an option in Iran, at least for Western countries. But if a crisis is to be avoided, a better strategy is needed. The Bush administration, which once advocated referral of the Iranian matter to the Security Council for consideration of sanctions, now is merely pressing for a deadline for Iranian compliance. The Europeans reject even that as too aggressive. Yet it should now be clear that if Iranian nuclear ambitions are to be checked, Europe -- and Russia -- will have to forcefully employ the leverage of their diplomatic and economic relations with Tehran.

Only Bush is mentioned, and accused of doing too little. Nary a word is mentioned that Kerry advocates the exact same strategy that has failed miserably. Note also this lovely bit of equivocation from the paragraph preceeding the one above (not excerpted here in full):

[The European "soft power" strategy] has not produced the daily casualties and chaos now seen in Iraq. (Again with the gratuitous non sequiturs -- ed.) But it could, within a year or two, lead to an outcome as bad as or worse than any now foreseen in Baghdad: possession of nuclear weapons or the means to quickly make them by a hard-line Islamic regime that sponsors several anti-Western terrorist organizations.

According to this site, 860 Americans have been killed thus far in Iraq, 4682 wounded. I don't see how there can be any doubt that the death toll resulting from detonation of a nuclear weapon would be ten to a hundred-fold greater than the casualties suffered in Iraq. To minimize the impact of a single a nuclear attack as only "as bad as" the casualties suffered during a 16-month war and occupation is, at best, intellectually dishonest.

It's one thing to attack President Bush because you don't like his policies; that's what editorials are for. But to attack President Bush in an editorial showing the failure of the very strategy that Bush's presumptive opponent advocates, without mentioning same, is the height of hypocrisy.

Oh, That Liberal Media

Attorney / Blogger / Friend Don Burton e-mailed me this article from the NYT that compares and contrasts the biking habits of President Bush (mountain) and John Kerry (road) in an effort to divine something about the respective characters of each. In reality, the piece does more to show the Times' naked bias towards Kerry, even in articles as light and unimportant as this one. First, the piece explains that President Bush rides a Trek Fuel 90, the least expensive of Trek's full-suspension mountain bikes. Here's how the Times describes it:

Mr. Bush keeps a Trek Fuel 90 at his Texas ranch, the site of his tumble on May 22. The Fuel 90, one of the snazzier of Trek's mountain bikes, retails for more than $1,500. [Emphasis mine.]

Yeah, the Fuel 90 is pretty snazzy, but not too dear. And, the bike's suggested retail price is $1,549.99, a whopping $49.99 more than $1,500, which is not all that expensive for a serious recreational rider, as the President appears to be. (I spent more than that on my Voodoo, and I only ride it about twice a month.) According to the article, here's why the President rides a Trek:

Mr. Bush's choice of Trek is hardly surprising, given that the company is one of the world's biggest manufacturers of quality bikes and its president, John Burke, is a member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness. Trek's sponsored athlete is Lance Armstrong, the five-time Tour de France winner from Austin, Tex., who presented his friend the president with a Trek bike at the White House in 2001.

While everything in this paragraph is true, it leaves out two important facts, i.e., that Trek is headquartered in Waterloo, Wisconsin and that most (if not all) of Trek bikes that retail for more than $1,000 are manufactured and built in the U.S. Why is this important? Because the NYT piece makes a big deal out of the fact that Kerry's custom-made Serotta road bike is built in Saratoga Springs:

It was difficult to determine if Mr. Burke is a Republican, since he declined repeated requests for an interview. But it could be determined that Ben Serotta, the maker of John Kerry's road bikes, is politically compatible with one of his most famous customers.

"I come from a fairly long line of Democrats," Mr. Serotta said in a telephone interview from the headquarters of Serotta Competition Bicycles in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. If Mr. Kerry won the election, he said, "we certainly would not be disappointed."

Mr. Kerry owns two road bikes from Serotta, a niche manufacturer that serves a high-end market. The senator has an Ottrott, which retails with custom-added parts for an average of $8,000, and an older Colorado III. Mr. Kerry also has mountain bikes for the trails near his home in Ketchum, Idaho. [Emphasis mine.]

I imagine the article points out that Serotta is an American company to keep Kerry from seeming like an even bigger Euro-weenie, of which the President would never be accused, but the Times still should have given the Prez equal credit for buying American. Even more egregious, though, is the way the piece dismisses the fact that Kerry owns not one but two Serottas, costing approximately $15,000, with nary a loaded adjective. So, the "populist" who would be president has more tied up in his bicycles than some people have in their cars. Not to mention a number of other bikes at his Idaho ranch. Warrants mentioning.

Then the piece really goes off the deep end, somehow turning Kerry's mean-spirited training wheels remark about President Bush's recent biking accident into a criticism of Bush:

When Mr. Bush had his spill, Mr. Kerry's reaction rapidly coursed through political cyberspace. According to The Drudge Report, Mr. Kerry said to reporters in what he believed was an off-the-record remark, "Did the training wheels fall off?"

The Chicago Sun-Times then reported that Chicago's Democratic mayor, Richard M. Daley - who ripped the skin off his kneecap in a bicycle accident a few years ago - had scolded Mr. Kerry for the wisecrack. "You should not wish ill upon anyone," Mr. Daley said.

The Republican National Committee then seized on Mr. Daley's remarks and sent them out as an attack e-mail under the headline "They said it!"

Mr. Kerry took his own fall from a bike on May 2 after he hit a patch of sand on a two-lane road in Concord, Mass. Mr. Kerry had no injuries and Mr. Bush had no reaction, at least none that we know of.

Wow. First, they're still pushing that "off the record" excuse, as though that makes Kerry's snipe okay (and as though it would have mattered if Bush had made the remark about Kerry). Second, what is an "attack e-mail" and to whom was it sent? Finally, and perhaps most appallingly, the piece insinuates based upon no facts whatsoever that the President elated in Kerry's accident, but simply did so outside the company of the press. Pathetic.

Last, I take umbrage with the article referring to Kerry as a "jock." A guy who catches like this is no jock.

Move Along, Nothing to See Here

In this story confirming that the roadside bomb detonated in Baghdad a few weeks ago contained sarin, it takes the Ass. Press three whole paragraphs to set up its "Bush Lied About WMDs!" template:

Comprehensive testing has confirmed the presence of the chemical weapon sarin in the remains of a roadside bomb discovered this month in Baghdad, a defense official said Tuesday.

The determination, made by a laboratory in the United States that the official would not identify, verifies what earlier, less-thorough field tests had found: the bomb was made from an artillery shell designed to disperse the deadly nerve agent on the battlefield.

The origin of the shell remains unclear, and finding that out is a priority for the U.S. military, the defense official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Now, Allah forbid this lead anyone to believe that Saddam had WMDs, here comes a vociferous eight paragraph absolution of Saddam and indictment of the President:

Some analysts worry the 155-millimeter artillery shell, found rigged as a bomb on May 15, may be part of a larger stockpile of Iraqi chemical weapons that insurgents can now use. But no more have turned up, and several military officials have said the shell may have been an older one that predated the 1991 Gulf War.

See, no worries kids. That's just an old shell, and, besides, they haven't found any more. This is an isolated incident.

It likewise is not known whether the bombers knew they had a chemical weapon. Military officials have said the shell bore no labels to indicate it was anything except a normal explosive shell, the type used to make scores of roadside bombs in Iraq.

So, the fact that the terrorists thought they were simply blowing us up the old-fashioned way excuses them. Right, then.

No one was injured in the shell's initial detonation, but two American soldiers who removed the round had symptoms of low-level nerve agent exposure, officials said last week.

The shell was a binary type, which has two chambers containing relatively safe chemicals. When the round is fired from an artillery gun, its rotation mixes the chemicals to create sarin, which is supposed to disperse when the shell strikes its target.

Since it was not fired from a gun but was detonated as a bomb, the initial explosion on May 15 dispersed the precursor chemicals, apparently mixing them in only small amounts, officials said then. In battle, such shells would have to be fired in great numbers to effect a large body of troops.

And it only did a little damage, so big deal. Without "great numbers" of sarin shells, which we're sure the terrorists don't have, there's nothing to worry about. Move along.

Iraq's first field-test of a binary-type shell containing sarin was in 1988, U.S. defense officials have said.

Saddam's government only disclosed the testing and production after Iraqi weapons chief Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel al-Majid, Saddam's son-in-law, defected in 1995. Saddam's government never declared any sarin or shells filled with sarin remained.

Even the Ass. Press can't continue to deny that Saddam was in violation of Resolution 1441. Predictably, they bring out the recently-minted "stockpiles" meme to distract attention from this point:

Saddam's alleged stockpile of weapons of mass destruction was the Bush administration's chief stated reason for invading Iraq. U.S. weapons hunters have been unable to validate the prewar intelligence.

Now we need stockpiles of WMDs to justify removing a murderous dictator and his torturing sons. Instapundit has more on this moving of goalposts.