The Big Giant Head Bites

John Hanna, Associated Press

An abortion doctor plans to ask for an investigation of the state attorney general and Bill O’Reilly over comments by the Fox television host that he got information from Kansas abortion records, the doctor’s attorneys said Saturday.

Dr. George Tiller said he will ask the Kansas Supreme Court on Monday to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate and take possession of the records of 90 patients from two clinics.

Attorney General Phill Kline obtained the records recently after a two-year battle that prompted privacy concerns. He has said he sought the records to review them for evidence of possible crimes including rape and illegal abortions.

During a Friday night broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” the conservative host said a “source inside” told the show that Tiller performs late-term abortions when a patient is depressed, which O’Reilly deemed “executing babies.”

O’Reilly also said his show has evidence that Tiller’s clinic and another unnamed clinic have broken Kansas law by failing to report potential rapes with victims ages 10 to 15.

A spokeswoman for Kline, who received redacted copies of the records Oct. 24, said Saturday he doesn’t know how O’Reilly obtained the information.

Busted

The Associated Press reports —

The Rev. Ted Haggard was dismissed Saturday as leader of the megachurch he founded after a board determined the influential evangelist had committed “sexually immoral conduct,” the church said Saturday.

Haggard had resigned two days earlier as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, where he held sway in Washington and condemned homosexuality, after a Denver man named Mike Jones claimed to have had drug-fueled trysts with him. He also had placed himself on administrative leave from the New Life Church, but its Overseer Board took the stronger action Saturday.

“Our investigation and Pastor Haggard’s public statements have proven without a doubt that he has committed sexually immoral conduct,” the independent board said in a statement.

    “Those who have great realization of delusion are buddhas; those who are greatly deluded about realization are sentient beings.”

    — Dogen, Genjokoan

    “When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty.”

    — Jesus, Gospel of Thomas

Update: Blaming Mrs. Haggard.

Update update:
You want to read James Wolcott.

How Low Can They Go? How Dumb Can They Get?

By now you’ve probably heard that the military Times papers — Army Times, Navy Times, Air Force Times, and Marine Corps Times — is calling for Rumsfeld to go. Taylor Marsh has the text of the editorial. As Taylor says, this is unprecedented.

For opposing views of the military Times papers, compare Billmon some rightie bloggers. Start with Billmon:

Long ago, I worked for the company that owns the military Times publications, although my own paper was aimed at the civilian side of the government (we called our small corner of the newsroom “the demilitarized zone.”) Maybe things have changed in 20 years but I can assure you that back then the Times papers were even more mindlessly pro-military than the Pentagon itself (which is kind of like being more Catholic than the pope, but with superior firepower). If they’re taking aim at the SecDef — and timing their battery fire for maximum political effect — it’s reasonable to believe that the generals have reached a point that in many countries would be followed in short order by a military coup.

Billmon points out that the military Times papers were taken over by Gannett awhile back, which makes them part of the evil “MSM.” And, sure enough, you can click here to read a rightie blog post titled “Liberal Army Times calls (again) for Rumsfeld’s head.” The blogger writes,

CNN fails to report that the editorial position of the Army Times has been and still is VERY liberal. I know that as I did a stint them as a journalist way back. Note most of their most editorized stories have come during less than stellar times for the military.

As proof of this runamuck liberalism, the blogger linked to a CNN story:

In May 2004, when the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal broke, an Army Times editorial said, “This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential, even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.”

Human decency, abiding by the Geneva Conventions, and accountability are “liberal.” OK, I accept that.

The Flopping Ace:

For those of us who actually served in our Military I can tell you what these papers really are…to the troops.

The National Enquirer of our military. Their editorials are always dripping with disdain for the military and have a huge liberal bias. They are owned by the Gannett publishing company who also publish the USA Today.

They are NOT representative of our military. For the MSM to allege otherwise is being dishonest.

Dr. Steven Taylor of PoliBlog — conservative but not crazy — writes,

Much will no doubt be made about the timing, but it is worth noting that the response is [to] the President–he is the one who brought the whole thing up in the first place.

I have passing acquaintance with the Army Times as a friend of mine is a subscriber and I have seen some (granted, limited) coverage of Iraq from the paper. It was certainly more positive than that in the MSM. Indeed, given that the four publications are aimed a military audience, it is rather difficult to make “liberal media bias” claims in this context. Members of the military or regular readers of the papers in question are welcome to correct me if they feel the need.

I sent enquiries to my military contacts, and I will let you know if any of them offer an opinion as to the political proclivities of the Army Times. Personally, I have a hard time believing that newspapers catering to military families are going to be The New Daily Worker.

As Dr. Taylor says, the editorial writers claim the timing of the editorial is not about the elections, but is a reaction to what the President said about keeping Rumsfeld. The Blue Crab, a rightie blogger (why isn’t he the Red Crab?), will have none of this.

The editorial protests that “This is not about the midterm elections.” Uh, sure. That’s why it was released to the major media outlets on Friday. …

… Of course it is about the midterms, and of course they are doing their level best to help drag the Democrats across the finish line. This is all part of that media crescendo.

“Media crescendo” refers to another post in which the Crab complained that the New York Times had the unpatriotic and liberal-bias nerve to quote people criticizing the President.

You’re shocked, I know. Truly, objectivity requires heaping only praise and glory and flowers and stuff on the President, at all times. Unless the President is a Democrat.

I see that much of the Right Blogosphere is still rampaging over the Kerry joke flub. Like that wasn’t ginned up just to distract voters from issues. It’s OK to try to swing the election by stirring up a phony crisis about someone who isn’t even running, but discussing a real issue critical to the nation is outside the pale.

Joan Vennochi writes in the Boston Globe:

The president earns dismal marks for job performance, according to recent polls. His unpopular Iraq war policy stands to turn voters against Republican candidates across the country.

Yet even with the presidential juice at low octane, some Democrats swiftly echoed the White House talking points after John Kerry bungled a bad joke. Kerry, a decorated combat veteran, insulted the US military, they insisted; he must apologize.

All it took to bring them to their knees was the usual: a blast of hot air from the White House, fanned by Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and cable TV, and then giftwrapped by the mainstream media.

And like trained seals, rightie bloggers honk away on cue.

At the Los Angeles Times, Meghan Daum picks up on the Dick Armey quote I discussed here.

Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey explained the process during the Kerry flap even as he conceded that what Kerry said was just a slip-up. “It’s pretty standard-fare political discourse,” he told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Tuesday. “You misconstrue what somebody said. You isolate a statement, you lend your interpretation to it, and then you feign moral outrage.”

Armey added that “the Democrats have been doing it for years,” and, of course, he’s right. Sloganism-as-national idiom isn’t a partisan tick. Here’s Kanye West’s post-Katrina mantra, although he didn’t so much reinterpret a statement as an entire agenda: “George Bush hates black people.” It mushroomed into a rallying cry for black America. Catchy, yes. True? Come on.

Except that Kanye West wasn’t speaking on behalf of the Democratic Party. As far as I know he was speaking on behalf of Kanye West. And if his remark had “legs” it was because (a) it was amusing to see someone go off-script; and (b) lots of people were already thinking it. As far as I know, nobody in the Democratic Party got their fax machines going and sent their minions forth to push the story onto news media as hard as they could push. So, Ms. Daum — you had a good column going, and then you got stupid. Try harder next time.

Truly, Stupid is in the saddle and riding mankind. Mahablog commenter k has seen campaign ads that smear candidates by associating them with the Democratic Party.

One thing I have noticed- I am in a ‘red’ state with a Dem Governor who will win easily- The R opposing him is running ads attacking him by showing him at the 2004 Dem Convention saying “John Kerry” and amplifying it: the implication being that Kerry is his hero and that it is a crime to attend one’s convention and endorse one’s party candidate. Another commercial attacks a local Dem for ‘ taking money connected to Hillary Clinton and John Dean. Well they are Dems and Dean is the Chairman of the party so yea, we get the slur but it is the attack on being a member of another party and gasp taking party money that is being attacked here. Another ad attacks a Dem for state senate, an Iraq vet, a lawyer, for defending drug dealers and criminals. Yea it is what lawyers do. What I’m seeing is the attack on belonging to another party, participating in the legal system.

They’re running on smears and air. It’s all they’ve got.

See also Glenn Greenwald on Faux Nooz’s weekend program schedule.

I want to go back to Billmon — I think he has a point here —

Now I despise Donald Rumsfeld as much as any commie pinko, but this kneejerk habit the generals have gotten into of blaming Rummy for all their problems in Iraq is getting pretty old. The Army’s own failures — most particularly, in deciding that because it doesn’t like to fight guerrilla wars, it wouldn’t prepare to fight one — are well documented in Tom Ricks’ Fiasco and elsewhere. The ossified bureaucracy obsessed with budgets, rank and military ceremony (in roughly that order), which led defense gadfly Chuck Spinney to label the Pentagon “the Versailles on the Potomac,” had grown deeply dysfunctional long before Donald Rumsfeld came back to town. If anything, he at least tried to reform it — even if most of his ideas went in diametrically the wrong direction for the “fourth generation” war the military now finds itself fighting. …

… trying to make Rummy the sole scapegoat for America’s failure in Iraq is as big a lie as Shrub’s insistence that the SecDef has done, and is still doing, a great job. It looks to me like the Times papers are simply pandering to their special constituency (something that was also their editorial bread and butter when I was there.)

The Dems may applaud now, but if I were them, I’d be extremely wary of the precedent. As a group, the joint chiefs are developing a taste for bureaucratic blood — they’re trying to destroy Rumsfeld just as they destroyed Les Aspin and emasculated Wesley Clark. Only now they’re doing it openly (or at least semi-openly) and in the middle of an election campaign.

That’s usually not a good sign for a republican government — and I’m not talking about the political party.

So, while at least Rumsfeld is a real issue and not a phony issue — keep what Billmon says in mind.

Update: Don’t miss Media Matters by Jamison Foser.