Right Wing Nut House

After all the sound and fury, the bombastic rhetoric thrown around by Democrats over the supposed partisanship of Fox News, comes this stunner of a study done by the conservative Media Research Center about coverage of the presidential campaigns on the three biggest morning shows on television.

In a word; mindboggling:

The study found that 55 percent of campaign stories on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” CBS’s “The Early Show” and NBC’s “Today” focused on Democratic candidates while only 29 percent focused on Republicans. The remaining 16 percent were classified as “mixed/independent.”

The morning shows aired 61 stories focused exclusively on Sen. Hillary Clinton, 44 stories on former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, and 41 stories on Sen. Barack Obama, all of whom are seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Former Vice President Al Gore, who is not officially running, was the subject of 29 stories.

Republican candidates received less attention, according to the study. Sen. John McCain was the focus of 31 stories. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was the focus of 26 stories and former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney was the focus of 19 stories.

Bring back the Fairness Doctrine!

And it isn’t just the number of stories being aired about Democrats that demonstrates an inherent bias bordering on cheerleading by the Big Three networks. Interviews with Democratic candidates or their representatives took up more than twice as much time on the air as those done with Republicans. What’s more, the tone and tenor of that coverage was almost worshipful; Hillary being referred to as “unbeatable” or Obama being called a “rock star” by grown up journalists would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

The effect of all this coverage is to make the Democratic candidates into celebrities, creating an aura of invincibility around their campaigns. By contrast, most of the stories on John McCain’s candidacy revolved around the sinking nature of the campaign - because of his support of the mission in Iraq according to the networks.

I guess his authorship of the immigration bill, his stubborn defense of McCain Feingold, and his tepid support for conservative judges had nothing at all to do with the collapse of his campaign.

No doubt McCain’s imploding campaign is newsworthy. But contrast the death watch nature of McCain’s coverage with the worshipful devotion to Silky Pony’s equally hopeless effort. Edwards got his very own Town Hall meeting broadcast live on ABC.

Gee. No favoritism there.

More subjectively, MRC tried to measure the way questions were framed to candidates or their representatives and came away with the conclusion that they were “friendly” to Democrats and “actively promoting the liberal agenda.” I’m not really concerned about that kind of criticism. Politicians go on those morning programs because they are generally treated in a more “friendly” fashion in the first place. And as far as questions “promoting” a liberal agenda, that very well may be in the eye of the beholder.

But that kind of partisan critique pales next to the very real discrepancy - huge discrepancy - in time devoted to coverage of Democrats versus that given Republicans. It appears to me that the morning shows on the network haven’t even made an effort to be fair and balanced. The thought never entered their heads.

A case can be made for slightly unbalanced coverage in favor of Democrats due to the historic nature of the Clinton and Obama candidacies. But clearly not on the scale uncovered by the MRC study. In fact, a good case can be made the the Giuliani candidacy has as many newsworthy/gossipy elements to report on as any Democrat in the race. And the Romney campaign has many compelling storylines to it as well.

Nearly 12 million Americans still tune in to the morning news shows to tell them what is happening in the world, dwarfing the audience on cable shows for the same time slot. One would think that the Big Three news shows might take their responsibilities as journalists a little more seriously and cover the campaigns in order to inform the American people of the choices they will have to make on election day. Instead, the perception that the network news departments have become an extension of the Democratic National Committee and mouthpieces for liberal candidates is fostered by the doting coverage they give presidential candidates belonging to only one of the two parties.

Somehow, I don’t think we’ll hear yelps of fake outrage from the netnuts and their minions about this kind of bias. After all, the Democratic party brand of favoritism has been the hallmark of network television since at least the 1960’s. To them, it must seem as if all is right in the world. God is in the universe, the sun is rising in the east, setting in the west, and network news is showing a ridiculously biased face to the American people.

Has it really been 30 years today since the death of Elvis Presley?

I was a year and some out of college and found his death sad but hardly a reason for the kind of outpouring of grief we witnessed around the world. After all, I was a Rolling Stones/Jimmy Hendrix/Led Zeppelin Rock ‘n Roll disciple who, along with most of my generation, viewed “The King” with a combination of contempt for selling out to Hollywood and bemusement at his on-stage antics in Las Vegas. I have since come to appreciate Elvis a little more, especially those Vegas shows where he proved himself a pretty good entertainer. But his music never did much for me, nor his voice, nor his early stage theatrics which even back in the ’70’s appeared stilted and forced.

I had a similar reaction to the death of Diana. Nice looking girl who fell in with the wrong crowd; the cutthroats who run the British monarchy - people who will do anything and go to any lengths to maintain their privileges and wealth. But what exactly had she done to warrant the massive, even hysterical manifestations of grief we saw not only in Great Britain but here in America as well? She was photographed holding AIDS babies. Very nice but beside the point. Standing next to her in the photographs were the real heroes - people who held and cared for those babies not just when a gazillion cameras were going off but every single day.

People who comforted those babies as the life oozed out of them. People whose contributions to humanity so far exceeded this mop topped blond rich girl that for me, it became an insult to those health care workers who held AIDS babies as well as others whose causes were adopted by Diana in an effort to either assuage her feelings of guilt at being born into privilege and wealth or out of a calculated effort to create a public personae that was guaranteed to keep her name in the media.

Elvis wasn’t quite the publicity hound that Diana became only because the media in the 1950’s and 60’s was just starting to suffocate us. The moguls hadn’t yet figured out that what the American people craved more than news from the world’s hot spots, more than information on the struggle for civil rights, more than coverage of American politics was dishing the dirt on the private lives of the world’s rich and famous.

I was barely 6 months old when Elvis recorded his first song for Sun records, That’s Alright, Mama, which was perhaps the first example of a viral recording making a huge impact on the cultural consciousness of America. Before the acetate was transferred to vinyl, it had been played on several radio stations in Memphis, generating a buzz that carried it to the top of the charts once the record was released (along with the other side of the single, an old bluegrass waltz called Blue Moon of Kentucky).

The Elvis phenomena in the 1950’s either reflected or began a cultural revolution, depending on your point of view. The cart and the horse in this case might be indistinguishable. For all the nostalgia for the 1950’s and its supposedly tranquil, somnolent nature, there were undercurrents of revolution boiling beneath the surface. Peyton Place, the novel of sex and secrets about small town America was published the same year - 1954 - that saw the emergence of Elvis Presley. The book was a cultural atomic bomb, 59 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and eventually selling a phenomenal 8 million copies in hard cover. That book paved the way for other novels critical of American society and especially, its cultural mores like Sloan Wilson’s searing The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit and later, Updike’s seminal Rabbit Run.

While TV shows like Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver were seen as more than the ideal of an American family but actually as a true representation of family life in America, the real American family was undergoing incredible changes. In the midst of the baby boom, Elvis burst upon a cultural landscape that was ready for an iconic ringmaster, someone who would parlay the fusion of black R & B riffs and rhythms with what was known at the time as “Hillbilly” music into a brand new art form geared to a young audience and using the new medium of television to sell it.

When Elvis appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1956, 60 million Americans tuned in to see him. His status as a marketing king and preeminent showman rose to new heights. The recording industry had never seen anything like him. Americans had never experienced the kind of music he played either. The influence of black R & B and blues performers was obvious. And while it was fairly common for white musicians to take songs written by black performers and record them, Elvis was the first to actually keep the raw rhythms of the blues performer, grafting it on to other forms of white music like Western Swing and bluegrass. No one had ever heard anything like it and young people devoured it.

They also swooned at the rank sexuality of his public performances. Watching Madonna or Michael Jackson grabbing their crotch during a concert today isn’t half as shocking as the gyrating, grinding, thrusting movement of Presley’s hips was to 1950’s audiences. Bringing sex overtly (if unintentionally if you believe Presley) into the public consciousness, taking it out of the bedroom and putting it on the TV screen proved too much for some.

Until the 1960’s, Presley’s appearances on TV were invariably shot from the waist up lest the youth of America be corrupted. What seems quaint to us today was truly frightening to parents in the 1950’s. They didn’t understand the sex. They didn’t understand the “race music” Presley was making. And they didn’t understand how powerful the message of rebellion Presley was communicating - a message that would be taken to heart less than a decade after that Ed Sullivan appearance with the arrival in the US of the Beatles. Then, with the baby boom generation bursting for change, the Beatles and others would happily oblige them by promoting music and a lifestyle that satisfied the pent up urges of what would become known as the Viet Nam generation.

Can we “blame” Presley for the negative aspects in all this - the whole 1960’s mish mash of dashed hopes and unrealized dreams? Can we blame him for the media’s obsession with celebrity, gotten so out of control that it has trivialized our culture and society to the point that even our politics is now driven by it?

Elvis Presley is proof that history’s forces are more powerful than any single individual (usually). If not Elvis, it would have been another who would have popularized rock music. Presley wasn’t the only one experimenting with such fused forms of musical expression and someone else was bound to have hit it big. And I suspect that those undercurrents of rebellion in American society would have found a voice elsewhere if Elvis had not lived, so powerful and meaningful they were.

For better or worse, Elvis was there to invent, exploit, and capture all of these threads of history and culture, turning them to his personal advantage while inspiring others who came after him to push the envelope even farther. Elvis may be blameless as far as being the father of many modern ills in our society. But his status as one of the originators of our pop culture shouldn’t be forgotten as we examine what is best and worst about the revolution he started.

Michelle Malkin links to my last post on the Blogs and Beauchamp, showing her disagreement by linking to this eloquent, dignified post by Bryan at Hot Air on why, in fact, the Beauchamp story is considered very important by the military:

How important, in the grand scheme of the war, is the Scott Thomas Beauchamp story? By itself, it’s not all that important. But contrary to the opinions of those who can’t be bothered to care about it but nonetheless opine on it for whatever reason, and then mainly to downplay its importance, Beauchamp hasn’t happened all by itself and to those of us who served, its context and trajectory make it very important.

For the record, my downplaying of the importance of the story doesn’t mean that I believe it to be inconsequential. Nor, as Ace believes, does it mean that I am denigrating the efforts of those who brought elements of the story to light that eventually debunked Beauchamp’s claims. Why must everything in blogs be all or nothing? Is there no place where proportionality matters? A little nuance? A little deeper look at something rather than the raw, emotional primal scream of irrationality?

I read Ace’s post with a growing sense of perplexity. It’s impossible to respond to because he is criticizing what I was thinking while writing. He confidently ascribes motivations to me when he doesn’t know me from Adam and I doubt whether he’s read me in a year - maybe two. Maybe never.

Criticizing what I write is one thing. Criticizing what I believe is fair game. Smearing me for being reasonable? For having an original thought? Divining my “true” intent how? Does Ace have a window into my soul? Is he a mind reader? If you can read that post at Ace’s without scratching your head in wonderment at how someone who doesn’t know me, never met me, rarely, if ever, reads me can accuse me of all that perfidious thought, then perhaps you would be good enough to come back here and explain it to me. It is simply and literally, beyond belief.

Perplexing, indeed.

But Bryan’s points deserve a response.

There were few who stood up for the troops after Vietnam, but that’s a shame that shouldn’t be and won’t be repeated. The Beauchamp story comes down to a simple thing that most who never served in the military may not understand, and that’s the linked concepts of service and honor. It’s an honor to serve in the US military. With that honor comes responsibility not to besmirch the uniform or let down your comrades. Some obviously don’t live up to that honor. It’s up to the rest of us to protect that honor, keep its value high and keep the traditions of the service worthy of honor.

No, I have never served in the military. I have written in the past about my associations with soldiers and how they were different than most people I knew - especially when I was younger. Military people have a sense of duty and honor that that they have no problem wearing on their sleeve. They don’t brag about it. But they are obviously proud that they have a strict code by which they live their lives. I came to respect that aspect of my military friends enormously. In a very real way, I was jealous of that kind of commitment.

So it is not surprising that military bloggers would take the Beauchamp story personally. I understand and agree. I said in the post that it was important to debunk the claims of Beauchamp in order to undo the damage done to the military.

What more should I have said? And herein lies the concept of proportionality. Is it that I’m not sufficiently triumphant? Another MSM scalp nailed to the lodgepole so break out the drums and let’s party? Alright, allow me to express my pure joy at sticking it to TNR - they deserve the shellacking.

But no. It appears that because I point out that all of this amounts to a hill of beans outside Blogdom by making the ridiculous claims that it won’t win the war or mitigate the effect of Abu Ghraib all of a sudden, people want links to bloggers who actually make those claims? What? Where do I say any bloggers say those things? I am deliberately blowing out of proportion the effect of claiming Beauchamp’s scalp to illustrate the futility of taking it too seriously when contemplating the larger picture of the war and even fixing the black eye given to the military by TNR’s lies.

Yes it is important to the military folk that this is done. And for the reasons so eloquently written by Bryan. And yes it is important to debunk false claims on anything made by the media. I hope blogs will always do this.

But not surprisingly, no blogs or commenters below have addressed the thrust of my argument; that these blogswarms blow things out of proportion until the story takes on an importance far beyond anything having to do with the world outside of this cliquish little circle of blogs and blog readers. Is there another way to accomplish exactly the same thing without this happening? Is that such a ridiculous question?

Allow me to post Bryan’s summation:

Besides all of that, truth matters. “Fake but accurate” amounts to a lie, TNR. And in a post-modern war such as the one we’re fighting, and especially as we place more emphasis on the morality of our actions in war than on actually winning it by defeating the enemy, Beauchamp represents an informational attack on our ability to wage war. Words are weapons. Loss of morale leads to loss in war, by the way we fight wars now. Letting his smears stand has the potential of letting another toilet-Koran story to get out there into the infowar zone unchallenged. So again, stopping that from happening is just the right thing to do.

To read my post and say I disagree with any of that would mean you should be working on your cognitive skills, gentle readers. And if my lack of enthusiasm for this victory upsets you, I’m sorry. But there is no need for the kind of wild denunciations made by Ace nor some of your comments below which put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head that simply aren’t there.

Conservatives will make more of this than it is. Liberals will make less of it than it should be.

And me? It’s a big deal because the honor of the military has been saved from being dragged through the mud by this lying twerp. But in the large scheme of history and the short skein of political importance, it is neither relevant or vital.

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned from a military source close to the investigation that Pvt. Scott Thomas Beauchamp–author of the much-disputed “Shock Troops” article in the New Republic’s July 23 issue as well as two previous “Baghdad Diarist” columns–signed a sworn statement admitting that all three articles he published in the New Republic were exaggerations and falsehoods–fabrications containing only “a smidgen of truth,” in the words of our source.

Separately, we received this statement from Major Steven F. Lamb, the deputy Public Affairs Officer for Multi National Division-Baghdad:

An investigation has been completed and the allegations made by PVT Beauchamp were found to be false. His platoon and company were interviewed and no one could substantiate the claims.

Franklin Foer is out the door - or at least being handed his hat. He lied. He said some of Beauchamp’s buddies had confirmed parts of the story. They didn’t. Or if they did, they obviously didn’t mind lying to TNR but thought better of it when it came to swearing an oath and telling the military the truth.

I’ll have more on this tomorrow. But the way this thing is going to explode on the left and the right after daybreak, I had to get a few thoughts out there before the explosion.

Do atrocities in Iraq occur? Yes. What’s the point of lying about them? There are plenty of real idiots out there - people who are regularly picked up and charged with crimes by the military. We read about them all the time. They are doted on lovingly by the left as examples of what we are doing to our “children” by making them fight. They are thrown in conservatives faces whenever a fantastic fabulist like Scott Beauchamp steps forward and anyone dares to question his story.

Remember Jesse MacBeth? For a couple of days, the left celebrated the atrocities this guy was fibbing about. Then it turned out he was a liar and you could have heard a pin drop in the lefty sphere.

No one has ever said “Don’t investigate atrocities” on the right. All anyone should be asking - right or left - is that the press gets the story right - and right the first time. The slip shod reporting from Iraq (much of it due to the extreme danger of the place) is not being confronted by the press. There is no self-critiquing that I can see. There are no questions being asked like “Can we do a better job?” There is only a monumental effort to cover their asses when it hits the fan as it has in the Beauchamp caper. The disservice to history, to the American people, to the institution of the press is incalculable. But they will continue in this way because no one is telling them to do anything differently.

Tell the stories of atrocities committed by American soldiers. And while your at it, would it be too much to ask that you mention the life of an Iraqi one of those soldiers touched in a personal way? Personal acts of kindness - the small, simple decencies that mark the American serviceman and set him apart from so many others in history - may not be sexy in a news sense. But more than Hadithia, more than Abu Ghraib, more than the tragic, stupid, deadly confrontations between Iraqis and Americans that fill out and color the daily coverage of the war, there is the smile, the reassuring pat on the shoulder, the respect and deference shown by our boys that in small, important ways, are as effective as a bullet in creating a new Iraq.

I’m not sure what kind of Iraq these soldiers are going to be allowed to help build. It does not appear to me that their sacrifices and service will be fully validated. The Iraqi government and the sheer madness of bloodlust and hate in Iraq will see to that. But they are trying their best in impossible circumstances. And the story is not - repeat not - being told.

I don’t know what can be done differently to prevent a Scott Beauchamps from smearing the military and getting away with it for so long. Confirming news in a war zone is always difficult and in Iraq, damn near impossible. But it seems to me any fair minded person would come to the conclusion that TNR did not do enough to get it right from the start. Whether it was bias or, as many speculate, a predisposition to believe the worst of soldiers they will have to answer themselves.

For now, they are in journalistic hell. And there they will stay until they can convince us they deserve to be let out.

I will be on two radio shows this morning.

At around 8:20 AM Central, I’ll be on the “Morning News Show with Pat Snyder and Tom King.” It airs on WSAU News Radio 55 (No stream available).

Then at around 10:20 Central, I’ll be on Greg Allen’s nationally syndicated show “The Right Balance.” You can access the stream here.

On both shows, I’ll be talking about PJ Media’s coverage of the presidential races as well as the controversy over the GOP participation in the YouTube debate

Nothing new on the Scott Thomas Beauchamp matter to report - or at least worth reporting. The fact is, I find the digression into who his wife is, what he blogged about 2 years ago, who he went to school with, or any other minutia the rightosphere has been unearthing these last 24 hours to be irrelevant to the main point.

Indeed, this point seems to have escaped the left’s attention as well. Digby’s post yesterday sums up the view from the left:

But this is bigger than blogospherics. There has been precious little good writing about the actual gritty experiences of average soldiers in these wars. Everything has been so packaged and marketed from the top that it’s very difficult to get a sense of what it’s like over there. I have no idea if this piece is accurate, but regardless it didn’t seem to me to be an indictment of the military in general, merely a description of the kind of gallows humor and garden variety cruelty that would be likely to escalate in violent circumstances. And so far, there has been nothing substantial brought forward to doubt his story — the shrieking nitpicking of the 101st keyboarders notwithstanding.

It certainly should not have have garnered this vicious right wing attack from everyone from Bill Kristol to the lowliest denizens of the right blogosphere. They want to destroy this soldier for describing things that have been described in war reporting since Homer so they can worship “the troops” without having to admit that the whole endeavor is a bloody, horrible mess that only briefly, and rarely, offers opportunity for heroic battlefield courage (which, of course, it sometimes does as well.)

(Read the whole thing for a fascinating glimpse into something I’ve been noticing more and more on the left: This need to practice armchair psychology on the right, laughably - indeed uproariously trying to “explain” why many on the right support the troops or the war. What makes it so amusing is not only their painfully obvious ignorance of psychology but their overarching hubris in believing that their diagnoses are viable.)

I find these thoughts of Digby’s fascinating on several levels. He really doesn’t have a clue the extent to which current and former vets have destroyed Beuachamp’s claims. No doubt he hasn’t bothered to read the debunkings of people who know a helluva lot more about the efficacy of Beauchamp’s stories than he or I. The critiques of the Milbloggers as well as soldiers emailing from Iraq are persuasive and compelling. It is a shame Digby didn’t feel it necessary to grant them the courtesy of reading their admittedly circumstantial but strong case for Beauchamp being a fabulist.

It is equally baffling that Digby downplays the dispatches of several embedded bloggers whose powerful reporting on the “gritty experiences of average soldiers in these wars” is rightfully seen as the best journalism out of Iraq and Afghanistan to date? Michael Yon, Michael Totten (whose detailed Lebanon dispatches have also been far beyond anything you can read in the US except perhaps the English language Arab press), and J.D. Johannes have each, to varying degrees expressed disgust with the way the war was being fought over the last three years as well as revealing bad soldiering and bad leadership. One could hardly call their writings “packaged and marketed from the top.”

What this shows about Digby is an insularity about the war I find common on both the right and left. No one wants to read anything that will shake the foundations of their beliefs about Iraq. Good news is no news for the left as is bad news about the war on the right. Perhaps this is inevitable with the current state of our shattered polity. Challenging long held assumptions gets people out of their comfort zone very quickly and stories like those told by Beauchamp are unsettling as is their attempted debunking for that reason.

Smearing the troops (and yes, that is what Beauchamp was doing and doing it knowingly) goes hand in hand with delegitimizing their efforts. John Cole makes the point that thanks to the attention paid this story by the rightosphere, the smear has spread far and wide whereas before, it was confined to TNR’s dwindling number of readers. There’s something to that notion although if, as seems very probable, much of what Beauchamp was “reporting” from Iraq were either fantasies or rumors presented as fact, certainly it needed to be exposed. But as for all the side issues about Scott Beauchamps wife working for TNR and what he may have written before being deployed seems to me a lot of fluff and non-germane to the real question no one on the left is asking.

Why didn’t TNR vet the stories before going to press?

It could be that they are simply bad journalists in which case anyone involved in getting this story out to the public should be fired. But the most common reason given for running the articles on the right is that Franklin Foer and his staff have an inherent bias against the Iraq War and wished to undermine support for it by publishing false information deliberately.

First, it should be said, support for the war can hardly be “undermined” when 70% of the country has already given up and wants the troops home. The deadly combination of George Bush’s incompetent prosecution of the war and incoherent defense of the reasons for being there along with the deliberate effort by the left to sabotage the war effort by questioning our motives and challenging the integrity and even legitimacy of those in charge has predictably caused the average voter to demand an end to the conflict.

But relating to Beauchamp, the right’s critique of his probable fables is a hollow victory. It will change no one’s mind about the war. It will not prove anything about the military that we don’t already know; that the overwhelming majority of those serving in Iraq are dedicated people who perform their duties honorably but that there are a few whose actions do not reflect well on the history and tradition of the United States Army. This is why Beauchamp’s stories seem plausible to people like Franklin Foer and Digby. Why bother to check the facts if we know this kind of thing happens all the time in Iraq? I see nothing in Digby’s piece that takes TNR to task for just now getting around to checking the accuracy of the incidents portrayed in Beauchamp’s stories which leads me to believe he didn’t think it important either.

But that is the point about the Beauchamp caper; incuriousness on the part of the press in general regarding stories about anything in Iraq - the troops, al-Qaeda, signs of progress or lack thereof, and especially about where much of the news appears to be coming from.

In the defense of journalists, more than 120 members of the press have been killed in Iraq making it the most dangerous war zone for journalists since World War II. It is an almost impossible task to cover the “big picture” for which major publications and the news nets are so fond of reporting. In fact, in a conflict like Iraq, there might not be much of a big picture or perhaps a big picture that has so many pieces to it that it becomes too expensive or too complex to cover. For the press, when in doubt, follow the blood. So because of the difficulty in telling the whole story, the press substitutes body count journalism - so many Iraqis blown up here. So many dead terrorists there. And of course, the solemn, ever rising toll on American families as their loved ones are killed or maimed.

Is this really the best the press can do? Obviously not. And Scott Beauchamp is living proof of both the pitfalls of a different kind of war reporting attempted far too rarely by the media as well as the opportunities it provides.

Is there a “larger truth” about the war to be found in the writings of people like Yon, Totten, and even Beauchamp? It may not be sexy or even very interesting in a modern media sort of way - not with the news taking on all the characteristics of show business - but I believe there is an “overall” being missed by those who cover Iraq for traditional media. It is the simple everyday travails of both the Iraqi people and our men in Iraq that will determine the success or failure of our Iraq adventure.

There is now nor will there ever be some grand denouement to the war. No general will be able to place his boot on the bloody neck of a vanquished al-Qaeda leader and claim victory. Nor I suspect will there be some cataclysmic explosion of violence that will turn Iraq into the haven for al-Qaeda and puppet of Iran. Whatever happens will occur at street level. And it is here that the worm’s eye view of the war by the internet correspondents and the wannabes like Beauchamp have it all over the traditional media.

COURAGE!

Dorothy: Your Majesty, If you were King, you wouldn’t be afraid of anything?
Lion: Not nobody, not nohow!
Tin Man: Not even a rhinocerous?
Lion: Imposserous!
Dorothy: How about a hippopotamus?
Lion: Why, I’d trash him from top to bottomamus!
Dorothy: Supposin’ you met an elephant?
Lion: I’d wrap him up in cellophant!
Scarecrow: What if it were a brontosaurus?
Lion: I’d show him who was King of the Forest!
All Four: HOW?
Lion: How?
Courage!
What makes a King out of a slave?
Courage!
What makes the flag on the mast to wave?
Courage!
What makes the elephant charge his tusk, in the misty mist or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk?
Courage!
What makes the sphinx the seventh wonder?
Courage!
What makes the dawn come up like thunder?
Courage!
What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the “ape” in apricot? What have they got that I ain’t got?
All Four: COURAGE!
Lion: You can say that again…

I was trying to decide whether to use this classic Bert Lahr bit from Wizard of Oz or another classic bit from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to illustrate how totally disgusted I am with Republican presidential candidates who fear getting questions via YouTube from well meaning but nutty citizens that would be gleefully culled and chosen by those totally impartial and fair minded editors and producers at CNN.

Hugh Hewitt, with what we assume will soon be the official Mitt Romney position, cries Humbug!

If the GOP candidates agree to this format, expect a series of cheap shots about all of the top tier candidates. Patrick worries that the Republicans will appear behind the times if they take a pass. Perhaps, but if that means skipping a no win set-up where MSM agenda journalists work for weeks to put a video shiv into one or more of the Big Three, I am for it. The second tier folks will no doubt show up hoping for a Hail mary moment, but Giuliani, Romney and Thompson ought to say no thanks.

To illustrate,take a look at this story –a bit of agenda journalism that Jonathan Martin at Politico.com told me on air today is built on a story that has been floating around for months. Imagine some YouTube video asking Rudy why he’s defending a suspected pedophile. No MSMer would dare ask such a loaded question, but imagine what the gang at CNN would do. They covered for the Dems with a series of overwhelmingly left-biased questions at the first YouTube debate, with a very few tough, serious questions thrown in. That dynamic would change completely in a GOP YouTube debate –they or their counterparts at a different network will be gunning for the Republicans, and the question set will be designed to embarrass or ridicule.

Hugh is missing the point. It’s not a question of partisanship necessarily. It’s a question of putting on a good show.

If you’re all doe eyed and worshipful about the “freedom of the press” and our grand experiment in democracy being safeguarded by these noble knights with printers ink on their fingers, allow me to disabuse you of something; these guys are not very noble and the only freedom they care about is the one that says they can make gobs of money while pretending to be journalists. Paddy Chayefsky’s nightmare screenplay Network has come true with a vengeance. It’s not about the news. It’s show business. CNN, Fox, MSNBC - the lot of them - are in “the boredom killing business” as Chayefsky so sharply observed.

Even more basic than that, it’s all about eyeballs. The news nets want your eyeballs and like the carny barkers of old, will do or say just about anything to make you stop clicking the remote long enough - 3 or 4 minutes at the outside - to watch as they dangle shiny, pretty, horrifying, funny, dramatic, titillating, and blood boiling baubles made of people and events in front of your eyes. Their goal; make you stick around until after the commercial break.

Are they partisan? Sure they are. But above and beyond that, they are consummate showmen. And a bunch of conservative Christian white men standing on stage all in a row like ducks in an old fashioned shooting gallery is just too much of a target rich environment to pass up. They’ll have every group of special pleaders (who happen to be Democratic constituencies) eager to get their shots in. Why do Republicans hate blacks? Or Hispanics? Or women? Or children. Or puppy dogs?

In the Democratic debate, the entertainment value came from the questioners themselves. The snowman, the guy who called his rifle “baby” - CNN could have cared less about the efficacy of the questions as long as the people asking them were interesting to look at.

The GOP debate would be a little different. Hugh is correct about the kinds of questions that would be chosen. But here, the entertainment value would be watching the Republican candidates squirm. The chickenhawk questions would be most entertaining - from CNN’s point of view. And can you imagine some gay guy asking Brownback why he’s persecuting him? Perfect!

So why bother, Hewitt is asking?

For God’s sake, Hugh! These people want to be President of the United States! If they can’t stand up to a little tough questioning from Democratic partisans (CNN included) how in God’s name are they going to stand up to Ahmadinejad who I guarantee will feel a helluva lot more empowered come November, 2008 than a gay guy from New York asking about gay marriage!

There would be something unseemly about Republicans ducking this debate - sort of like being too frightened to walk into a dark room full of treasure where you’ve been told a vicious beast is ready to pounce and eat you. That doesn’t mean you don’t go into the room. It means that you grab yourself a set of night vision goggles and the biggest gun in your arsenal and you go and face down the beast and grab the loot.

If Republicans don’t believe strongly enough in their ideals, then perhaps they should skip the debate. Case in point was Obama’s response to the question about meeting the thugs of the world his first year in office without pre-conditions. It’s a stupid idea. But was there any doubt in your mind that Obama didn’t believe in his answer 120%? Hillary has tried to make political hay out of Obama’s naivety but isn’t getting very far because people know that Obama believes what he’s saying.

Does Romney mean it when he says he’s anti-abortion or anti-gay marriage? Does Rudy believe it when he says he’ll name strict constructionists to the Supreme Court? Does anyone believe anything John McCain says anymore?

The GOP is in crisis because it has no leadership, no agenda, and is failing the test of history. It’s principles have crashed on the shoals of expediency and arrogance. It insists on putting its social agenda front and center in the mistaken belief that Americans care more about preventing gay people from getting married then whether they’ll have a job in six months. Or how in God’s name we’re going to get out of Iraq without leaving a bloody mess.

Stay away from the debate and the American people will judge you cowards. The press will see to that. Stand up like men, take your lumps, give back as good as you get, don’t fear the unknown, and move forward.

Or, perhaps the man behind the curtain will give you what you really need; a permanent pass to the back benches of government where you belong if you skip this debate.

Franklin Foer, Editor of The New Republic is still trying desperately to confirm many of the details of bad behavior by US troops in Iraq related in the Scott Thomas stories. He really needn’t worry that much; blogs appear to be doing his work for him:

This information is from an anonymous soldier who served in the area described by Thomas. It partially confirms one of the more gruesome stories in the Thomas diaries - that of a soldier wearing the skull of a dead child that was unearthed by a mass grave:

There was a children’s cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport. It was not a mass grave. It was not the result of some inhumane genocide. It was an unmarked cometary where the locals had buried children some years back. There are many such unmarked cemeteries in and around Baghdad. The remains unearthed that day were transported to another location and reburied. While I was not there personally, and can not confirm or deny and actions taken by Soldiers that day, I can tell you that no Soldier put a human skull under his helmet and wore it around. The Army Combat Helmet (ACH) is form fitted to the head. Unlike the old Kevlar helmets, the ACH does not have a gap between the helmet and the liner, only pads. It would have been impossible for him to have placed and human skull, of any size, between his helmet and his head. Further more, no leader would have tolerated this type of behavior. This type of behavior is strictly forbidden in the U.S. Army and would have made the individual involved subject to UCMJ actions.

Not a “mass grave” as described by Thomas (the article said that Thomas and his mates “speculated” that it could have been a mass grave) but rather an unmarked children’s cemetery that the army then moved to another location. A difference worth quibbling about? Not to my mind. That much we can confirm about the story.

What about the soldier walking around wearing a part of a child’s skull? This may be a little more problematic for TNR as the soldier makes clear above. Is it possible some goof put the piece of bone on his head and paraded around for a few minutes or longer? This is possible. But spending an entire day with the skullbone underneath his helmet would seem to be an impossibility.

Score one for the blogs. And chalk up an embellishment to the author.

In the end, that’s what I think this story is going to be about; a real combat soldier who is serving in Iraq with a gift for writing and who didn’t mind spicing up his memoirs with some exaggerations and embellishments to the truth. The Bradley driver who targeted dogs with his vehicle will probably end up being someone who decided it was suicide to slow down in a combat zone to avoid hitting a dog or two. Did he joke about keeping track of how many dogs he ran over while trying to ease the tension you might find on a combat patrol? Other incidents related by Thomas may be composites of several different events that actually happened but for the sake of his “narrative,” he chose to combine various elements in order to make a seamless whole.

An excellent technique - if you’re writing fact-based fiction. Unfortunately for The New Republic, this isn’t the case.

The problem for Foer and TNR is that they presented this fellow Thomas as writing the unvarnished truth about his experiences in Iraq. In this case, embellishment of the facts surrounding any of the incidents mentioned is the same as lying. Publishing what they purport to be “journalism” as opposed to a story based on fact, TNR was obligated to vet carefully anything that appeared in those articles before the fact. The idea that Foer is just now getting around to that little detail is astonishing - especially after the Stephen Glass fiasco.

I’m not sure why but Matthew Yglesias doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with this:

. . but amidst The Weekly Standard’s huffing and puffing about how “Scott Thomas” couldn’t possibly have come across a mass grave in a particular area of operations where he allegedly said he came across one (crucially, he didn’t actually say that), they inadvertently corroborated the story. Thomas said he and other soldiers found a bunch of skeletons during the construction of a combat outpost. One of the article’s detractors concedes that “There was a children’s cemetery unearthed while constructing a Combat Outpost (COP) in the farm land south of Baghdad International Airport” and then gets very insistent that it was no mass grave. The article, however, just said they found a bunch of bones and then speculated idly that it might have been a mass grave. Well, turns out it was a children’s cemetary.

Meanwhile, the case that nobody could possibly have driven around in his Bradley Fighting Vehicle killing dogs seems to essentially come down to the fact that “This would violate standard operating procedure (SOP) and make the convoy more susceptible to attack.” I don’t, however, think anyone ever argued that killing dogs was SOP, the claim was that it happened. Surely the Standard is prepared to concede that SOP, though standard, is sometimes violated.

First, why must Yglesias do his own bit of exaggerating here? The Standard didn’t “inadvertently” corroborate the information about the children’s cemetery. That’s absurd. Is Yglesias saying that Goldfarb is such a dolt he forgot to exclude exculpatory evidence that would prove Thomas correct? Evidently yes. No mention of debunking the child’s skullbone on the head of the soldier story by Yglesias. Looks like he “inadvertently” left that out.

As for the Bradley deliberately targeting dogs, it is evident that Yglesias is a little behind the information curve. Several vets who have driven or a currently driving Bradleys point out the impossibility of targeting anything given the location of the hatch as well as the range of vision afforded the driver. This would seem to supersede Yglesias’ contention that judging the veracity of the incident came down to a question of SOP.

Another “inadvertent” omission by Yglesias? I guess so. I think Matthew would probably fit in wonderfully at The New Republic.

Debunking or confirming specific incidents related by Scott Thomas is important but at the same time, we mustn’t lose sight of the overall picture of the military being painted by the left recently; and that is, the US army is chock full of kooks, crazies, gun nuts, latent serial killers, rapists, psychologically disturbed, violence prone killers who are careening around Iraq firing indiscriminately at civilians, killing kids for sport, and hating their hosts with a genocidal passion.

I have no doubt that war turns men into beasts, that no amount of training can prepare young men for the horror of combat, and that the stress of numerous deployments has taken its toll on the psychological health of many in the military.

But articles like those written by Scott Thomas and the 7500 word screed appearing this month in The Nation make no effort to avoid generalizing the behavior of the few into what amounts to an indictment of the entire US military.

That’s their intent, of course. Being anti-war has its perks, not the least of which is the right to talk out one side of your mouth claiming support for the troops while dishing dirt on the military out of the other side. And inadvertently or not, the effect is to tar the entire military serving in Iraq with the crimes of the few.

The article in The Nation is astonishing for its detailed recitation of some brutal atrocities as well as the casual - perhaps inhuman is a better word - manner in which the death of civilians was treated by the military. The graphic descriptions of war crimes come from 50 ex-military people who served in Iraq between 2003-2005.

Many of these young men are undergoing psychological treatment for the things they did as well as incidents they witnessed first hand. For them, as well as no doubt thousands of others who the experts say will need counseling when their tours are over, let us wish them well and hope that they can recover and adjust to living among civilians.

Does the fact that many of those interviewed for the article - if not the overwhelming majority - come from anti-war groups or were recommended by them cast doubt on their stories? We don’t know. Wherever possible, The Nation included press reports that confirmed the soldiers’ stories. But that fact raises other questions of media contamination as well as the simple, human penchant for remembering things differently from the way they actually occurred. And then there is the experience we in the United States have had with these types of forums, specifically the Viet Nam era “Winter Soldier” confabs. To avoid the worst errors made by the organizers of that anti-military get together - it turns out many of the testimonials of atrocities were given by people either never in the military or who couldn’t possibly have witnessed what they were describing - The Nation was careful in only interviewing genuine ex-servicemen. Whether they served in areas that would have put them in a position to actually witness the events they describe is up to the reader to decide.

The problem for The Nation is the same one facing The New Republic; how do you vet stories in a combat zone, months or years after the fact? Given the anti-war agenda of both publications as well as their reputation for advocacy journalism, questions should always be raised about their sources and methods. And despite arguments by the left to the contrary - that even if partly true, the stories confirm a “larger truth” about Iraq and the military - the standards for publication should be at least as strict as those used when publishing any other news story in those magazines.

Where is the truth in all of this? In the eye of the beholder, naturally. Subjective vs. objective truth will always fight it out when issues that enjoin the passions of the people are discussed and debated. It might be helpful if we remember however, that smearing the reputations of honorable people for political profit reserves a special level in hell for the practitioners - something both publications might want to keep in mind when printing stories about the United States military.

The Editor of The New Republic Franklin Foer must be feeling very lonely today. His boss, Martin Peretz, has yet to rush to his defense in the Scott Thomas controversy. The left has been skewering The New Republic for months over their criticisms of the netroots and their undue influence on the Democratic party and not surprisingly, are either questioning the Thomas stories along with their conservative blogging brethren or maintaining a pregnant silence on the matter.

Foer is maintaining a stiff upper lip and stonewalling as if his job depended on it. Come to think of it, that’s not far off the mark. Given that Foer admitted yesterday that he failed to check out the Thomas stories until questions were raised by conservative bloggers about the veracity of many of the incidents catalogued by the anonymous diarist, Foer may not be out the door as Editor quite yet. But Peretz’s silence could signal that he’s being handed his hat.

One shaky strut after another that has kept the Thomas Saga from collapsing in a heap has been yanked away by a combination of Milblogger expertise and simple common sense. Greyhawk was one of the first to weigh in with some pretty compelling evidence:

How far into The New Republic’s fabricated war story did I have to get to recognize it was a fabricated story? Answer: Not very far. Here’s the first line:

I saw her nearly every time I went to dinner in the chow hall at my base in Iraq.

Here’s a true war story. One late night near Baghdad, my unit’s First Sergeant and I went to the local USAF passenger terminal to pick up a newly arrived troop. Because food is important to survival and morale, the first place we took our newbie was the DFAC - the Dining Facility. (Pronounced DEEFAK with emphasis on the first syllable.) AS I said, it was late, so as we pulled into the parking area Top asked a passing soldier “Hey, what time does the chow hall close?”. His response was a blank stare, and a “huh?”. He moved closer to the vehicle.

“What time does the Chow Hall close?” The First Sergeant repeated. The soldier began to appear confused, and was unable to respond. Something clicked in my head. “He doesn’t know what a chow hall is” I said. The term is outdated, appearing now only in old war movies on TV, but Top and I are old school. “What time does the DFAC close?” Asked the First Sergeant.

“Twenty hundred hours” he replied smartly. He wasn’t being a smart ass, he was completely unfamiliar with the term “chow hall”. (By the way, it was closed, so we ate at Pizza Hut that night. I paid. War is hell.)

Small details like that have been picked out and chewed over by military or ex-military readers of many blogs. Taken separately, they are not really that compelling. But the fact that there are so many little discrepancies like the one described above - including eyewitnesses at “FOB Falcon” denying the specifics of most of Thomas’ charges and where most of the alleged bad behavior was said to have taken place by Thomas - leaves the reader wondering how Foer fell for this propaganda in the first place.

The answer, apparently, is that he wanted to. By issuing a statement yesterday in which he admitted that The New Republic failed to properly vett the story in the first place, Foer proved that he could have cared less about accuracy or truth when it came to publishing a story so damaging to the reputation of American military personnel. Either that, or he’s incompetent as an editor.

Either reason would be enough to warrant his removal. Unless Foer can come up with some credible evidence that his source is trustworthy and that at least some of the incidents reported weren’t made up out of whole cloth, The New Republic will probably be looking for another Editor very soon.

It’s days like this that make blogging so much fun…

We on the right have had precious little to laugh about lately. The Republican party seems intent on going ahead with the suicidal Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill that is guaranteed to comprehensively alienate the base while comprehensively leading to a Democratic sweep at the polls in November of 2008.

We were promised a comprehensive reform of the Republican party. What we didn’t realize is that it would involve shrinking its numbers and losing elections - comprehensively, of course.

And of course, the din from the netnuts over the continued non-scandal at DOJ, the Scooter Libby sentencing, and a variety of other “ethics witch hunts” as Goldstein refers to them, has contributed to the overall feeling of ennui felt by most conservative bloggers. Especially since it is clear the GOP brought much of this upon themselves due to their unmitigated arrogance. Not breaking the law and acting ethically are not mutually exclusive, although making each mini-breach of ethics into a threat to republican government is as silly as it gets.

So here we are, our “black dog” getting the better of us as Winston Churchill liked to say, when all of a sudden, a gift from heaven. Harry Reid tells liberal bloggers that retiring General Peter Pace is “incompetent” and makes similar observations about General Petreaus. This according to Politico - a publication already derided by the netnuts as part of the right wing noise machine. That may be true. I have yet to see any acknowledgement that the dozens of conspiracy theories spouted by the left have any validity on that publication. So obviously, they are right wing Rethuglican theocrats.

But did Harry Reid really say that about our generals?

Not so fast says Greg Sargent of Election Central at TPM Cafe:

The story has already sparked an uproar, and the conservatives have jumped all over it. It was linked on Drudge, and John McCain sent out a press release attacking Reid over it. And White House press secretary Tony Snow use it to hammer Reid as anti-military in today’s White House briefing. Snow brought up the Politico story himself, saying that it was “outrageous” for Reid to be “issuing slanders” toward commanders “in a time of war.”

But we’ve just spoken with three of the prominent liberal bloggers who say they were on the call, and they all say they don’t remember Reid saying anything like this. One flatly denies that he said it.

And just to set this delicious story up a little more, here’s what those “prominent liberal bloggers” told Mr. Sargent about their teleconference with Harry Reid:

We asked Joan McCarter, who blogs at DailyKos under the name McJoan and wrote about being on the call here, if she recalled Reid calling Pace “incompetent.”

“I don’t remember him saying anything like that,” she answered. “I can’t swear he didn’t say it. But I have no memory that he actually did. It’s not in my notes.”

Asked if Reid had disparaged Petraeus at all, McCarter said: “No. He said something about [Petraeus] coming back in September to deliver a report.” But on the question of whether he’d said something disparaging, McCarter said: “Not that I recall, no.”

“I don’t even recall Pace’s name specifically being mentioned,” adds Barbara Morrill, who blogs at Kos under the name BarbinMD and says she was on the call. “If it was, he did not say that he was incompetent.”

Asked if he’d criticized Petraeus, Morrill said: “Not that I recall. I checked my notes,” and there was nothing like this. “He mentioned the report that Petraeus is supposed to be coming out in September. I only recall him saying something along the lines that the Bush administration had run the war poorly. Any criticisms were against the Bush administration.”

Finally, here’s what MyDD’s Jonathan Singer, who wrote about the call here, told us: “I don’t remember him calling Pace incompetent.” He added that while he couldn’t promise that he hadn’t done it, “I just don’t recall those statements.”

There are more “I don’t recalls” above than there were at the Scooter Libby trial. And that guy was trying to remember stuff that he said 4 years ago not a couple of days like these tireless champions of truth and justice.

Case closed. After all, if you can’t trust a liberal blogger to tell you the truth, who can you trust?

And based on those denials, the netnuts went absolutely ballistic on conservative bloggers who dared quote the Politico story as if it were - well, a story. They skewered Politico reporter John Bresnahan, basically accusing him of being a liar.

Except it turns out, the story was true:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid confirmed Thursday that he told liberal bloggers last week that he thinks outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Peter Pace is “incompetent.”

Reid also disparaged Army Gen. David Petraeus, head of Multinational Forces in Iraq.

The netnuts, forgetting that their original triumphalism about catching conservative bloggers goosing a false story, were quick to respond that even if Harry did say it, the fact is, it’s true isn’t it?

Everyone is now going to be talking about the “context” of Reid’s remarks, which is important. He has supposedly told Pace to his face what he thinks of him. Good for Reid, that’s what any person of character should do. Senator Reid has many supporters in the military. He’s earned them and I’m sure those who support him will continue to do so.

However, it doesn’t make this event any less newsworthy. “Context” doesn’t matter to most people when you hear the quote. Reid said it. It’s confirmed. Cable news and talk radio will now be using it forever against Reid and the Democrats. In addition, when you weigh the Congress, which has a 23% approval rating, against what the American people think of the U.S. military, let’s just say Congress loses. You don’t get anywhere by calling a chairman of the Joint Chiefs “incompetent.” If you’re going to level a charge make it specific and cite the situation in which the soldier failed. Letting bin Laden go at Tora Bora comes to mind. But blanket charges just won’t get the job done.

Even my level headed lefty friend Taylor Marsh fails to mention what Reid said about General Petreaus. Evidently, our Harry has more information about what is going on in Baghdad sitting on his ass in his Washington D.C. office than General Petreaus has by virtue of him actually being in Iraq:

The Senate majority leader took aim yesterday at the top U.S. commander in Iraq, who until now has received little criticism from Capitol Hill over his statements or performance.

Sen. Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) charged that Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, who took command in Iraq four months ago, “isn’t in touch with what’s going on in Baghdad.” He also indicated that he thinks Petraeus has not been sufficiently open in his testimony to Congress. Noting that Petraeus, who is now on his third tour of duty in Iraq, oversaw the training of Iraqi troops during his second stint there, Reid said: “He told us it was going great; as we’ve looked back, it didn’t go so well.”

Reid seemed most provoked by an article in yesterday’s edition of USA Today, which quoted the general as saying that he sees “astonishing signs of normalcy” in the Iraqi capital. “I’m talking about professional soccer leagues with real grass field stadiums, several amusement parks — big ones, markets that are very vibrant,” Petraeus told the newspaper.

Did Reid make similar criticisms of Petreaus to the netnut bloggers?

The Politico story would seem to indicate the affirmative. There is silence on the matter from those who actually were involved in the call in addition to the “non-denial” denials of Reid calling Pace incompetent.

I share some of Reid’s concern about Petreaus glossing over the violence in Iraq but at the same time, the General has a point. Baghdad is a very large city and it is more than probable that big parts of it are returning to “normalcy” as a result of the increased troop presence. So far, that increase hasn’t stopped the terrorists although it has apparently slowed down the death squads. What the surge hasn’t done, of course, is get Prime Minister Maliki to give up his imitation of a bronze statue and move his government toward meeting the political goals he agreed to with President Bush last year in Jordan.

But the real kicker in this story is what Reid told the press after admitting he referred to Pace as incompetent. “”I think we should just drop it,” the leader of the Majority Party in the United States Senate said.

Good advice. I recommend that the following should be “dropped” from discussion on the internet:

“Bush lied people died.”
“No blood for oil.”
The Administration “twisted” pre war intel on Iraq.
Dick Cheney actually runs the government, not Bush.
Diebold helped the Republicans steal the election of 2004.
Gore actually won Florida in 2000.
9/11 was an inside job.
Bush is trying to set himself up as a dictator.
America is now a theocracy - or almost there.
Conservatives are racists.
Glenn Greenwald never used sockpuppets.

I could think of a couple of dozen more, but you get the picture. Why not leave your “Harry Reid Sanctioned Dropped Memes” in the comments? It just may make you feel better today.

UPDATE

I’ll give Bryan at Hot Air the final word:

Sen. Harry Reid is a dishonest shill for the nutroots whose approval rating stands at 19%. He is the incompetent leader of a pathetic Democrat-led Senate, the approval rating of which stands at a whopping 23%. For Reid to disparage either Gen. Peter Pace or Gen. David Petraeus, both of whom have given their entire adult lives in service to their country, is a disgrace.

If Reid had any sense of honor or decency, he’d resign. Which means he’ll be in the Senate until the voters of Nevada finally tire of him, or he retires at a ripe old age.