Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Who's Minding the Store?

Jerry Lewis has a bad evening. It's all reported by Will Pfeifer over on his weblog.

• Posted at 10:36 PM · LINK

Good Catch

Here's an example of why Keith Olbermann has become my favorite TV newsguy. You've probably all read about the revelation today that some senior official in the Bush administration "outed" Valerie Plame Wilson to super-reporter Bob Woodward before the time that Lewis "Scooter" Libby is alleged to have told another reporter about her. Almost all the news sources out there are quoting Libby's lawyer as saying...

[Woodward's] disclosure shows that Mr. Fitzgerald's statement at his press conference of October 28, 2005 that Mr. Libby was the first government official to tell a reporter about Mr. Wilson's wife was totally inaccurate.

Which would make Fitzgerald wrong if he'd actually said that. On the Countdown show today on MSNBC, Olbermann played the actual tape of Fitzgerald's statement at that press conference. And what Fitzgerald said was...

Mr. Libby was the first government official known to have told a reporter about Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife.

Not exactly the same thing. And this is the kind of thing reporters ought to catch. Every time anyone in the news misquotes someone or twists provable facts, the press ought to point that out instead of just letting it pass. Too many newspeople have just gotten into the habit of letting everyone have their say and not holding it to any standard of accuracy. That's not covering the news. It's just turning over your cameras and microphones to the newsmakers.

• Posted at 9:49 PM · LINK

Today's Political Thought

Dick Cheney, whose approval rating is two points below cold sores (but still a full point ahead of groin pulls) has joined the "If we were wrong, so was everyone else" crusade.

My thinking on this whole issue seems to be evolving to the following rule. I think we should get rid of everyone in government who thought Saddam Hussein possessed serious Weapons of Mass Destruction and either had a nuclear weapon or was close to getting one. Maybe these government officials were duplicitious. Maybe they were just gullible. I don't want either kind in any position of power.

There would be one exception to this. That would be if that government official can say "I was deceived" and — and this next part is crucial — is taking whatever steps they can to ferret out the deceivers and take the appropriate action against them.

Back in the Wacky World of Watergate, there was something Nixon did — or rather, that he didn't do — that caused a lot of people to think he was guilty of something. What he didn't do was to get mad at those who had broken the law. He complained a lot about the press and about the Democrats, both of whom wanted to get to the bottom of who'd dunnit. But he never pounded on the desk and yelled, "Damn it! This is the Law and Order Administration and we're going to find out who authorized these break-ins and no matter who they are, they're doing hard time for it!" In the same vein, a lot of people decided O.J. Simpson was guilty of that double murder because he only spoke (and rather unemotionally) about "finding the real killers" — and then only as a means of clearing his own name. He didn't shout, "I'm going to find the bastard who killed the mother of my children and make him pay for his sick crime!"

The current White House line seems to be admitting — or coming darn close to admitting — that the administration acted on bad intelligence. Okay, I think we all know that by now. I might be willing to believe that the Bush crew had no hand in the doctoring or slanting of that intelligence if I saw somebody high up in that crowd saying, "The President of the United States cannot conduct a war based on faulty information. We're going to find the people responsible for this, fire them and maybe prosecute them." Until they do, a lot of people (including myself) are going to believe that they don't do that because they know such an investigation would uncover massive fraud and/or incompetence where they don't want it uncovered.

I'm guessing that by Thanksgiving Day, Cheney will be a point below groin pulls...and giving leprosy a run for its money.

• Posted at 7:31 PM · LINK