THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS has published another installment in its series on Catholic Church priestly abuse.
Archive for 2004
June 22, 2004
INTERESTING 1999 CNN ARTICLE on Saddam and Osama:
Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.
Then there’s this 1999 article from The Guardian:
The key meeting took place in the Afghan mountains near Kandahar in late December. The Iraqi delegation was led by Farouk Hijazi, Baghdad’s ambassador in Turkey and one of Saddam’s most powerful secret policemen, who is thought to have offered Bin Laden asylum in Iraq. . . .
Analysts believe that Mr Hijazi offered Mr bin Laden asylum in Iraq, most likely in return for co-operation in launching attacks on US and Saudi targets. Iraqi agents are believed to have made a similar offer to the Saudi maverick leader in the early 1990s when he was based in Sudan.
No doubt this was a preemptive fiction on the part of the not-yet-nominated Bush Administration.
A FASCINATING IRAQ NEWS ROUNDUP from Arthur Chrenkoff.
CNN’S SOURCE is changing his/her story on Rumsfeld and interrogation notes Ed Morrissey. Think this will get as much play as the original accusation?
UPDATE: Hmm. Some people will start talking about rope-a-dope again.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Powerline has more thoughts, and says that the Associated Press is spinning out of control.
CATHY SEIPP will be on Dennis Miller’s show tonight. CNBC.
ANOTHER DARFUR REPORT:
Arab militias, supported by the Sudanese government, are crossing into Chad to attack local villagers and refugees from the Darfur conflict.
Aid workers have said 158,000 refugees from Darfur in western Sudan have fled to neighbouring Chad to escape fighting, which broke out in February 2003. . . .
“Human Rights Watch documented at least seven cross-border incursions into Chad conducted by the Janjaweed militias since early June.
“The Janjaweed attack villages in Chad and refugees from Darfur, and also steal cattle,” the New York-based organisation said in its statement. . . .
Human Rights Watch said the Khartoum government must take responsibility for the raids.
“The Janjaweed is the government’s militia, and Khartoum has armed and empowered it to conduct ethnic cleansing’ in Darfur,” the statement quoted Jemera Rone, the group’s Sudan researcher, as saying.
Stay tuned.
DANIEL DREZNER IS DISSING LOU DOBBS.
HEH. Guess who got the first signed copy of Bill Clinton’s new book? Greg Packer!
JUST DID A SEGMENT on Mickey Kaus’s radio show. It’ll air at 5:30 this afternoon (Eastern time) and you can stream it from here. (Link in upper left).
Also on were Robert Wright, and Joe Trippi — who has a new book on the Internet and politics coming out.
PERRY DEHAVILLAND: “It seems astonishing that the state still gets involve with the content of TV programming in the USA. I expect this sort of crap in Britain and Europe, but in the USA?”
Sadly, yes.
NONPARTISAN WATCHDOGS.
IF YOU’RE A STUDENT INTERESTED IN NANOTECHNOLOGY, you might want to read this announcement from the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology.
INTERESTING NEWS from Gaza and the West Bank.
THEY MAY BE STANDING IN LONG LINES for Bill Clinton’s book in New York, but when I visited my local mall just a few minutes after it opened this morning, the customers didn’t seem to be lining up for their copies.
Interestingly, there are still no reader reviews on the book’s Amazon page, though it does report that the book’s number one. Maybe all the Knoxvillians bought their copies that way. . . .
UPDATE: You’ll have to click on the image on the right to see the big version, but a sharp-eyed reader notes that in the middle of the Clinton books is a copy of this book on presidential leadership from the Wall Street Journal folks. I swear I didn’t put it there. [Note: I changed the time on this post by a few minutes to put it back on top, so proud was I of the first-hand reporting and photojournalism involved. . . ]
ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader points out that the New York lines are at a store where Clinton is personally autographing books. Good point. And maybe there’s more to Clinton’s book than some are saying — Andrew Sullivan notes a startling admission.
MORE: Well, there’s one reader review now. I expect it’s the first of a deluge. I was a bit surprised there weren’t some earlier as there are often reviews up before a book’s official release. I guess this one was held pretty close, though.
STILL MORE: Did Clinton hire a crowd? Some people are offering this link as proof, but I suspect the explanation is more innocuous. Still, if not it might be a scoop for someone. . .
By the way, here’s a link to the BBC Clinton interview. The hot stuff begins about 28 minutes in. And there’s some very interesting trimming on Iraq and Saddam about 38 minutes in. Rwanda trimming begins at about 51 minutes.
The commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks has received new information indicating that a senior officer in an elite unit of the security services of deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein may have been a member of al-Qaida involved in the planning of the suicide hijackings, panel members said Sunday.
John F. Lehman, a Reagan-era GOP defense official told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that documents captured in Iraq “indicate that there is at least one officer of Saddam’s Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of al Qaida.”
Funny, I wonder why this hasn’t gotten more attention. (More here.)
UPDATE: This story says that it may be a case of confusing two similar names.
IS IT A MEDIA INDUSTRY ENRON?
NEW YORK Troubled by last week’s circulation scandals at Hollinger International’s Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune Co.’s Newsday and Hoy, Merrill Lynch’s Lauren Rich Fine released a report today calling into question the reliability of circulation figures for the entire industry. “Our biggest fear,” the report said, “is that these two announcements may not be isolated incidents.” . . .
The report also takes to task the Audit Bureau of Circulations, saying that the overstatement of circ figures seems to “suggest that there may be loopholes in the ABC audit system” and “at the very minimum, it suggests that ABC’s audits need to be completed much sooner.” Many newspapers use the ABC publisher’s statements to sell advertising because there is a lag in the ABC audited reports.
Hmm. Overstated sales? Shaky financial disclosures? Unreliable audits? Bilked customers? Why isn’t this frontpage news? Because the front page is the news?
You just can’t trust those corporate types! Sadly, these kinds of problems aren’t limited to print media. As I’ve noted before, transparency in readership numbers is another thing that bloggers — at least those of us with open sitemeter counters — have over Big Media. (And read this, too).
UPDATE: Steve Antler: “When it comes to circulation figures the blogosphere is the very embodiment of transparency.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. Antler has a letter from a guy (who says he sent the same email to me, but I don’t seem to have it) distinguishing between counters like Sitemeter and third-party audits. Well, sitemeter is a third-party item, and while I suppose it could be fooled it’s more reliable than a self-report, and anyone who cares to browse the information it offers can learn a lot. As for the reliability of audits, that depends on how much you trust the auditors.
Meanwhile, another reader sent me an email that’s long enough I’m going to put it in the “extended entry” area. Click “more” to read it. I have no idea whether his assessment of the advertising industry is true, but perhaps this will spur those in a position to investigate to look further and see what they can find out.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Click more for an additional email from David Barlin, in favor of audited blog circulation numbers.
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS seems to dislike Michael Moore.
UPDATE: Roger Simon has comments.
LEGAL AFFAIRS presents an interesting debate between Richard Posner and Vicki Jackson on the extent to which the Supreme Court should pay attention to foreign law in interpreting the U.S. Constitution.
SILVIO BERLUSCONI FOR PRESIDENT! (Of the E.U.)
THE POST EDITORIALIZES:
If judges and lawyers wonder about why they are held in such low esteem by so many Americans, they might consider the loose lips of Federal Appeals Court Judge Guido Calabresi. . . .
The New York Sun reports that at last weekend’s annual convention of the American Constitution Society in Washington, Judge Calabrese compared Bush’s election to the rise of totalitarian despots Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. . . .
But common sense — and judicial fairness — demand that, given his blatant and public political bias, Judge Calabrese recuse himself from any and all cases involving the Bush administration, including any case on which the administration has taken a public position.
Clearly, he is in no position to evaluate such cases fairly.
(Via Howard Bashman). As I said on Hugh Hewitt’s show last night, I’m genuinely shocked by Calabresi’s comments, which by now I guess must have been reported accurately — at least, there’s no evidence otherwise, and you’d think he’d have said so if he were misquoted. I’m shocked that he’d think something as absurd, ahistorical, and illogical, and I’m even more shocked that when he did think such a thing, he had the poor judgment to proclaim it in a public speech.
Calabresi was always, in my experience, diplomatic; it’s sad to think that he might be less concerned with public propriety as a judge than he was as a law school dean. These comments have, as this editorial indicates, damaged his reputation, and that of the federal judiciary.
THE INSTADAUGHTER AND I finished watching the latest Simpsons DVD collection yesterday. My favorite episode is Marge vs. the Monorail, which features this memorable Homer line: “Doughnuts! Is there anything they can’t do?”
What’s more, Marge’s steadfast belief that the city would be better off funding road repairs than mass transit turns out to be environmentally sound:
Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded.
Challenging assumptions about railways’ green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport. . . .
Assuming the continuing dominance of fossil fuel-based electricity, the study indicates that suitable French-style rolling-stock would require twice as much fuel per seat as a Volkswagen Passat, and more than a short-haul aircraft.
Monorails, however, are not specifically mentioned. Still, Marge seems to have been on to something. Or, in other words: “Save the planet. Jump into your car.”
Maybe I should print up a bumper sticker with that slogan, and put it on my Passat!
KERRY’S NANTUCKET VACATION IS TAKING SHOTS FROM THE LEFT, as The Progressive writes:
Why was Kerry vacationing on Nantucket, of all places?
To go to this island retreat of the rich sent all the wrong messages to undecided voters, and it discourages his hard core.
Like his ski trip to Colorado after the primaries, the junket to Nantucket, where Kerry owns a home, reinforces the image of Kerry as a member of the upper class.
Well, he is a member of the upper class, of course. But it’s probably poor campaigning to stress the point.
THE LOS ANGELES TIMES IS BUSTED FOR FALSE REPORTS of what the 9/11 Commission said. “Does the L.A. Times think we don’t know how to find and read a transcript?”
UPDATE: Greg Djerejian has problems with the Washington Post, too.
STILL MORE on the Catholic Church’s effort to cover up abuse by priests, from the Dallas Morning News.