American Media Archives

Since there are billions of dollars in direct costs attendant on climate change legislation and regulations, and billions more in indirect costs, it is important to follow the data reports and revelations.

This is one of the best journalistic treatments I have seen. It is written by Mark Landsbaum in the Orange County Register.

What has the Columbia Journalism Review learned from the campaign it waged with Chris Mooney (see immediately previous post) to disallow scientific evidence against massive man-caused global warming? What have "media experts" at Harvard and MIT learned from the efforts to disallow the critics from being heard?

Why, at a seminar last week on "Scientists, Skeptics and the Media" they learned that media must be even more ardent in support of the alarmist viewpoint. No one seems to have considered the possibility that the skeptics might have a case deserving of coverage.

Mooney is a sometime Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT. Philip J. Hilts, professor of "science journalism" and the current head of the Knight program (presumably funded with money from the Knight newspaper chain's charitable arm), covers the seminar for the CJR.

"Like doctors gathered around the operating table in mid-surgery, a group of media experts at Harvard yesterday offered their diagnoses of the ailing body of journalism. The symptom: a surprising decline in public belief that climate change is real or important."

The journalist-doctors go on to offer one idea after another on how to convince the public that its growing skepticism is a mistake. Only a small group in the population are true skeptics, after all. And the way to restore a proper sense of alarm among the others might be to tie climate change to people's personal health concerns....Etc.

A comment on the CJR blog by "JLD" makes the pertinent response:

"I have to say it takes a great deal of chutzpah -- or perhaps cluelessness -- to examine the drop in public trust in climate science without once mentioning Climategate or the very real scandals that are now plaguing this 'settled science.'

"But being a recent graduate of the Kennedy School I would expect nothing less than a complete whitewash of anything that offends liberal sensibilities. By all means keep 'fighting back' against the 'denialists' -- it might feel good, but it won't convince anyone outside of Harvard Square."

The scene from the Babylon Hotel, frequented by foreigners, after it was attacked January 26. Photo courtesy of Reuters.

The successful attacks Monday on the three leading international hotels in Baghdad tell us a lot:

1) Media have lost much of their interest in the Iraq War since it was "won" and Iraq appeared to be on the path to democracy. As U.S. and other troops leave, the level of coverage has declined--to the point that these three brazen bombings are not even the top news in the West. Is there any doubt that they would have been our leading stories four or five years ago?

2) Journalists may think of themselves as observers, but al Qaeda and its terrorist pals are not confused: journalists are seen as enemies of militant Islamists. The three targeted hotels hit Monday are in what was called the "Red Zone;" namely, everything outside the highly secured government "Green Zone." All, including al Hamra, where I stayed six years ago, are frequented largely, if not mainly, by journalists. Many news organizations have offices as well as dwellings there.

3) Even the most "secure" locations are still vulnerable. The al Hamra has been hit before, but never so directly. The breached fortifications were substantial.

My heart goes out to all those, including the hotel staffs and small concessionaires, who have been assaulted.

We are not done yet in Iraq.

The New Scientist is just one of those science journals that boast falsely of their professionalism. It is obvious on the face of it, however, that they routinely employ ad hominem comments and sheer rank-pulling to disparage critics of what they regard as the "scientific consensus" (e.g., dogma). Don't confuse them with the evidence.

Now they and other supposedly objective media are being exposed by demonstration after demonstration that they have allowed the books on climate change to be hidden or rigged. Climategate, as the Investor's Business Daily says, is a scandal that extends far beyond some mischief in East Anglia. People in the science media who should have been investigating these situations instead have buried them.

Someone in the mainstream media is going to pick up on the increasing examples of fraud, misuse of public and foundation money and plain ideological presumption. It will make a great newspaper series, book and documentary. Good work already is being done in all these categories, but not in the media major leagues.

There is no question that human beings contribute to air and water pollution. There is no doubt that the West needs to wean itself from imported oil. But collaboration on win-win solutions is hampered, not helped, by groups of ideologues who are willing to hide data and avoid scrutiny. Their loyalty apparently is not to science, or even to the general welfare, but to their worldview.

Do you think I am wrong? Then where are the debates that let both sides be heard?

The more public opposition to Obamacare grows, the more the mainstream media tries to block criticism from being heard. The editorial pages of major dailies ignore critics. So do many news broadcasts. George Stephanopolous, former Clinton aide supposedly performing now as an objective newsman on Good Morning America, features one defense after another of Obamacare and scolds Howard Dean for imperiling the Obama Presidency--as if GMA were an official mouthpiece for the Administration.

The same is happening on climate change. Instead of encouraging discussion (or even debate), the MSM reaction to Copenhagen is to try to shut down critics. When officials cut off the microphone of a questioner, only the Washington Times reports it. Where there could be agreement (e.g., hybrid cars, nuclear power), there is only grandstanding on crisis claims.

The public is not buying the propaganda approach. What to do? Get a new public?

For nearly a year we have been urging Mr. Obama to be the kind of president he promised to be: one who listens, who tries to find common ground, who is genuinely bi-partisan. Had he followed that path he could have had a health bill by now that enjoyed Republican as well as Democratic support and he could have had energy and environmental policies that were reasonable, forward looking and productive. The reason these paths have not been pursued has to be ideological. It is not smart politics or statesman-like policy.

Oddly, even the liberal base (e.g., Howard Dean) isn't happy now. The Administration is failing, and while that is good political news for Republicans, it probably is bad for American leadership in the world. Only on Afghanistan, where the President actually has listened (to Defense Secretary Bob Gates) is his approach working.

Why wait, as Bill Clinton did, for a mid-term defeat in the Congressional elections for a mid-term correction in policy, Mr. President?

The supposedly august Nature magazine shows its true stuff with an attempt to dismiss the Climate Gate emails. To them, the problem is only computer hacking. That would be quite irrelevant, of course, if the Shoe-on-the-Other-Foot rule were applied; if the Climate Research Unit, in other words, had been covering up evidence for global warming.

Nature's editorial speaks volumes about the way the journal itself is complicit in arrogant avoidance of contrary evidence on this, or any other subject where an iron "consensus" must be established, controlled and enforced.

The big news today is that Australia has just declined to embrace Cap and Trade. In the U.K., the head of the CRU has been forced to step down pending an investigation.

But, pay no attention, Nature says that there's no story here.

The lead scientist in the global warming scandal, Dr. Phil Jones, has just agreed to step down, pending an investigation by the University of East Anglia. Nothing can be done to spin this as a good development for those arguing that the recent email disclosures are irrelevant or trivial.

Will this rouse the mainstream media to admit there is something major here that is worth covering in full?

The story is like so many others recently where news develops on the Internet and is carefully avoided by the New York Times, the AP, et al, until they are all shown to be far behind the curve on something important. Do you think such mistakes may have something to do with declining public support for the MSM?

The key reason such stories are late arrivals in news rooms of liberal media is that they embarrass the ideological party line. That's just about all there is to it.

Wesley Smith's First Things blog nails the connection between the ClimateGate emails and the similar authoritarian approach to Darwin and design. The Wall Street Journal editorial he cites elicits comparable comments from several other readers who noted the paper's article online.

Consider these lines from the editorial:

"The real issue is what the messages say about the way the much-ballyhooed scientific consensus on global warming was arrived at, and how a single view of warming and its causes is being enforced...

"According to this privileged group, only those whose work has been published in select scientific journals, after having gone through the "peer-review" process, can be relied on to critique the science. And sure enough, any challenges from critics outside this clique are dismissed and disparaged.

"As anonymous reviewers of choice for certain journals, Mr. Mann & Co. had considerable power to enforce the consensus, but it was not absolute, as they discovered in 2003. Mr. Mann noted in a March 2003 email, after the journal "Climate Research" published a paper not to Mr. Mann's liking, that "This was the danger of always criticising the skeptics for not publishing in the 'peer-reviewed literature'. Obviously, they found a solution to that--take over a journal!"

"Mr. Mann went on to suggest that the journal itself be blackballed.."

As Bill Dembski has noted at Uncommon Descent, "Sound familiar?"

(Meanwhile, the London Telegraph's Christopher Booker reminds us that the scientists involved in ClimateGate are the leaders of the warming pack, not just a few who share the supposed consensus opinion. It is their work upon which the international consensus is based.)

There seems to be a middle way between asserting that the Fort Hood massacre was the product of a religious fanatic and claiming that it was the product of a deranged mind. A fanatic is often deranged or slightly so. That does not usually excuse the individual from the consequences of his actions. Osama bin Laden in an American uniform probably might well have done the same as Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

David Klinghoffer points out that atheist evangelizers want the Fort Hood killings to be laid at the foot of Islam almost as badly as some right wingers do. They are not wrong about the way the religious thinking of Dr. Hasan was turned to violence. And it is certainly correct to notice that Islam these days does seem to provide a great many violent agitators. But, as I have said before, there are many Muslims who are fighting and dying against just such fanatics around the world, whether their foe is Al Qaeda in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan or the oppressive regime in Iran. Please make clear, then, that the danger comes from Islamic extremists.

And, meanwhile, as Klinghoffer says, if you want to trace the works of ideas in our civilization, let's bring in the parade of secularists. (Shall I mention North Korea?)

Plenty of speech writers like to take credit for this or that speech that a President, in particular, gives. Often it is not deserved, for major speeches are the products of more than one hand. And one of the hands belongs to the President himself.

But the speechwriters of Ronald Reagan are a special case. Tony Dolan, who has an historically significant article in this morning's Wall Street Journal about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, ran a presidential speech writers staff that was famous in its day and deserves to be called great by any measure.

Almost all the team members were fiercely loyal to the President, self-effacing, truly smart, able craftsmen and serious in-house diplomats. A group of them went off to found the White House Writers Group (Clark Judge, Josh Gilder, et al.) Novelist and Hoover Institution fellow Peter Robinson has helped lead a revolution among Dartmouth alumni. Several others have written well-received books, including, of course, Peggy Noonan.

Lodged in what is now called the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (the onetime War Department) across Executive Avenue (closed to traffic) from the West Wing of the White House, the writers labored on many chores at once. They obviously had a primary obligation to heed the desires of the President, but they also had to take more attentive direction (sometimes unwanted) from assorted Chiefs of Staff and Communications Directors. Mrs. Reagan was known to let her views intrude on occasion.

Then there were all the department heads that had to be consulted. Usually they got to clear text that dealt with "their" issues, and Ronald Reagan was generous--maybe too generous--in heeding the voices of caution. But on important matters he also put his foot down, as in the instance of the Berlin Wall speech. His willing accomplices were the Presidential Speech Writers. They had him figured out about as well as anyone. He liked them, they loved him.

One reads over Jim Baker's article for the new Newsweek, looking for acknowledgement of President Ronald Reagan's crucial role in bringing down the Berlin Wall in 1989. It turns out that Reagan is mentioned by Baker, but only in passing. Others are credited more.

But it was Reagan who rebuilt America's military might, confronted the Soviets around the world, promoted Star Wars and revived the American economy while the Soviet's command economy was crumbling. In diplomacy, it was Reagan who pursued "peace through strength" when dealing--brilliantly--with Mikhail Gorbachev.

It was Ronald Reagan who stood before the Wall in 1987 and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" The famous declaration was made in the teeth of advice from his own White House staff and top State Department officials that he not provoke the Russians and embarrass the Germans. The famous line, writes Steven Hayward in his fine new history of the time, The Age of Reagan, actually was extracted from early drafts of the speech text several times by would-be in-house censors. The President kept putting it back in. Hayward describes a conversation between the President and his aide, Kenneth Duberstein, in which Reagan actually has to remind his own staffer that he is the President and the staffer is not!

Ronald Reagan does not deserve all of the credit for the end of "The Evil Empire," as he called it (also famously, and to the howls of his domestic critics). But he deserves a lot of the credit, along with Pope John Paul II and Margaret Thatcher, one should say, and, of course, countless Eastern European martyrs to freedom and such luminary intellects as Alexander Solzhenitsyn. So, yes, give credit to Mikhail Gorbachev, to George H. Bush, and, by the way, to Jim Baker, too. But without Ronald Reagan it probably would not have happened.

James Baker was Secretary of State under President George H. W. Bush at the time the wall came down, ten months after Reagan left office. (He was Chief of Staff in the Reagan White House in the early years.) I well recall Mr. Baker's reaction the day in 1989 that the wall first was pried open by East German youth. I was watching TV, thrilled, tears coming to my eyes.

Secretary Baker was asked (by CNN, I think) for his reaction. He said he thought it was "a good first step." I couldn't get over that tepid reaction. I said to the television: "A good first step, Jim? The Berlin Wall is coming down!"

It is likely that the Mr. Baker was just being professionally cautious. After all, he must have thought it important not to celebrate too much in public while the Soviets could still use troops to quell the change.

Still, Jim Baker seemed as surprised as anyone.

In contrast was Ronald Reagan, who often had predicted the defeat of communism. He worked most of his adult life to that end. He also and a very few others also saw ahead to the fall of the Wall. Give him due credit.

PLEASE NOTE: I will have the pleasure of introducing Steve Hayward, author of The Age of Reagan, at Discovery Institute headquarters, 208 Columbia, Seattle at 4:30 p.m. Monday--the 20th anniversary of the fall of The Wall. Email Mollie Tschida at molliet@discovery.org if you'd like to join us.

Among those picking up our October 30 news post (see below) on Christopher Hitchens' unseemly attack on Mother Theresa--made in a debate on the Dennis Miller radio show--was William Donohue of the Catholic League. Today, Donahue declares that Hitchens contacted him to apologize, at least in large measure. Donahue tells his email list today:

"On November 2, I criticized Christopher Hitchens for saying that Mother Teresa was 'a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it's a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to.'"

"At the end of the news release, we published his e-mail address, and he was roundly condemned, sometimes maliciously, by angry Catholics (he forwarded some of the e-mails to me). I subsequently e-mailed him, saying, "Seems like you've heard from the faithful." I also took the opportunity to invite him for drinks the next time he is in New York. Why? Although we've had it out several times in the past--in person and on TV--and although I strongly disagree with him, the man is no phony, and that means a great deal to me. Unlike most of those whom I do battle with, Hitchens is intellectually honest.

"Christopher wrote back to me today, saying, "The first thing to say is that I felt remorse for employing the word 'bitch' as soon as it was out of my mouth." Forgiven. As I have always said, when someone apologizes, Christians have no choice but to accept it. Besides, anyone who fights for a cause, myself included, occasionally lets his emotions get the best of him. The difference is, Christopher admits it.

"A few years back, Christopher wrote a piece in Vanity Fair on abortion that was so fair that it moved me to write a letter in praise of it; it was published. In other words, this is not the first time we have broken bread. But who needs the bread? Christopher and I have some serious drinking to do."

Donahue shows again that while he is relentless in pursuit of bias and discrimination, he also is gracious when given the opportunity.

Catholics and other Christians probably don't care what anyone says about them anymore, given the relative lack of outrage over Richard Dawkins' comments in The Washington Post this week. (See blog post below). So who will notice what Christopher Hitchens just unloaded on the Dennis Miller show this morning? Miller, let it be said, was not buying it at all--merely letting Hitchens spout this about abortion and Mother Theresa:

"Mother Theresa spent her whole life saying (that what Calcutta needs) is a huge campaign against family planning. I mean, who comes to that conclusion who isn't a complete fanatic? She took - and I would directly say stole...millions and millions of dollars and spent all the money not on the poor, but on the building of nearly 200 convents in her own name around the world to glorify herself and to continue to spread the doctrine that, as she put it -- when she got her absurd Nobel Peace Prize -- that the main threat to world peace is abortion and contraception. The woman was a fanatic and a fundamentalist and a fraud, and millions of people are much worse off because of her life, and it's a shame there is no hell for your bitch to go to."

Christopher Hitchens is a regular contributor to The New Republic, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair.

You do not have to be a statistician (I'm not) to appreciate the work of someone like Carl Bialik who writes the Numbers Guy column for the Wall Street Journal. When I served at the Census Bureau during the Reagan Administration I privately urged the Journal editors to create such a post and find some who not only could crunch numbers, but write well. Belatedly (by a few decades), it has happened. Bialik is the man. Regardless, there is nothing else like this column in mainstream journalism.

Yesterday's Numbers Guy piece, "Ill-Conceived Ranking Makes for Unhealthy Debate", is a fine example expert reportage made pertinent to everyone. I especially like the article because it validates some of the assertions on health care I made a few days ago (October 19, below)!

Andrew Breitbart, who learned of the videos of Acorn staff making now-infamous suggestions to supposed seekers of federally supported home mortgages, is a conservative public relations man. He also is an internet entrepreneur who, ironically, was an organizer of the the liberal Huffington Post site.

This story, Breitbart saw, was huge. Here apparently were publicly backed non-profit Acorn staff--in one city after another--offering help to a man and woman who said they wanted to open a brothel; a brothel, no less, for young girls brought in from El Salvador.

Breitbart, who shrewdly suggested sending out the explosive videos ad seriatim, rather than all at once, made it possible for the story to break slowly and then build. The story marks another triumph for new media.

Regardless, what the young amateur investigators found, and Breitbart helped publicize, merits appointment of an independent counsel. An inquiry conducted within the Department of Justice will not suffice.

The videos may be just a glimpse inside Acorn. Lending credibility to suspicions of wider malfeasance are public lawsuits over alleged electioneering fraud by Acorn, including one attracting attention this past week in Nevada

The Census Bureau, stung by Judicial Watch FOIAs that inquired into Acorn activities with the coming 2010 Decennial Census and wisely worried about the perceived integrity of the census count, cut off relations with Acorn several weeks ago. Then other federal agencies did, as well. Congress fled for the exists--even many former friends of Acorn.

Now foundations are dropping Acorn, and some are saying (belatedly) that they have been suspicious of the organization for some time.

It also appears that Acorn benefitted from a number of possibly coerced deals with banks that were given to understand that their own good relations with the federal government, and such quasi-governmental bodies as Fannie Mae, depended on agreements to fund Acorn programs.

Special prosecutors have been over-used in recent decades. But a volatile scandal like this one needs to be put into conspicuously disinterested hands. If the problems aren't thoroughly and fairly investigated, they are likely to happen again in a new guise.

Machiavelli, the Dick Morris of medieval Florence, warned readers of The Prince that when opinion is divided between a minority that feels passionately and a majority whose passion is weak, the minority may prove more potent in the end. The passionate minority will act on their feelings, while the uninspired majority may not.

Right now, as polls show, opinion on health care reform (so called) is about evenly divided. But polls are only snapshots of opinion and the proponents are counting on a vague appeal--not specific elements in a bill--to win the day. But, opponents are confident of long term success on the politics because the members of the public who are suspicious of what is going on in Washington on this issue are almost sure to remember it and vote accordingly.

Rhetoric has been a substitute for substance for some time in this Administration. It's great rhetoric, but it lacks a foundation. The health care speech--now remembered mainly by the controversy over a Congressional heckler--has been followed by an empty speech on the economy.

The President went to Wall Street yesterday to tell off the daytime residents. But it is doubtful if they were impressed. No matter, they weren't the true audience.

No, the President really was hoping to speak over the heads of the greedy Wall Streeters (many of whom voted for him) to the Little People of America. The trouble is, the predictable drone of vacuous generalities is not really getting the Little People's attention any more. Reality is.

Back in Washington, DC, the news is that the economy there, at least, is holding up. Another 140,000 jobs are expected next year. They are all in the government. We, the Little People, are paying for them.

Bob was a gloriously flawed, constantly seeking child of God who will be followed on his path by many prayers of those who knew him. In the history or our time he was a writer whose scrupulous honesty and rigorous fairness illuminated one "crisis" and "scandal" after another, and enobled the otherwise sad state of journalism.

I first met Bob in 1963 when George Gilder (old friend, Discovery co-founder) and I were undergraduates at Harvard, publishing a rebel Republican magazine, Advance. We interviewed Bob and his co-writer, Rowland Evans, about the condition of the Republicans in Congress. We all agreed, it turned out, that they were ill-serving their mission.

On occasion, George and I provided fodder for Evans and Novak and their column in the New York Herald Tribune. We enjoyed their company at the Republican Convention in 1964. I myself went to work for the Trib in '65 and when the paper folded in '66 (I had nothing to do with it--promise!) I happened to be in the office of Walter Thayer, Trib President and Everyone's Mentor, when Bob called to ask Walter if he thought Bob and Rollie should try to go with The Washington Post. Walter agreed that it was a good idea, and I think the Evans and Novak column must have lasted 35 years, until Evans' death, and then another decade while it was the Novak column.

At every turn Bob Novak was a no-nonsense newsman who scooped all kinds of other people, some virtuous, some not. In the early days he and Rollie were Kennedy liberals, then unpredictable, then both veered right. By the Carter years they were fed up with the Left and became one of the few column outlets for news items that conservatives wanted ventilated. Among other things, they defended Ed Meese in the Reagan years when he was being grilled by the Left in Congress. They managed all the while to keep their Washington Post slot, largely (I suspect) because they kept breaking and making news, as well as reporting it.

I don't think that is at all wrong for a columnist; in fact, there is a certain admirable sport to it. Novak was an opinion former, mainly because he was a true news breaker.

Crusty, acerbic, Bob was perversely beloved for his unlovable public persona on TV as well his column. In essence, everyone knew that his ultimate loyalty was to the truth as he saw it. And the truth as he saw it increasingly had a faith in America and our system of government and economics behind it. He also had a redeeming sense of humor.

I saw a bit of Bob in recent years, usually when he was traveling the country in support of conservative youth development. By conservative he meant the principles of the American founding and the principles of free enterprise. And the principle--forever--of no nonsense.

In his last big contretemps he was involved in exposing the political machinations of CIA analyst Valerie Plame. Oddly, he did not become an issue, only a platform in that pseudo-scandal. The victim, it turned out, was not Plame (what a joke), but Scooter Libby in the White House, sacrificed at the end, sadly, by President Bush, who should have pardoned him. (Bob would have agreed completely with that.) This is another story, of course.

The main thing is that hard-working Bob Novak gave far more to American journalism than almost any of his contemporaries.

In his private life he traveled the path of skeptical secularism to a surprising conversion to Catholicism and the moving account of same that he provided in his final book, The Prince of Darkness. For all of us, he remains a symbol of integrity.

Blessings and peace upon him.

Ben Stein probably thought he could do his work on the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and not himself endure the kind of personal attacks that, in the film, he defended Darwin critics against. In fact, what he found was that Darwinism is at the root of the worldview of the materialist Left and even the materialist Right. You can't say or do anything to offend them. You can't even advocate academic freedom.

The people who demanded free speech in the 60s and shouted down figures of authority are now the tenured faculty and newsroom editors of the Establishment. And now they are disallowing any criticism at all.

So, unlikely as it seems, Ben Stein became a martyr. Richard Dawkins intervened at the University of Vermont last spring to deny Stein a gig as Commencement Speaker. Now Ben has been disingenously trashed by The New York Times. Typically, when firing Stein as a business columnist the Times couldn't give the actual reason--which is ideological--and instead had to insinuate that he had a "conflict of interest." That is a joke as well as an insult.

Actually, I think Ben may come to enjoy the role of martyr. Like many of us, he never really suffered much discrimination in his life and may find it an interesting experience. As middle age creeps into Medicare Age, he may even find the sting of the lash will stimulate his muse--his comic muse, I hope. It is notable that his American Spectator column on the firing has generated hundreds of comments, almost all favorable, the others sublimely ignorant and smug.

Think of the new material you've been handed, Ben. Maybe the Intelligent Designer is priming you for a book!

The Obama idea ran something like this: People know there are problems with health care, they want the uninsured covered and they want relief from what they may regard as an unfair bureaucracy at many insurance companies. Therefore, the scheme went, this is the time to introduce the vehicle of "reform" that will be sold as limited, but end up in a couple of elections with nationalized (socialized) health care in the supposedly great European tradition.

With President Obama riding a wave of popularity and with media that literally would eat out of his hand if they could get that close, the Administration bet that a big push should be made this year. The Recession didn't bother them; they tried to turn it to their advantage, asserting that somehow increased spending on government medical care would save money for the economy.

What has happened politically is very different from what the Obama Administration hoped. Instead of the President's popularity carrying the medical care proposals to victory, the increasing public unease over a costly new entitlement has cut into Obama's job approval rates.

Meanwhile, the reporting of the major media finally is beginning to take cognizance of the problems with the assorted Democratic bills in Congress. Until the public's opposition started to firm up, Establishment organs were describing each development in language that the White House might have crafted itself. The failure of the public to see the proposed changes as mere "reforms", however, as Democratic leaders and the media have presented them, is testimony to the discernment of public opinion once a subject finally gets enough attention that people can see behind the headlines and the spin.

Hats off to The Wall Street Journal editorial pages on this one. The Journal's Peggy Noonan's insightful weekend piece quickly became the "most emailed" of the paper's work. But outstanding digging went on by other columnists, including John Fund and Kimberley Strassel.

The Journal's editorial writers on Friday ("A Better Health Reform") called, wisely, for Obama to respond to the current de facto reversal of momentum on the Administration-favored Congressional health care bills to develop a program that would have bi-partisan support. He could start by taking a fresh look at what Sen. McCain proposed last fall.

In truth, the President should step back and realize that his big scheme is not going to make it, even with much of the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical companies and apparently the bulk of the American Medical Association having thrown in with him in hopes of being spared government revenge. If, instead, he made a more limited proposal that ordinary people in both parties could understand and applaud, the political reality is that it is he who would be given credit in the end. He could just adopt John McCain's proposals and the public would still call it Obama Care. That would be bad for Republicans politically, but it would be good for the country and the economy.

Instead the President seems intent on pushing ahead. As a result, his public approval ratings are falling fast and, with them, his whole domestic program. Critics say that the Rassmussen Poll is often skewed toward Republicans, but there is no ignoring what it says about the trend.

Diane Medved is a mother and clinical psychologist who has written sagely about the way the material we witness in the media cannot help but affect us, even if indirectly. Pornography, for example, may not arouse; it may, instead, depress. Either way, a message of bleakness behind the "action" seeps into the mind, like advertising, whether you want it or not. After all, corporations pay lots of money to get their impressions into your head, trusting that it will pay off. What makes you think other messages don't also sink in?

The issue at hand is Bruno. Diane Medved, whose husband, Michael, is a movie critic and has to go see films like Bruno, declined to attend a screening of this picture. She explained this on her blog (July 8). I was going to comment on the film about that same time, but figured that my comments would be dismissed by many readers if I didn't bother to see the film. So I saw it. By and large, Diane was right.

Let it be said that Sasha Baron Cohen is a master comic with a particular gift for reality-tv, Candid Camera style embarrassment. Some of his inventive scenes are inescapably hilarious; others are merely cringe inducing. Regardless, unlike the great comics of yore, such as Charlie Chaplin, deep down Cohen seems to be a misanthrope, a nihilist. He doesn't even really like his own characters. His "Bruno", the gay Austrian fashionista, is a hollow man. There is no way to care about him or anyone else in the film.

In the Victorian Era public art was famously prudish, and the eventual reaction against it was based largely on the proposition that the Victorian moralists were, among other things, hypocrites. In private, they supposedly indulged in the very kinds of vices they deplored in public. Today, we have a new dominant morality, in which the effective highest good is "tolerance" and "diversity". But this morality is hypocritical in its own way, allowing people to defend a behavior (and congratulate themselves in doing so) even while privately scorning that behavior. That is part of Sasha Baron Cohen's insight; he exploits a moral duplicity within his own audience, even while lampooning it. The audience is laughing, but the audience is also the target.

The film presents itself as a satire on celebrity culture. Bruno lets stars like Paula Abdul and Elton John make themselves look foolish, knowing that such people don't really care ultimately if they are exposed as kooks as long as the public continues to notice them. A great many people in this civilization really do care about fame and money to the exclusion of reputation. (Whatever their faults, the Victorians were not so shallow.)

If that was all there was to it, the film would be a small masterpiece. But a satire of celebrity is only the outer layer of the movie. Deeper down, the film is a meditation about itself, and its self not only seems to loathe its subjects, its characters and you, the audience, but also life.

Townhall.com carries a very timely article this morning by Hans Zeiger that reminds political and media elites that "dialogue" requires reciprocity.

I predicted here a while back that the zesty British scandal about the abuse of personnel spending allowances for second homes for members of Parliament would be picked up as a theme tailored for American audiences. That now happens (and with direct references to our English cousins) on the front page of The Wall Street Journal today.

It's pretty thin, I think. The fancy camera of the Ohio Congressman is probably used by the office to photograph him with constituents and to prepare photos for the newsletter sent out to the district--something all members do. The Lexus story and some others raise eyebrows, perhaps.

If this is the best the media can come up with, we're a pretty honest bunch in the U.S. Not even one charge for cleaning a moat or renting porno movies! But I doubt that we have heard the last of the search effort.

In ways that seldom catch public attention the Sister City movement seems worthy of notice this Memorial Day Weekend. War in the 20th Century seems to stimulated people to want to connect and finding a specific foreign city--maybe like one's own and maybe different--as a way to implement the aim of "people to people" diplomacy.

It started after World War I with allies France and England. Then, after World War II Coventry, England and Dresden, Germany became sister cities--the two cities were among the worst bombed in the European Theater of the war. During the Cold War, Seattle became a sister-city of Tashkent, Uzbekistan, then a part of the USSR.

President Eisenhower made the program popular in the 50s when it was still part of the National League of Cities. Now the program is under the umbrella of Sister Cities International.

The stories of sister city relationships continue a visible signs of the desire of ordinary citizens for peace and true cultural diversity. Howard and Betsy Chapman, my brother and sister-in-law in Fort Wayne, Indiana, took up an avocational interest in the program a quarter century ago, establishing life-long friendships in Takaoka, Japan. Eventually, they set up a program to allow students from Fort Wayne's sister cities to come to Fort Wayne and for Fort Wayne youth to study in the sister city schools. On a recent trip to Plotz, Poland, Howard (a sometime columnist and Adjunct Fellow of Discovery Institute) found himself the surprise beneficiary of an honor: the dedication of a beautiful new "Chapman Hall" in one of two schools he visited. That moved him, but not as much as meeting some of the Polish young people who told him how their lives had been enriched by the time they had spent as guest students in Indiana.

The Sister City program is one way to honor the sacrifices of soldiers who died to make peaceful understanding the norm rather than the exception in the world. Little steps in "people to people diplomacy": who knows how far they will take us?

The smooth funny-man, social and political critic Dennis Miller toasted Discovery Senior Fellow John Wohlstetter's ideas coast-to-coast May 21, asking, "Johnny, where have you been all my life?"

Wohlstetter, author of The Long War Ahead (Discovery Institute Press) and the regular blog, Letter from the Capitol described the trap Speaker Nancy Pelosi finds herself in with CIA Director Leon Panetta and the trap the President finds himself in with former Vice President Cheney.

On Gitmo, Wohlstetter commented: "What Obama should do to spin this is he should go down to Gitmo himself (inspect it publicly) and then turn around and say, 'Any one in the world who say's Gitmo's a terrible place, open your own jails to the photographers."

Miller loved the idea (good for the country, good for national security and even for President Obama). "Look at you, Johnny! Christian (his producer), we have to get him back on as soon as possible."

Wohlstetter continues to build an audience and appeal on interview programs nationally.

One reason that MSNBC and CNN (not to mention certain other media) are withering in the ratings is their insistence on hashing over old news even while major breaking stories go undeveloped.

We are supposed to be exercised about the issue of legal memos of six or seven years ago that justified what turned out to be the water boarding of a handful of captured terrorists.

Meanwhile, Pakistan is teetering, Afghanistan and Iraq have seen an upsurge of violence in what used to be known as the War on Terrorism, but now is--I don't know what it's called, maybe "The Struggle Against Man-Made Disasters."

The Islamic Republic of Iran is close to getting atomic weapons, threatening the existence of Israel and working to destabilize Egypt and the Gulf States.

And The People's Republic of North Korea is testing long range missiles.

And never mind about domestic issues of major significance, including runaway public spending and huge domestic changes looming in health care, cloning and energy. Don't tell me these topics aren't as interesting as old DOJ memos.

Rather, it appears that someone is trying to manufacture public interest in old memos in order to distract attention from what is imminent and pressing. The media that are fascinated are not naive, either. It's doesn't seem to bother them that the public really isn't following their lead.

In a speech at Discovery Institute, where he is a Senior Fellow, Michael
Medved described the origin and startling trajectory of his latest book,
"The Ten Big Lies About America." Medved advised an enthusiastic crowd gathered at a book party that his book has been ignored by major reviewers, but (as happens these days), already has gone through nine editions since it first appeared four months ago.

The Medved book is winning an especially appreciative audience among conservatives and other tradition-minded Americans for its defense of the history and values of the United States, a history often misrepresented in the media and institutions of public education.

Introducing Medved, Discovery President Bruce Chapman, described the author and national talk show host, as "a pioneer, an explorer on a voyage of rediscovery" of America's true past and present. The new book, he said, is a treasure trove of useful information for anyone faced with the arguments commonly advanced by advocates of political correctness.

Watch the video here.

The Wall Street Journal got it right, as they usually do on such issues.

But The Washington Post thinks the main point is that Stevens somehow got away with a crime. They apparently missed the news that the main government witness plainly lied about the amount of money involved in the Stevens house rehab--$80,000, not $240,000. Eighty thousand is not a lot for remodeling a house.

In comparison, how much has been spent on a wrongful prosecution of a sitting U.S. senator? What price does The Post think should be placed on the government's legal manipulation of a federal election?

UPDATE: Anger (well justified) in Alaska: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/us/politics/03react.html?_r=1&hpw

Victor David Hanson lets dismay get the better of him today.

Like Harry Truman from a still earlier generation, Hanson probably was raised to say, "Fine, thank you," whenever someone inquired how he was. Until today, it was regarded as impolite, after all, to burden others with one's own troubles. But, once in a while a person has to let the truth out, if only to make a larger point, and what Hanson sees in America today is genuinely and significantly depressing.

When you read about the fairy tale economy we have created you have only touched the broad surface of cultural decline. Hanson has opened a subject that invites many other examples.

This is a twilight age when people are out of work and pinching pennies, yet you have trouble finding a high school student to mow the lawn. The reason is that so many teens get whatever money they need from their parents. Is there a moment when that turns around?

The saddest thing for me is the coarsening of manners that Hanson describes, the way that spontaneity and candor have been elevated over reserve and consideration. What Hanson says about air travel and stores is simply obvious to anyone who grew up before the late 60s or had relatively strict parents.

He might have added that honest disagreements, which Americans never minded acknowledging, are now touted as justifications for shutting down contrasting opinions. The coercive atmosphere of universities, for example, seems to grow in proportion to the growth in doubt about old intellectual standard bearers like Marx and Freud and Darwin. Meanwhile, there is less civilized discussion about public issues on our 100 plus television channels and endless internet and iPod chat than was found on TV when it was live, black and white and arrived over only three stations.

Hanson might have written about the way the supposedly concerned, less formal society has ushered in presumptuous, slightly imperious impersonality, just as C. S. Lewis predicted. Think of the false familiarity that now poses as respect in dealing with strangers. In a clinic waiting room, for example, bored nursing assistants call out octegenarians by their first names--"Annie!", "Peter!" Doctors who think they are still entitled to be called "Doctor" apparently regard that kind of thing as a way to establish--what? "Intimacy?" "Friendliness!" Going to the doctor (some doctors, anyhow) is about as truly "friendly" as being hailed at a restaurant chain where a bumptious voice over a microphone announces, "Chapman, Party of Four!"

Former Senator Slade Gorton says that such eras of unapologetic rudeness eventually encounter backlash and the re-establishment of social sobriety. I am wondering when that will come about, and how.

The salmon-colored Financial Times seemed for a while like a potential rival for The Wall Street Journal. Now it seems like Yesterday's Times.

Coverage of the AIG scandal and what the new American Administration's actions portend for world markets is an example of a business newspaper that swooned so hopelessly for candidate Obama that it cannot bear to look reality in the face. Investors of all income groups are sitting on their money, a vote of no-confidence in Obamanomics, but that is not the view that prevails in the FT's "leaders". The amateurish way Prime Minister Gordon Brown was treated at the White House recently didn't register much, either. The trade war Obama has provoked with Mexico is a setback for NAFTA, but apparently not worthy of reproach in liberal London. The near-unanimity of European leaders that the US is over-doing its stimulus programs and is over-reaching in calling on them to do the same--that, too, is not what the FT views as particularly instructive.

The paper's own core constituency surely must reside in London's "City", and those folks can read and figure things out. They, too, probably were ga-ga for Barack and the Democratic Congress a few months ago, but their revised opinions at least are beginning to be heard in news columns. And ever so slowly and mildly the editorialists are starting to come around.

Meanwhile, the slowness of the editorial columns seems to have seeped even into the circulation department. Finding the FT increasingly irrelevant this winter I tried to save time and money by canceling my subscription. Not only would the FT not accept the cancellation (twice), they started sending me two copies.

The Bobbi McCallum Fountain

Today's editorial in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer ("Too Many Posers") assails the majority Democrats in the Washington State Legislature for not following through on their promise to adopt green "cap and trade" legislation. It would have been much better for them to respond to the recession by commiting political suicide, apparently.

It was a perfectly pitched swan song for the unfailingly liberal voice of Seattle's rainy, gritty (sometimes faux gritty) Left Coast culture. Tomorrow the 146 year old news organization ceases paper publication and goes solely online. I will miss the paper. http://www.seattlepi.com/business/403793_piclosure17.html

I don't want to belabor the failure of the paper to include more right wing commentary over the years, not to mention the failure to cover news that conservatives regard as important. But it is fair criticism. There may not be more than about a quarter of Seattle area readers who are right of center, but writing them off would seem to have been a publishing mistake. As is, I suspect that conservatives are giving up big city newspapers faster than anyone.

Likewise, as the downward trend of revenues reduced formerly standard features, business coverage was an especially unfortunate loss. Once the high end business reader decamps to, say, the Puget Sound Business Journal, the relevance of a metro daily declines in the minds of the very people an advertising salesman needs to reach. Or so it seems to me.

Regardless, let's be fair: a lack of balance didn't kill The P.I., and the decline of business coverage was more a symptom than a cause of collapse. Surely the Internet turned out to more deadly a foe than imagined. The cost of newsprint, meanwhile, rose high enough to absorb the entire expense that the subscriber pays, and more. And maybe, just maybe, our post-modern schools are producing readers with very short attention spans and relatively small understanding of how society actually works. You can't interest someone in the failure of the Legislature to pass cap and trade (to use today's editorial as an example) if they barely know what a Legislature does.

Resolute newspaper reader that I remain, and one-time editorial writer (New York Herald-Tribune in 1965-66, during my tender youth and the paper's final agonies) it is sad to witness this loss. As has been said before, while its product is almost always forgotten in a few hours, a great city newspaper is somehow a living creature. In a proper history of our era you would have a newspaper's account of what people at a certain time thought was important, but you also would have the paper's own role in those events, and behind that the people doing the writing, making the policy decisions (what's newsworthy, what's not, what's adequately sourced, what is hearsay). Someone realistic might even find some time to recall the poor souls in advertising and circulation who tried to make the money that allowed the paper to continue. Someone truly magnanimous might find some sympathy for the "suits" of management.

For myself this afternoon, considering the P.I., I recollect the roles the paper played in such seminal events as the Century 21 World's Fair that restored Seattle's Progressive Era ambitions, and the Forward Thrust bond issues whose enactment saw the city through the "Boeing Recession" of 1970-'72. The paper was criticized as a "booster" in those days, which criticism it usually ignored and which it always should have ignored. A newspaper that wants community support needs to support the community.

The P.I. was politically daring, in any case, often the chip-on-the-shoulder guy, the underdog. I think back, usually in rueful fondness, to a parade of political campaigns. The paper helped create Governor Dixy Lee Ray and then helped bring her down. Earlier its exposé of scandal in the Seattle Police Department contributed to the electoral defeat of County Prosecutor Charles O. Carroll and his replacement by the young, reform-minded Christopher Bayley. The comparable changeover in the City Council during the 1970s, led by C.H.E.C.C. ("Choose an Effective City Council"), also bore second hand finger prints from enthusiastic P.I. editors. That being true, the P.I. (and The Times) also can be said to have helped forge the changes that made Seattle one of the nation's "most livable cities."

I am recalling the bright young reporter of the 60s, Bobbi McCallum, who (it occurs to me now) was one of the trailblazers for female journalists. (May I also recall that she was lovely and fun?) Memory summons, too, the idealistic suburban mom, Ruth Howell, who worked her way into a great career as the P.I.'s devoted and provocative editorial page editor in the early '70s. Both these fine women were writing almost to the time they died, which adds a sharp poignance to their personal stories.

The roster of writers and editors is a bit painful to recall generally, because a number became friends. There was a time when, along with everyone else, my breakfast always included the droll gossip and wry opinions of the late Emmett Watson. Maybe in my time I even sent him a few items?

Other P.I. writers of note are still around. Shelby Scates, the Tennessee-born, corruption-scenting hound dog of the Legislature--who retired to write about some of the remarkable figures with whom his career intersected, such as Warren Magnuson and (an example of Scates' national reach), Maurice Rosenblatt. The latter, Scates explained, not only pioneered what became the modern political action committee (the Committee for a More Effective Congress), but also was an under-appreciated force in the anti-McCarthy movement. Committed reporter/columnists sniff out such unusual characters and stories and make journalism into history.

I could mention the conscientious, thoroughly professional Charles Dunsire, whom I met when he was covering the City Council and then again when he was editorial page editor in the early '90s. Chuck gave me a weekly column and defended it, even though it often surely grated on some of his colleagues. (His successor told me I would have to stop attacking scientific materialism, so I quit.)

Now, of course, you have Joel Connelly, columnist and former political reporter, who has been a scourge of Republicans for so long that some have developed a secret affection for him. Mere nodding notice from this redoubtable liberal is like a bouquet of roses from John Carlson (of KVI talk radio). For his part, Connelly can count on a number of legislative initiatives that were inched along their way over the decades by his advocacy at the P.I.--the North Cascades National Park comes to mind as one monument.

The sports reporter/philosopher Art Thiel, the ace business and technology writer Bill Virgin, the brilliant, and, of course, unfair, David Horsey, nationally admired editorial cartoonist--the roster goes on. It is going to be hard for them and others to turn the page. I know what closing a paper is like--saying goodbye to people like that. It's awful.

For what seems like decades I have sent op-ed drafts to Kimberly Mills, but truth is, it's been years since we actually have seen one another. I hope all good things happen to her, Mark Trahant and to all the other serious and talented people at The P.I.

A person's death often ends with an obit in the papers. In the case of a newspaper, it seems almost an afterthought that someone should have been celebrating the 146 years of The P.I before the end came. Love it, hate it, it's a real story.

When Bobbi McCallum died her friends commissioned a statue and fountain by the renowned sculptor, George Tsutakawa. It has welcomed visitors to the entrance of The P.I. at the old headquarters as well as the new. I wonder where it is going now.

Fox runs a revised story from AP headlined "Creationists Blast Vatican...." The new lede changes the meaning (someone up there--in Rewrite--doesn't like us) and makes this out to be a story about "creationists" and has the target "the Vatican". The origin was my statement responding to the AP reporter about the role the Templeton Foundation had in shaping the conference and keeping out intelligent design scientists.

Here you have a conference set up largely to attack intelligent design, and that denies its targets the chance to defend themselves. The funder has called the shots. I point out that this represents Templeton policy.

I am not a creationist. i quoted Pope Benedict XVI extensively and positively.

So how have "Creationists Blasted the Vatican"?

There is a tricky game of false compassion the media played during the Iraq War, as earlier, wherein TV programs and newspapers daily ran the names and pictures of Americans killed in action (or a soldier who died for any reason in the war zone). Another version of the trick was to show the flag covered coffins of the slain being unloaded ceremoniously at Dover Airbase in Delaware. The superficial implication was that people would want to show sympathy for the dead and their families and acknowledge their sacrifices.

People do want to show such sympathy. Some families appreciate it. Some don't like the intrusion into their privacy.

Regardless, for some the real reason for the photos was to build popular dismay at the cost of war in American lives. It was meant to demoralize. Almost everyone in the media and the military and the government surely knows the effect and therefore the motive. That is why Franklin Roosevelt banned pictures of Americans being killed in World War II. George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton and George W. Bush eventually decided in most cases to keep the media away from the delivery of the coffins of the deceased personnel. But the reason the government doesn't want to dwell on the pictures is also why the left wing media want them. They have an agenda.

There have been a number of articles lately about the possibility of a change in policy in the Obama Administration that, one way or another, would reopen the opportunity for the media to show pictures of arriving coffins.

There are two remarkable facets of this. First, the media want to show the coffins of Americans killed overseas, even though that now predominantly means coffins from Afghanistan, where President Obama--whose election they overwhelming supported--is sending more troops to fight, just as he said he would during the campaign. The media are suddenly and already willing to undercut the man they helped elect president--only a month after he took office.

Second, some of the media are fairly obvious in hinting at their true motives. You don't have to read too much between the lines, for example, to gather the anti-war policy agenda of this editorial of The Palm Beach Post.

There is, however, another possible hidden motive in this situation, however unlikely it seems. If President Obama actually now wants to get out of Afghanistan as well as Iraq--despite his past commitments--and wants the public to end its support for the Afghan War before he does so officially, then changing the policy on photos of arriving coffins would be a good way to get the "change" underway. In that case, editorials like the Post's are just getting ahead of Mr. Obama, not turning against him.

For my part, and for the good of the all-too real war on terrorism, I hope that the new president does not grant the media rights to showcase American deaths and instead gives sustained support to defeating the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Dear Steve,

Your magazine's lively online service, Forbes.com, has been attacked by biologist Dr. Jerry Coyne for allowing several scientists who support intelligent design to dissent from an other-wise fawning parade of Darwinists who appeared in your spaces to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. http://www.forbes.com/2009/02/12/evolution-creation-proof-opinions-darwin_0212_jerry_coyne.html

Coyne compares your carrying articles critical of Darwinian theory to support for Holocaust denial, among other extremities. He says you have "debased journalism as well as science."

Oh, my.

Actually, it is instructive to have Coyne exhibit in public the spirit of angry censorship that now pervades Darwinian science. Behind the scenes Coyne and his colleagues have intimidated a number of other media from publishing or interviewing scientific contrarians. It has become a trend.

There even was a legal effort by several Darwinists to block the showing of the 2008 Ben Stein film, Expelled. Fortunately, they were unsuccessful. Recently, a telephone call from Richard Dawkins helped inveigle the president of the University of Vermont to dispense with Ben Stein as one of this year's commencement speakers. Stein's crime was to defend the academic freedom of intelligent design scientists in his film.

The academic left's assault on free speech and academic freedom is often accompanied by adhominem attack, as in Coyne's repeated false characterization of Dr. Michael Egnor of SUNY (Stonybrook)--one of your recent writers--as a "creationist". Egnor further is a mere medical doctor, in Coyne's telling, not a "genuine scientist" like Coyne.

In reality, Dr. Egnor is, indeed, a well-known neurosurgeon, but he also is a distinguished neuroscientist. He not only teaches, but he also has conducted pathfinding research with an intelligent design perspective. He has been a visiting professor at Stanford, Harvard, and UCLA, among other leading institutions, and his discoveries about the manner in which blood flows into the brain after head injuries have influenced surgical practice.

Who is Jerry Coyne to question the bona fides of such a man?

Forbes proudly calls itself "The Capitalist Tool," and you personally have dedicated yourself first and foremost to the advancement of freedom in many arenas, especially economics.

You don't need to be reminded, therefore, that there have been places and times where the arguments for capitalism and against socialism have been banished--by definition!--from economics classes, exactly as Darwinists want to forbid the weaknesses of Darwinian theory from being heard in America's high schools and to prevent scientists who support intelligent design from being employed at universities--or read on the pages of your publication.

There is an arrogant, almost totalitarian mentality among certain scientists and Coyne is a prime example. There is a coercive ideology behind their calculations that challenges all friends of liberty.

With best regards,

Bruce Chapman

Some of the best political reporting in Pacific Northwest broadcasting is by C. R. Douglas on the Seattle Channel. That is remarkable because the station is part of city government, with offices in the basement of the new City Hall. But the host, who founded the operation about ten years ago, has mastered the art of provoking his guests without sandbagging them. In preparing for last week's debate about the future of the Seattle waterfront (new elevated Viaduct, all-surface option or a combined deep bore tunnel and waterfront boulevard), one of the participants challenged Douglas, "You sound like a television reporter!"

"He IS a television reporter!" I pointed out. In this case, that is a compliment. Here is the piece if you'd like to watch it.

The Washington state analog of the Seattle Channel It has been around since the 80s and now has its own building in Olympia. I don't know but I suspect that TVW probably does a better job of covering state issues--always broadly understood, too--than their counterparts elsewhere in other states.

Then there is C-Span. In some ways it is the grand-daddy of such outfits of course, attracting serious national listeners in serious numbers (about 250,000 at a time). Sometimes I think C-Span is the real public television in America since it credits the viewer with enough intelligence to figure out for himself whether speakers or debaters are telling the truth or fudging. As a result C-Span is popular with both parties, even though there is no public money in it. The cable companies pay for it.

Right now C-Span is airing its own documentary on the White House, its history and current operations as seen from the inside. Having worked there once (under Ronald Reagan) I found myself surprised and fascinated last night as the cameras not only explained how the public areas were developed, but also how the President's private areas work now. It is engaging and beautiful, and frankly makes you proud to be an American. You can order copies of the 105 minute program for only $9.95, though they won't guarantee arrival before Christmas.

I don't mind promoting C-Span or this production. Like Seattle Channel and TVW--and their counterparts around the land--they think it a service to show you what is going on and to resist the call to self-dramatizing sarcasm and irony. For all that they deserve praise and gratitude.

It is hard to write good political satire and harder still to get it past editors. I did once and was told I had to label it satire since some readers might think it was serious.

What is almost as funny as the adroit whimsy of Katherine Kersten's piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune is reading the turgid criticisms of some readers in their comments that follow it. Don't miss them.

What is remarkable is the straight, high profile coverage.
The Seattle Times ran this as the top feature, page one, above the fold. The Seattle Weekly ran a story that also, overall, was fair. KOMO-TV picked it up.

How do readers (and viewers) handle this? If they are pro-choice they can treat it as merely an interesting human interest story about the individuals involved. Or they can trivialize it. (As one critic says, three quarters of human embryos are not viable. Never mind that of the 400,000 frozen embryos in the country the other quarter represents 100,000 human beings . Or they can grouse to themselves, "There probably is something wrong with this that they are not reporting," and turn the page.

Or they can have an epiphany moment and look reality in the face. This is another demonstration of what it means to be human.

Does one have to be a couple longing to adopt a child--and finds it possible through this service--in order to accept the truth? The mind having seen clearly, what does it take to have a conversion of heart?

And the winner is...(envelope please).....Sarah Palin's expensive campaign wardrobe!

The Governor and her glad rags

It is almost unimaginable that anyone tried to make this an issue, let alone that the media covered it as if it meant something. Even more astonishing is the performance of the backstabber on the McCain staff who leaked--or made up--more of a story on it after the campaign, and, yet again, that FOX or anyone allowed such a pseudo-scandal to keep going after the election.

Forget all the price tag numbers and the disparaging language by the "leaker": On the campaign trail, a candidate (let's face it, especially a woman, even now) has to look good every day and for several appearances a day. During the primary season even males typically take weeks to get into the sartorial rhythm of having clean, presentable clothes available for every occasion, But at least people don't normally critique men's suits. If Palin had been stuck with any normal woman's wardrobe and yet had tried to look fresh and well-groomed on the road, public event after public event, it would have led to amused press comments stories about her inadequate style. In fact, that is where the press was headed before Sarah headed for Neiman Marcus. It's a funny thing how ordinary, middle class people on a budget seem to have such "poor taste", isn't it? Why some are even "second homeless"! It makes them unqualified for high office, don't you know?

Therefore, as in many campaigns, Gov. Palin's personal costs--in this case her handsome dresses and suits--were appropriate campaign expenses. Most campaign supporters undoubtedly would have been delighted to know that their contributions went to such a useful purpose. It beats having your cash used for, oh, say, a $700,000 rally in Berlin, or another television ad to match the one that just ran 90 seconds earlier.

Most important, Palin's wardrobe was a campaign expense, not a taxpayer expense. The faux-furor in the media made some people think it was somehow a public cost. The proper reply to the story right from the beginning should have been, "So, what? This is an expenditure the Republican National Committee was pleased to make. And, by the way, we absolutely expect Gov. Palin to keep the clothes after the election. Why not?"

Finally, we are left with the pitiful spite of whoever brought this story to the media from inside the Republican camp. What odious political gnome would refer to the Palins as "Wassila hillbillies"?

This year we seem to have conquered racial bigotry, but not class and regional bigotry.

Overall, Gov. Sarah Palin rose admirably to the challenge suddenly thrust upon her at the Republican Convention. She and Todd, her dignified, yet cheerful husband (who comes across as a natural gentleman, savvy and decent), managed to leap into campaign mode from a standing start. Good for them. Which of the fault-finders could have done as well?

George W. Bush was supposed to cut taxes and spending as president, appoint able constitutionalist judges, open America more to Latin America and avoid "nation building" exercises overseas.

He did cut taxes, which helped spur huge economic gains for over five years. He appointed many excellent judges, though Democrats held up numerous other worthy appointments. For several wasted years Republicans in control of Congress actually joined Democrats in promoting higher spending, including a new entitlement (the prescription drug program for seniors). They thought they would get great political benefit from such spending, it seems. They got none.

We still have done far too little to engage Latin America--our home region--and, thanks to 9/11, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we certainly are engaged in "nation building" on a grand scale elsewhere. History handed G.W.B. and all of us a number of unwelcome surprises.

In the course of time, the tax cuts, the wise judicial appointments and the war on terrorism, despite many missteps, will be regarded as a serious and sound legacy for Bush. If the new president doesn't mess up, Iraq in particular will result in a hugely important foreign policy success with excellent long term consequences. Too bad the president's critics won't give him now the credit that he deserves.

There probably were other policy successes. (One thinks of the historically high commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa, for example.) It would be nice to say that there were many such examples. But the truth is that the Administration has been so concentrated on the huge issues of the war on terror, taxes and judges that it has neglected other areas where it could have accomplished without too much strain. Obviously, Bush should have pushed harder for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. He tried, but weakly. The crash we have endured and which is undoing conservative government, however, is not the fault of this Administration. On the contrary, as a host of yet-unwritten books will show, under-regulation in some areas and over-regulation in others were the products chiefly of 15 years of liberal interest politics.

Still, as the nation votes tomorrow for his successor some of us should pause and reflect that President George W. Bush has received a bum rap from adversaries and the media,(as some of his staffers say). I trust that history will treat him much better.

The strange life of policy issues has one replacing another as the two year presidential marathon campaign closes. Supposedly vital issues aren't resolved, just shed. Global warming, for example, was on every TV screen this time a year ago - Climate change 'Cold War' looms, Climate change a 'mega disaster', Climate outlook 'beyond grim' - but now come back of the newspaper stories of record early snows from the Alps to the Cascades (of the Pacific Northwest). The October cold snap in Florida beats a 150 year record (though I must suspiciously wonder who was keeping accurate modern records in 1858).

It's been really cold in Alaska this year. The glaciers are filling up. What does that mean? Apparently, definable global warming slowed or stopped a decade ago. Is that true? Why aren't we hearing about the reasons?

Yes, of course we shouldn't look to daily or even yearly figures for support for macro-climate theories. But, if that is so, why were they used to explain the significance of hurricanes and warming weather phenomena only a couple of years ago--until the temperatures dropped?

In general, I support many policies that also are backed by people alarmed by global warming. Plug-in hybrid cars. Experiments with algae as an alternate fuel. Government encouragement of solar. Certainly nuclear power and natural gas. (However, I also support "clean coal" and drilling off-shore, in Alaska and in shale to help us replace imported oil.) Yet the global warming analysis is a separate matter. It has been used to harass people and make them feel guilty for a lifestyle of abundance and to promote increased government control over people's lives. In other words, it has an element of liberal ideology about it. If the assumptions behind the global warming analysis are wrong, we risk losing common ground for policies that would promote greater energy conservation, developing new fuel sources and holding down costs for consumers. It would be nice therefore to see greater skepticism--and honesty--on this topic.

Circulation continues to decline steeply at almost all major city dailies. The only exceptions are USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.

Is it the Internet that is killing them? Well, it is a major part of the problem.

But another is the decline of effective literacy among the young and the even steeper decline in understanding of basic citizenship (what used to be called "civics") and economics. Newspapers can't rely anymore on their readers to possess a basic grasp of how Congress, the courts or administrative agencies work, let alone state and local governments. Stories therefore have to be sensationalized or dumbed down. Smart people then flee the papers for more intelligent coverage and the papers are stuck with a downscale readership.

Why don't young people understand civics? Because the schools either neglect the subject or downplay it or turn it into a left wing morality tale that ultimately is demoralizing.

And who has supported all these changes in schools? Often it is the local big city newspaper.

Then there is one other reason for readership decline, and that is growing media bias. If you can't count on straight news and editing, then you just give up on your local papers. Why waste your time with the views and opinions of some reporter who knows little but has a high opinion of himself? One reads a paper to get news--straight news, real news. When one finds that the real news is not found there, he stops using the paper as a resource.

For all of us who treasure newspapers--and sequential thought--it is sad to see all this happening. The end of newspapers isn't going to improve the sum knowledge and responsibility of the electorate.

Please, someone, give us newspapers that report the news in such a way that one can't discern the personal views of the reporters and editors. And use the editorial pages to campaign for better schooling in civics. You'll have to fight the teachers' union, but that, as they say, is another story.

The longest presidential campaign in U.S. history is now eleven days from completion, unless the lawyers take over after the polls close and keep the show running even longer. The television and radio broadcasters increasingly are taking sides without much embarrassment. Are we developing a system of openly partisan media as in Jeffersonian days? It would seem so. The masks are coming off. Maybe that will prove healthier in the long run. Once people realize the bias of the press and broadcast media they will be better on guard against it.

One example is the way malfeasance in the election process itself is handled. There is no question that ACORN is under criticism for fraudulent voter registration in over a dozen states nationwide. ACORN plainly aims to benefit the Democratic Party, though it is supported by the government. So brazen is ACORN that even Democratic elections officials, as in Nevada, have been incensed by the group's improprieties. (From my experience, most elections officials are honest and want to run an honest operation, regardless of their own affiliation.)

So, when CNN wants to show an example of election fraud, what do they do? They run a segment about the rare Republican who has been indicted. There was a time thirty years ago when CNN truly tried to present news objectively. Those days are gone.

Then there is the Sarah Palin treatment. It is preposterous that Gov. Palin and her husband should be hauled before a state personnel board in Alaska eleven days before a presidential election. But no one seems to protest in the media. Instead, they will be at the hearing with hundreds of cameras and reporters.

Enormously important issues like the coming crisis with Iran are going unremarked in the media during this campaign. That makes it particularly breathtaking to see the fourth estate wallowing in such trivia as Palin's clothing. Dan Henninger gets much of it in today's Wall Street Journal column.

Canada's Thanksgiving Day is today. Tomorrow is the federal election for Parliament. Therefore, except for last-minute polling that interrupts people's family turkey dinners, the final polls are from yesterday. And they diverge considerably. And there still is uncertainty shown in the electorate, with a 46 percent "undecided" column in one poll. Granted, the "undecided" term may represent people who in the end are not going to vote anyway. Nonetheless, the lesson for Americans in our own election should be, don't count on the polls.

All three top polls show the Conservative Party of Prime Minister Stephen Harper winning re-election, but only to another minority government. The differences come in the prospective margins.

The Strategic Counsel poll conducted for the Toronto Globe and Mail and CTV has the Conservatives ahead of their closest rivals, the Liberals, by only 33 percent to 28 percent (five point spread), with the New Democrats (NDP) coming in at 18 percent, the Greens at 11 and the Bloc Quebecois at 10 (that is all in Quebec, of course, where the Bloc vote stands at a nearly commanding 42 percent).

The Harris/Decima poll shows the Conservatives ahead by nine points (35 percent to the Liberals' 26 percent--NDP at 18. That is a nine point spread.

The Ekos Research poll falls between the others, with the Conservatives ahead 34 to 27 over the Liberals (six points).

Somebody's wrong, which is to say, the samples are different.

Serious news developments are going under-reported and significant national issues un-discussed in the presidential race because we are all deluged with stock market stories. There are even many stories related to the market that are not getting play yet.

The recent hurricanes damaged U.S. production of oil and temporarily slowed the slide in oil prices, but they did terrible damage to Cuba. Since there are few American reporters there and the Communist regime is not really interested in exposing its weaknesses, the reality goes mostly un-noticed. But here is a story with some insight.

Cuba depends on Venezuela for oil now, but Hugo Chavez also must be facing strains now that the prices for his country's main product have dropped from $147 a barrel to $80. Leftists like Chavez are seldom careful about spending commitments, so it is likely that his regime is going to feel serious strain now. Great story. Not reported yet.

The same squeeze is on Iran and Russia, of course. Already the Russian government's recent hostility toward the West seems to be abating. As I noted several months ago, it usually is not a good idea to threaten one's customers, but that is what Russia was doing to the Europeans. It is a temptation that the Kremlin is finding it easier to resist right now. (By the way, Russia reportedly has huge cash reserves. How is that affecting the economy in the current international crisis? Doesn't Bloomberg News' excellent team in Moscow have a story in depth to tell us about that?)

Another under-reported international story is in the field of human rights. It is a mystery to me why the McCain campaign has not publicized the fact that Sen. Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been holding up passage of the Wilberforce Act of 2008, a bill that would strengthen the law against human trafficking. His reported reasons are bureaucratic, trivial and unresponsive to the world wide problem of slavery. A new film (Call + Response) highlights the situation, and among other things, features Discovery Senior Fellow John R. Miller, former U.S. Ambassador for Human Trafficking Issues.

Domestically, there has been a doubling of money going to Amtrak to improve service, but it was voted through in the midst of the bailout legislation and without any apparent discussion or debate. America needs a first class passenger rail system to supplement air and auto carriers. But because of unenlightened union opposition the Democrats in recent years have prevented any effort at reform and partnership with the private sector. The new money won't really change much at all. Given the overall energy issue and the pressures on the present transportation system you might think that at least one of the candidates for President would be talking about this. But they aren't doing so, are they? Do they imagine that travelers in states on the Eastern Seaboard, the Great Lakes region and the West Coast are not interested?

Speaking of energy, there is the under-emphasized potential of nuclear power. McCain is all for it. But why isn't he conspicuously going to the places where it could be installed and calling attention to the subject? Nuclear power is back in vogue, even among many environmentalists, and it promises the responsible, relatively inexpensive energy that U.S. industries need to save and create jobs. He mentions it, but he doesn't hammer it home the way Ronald Reagan did--by giving TV viewers a backdrop image.

Another issue that McCain under-plays is his support for expanding the personal income tax exemption for people raising children. Reagan doubled it in '86, as McCain undoubtedly knows. It would be a huge break for parents (single parents as well as two parent households). But it is being lost in the din. McCain needs to be in people's kitchens explaining the issue.

One could go on and on, but let me end with this observation: In a time when the stock market is telling us that a recession is surely at hand, one might expect that the federal government would be doing all it can to at least push out of the Treasury pipeline funds for various public projects in transportation and other fields that already are authorized and appropriated. The market crash is about to start rippling through the economy, with building slowdowns and job losses. Already existing federal projects could help take up the slack. I'm not talking about a big new public works program--the kind that typically wouldn't be effective until after the recession is over--but planned projects that the bureaucrats just can't seem to get into action. They need a push. Why aren't they getting one?

Leave it to the English to try to rescue fine old words that have fallen on hard times.

My favorite in this collection is "skirr", the whirring sound of birds' beating wings. Give that to a poet as a present. He'll thank you.

"Recrement" also seems serviceable. After all, "waste matter" is not always sufficiently, shall we say, redolent of the reality. "Griseous" is a happy discovery worthy of revivification, don't you think? "Streaked with grey" is just too cumbrous a synonym.

For my own part, I would like to propose a few dear old words that reside in the Chapman Home for Semi-Retired Words. With a little exercise and refurbishment they could be put back on the road. There is, for example, "pullulation", the busy action of many participants; as, for example, what an ant hill does. (E.g., "The campaign office pullulates with volunteers.")

Another underappreciated latinate word is "scrofulous", an appearance of disease or contamination. It is the sort of thing that eventually might characterize the uncleared "recrement" in your kitchen sink.

The September 15 issue of Forbescarries one of its signature stories, this one a list of the 100 "Most Powerful Women" in the world. There are some obvious international business CEOs and heads of state on the list, but also some curiosities. Among the latter are Katie Couric of CBS (# 62), Barbara Walters of ABC (#63), Diane Sawyer of Good Morning America (#65), and Christianne Amanpour of CNN (#91).

Notably missing: Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska.

The magazine probably went to bed with this story weeks ago, one supposes. Still.

Minor oversights like this notwithstanding, Forbes remains the best business magazine out there and Steve Forbes' columns on business, finance and politics are essential reading. Publisher Rich Karlgaard is both an insightful businessman and a principled futurist.

The rampant over-reaction of the mainstream media and the political left to the nomination of Gov. Sarah Palin has been helping the Republican ticket. It is mobilizing conservatives to work harder. it also is making them chuckle.

One reason is that the critics clearly don't know what they are talking about. Here you have silver screen tough guy Matt Damon saying how "terrified" he is of Palin. He demands to know if she really believes dinosaurs lived four thousand years ago. He doesn't even wonder why he imagines that she does believe such a thing. The poor man supposes that speculations by liberal commentators and Internet hysterics constitute reliable sources for Palin's views.

The daily papers are filled with article after article that seek to find chinks in Palin's armor. Investigative reporters from New York and Washington are helping to elongate the Alaska tourist season as they try find dirt on Palin, or some tundra scruff that can be made to look like dirt. Hostile, sarcastic reporters on Cable TV chastise Sarah for not letting them interview her. They even ruminate that she probably fears they will try to set her up with some gotcha quote ("Who is the prime minister of Uzebekistan?"). That just helps readers and listeners to do some ruminating themselves: "The media really are out to get her!"

Most of all, Damon-like liberals replace factual comment with what is known as "projection". They conjure up the views that would most discredit a conservative and then assume the targeted politico must hold such opinions. They don't have any conservative friends to give them a reality check, apparently, and just let their paranoia run away with them.

Then they are shocked when their public attacks backfire.

Conservatives are finding this almost too good to be true. The media are doing a jujitsu move on themselves.

What does "septalingualism" mean, a colleague asked in the hallway after seeing the following article about New York Mayor Blomberg's latest costly idea. It means you have a pompous vocabulary, was my reply.

Columnist Deroy Murdock gives Discovery senior fellow Yuri Mamchur the main rebuttal in this excellent story.

Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers (on global warming), has an accurate and trenchant piece on National Review Online about the deceits of Wikipedia. As he says, what is true of the global warming debate (where no "debate" in to be acknowledged by the Left), is true of many other issues that Wikipedia supposedly covers, including abortion and intelligent design.

In an important Washington Post inside story Robert Mugabe is thoroughly and unmistakably displayed as a particularly ruthless, thuggish dictator. Which apologists can pretend otherwise now?

It was a fine accomplishment to get such detailed accounts of Mugabe's internal organization and its deliberations. Did the CIA possibly hand this story to the Post?

The more significant question is why all African states have not cut off ties with Zimbabwe and begun to assist what will have to be a guerrilla movement. Mugabe effectively has closed the door to lawful and peaceful change.

What Tim Egan writes about in The New York Times--the survival risks facing newspapers --is notably true of The New York Times itself.

There are many reasons for the decline of advertising and readers, but one that is almost always neglected in stories like Egan's is that many center-right readers finally have had it with the bias of much news coverage. Bias is understandable on editorial pages, although the Times' unintentionally droll quarrel with Barack Obama today surprises one by the extent of the paper's dogmatic liberalism. It is that dogmatic liberalism, unfortunately, that spills readily into other sections of the paper and alienates conservatives and many moderates. You just can't count on the Times for objective news coverage, and that goes double for feature stories.

Some people take their view-cues from the Times and will never notice when the paper is factually unfair. Others recognize the lack of objectivity when they see a story on a subject they know personally, but they wrongly assume that other stories probably are accurate. Still others--including a body of readers who would like a national paper of serious depth, but have come to believe that The New York Times simply cannot be trusted--don't read it at all.

Editors and owners of the Times don't care, of course. They are willing to write off such readership. But they can't expect others to care, either, when their flagship runs into rough seas.

There are several good news stories on today's development in the federal court case in which Yoko Ono seeks to prevent further distribution of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, the Ben Stein film. And then there is this one from ars technica:

Notice the way the writer feels obliged to abuse free speech--by misrepresenting intelligent design--even as he defends it.

We still do have free speech protections in America, but we also have the right to tie up opponents in tactical lawsuits, which is just what Yoko Ono did at a crucial point in the screening of Expelled. Nonetheless, Expelled has become one of the most-viewed theater-released documentaries ever.

We are not quite at the point where there should be a film about the way Expelled itself was attacked, but there is a story there.

The spirit of authoritarian censorship is all over the cultural left these days. These were the same people who opposed authority back in the 60s, weren't they--people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono? "Imagine"!

The amazing thing is how awareness of Left Wing censorship at the supposedly open and fair-minded Wikipedia is growing. I was delighted that the author of the National Post article recognized it. Tell your friends: except for non-ideological arcana, Wikipedia cannot be trusted for anything like accuracy or objectivity.

Despite what is expected to be an unseasonably sunny few days, at least one hundred Seattleites will have lousy weekends. By Monday, 131 soon-to-be former employees of the Seattle Times Company, the owner of Washington State's largest daily, will have to decide whether they want to be bought out or laid off.

In a decision made public on Monday, the Times said it'll "slice its flagship newspaper's staff by nearly 200 and make other cuts aimed at saving $15 million." That casualty list will include circulation, advertising and newsroom personnel, a spokesperson for the company said.

Vice President Alayne Fardella said in an e-mail to employees that up to 45 circulation workers, 30 newsroom employees and 24 advertising staff could be laid off. The exact number will depend on how many employees choose to accept buyouts and leave voluntarily, she said.

On the other coast, if The New York Times and Variety are to be believed (a suspension of disbelief chasm too wide for many to fjord, I know), then The Seattle Times' journalistic brethren at CBS News should prepare for a similar agonizing future weekend of weighing the buy-out versus laid-off option. If rumors and a news report in the Old Grey Lady prove true, then CBS brass is giving serious consideration to subcontracting its "newsgathering operations to CNN." (Read: The reporting, off-air producing, etc., that fills the 30 minute news hole between America's affiliate coverage and the network's weekly evening sitcoms.) Although Variety reports that the sharp-penned MBAs at CNN and CBS are discounting the rumor, another unnamed insider said they "would eventually resume the discussion about a merger or alliance."

Huh. Two examples. Two different media. One week. It's a tough time to be in or supporting "the business," as journalists like to refer to the profession. And regardless of one's view of the amorphous yet seemingly omniscient mainstream media, the reasons for and consequences of a slow but steady death of the Fourth Estate in America -- at least what has become the conventional understanding of the mainstream press -- is worth at least a few seconds of thought.

Fuel Shortage. At one point, owning a newspaper was basically a license to print money. Not anymore. As readership and circulation numbers have declined at a precipitous rate, the advertisers (the self-proclaimed fuel of a free press) have gone elsewhere. (See: Online.) You don't need a complex market segmentation analysis to understand that it just doesn't make as much sense to allocate money to space in newsprint when fewer and fewer people are going to see it. Without the advertising dollars, newspapers can't hit the margins needed to keep employees (front office, back office, circulation, reporters, editors and the copy desk) on the payroll. That's sad and short-sighted. And it's in part what's happening to the 131 soon-to-be unemployed Seattle Times' staffers.

Mis-Modeled. In the age of the Internet, citizen journalism and online aggregators, many people's concept of the "news" just ain't what it once was. A story from one of the wires isn't worth as much over morning coffee if you read it the night before on your laptop while sipping your nightcap. There have always been two great differentiators with the news -- speed and veracity. But in a world where the speed of the Internet makes the procedure of the "daily miracle" appear glacial, and when the veil of journalistic objectivity and accuracy have had more than their share of pummeling by high-profile cases, anything other than "traditional" or "mainstream" media is the new black. The old stuff? A vague, faded, grayish hue. Again, sad and unfortunate.

This Matters. I never like to hear about someone losing a job. And I really don't like to see good journalists and support staff being asked to walk because of corporate cutbacks. But, regrettably, none of this is surprising; the business end of journalism -- the accountants, executive editors and management -- haven't figured out how to balance the market with their accounting ledgers. Journalism suffers. And what ultimately matters, and what Americans should care about, is how the business will recalibrate and what effect that might have on the flow of information. Blogs are great. Citizen journalism has its purity. But, even for those who cry "bias" with regard to the mainstream media (and I'm among that crowd at times), newspapers and the mainstream media serve a function critical to democracy: Ideally leveraging reporting and writing talent to cover events, stories, people and places in a timely, reliable fashion with the goal (paraphrasing one of my professors at Missouri's journalism school) of reaching the closest verifiable approximation of the truth under deadline. Yes, reporters sometimes miss the mark. But it's much better than having no mark at all.

It's said that no medium ever fully replaces another. And although the hit business self-help book, "Who Moved My Cheese," keeps coming to mind, some sort of symbiotic coexistence instead of replacement will probably be the eventual case with the Fourth Estate. The mainstream media won't be replaced entirely by blogs, camera phone reports from citizens, and online news sources not connected to a "mainstream" source. And I'd say that's a very good thing for the Republic. It's nice to have an adult in the room.

Good journalists aren't made overnight and the more who are forced out (or never enter the business in the first place) will make it that much harder for the information pendulum to swing back to equilibrium. So let's hope that someone, somewhere is figuring this out. Who knows, maybe the new black will meet the faded, grayish hue halfway. Then we might end up with something useful and maybe even better -- something that hits the mark of TRVTH that the mainstream media says serves as its touchstone, and the market demand to support it.

Today's editorial page of the Sunday Seattle Post-Intelligencer carries an op-ed by Ilan Goldenberg, policy director of a group called the National Security Network. It offers a new "Responsible Plan" for Iraq. Clearly this is a campaign document for aspiring Democratic candidates for the U. S. House of Representatives and I suppose it is being offered to a number of papers around the country where such aspirants are found.

Nothing wrong with that.

It is just that this "plan" is almost banal, a bottle of bromides. Read it for yourself if you're having trouble getting to sleep tonight.

The "Plan" thus illustrates the increasing hollowness of real debate over Iraq. Most informed people have come to understand that we cannot and should not leave Iraq at this point, and I suspect that many realize that a free Iraqi government may actually prevail. Some expect the U.S. and our Coalition allies to win, some just expect to muddle through.

An aide to Sen. Obama is suggesting that U.S. troops will need to stay in Iraq until 2010. Obama himself seems to envisage a drawdown that is so slow--a division a month--that our troops will be there for several years, at least. So how is this at substantial variance--other than in the rhetoric--with the Bush Administration's aims or those of Sen. McCain, let alone of Sen. Clinton?

We seem reduced to feelings pure and simple now. The Republicans want to stabilize Iraq and then get out as soon as possible after that, starting next year, they hope. The Democrats REALLY want to get out as soon as possible, starting next year, they hope. Get it? They "really, really" want to. Cross their heart!

One guesses that the far left--the folks who want to remove the troops in the minimum time required to vacate the premises (about four months)-- is now so invested in the presidential race that they don't realize that they have been seduced and abandoned.

On the presidential races, my analyses have been tracking closely--no surprise--with those of Discovery Institute colleague and nationally prominent talk show host, Michael Medved. But this week, in his Townhall column, Michael has done a remarkable thing. He has taken on virtually all his conservative fellow hosts for weeks of trashing two of the Republican candidates, Mike Huckabee and John McCain. http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/6dee8f0b-a7a5-40c6-b670-c0637d945de1

I myself would hesitate to criticize such a powerful group, but I have to say that I, too, have been wondering how it is that the bulk of conservative airwave warriors have not yet seemed to stop the two candidates they targeted. Maybe it is because in a field of five or six candidates it is hard to damage one or two unless you have one that you openly advocate, and the talk folks don't have that one. They can't decide between Romney and Thompson, so assailing McCain and Huckabee doesn't really provide much help for either of the preferred alternatives. This could change. It may be that the talk jocks' power still may be demonstrated as Florida and then Tsunami Tuesday develop. (NOTE: Medved the Super Analyst himself will handicap the races in both parties at a Discovery Institute dinner in Seattle on the eve of the big February 5 rush of primaries and caucuses. See our homepage for details.)

Another reason the conservative talk shows have not been determinative is that few conservatives, even the talk show hosts, are positively excited about anyone, including Romney and Thompson. It is obvious that each of the candidates (in both parties) has serious flaws. Conversely, each of the candidates has virtues. And, by the way, each certainly deserves credit for marathon stamina in this elongated campaign. My own runs for office took a few months and seemed like an eternity. This year's presidential campaign literally is taking years. The runners must be exhausted already. Mainly the people having fun are the broadcast and cable TV media who are treating it all as what I call Politainment, politics consumed as a glossy, gossipy alternative to the Britney Spears story of the day.

Meanwhile, the voters probably should not be too critical of the combatants, despite negativity and carping, because we benefit in the end. After all, they give us choices. And, if they are not perfect choices, they could be worse.

And talk radio? Maybe it does better at refining choices than defining them, at fanning fires rather than starting them. Talk show hosts are quick to announce the end of the mainstream media's control of the agenda, but talk radio itself has not replaced the MSM, either. Neither has the internet. Nobody's in charge anymore.

Except, perhaps, the voters. That is, when we get a chance to vote.

You would gather from much of the media today that the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear program somehow shows either 1) a Bush failure to understand what is going on in Iran, or 2) Bush's desire to mislead the public heretofore about the seriousness of Iran's nuclear plans.

All of this is bizarre. It is getting to the point that you can't trust a news account unless you do your own reading and research.

The NIE was sent to Bush to provide him information. (It is contrary, by the way, to earlier NIE reports.) Then the Administration released it. The only thing remarkable about this process is that someone in the spook world with an axe to grind didn't leak the report ahead of time.

Anyhow, the White House late today published a list of reactions from other countries and multi-lateral organizations that is far more representative of reality. Here they are:

"What They're Saying..."

International Response To The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) On Iran


Spokesperson For British Prime Minister Gordon Brown: The report "confirms we were right to be worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons (and) shows that the sanctions program and international pressure were having an effect in that they seem to have abandoned the weaponisation element." "It also shows the intent is there and the risk of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon remains a very serious issue." (Zahra Hosseinian, "France And UK Urge Pressure On Iran Despite U.S. Report," Reuters, 12/4/07; "Bush Says Iran A 'Danger' Despite Intelligence Report," Agence France-Presse, 12/4/07)

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier: "The NIE report confirmed 'the double approach chosen by the international community of incentives and measures from the United Nations Security Council was right,' German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said in a statement released Monday, Nov. 3." ("EU To Keep Up Pressure On Iran After US Report," Deutsche Welle [Germany], 12/4/07)

French Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Pascale Andreani: "It appears that Iran is not respecting its international obligations. ... We must keep up the pressure on Iran ... we will continue to work on the introduction of restrictive measures in the framework of the United Nations." (Zahra Hosseinian, "Bush, Allies Urge Pressure On Iran Despite U.S. Report," Reuters, 12/4/07)

Russian President Vladimir Putin: "Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday told Iran's top nuclear negotiator that the country's nuclear program should be transparent and remain under control of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 'We welcome the extension of your cooperation with the IAEA. We expect that your programs in the nuclear sphere will be open, transparent and be conducted under control of the authoritative international organization,' Putin said at the start of a meeting with Saeed Jalili at the presidential residence on Moscow's outskirts." (Vladimir Isachenkov, "Putin Tells Iran To Keep Nuclear Program Under IAEA Control," The Associated Press, 12/4/07)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert: "It is vital to pursue efforts to prevent Iran from developing a capability like this and we will continue doing so along with our friends the United States." (Zahra Hosseinian, "Bush Allies Urge Pressure On Iran Despite U.S. Report," Reuters, 12/4/07)

Spokesperson For EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana, Cristina Gallach: "Solana's spokeswoman, Cristina Gallach, said the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) report 'proves that transparency about (Iran's) nuclear activities and its intentions are fundamental.'" ("EU To Keep Up Pressure On Iran After US Report," Deutsche Welle [Germany], 12/4/07)

War is hell. At least it is for Hollywood and The San Francisco Chronicle. It was a another liberal assualt on good sense for The Chronicle to write a story about the commerical failure of the half dozen anti-Iraq War films that have come out this fall. The reporter writes that he can't understand it. After all, most of the films had famous stars and got good reviews! Moreover, several anti-war veterans he interviewed are likewise disappointed, if not aggrieved! The American public--save "San Francisco intellectuals", which surely must mean 90% of the population there--just seem to be so lackadaisical and unresponsive. Maybe the films should have been even more provocative.

Nowhere did the reporter wonder the opposite: how Hollywood might have done if it had produced war films that expressed support and understanding for the U.S. mission in Iraq and the way our troops are making progress under great difficulties.

The real mistake, however, was not the article--typical left win gibberish and self-delusion--but the provision of a way for readers to comment on line. They do comment, and they make all the right points: people may be tired of the war, but they are really tired of Hollywood thinking it has found the truth about the war and using its wiles to manipulate the rest of us; and why did the reporter only talk to anti-war veterans? If there is any room for embarrassment at The Chronicle newsroom, reading the 165 plus comments to their piece should fill it to overflowing.

Here's the link: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/23/MNJNTG272.DTL

Michael Medved, nationally syndicated talk radio host and bestselling author, has joined the Discovery Institute in the role of senior fellow. The position cements a longstanding friendship and recognizes a commonality of values and projects across a spectrum of issues.

"Michael Medved is an intellectual entrepreneur, a political and cultural polymath with great insights, judgment and wit. We are delighted to have this new relationship with him," said Discovery Institute president Bruce Chapman.

The sixth largest talk radio audience in the country, 3.7 million listeners, hears Medved's daily three-hour radio program, The Michael Medved Show. Michael's show is carried on more than 200 stations across America. The author of several books, including Hollywood vs. America and a recent autobiography, Right Turns, the one-time "punk liberal activist" turned "lovable conservative curmudgeon" is currently at work on a book on The Ten Big Lies About America.

Chapman saluted Medved "as the national radio host--make that 'media host'--who is best able to understand science issues, including the current conflict over Darwinism and intelligent design. He's very smart, quick and resourceful. Yet he also is respectful of those he disagrees with."

"Over the years, I've greatly appreciated Discovery's scholarship and advocacy in many areas," Medved commented. "We may not agree on every issue, but I often have been struck by how much our worldviews overlap. It has been my pleasure to have Discovery fellows on my show as guests, including Stephen Meyer, Jonathan Wells, and David Klinghoffer. Formalizing the relationship will, I'm sure, only deepen the feeling of collegiality I already have with my friends at Discovery. I look forward to working with Discovery on future projects."

Medved's first book, What Really Happened to the Class of '65?, provided one of the first skeptical reconsiderations of the 1960s counterculture. His tenth book, Right Turns, drew national attention in 2005, offering 35 "unconventional lessons" from Michael's dramatic political and religious evolution. The New York Times called Right Turns "A provocative memoir... Even many of his readers who hold to very different political and social views will concede, grudgingly, the quality of Medved's intellect."

Crown Forum will publish The Ten Big Lies About America, certain to be hugely controversial, in June 2008.

Long active in the Jewish community, Medved has served as president of an Orthodox congregation and co-founder of a Jewish Day School. Since 1996, Michael and his wife, Dr. Diane Medved

The Associated Press' Douglas Birch writes in today's papers--a bit after it was reported in many other places--that US deaths in Iraq were way down in October, and so were civilian deaths. But Birch apparently just can't figure out why that is so.

Is it because there are so few people left to kill, now that Sunni areas have been depopulated by Shia militia, and vice versa? Is it because so many people have fled the country?

In the AP version run in the Thursday Seattle Post-Intelligencer, at least, the one explanation not mentioned is that the decline in deaths might have something to do with the success of the U.S. military's Surge.

It reminds me of the stories about high prison incarceration numbers. They are high, one hears, even though the crime rate has gone down. It doesn't occur to reporters providing such coverage that crime might have declined precisely because so many criminals have been caught and incarcerated. And it may not occur to the AP (unless this was just an editor's error) that the reason deaths of US service personnel have declined might have something to do with growing success in combatting the terrorists.

Why avoid the obvious?

I wrote last week about Bella and urged you to see it. (See below.)

Anyhow, people in large numbers did attend the opening weekend, though the number of screens on which the film appeared was limited (800 nationally). That means it has not opened yet in certain big cities such as Seattle, or smaller cities like Fort Wayne, say, or Boca Raton, not to mention small towns like Galesburg, Illinois. It will now, I guess, so see it. I don't want to give away the plot, but I will say that it says much worthwhile about America today, our heritage and the positive influence of the "new" hispanic culture. (It has nothing to do with illegal immigration, however!)

Here is what the people promoting the film just sent film supporters (note the link to the Ebert review):

THANK YOU!!!!!
Because of your help Bella broke records on opening weekend! Bella achieved:
-#1 highest avg Box Office per screen of any film in our category in the world this year!
-#2 highest avg Box Office per screen of any film in the world on Friday & Saturday
-#1 highest avg Box Office per screen of any film in the world on Sunday

Ebert's incredible thumbs up review.

Last week Tony Bennett spontaneously took the microphone from lead actor Eduardo Verastegui after the premiere at Tribeca and gave an impassioned speech thru his tears saying; "it is a perfect movie, an artistic masterpiece that every American must see". He said a lot more and you can see the video on You Tube. You can also see Eduardo's appearance on Fox and other interviews at www.BellaNews.com.

LATEST REVIEWS
Warm, sweet and funny. -Roger Ebert, rogerebert.com

Versategui is a natural on the big screen, a compelling presence. -Ruthe Stein,

SF Chronicle "A sweet, life-affirming picture" - Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

"A bear-hugging embrace of sweetness and light" -Stephen Holden, The New York Times

"Cynics need not apply, but I found "Bella" a real heart tugger." - Lou Lumenick, New York Post

An unforgettable experience! A celebration of family, food, music and life-affirming values -Michael Medved

Powerful and moving... a true inspiration. -CNN, Ana Maria Montero

"The warmest family drama I've seen in years" -Frank Lovece - Film Journal FOX NEWS

Take someone you love (or would like to love you) to see the opening of Bella this weekend. It will be on some 800 screens, which is a nice number, but to get it shown in out of the way places (like Seattle!) it needs a big first weekend success. So you'll be doing the rest of us, as well as yourself, a favor by going this Friday, Saturday or Sunday.

You won't be sorry. It is a gorgeous, surprising, life-affirming story that confounds the usual Hollywood tropes. It's hero, Eduardo Verastegui ("Veras-teg-wee") is a Mexican media heart-throb making his Hollywood debut. You're surely going to hear much more from him after this.

I saw the film a couple of months ago at a special screening and was stunned by its fine quality. So, apparently, was the Toronto Film Festival, where it won a surprising award last year. I won't give away the story, but let's just say that it is not the sort of cynical and downbeat fare that many mainstream reviewers like. Well, you can't trust them.

Trust me, instead. This could be an important film. It definitely is an enjoyable one.

Check it out here.

Campaign polls are least reliable the farther one is from an election, because most people (as in the current presidential race) are not really paying attention yet.

Polls also are unreliable in the transition from one reality in the news to a new one. The improving U.S. performance in Iraq is not yet reflected in polls, such as this one from Gallup, because of the lag time between changes in complex situations. When the changes are adequately reported and then, even more, when a new reality filters fully into the public mind, poll results begin to reflect the change. The development of a new poll consensus on Iraq will emerge, but only after time--assuming, of course, that prospects in Iraq do continue to get brighter for the Coalition and anti-terrorist Iraqis.

Part of the difficulty is that polls are very good at providing answers to specific questions, but not so good at measuring intensity of feeling or--to the point here--whether an opinion is fixed or fluid. Before an opinion given to a pollster shifts, it first softens, and that softening is often hard for survey takers to catch.

In economics, likewise, public opinioin measured in polls suggest that in a period where the economy first starts to deteriorate, people appear to be slow to realize it. And, they seem slow to shift their understanding again the next time the economy improves. You see it especially on employment figures and inflation, matters where an opinion poll majority can sometimes conflict with hard data.

People usually take their time in changing their assessments.

Two of the best tools for interpreting the news:

1) Ask, what if the shoe were on the other foot? When you see an attack on some organization or person for a comment or opinion implicitly or explicitly regarded as "beyond the pale," ask yourself, would this story be played this way if the target was on the other side politically? Numerous examples could be cited, but that's for another day. I want to get on to the second helpful tool.

2) Ask yourself, what news is not getting a big play in the media, or is being under-reported? This always makes me think of the famous forensic shrewdness of Sherlock Holmes when he helped solve a murder case by noting the dog that did not bark in the night. The significance in that case--and in many instances of newsworthy importance--was what didn't happen. Very often, what doesn't get reported or emphasized in daily reporting is what history will judge most consequential.

When it became clear that the Berlin War was coming down and the end of the Communist empire was coming to an end, there was widespread surprise. Few had predicted that such a thing would happen in their lifetimes. (Two that did were Herman Kahn, founder of Hudson Institute, and Ronald Reagan.) The stories of Soviet collapse ultimately did make the news, of course, but hardly anyone bothered to show that the decades-old peace movement in Europe and the U.S., with its warnings of nuclear doom and recommendations of unilateral disarmament, had now been discredited and effectively decommissioned. If you thought that the only way to a peaceful future was to "converge" with the Soviets, as the Left had long argued, then a surprising capitulation by the USSR was not cause for dancing in the streets. It was cause for a kind of sullen and unreflective silence. But instead of investigating that defeat for the Left, most news organizations--themselves gulled for years by the peaceniks--simply ignored the topic.

My current prospect for relatively under-reported news is the apparent disintegration of the Al Qaeda campaign in Iraq and the world-wide improvement of the war against Islamist terroists.

The U.S.-led Coalition troops during the Surge have greatly diminished the effectiveness of Al Qaeda . Some Sunni insurgent groups have come over to the Coalition or are inert. Most importantly, the pro-Iranian Shia "Mahdi" militia is both fractured and increasingly unpopular among the Shiites themselves.

The story of opposition to the U.S. Coalition and to any non-terrorist government in Iraq has been a complex one and it is apparent that the Bush Administration didn't understand that complexity going in. Nonetheless, the situation on the ground seems to be improving for real. Even with more U.S. troops exposed to danger under the Surge, U.S. combat deaths are down by half over the past six months. So are civilian Iraqi deaths. Civic life and business are getting better.

This is really a big story. We know it largely through the Internet. You wouldn't know it from most MSM news coverage, but you can tell it from the way that the presidential candidates are reacting. Suddenly, the issue of immediate withdrawal is not discussed, but only the question of how and when to acknowledge victory and withdraw in stages. The under-reported but real story is partly responsible for the decline in the prospects of Senator Barack Obama, the viable candidate most invested in a pullout strategy. Perversely, it also may be hurting the candidacy of Rudy Giuliani, since he has been seen to some extent as the most outspoken proponent of seeing the war through. Now that position is almost a consensus on the GOP side, making other issues that are less advantageous to him seem more important.

But the political impact is not the true significance of the War in Iraq, in any case. What may be happening is that America's often stumbling, but consistently firm pursuit of the war against Islamist terrorists is emerging as a possible success, if we will only persevere. It won't be fast or even complete. There will be setbacks. But if we can win in Iraq, even to the point that a non-terror regime that is not actively hostile to the U.S., prevails, it will be a victory globally. That has enormous and hopeful consequences for world security and economic, and even environmental, progress.

It was asserted by Osama Bin Laden only a few years ago that the United States lacks tenacity and, thus, our will can be broken. That has not been true under George W. Bush.

It is a big story, and thus far it is under-reported. It will just kill the MSM to give credit where it's due.

There are many helpful sites on the Internet that can provide real news on the war against Islamofascist terrorism, including the war in Iraq, but I want to recommend this one now, The Long War Journal:http://www.longwarjournal.org/ It, in turn, will lead you to various sites that offer current reports from the many fronts of what is, yes, "The Long War".

Did you know about the successful meeting of 300 tribal leaders just held in Iraq? An earlier meeting that was disrupted by the terrorists managed to make the news, but mainly because of the attack, not because of the positive organizational commitments being made by the tribes.

Did you know about the capture of Iranian trained militia, especially in the detail given at this site?

Or the foreign fighters killed in the past two days in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Sadly, there often are few ways to find out this kind of thing from the mainstream media. They are too busy trying to convict the private contractors of Blackwater. That is because they hope that Blackwater might write what many in the media regard as the only valid script for Iraq: U.S. failure. There are many fine reporters covering facets of the war against terrorists, but the daily headlines seems to have concentrated on problems with the U.S., especially anything that could be worked up as a scandal. We are seen as the center of attention. The focus is rather chauvinistic, in its perverse way.

In contrast, can you rely on the accuracy of The Long War Journal? I don't don't know its provenance, but I do note that its accounts cite officials in government (ours and others) and the military as sources. Its scope is truly global.

So, friends, is the war. And this historic global war is not mainly about us--certainly not in Thailand or Indonesia or even Somalia. It is not about us when the terrorists' cells are uncovered in Europe. It is about fanatical Islamists out to undermine Muslim countries first, and then the West.

A parade of cut-rate ads for politicos and causes--accompanied by all kinds of controversy--probably has been avoided now as The New York Times admits that it mishandled the "General Betray Us" ad by MoveOn.org. The impetus was a column by the Times' ombudsman; however, it could not have been entirely unwelcomed by management, which has found itself facing criticism for unfairly giving a more than 50 percent price reduction for the cuttting political ad, and also facing a likely demand from a string of candidates and others for comparable price breaks. Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani was only the first in line to take advantage of the hole the paper shot in its own ad policies (and hats off to him for doing so at once).

So "The $64,000 Question" that I asked earlier has been answered. How cozy was The Times with MoveOn.org in giving a special rate and a set date for the "General Betray Us" ad? The answer is...very. The timing concession was one indication. But another is the publisher's rueful statement that whatever mistakes were made, it is important to keep in mind the important goal of encouraging robust public speech. That seems like an attempt to offer at least a partial excuse for the decision to print the ad, even though it contradicted The Times' policy on price, timing and ad hominem content and put competitive points of view at a disadvantage.

So one cannot now assume, after all, that the ad's acceptance and placement was just an accident. Contrary to what I was prepared to grant, one probably can assume bias was involved. The very fact that The Times didn't acknowledge any error for days gives credence to that conclusion, and so now do Mr. Zulzberger's comments.

The paper should be embarrassed and should apologize. (What a thought for a newspaper that routinely demands apologies from others!)

Meanwhile, what The Times did importantly accomplish for itself was the refreshment of a rationale for keeping further political ads at reduced rates out of the paper.

The New York Times ran a reduced price ad ($64,575) for the Giuliani campaign today attacking a similar ad Monday by MoveOn.org that called General Petraeus "General Betray Us". Guiliani's campaign also chastised Sen. Hilary Clinton for declining to distance herself from the ad. The price of both ads was far below the standard full-page price most often quoted for the Times ($181,000).

Rather late in the discussion, the Times now says that it merely gave MoveOn.org a rate it gives other non-profits if they are willing to let the Times decide what day (within a week's schedule) an ad will appear. That makes sense as a negotiating practice, actually.

However, somehow the MoveOn ad appeared on the very day that General Petraeus testified before Congress and MoveOn.org knew ahead of time that it was running (it told people so). This suggests a certain amount of cooperation that, in fact, negated the whole idea that the "cheap" price was due to scheduling uncertainty.

This raises the question of how cozy the Times was with MoveOn.org and whether the group did, in practice, get special consideration.

However, suspicion about the ads should probably be set aside at this point. Real life often fails to support a suspicious interpretation of events. (Oh, that Times reporters themselves had that attitude more often.) One thing is clear, though, we now know how much a Times full page ad really costs! It is fungible. As I wrote below, in coming months you probably will see a whole parade of candidates and groups taking advantage of the suddenly visible "special" New York Times rate.

You probably are aware of the mini-scandal over discovery that the New York Times ran an ad by MoveOn.org that not only described Gen. Petraeus as "General Betray Us", but also managed to finagle a cut-rate on its ad space purchase from the Times. It may be illegal, and it certainly raises questions about the integrity of the Times.

Hand it to Ruddy Giuliani. He not only denounced the ad, but demanded to run one of his own in the Times at the same price. Surely, one thought, the Times will explain that there was some perfectly understandable reason why MoveOn.org got such a low price ($65,000). But, no, it now appears that they are going to sell an ad to Ruddy for the same amount.

How embarrassing. It would appear that the Times really does let editorial policy dictate how other departments of the paper behave. One might alert the Ombudsman (reader rep), if one thought that column might do anything.

What will happen, I submit, is that the Times will hold an "investigation," decide they had made a mistake--and THEN let any and all presidential candidates rent their page for at least one time at $65 K.

Well down in the Times' blog on politics today you can find most of the story.

Rich Karlgaard, the dapper and insightful publisher of Forbes (under Steve Forbes), has an amusing column on the way to read business news ("Only the Bad News is Fit to Print").

Sadly, even business news is afflicted with a bias toward the negative and a tendency to report opinion as fact.

Obviously, we can apply the same device to examine, say, The New York Times.

This blog is subtitled, "All the Views that Fit." It's a pun, of course, but also has the merit of candor.

A few days ago I sat in one of the rooms where the producers of a new film, "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," were screening a trailer and passing the word to interested individuals and groups. It's the same pre-release publicity approach used recently for other Hollywood offerings, including documentaries. My emotion was almost as much one of relief as excitement. It is going to be a terrific film treatment of the whole controversy, and far fairer than any we have encountered.

For two years we have known that the Hollywood actor/critic/comedian/writer Ben Stein was making a film with a company called Premise Media that would inspect the controversy over Darwinian theory and intelligent design. Let's just say that some people at Discovery Institute were eager to cooperate, others more cautious. We have been burned so often by sweet-talking film-makers and television people who wanted to hear about "the science" and to hear our "side" of the controversy, only to be appalled by the one-sided, selectively edited final products that resulted.

The stories I watch most closely from Iraq now are the ones that tend to get buried in the newspapers, or ignored altogether.

The New York Times reports online today that U. S. troops killed 32 Iraqis in attacks in the Sadr City area of Baghdad.

As you examine it, the American military reports that all or nearly all those killed were Shia terrorists, so this story Is not not bad news about deaths in Iraq, per se, but good news about terrorists terminated in combat. Other than having such terrorists surrender, I don't know how the news could be better. These are the folks we believe are getting material aid from Iran.

(To be fair, I don't know how prominently the N. Y. Times will run this story in the print edition.)

Meanwhile, Stratfor's subscription-only intelligence briefing reports that the Saudis are preparing to reopen their embassy in Baghdad. This is will help restore confidence in Iraq's future and provide closer means of cooperation in shutting down Al Qaida operatives from Saudi Arabia that have been coming in through Syria.

The U.S., we also learn, is talking with Syria and other of Iraq's neighbors, as well as the Saudis and Iranians. The Iraqis are doing so, too, of course. Of significance, again according to Stratfor, are Iraqi agreements with Turkey to cooperate in curbing the activities of the PKK Kurdish terrorists that roam over the international border and attack Turkish soldiers, police and even civilians. They are not supported by the Iraqis (or the other Kurds), but their mere existence within the Kurdish region of Iraq has stirred the passions of the Turkish military, among others. The Erdogan government in Turkey, backed by the U.S., is eager to stop the PKK provocations.

All of these diplomatic developments are positive accompaniments for the apparently improving military situation.

I just threw up my hands when I saw that the New York Times Review of Books had assigned Richard Dawkins to review Michael Behe's excellent new book, The Edge of Evolution. A more temperate soul, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus of First Things takes apart the Times's decision with greater care.

The tendentious Dawkins does not answer Behe, but merely vilifies him. This seems to be the standard Darwinist reply to scientific critics of their One True Faith. The mild surprise is not Dawkins, therefore, but the Times' rabid partisanship in asking him to review the book in the first place.

The Times is having its problems, as are most newspapers. As a lover of print media, I hate to see it. As someone who looks for objective news and balanced commentary, however, I observe that they are reaping what they sow. One reason that sensationalist radio and TV gain market is that papers like the Times are becoming indistinguishable from them in the quality of their product. And radio and TV demand less attention.

I advised a friend over lunch last week that his "weariness" with the war in Iraq is unwarranted. If the United States stays with it, we will win. The problem is the way in which our domestic morale has been undermined by incomplete reporting. I saw it in relation to the elections of 2004 when I visited Baghdad. The Iraqis were upbeat about voting, the media cynical, not bothering, apparently, to find out from the people whether they cared about voting. Millions did, of course.

The media did warn about a "civil war" between the Sunnis and the Shia, and that was a valid concern. But the analysis of causes was not adequate. Behind the strife were two forces trying to force conflict: Al Qaeda (and former Baathists) and Al Sadr's Shia militia. Each provoked the others.

Now one sees that the average Iraqi is quite fed up with both extremes and recognizes that the United States does not want to hang around as an occupier--that the greater danger, in fact, is that we will leave too soon--and that Iraq cannot trust the Muslim extremists.

Now we are finally beginning to get some media reports that dare to diverge from the negative line laid down so long. John Burns, NY Times bureau chief in Baghdad, has long been giving an opinion that contrasts sharply with the snide sarcasm and defeatism of his employer's editorials. Now comes an op-ed (and congratulations to the Times for running it) by two think tank observers from the liberal Brookings Institution.

Someone once pointed out to me a sad condition of conservatism; namely, that writers at the National Review didn't used to believe something unless they saw it in the NY Times, even though they disliked the Times. (I hope that day is past, but sometimes I wonder.) But perhaps in a similar vein, liberals also won't believe good news about long term prospects in Iraq until they see it in the Times. Is that possibly happening now?

It is getting tiresome to find out that major successes in Iraq simply are ignored in the mainstream media. This time Max Boot, a defense analyst, author and former Wall Street Journal editor provides the useful source for news directly from the front. The way he gets it is to ask American personnel on the scene to tell him what is going on. What a concept! Quick, pick up the phone and call the Medill School of Journalism.

We do know from the MSM that once-tormented Anbar Province has become much less dangerous since the Surge and the decision of Sunni tribes to distance themselves from--and then, turn on--al Qaeda. Here, from Colonel John Charlton in Ramadi, via Max Boot's Contentions blog at Commentary magazine's site, is a report on a major al Qaeda attack that recently was thwarted, with most of the 50 attackers killed or captured.

My article on the so-called Fairness Doctrine ran today in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. It is a credit to the P.I., and also the Seattle Times, that they accept op-eds from conservatives. Many papers effectively do not. Or they accept those that fit their own ideology (a conservative writing an article denouncing the war in Iraq, for example) or are irrelevant to the biting controversies of the time. My favorite was a Bill Buckley piece on the joys of sailing that the New York Times ran a few years ago. A Buckley piece skewering a favorite Times sacred cow; that would be a different matter.

When I have run articles in the past that stirred controversy, a number of the letters to the editor were based on personal attack: Why do you allow such a person (with such a view) to be published in your paper? But I don't take it personally. Increasingly, censorship is the liberal grass roots (and "net-roots") response to conservative analysis and critique. In other words, liberal editors will get in trouble with readers for running conservative articles and never will get in trouble for failing to run them.

The problem is particularly acute now on issues that touch on science and technology. The media are overwhelmingly populated by liberals, of course, but in the past that meant that they agreed with the old-liberal idea of a marketplace of ideas. The attacks on conservatives by the kind of people that populate the left today always start by saying that, of course they support free speech, academic freedom, etc. (Oh, but, of course!) "HOWEVER," there must be an exception in the case of.....fill in the blank with whatever issue is under debate. In science, the trope is that that "science has spoken" on some hot topic (Darwinian evolution, embryonic stem cell research, assisted suicide, the extent of man's role in global warming, etc.) and therefore contrary views should receive no more attention than one would give (and this is always the example), say, Holocaust denial.

You wouldn't want to be equated with Holocaust denial, would you? Good, so don't publish an article that splits from the liberal herd on embryonic stem cells, or whatever. This is pure demagogy, but it apparently goes down easily at editorial departments where the editors already agree with the the policy perspective of the complainant.

That is why the Washington Post--that has sensible things to say about the war in Iraq, for example--will not publish an article defending intelligent design or criticizing Darwinian evolution, even though the subject has attracted huge audiences nationally and has even come up in presidential debates. The Atlanta Constitution won't run any anti-Darwin op-ed, even "balanced" with a pro-Darwin article, as a matter of policy.

But it is not just science-related issues. For supporters of the war in Iraq, the window of response is slowly closing. Even some conservative columnists feel the squeeze. Their pro-Iraq articles somehow don't get published in as many of their syndicated papers as others do, so why keep writing them? Academic freedom articles are newsworthy only when the assailed professor holds views with which the editors are sympathetic, regardless of topic.

Which brings me back to my article on the Fairness Doctrine in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Yes, talk radio has some real goons in it; some are embarrassing, regardless of your point of view. And yes, talk radio doesn't lend itself easily to discursive analysis. Speak over 30 seconds on a talk show and the "Snooze" button sounds and the host interrupts. You can understand why, because talk radio is designed to be part entertainment and all action. It was, after all, a means to get away from the old format of "talking heads" that typically induced terrible ratings. Small audience, low ratings, few advertisers, no program. That's the way it is, and that probably is the way it should be. Within that understanding, commercial talk radio and tv have been a huge boon to public participation in "public" debate. That is probably why liberal public radio has tried to imitate it.

To be clear, for someone like me who loves newspapers and magazines, even when I hate them, talk radio (even when I love it!) is not a sufficient substitute for long interesting articles in major dailies and weeklies.

But it is "A" substitute ,and some of its practitioners are gutsy when other media, including supposedly conservative newspapers and magazines, are cowardly. And it gets results. It is needed. It is one of the few major safety valves conservative opinion has left in America. The proposition that the left should not tolerate it appears to me to border on the totalitarian in motive (witting or not) and the cheapest politics in practice.

Discovery Institute President Bruce Chapman has a column in today's Seattle Post-Intelligencer on the Fairness Doctrine:

Read it below the fold!

Wouldn't you think an atrocity in which little children's heads were cut off by al Qaeda would merit coverage by American news media? Especially if the reporters had been told about it? Especially if a different atrocity that was supposed to show sectarian conflict was reported, only to be proved a fabrication?

A public investigation surely seems warranted. At some point the American people have to ask more probing questions about the quality of news they are getting and what the sources are that the US media are employing--figuratively and literally. And if the news executives back in the States have integrity they will want to fire people who are not doing their jobs properly.

The besetting temptation of American media on foreign policy is to serve up over-simplified accounts of overseas developments and to follow the conventional script that already is in the reader's or viewer's mind. (Foreign media do it to us, too. One such trope is that America is such a violent, gun-crazed society that one dare not walk down most city streets at night. Every story of a killing in the U.S. supposedly proves this point.) The more I have traveled around the world, and having served abroad, the more I regret this tendency to mislead by wrong-headed generalities. I see it now in Iraq, in Russia and Mexico. The recent developments in Turkey suggest that the same cliched, un-nuanced coverage often obtains there, too. As an excellent corrective, read this fine article from the Turkish Daily Times by our firend, Mustafa Akyol. Oddly, Christians who are badly discriminated against in Turkey (they cannot even build a church or operate a seminary) might do better with a nominally Islamic government than a nominally "secular" regime that oppresses all religious groups. In any case, the political story in Turkey is not as easily understood as many news accounts suggest.

Am I the only one to think that the estimable New York Times Baghdad Bureau chief, John F. Burns, may hold opinions about the Iraq War that are at variance with the editorial policies of his employer? I have suspected so for some time. Burns' stories have a texture of close familiarity that are lacking in the ideological emissions from Times Square. Now the Sunday online Times carries a video of an interview that Burns gave the Canadian Broadcast Channel on "The Battle for Baghdad," and it says several remarkable things.

Click here to watch all three short installments of the video series, "Battle for Baghdad".

Among them, Burns suggests that, yes indeed, there is--and apparently was--a tactical alliance between Saddam's Baathists and al Qaeda and that, further, some two billion dollars of Baathist funds help fund al Qaeda even now.

In the course of three short installments, the interview also indicates that Iraqis, both Sunni and Shia, want the American troops to stay on to help stabilize the country. This is the "only way" that stability can be achieved in Iraq, Burns says. The alternative is a civil war "that will bring in the neighbors," including not only Iran, but also Saudi Arabia and even Turkey, destabilizing the whole Middle East. If Iraq has a full blown civil war, King Abdullah in Jordan may fall, and if he does, Israel will be in greater danger.

When it comes to the Surge, then, there is "no choice but to try and make it work." Burns obviously is critical of much of the war and the way it has been waged, but he still comes to the conclusion that the U.S. should not give up.

Such counsel, ladies and gentlemen, is wise, but it is not the wisdom of the editorial page of the New York Times. It is also not the thrust of reporting by the MSM or the political posture of the Democrats in Washington.

It sounds like such a nice idea and it really does appear useful at first, but Wikipedia turns out to have a fatal flaw: While you can edit material on its listings, malicious persons can change it at their leisure. Worse, some editor you can't find is able to sabotage even the best efforts to make corrections.

That has happened to Discovery Institute thanks to an editor who calls himself "FeloniousMonk" (get it? it's a pun on the great jazzman Theloniuus Monk). The pen name is shared by a number of people on the Internet, so this one clearly is in hiding. But he doesn't shirk from making sure that a factually untruthful picture of Discovery Institute is posted on Wikipedia, no matter how we try to correct it.

But we are not the only ones complaining. I notice most recently that the scientist Douglas Hofstadter, author of "Godel, Escher, Bach," among other things, has this exchange with an interviewer (Deborah Solomon) in the Sunday New York Times Magazine:

(Q) "Your entry in Wikipedia says that your work has inspired many students to begin careers in computing and artificial intelligence."
(A) "I have no interest in artificial intelligence. The entry is filled with inaccuracies, and it kind of depresses me."
(Q) "So, fix it."
(A) "The next day someone will fix it back."

Moral: you can't trust anything on Wikipedia. Felonies against the truth don't get prosecuted there.

This Just In: A Rasmussen poll shows that 25% of visitors found errors on Wikipedia. Imagine how high the number would be if they polled people mentioned in Wikipedia items. Sinbad (the entertainer) was amused recently to read on Wikipedia that he was dead!

It is hard for people who live in an opinion balloon to see that they do. All they see is what's inside the balloon. The current case is the relentless, daily media and political assault on American prosecution of the war in Iraq, and, really, all parts of the war on terrorists. The innuendo, the mood, the leitmotif of every single day's newspaper and broadcast is that America is in a hopeless war in which our very involvement is both imprudent and immoral, and that Americans' rights (thanks to the Patriot Act, etc.) are being undermined, as are the human rights of accused terrorists. There is no satisfaction in these quarters when criminal terrorists are captured, tried and convicted. Those are small stories and almost insignificant. The same goes for U.S. achievements in battle in Iraq and Afghanistan. The major success in Somalia has been nearly ignored.

And there is no alternative scenario. Once we stop going after terrorists, they, presumably will just go away.

One of the oddities is that when American troops kill terrorists the new stories sometimes only refer to them as "Iraqis", or even "civilians", or maybe "suspected terrorists." As mentioned before in this space, days when there is no news of American deaths in Baghdad should be noteworthy; but they are ignored.

Ours is a civilization increasingly manipulated by people on the cultural left who disapprove of it profoundly. They have support in the media, academia, the foundations, the courts and even the bureaucracy. But they are all living in a balloon, a kind of malign Truman Show. They are not willing to confront the real challenge--well-funded and varied forms of Islamist extremism--so they turn on their own government and society, a target they can't miss. Their government and fellow Americans don't fight back the way the real enemy does. So, if you lack the resolve and courage to criticize the true foe, criticize the people who do fight them. It's like a scene where neighbors attack the firefighters trying to put out a house fire, or the occasional incidence of swimmers heedlessly grabbing hold of a lifeguard who is trying to rescue people in the water. Odd, perverse, but it does happen.

Senator Joe Lieberman, Independent of Connecticut, alluded to this perversity in a speech just made to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (brought to my attention by Peter Wehner in the White House). Contrary to his recent press treatment, Sen. Lieberman has long been a staunch Democrat, and a real partisan when he ran for Vice President with Al Gore. But we are at war. He knows it. He is not confused about the difference between the fireman and the fire.

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism. There is something profoundly wrong when there is so much distrust of our intelligence community that some Americans doubt the plain and ominous facts about the threat to us posed by Iran. And there is something profoundly wrong when, in the face of attacks by radical Islam, we think we can find safety and stability by pulling back, by talking to and accommodating our enemies, and abandoning our friends and allies. Some of this wrong-headed thinking about the world is happening because we're in a political climate where, for many people, when George Bush says "yes," their reflex reaction is to say "no." That is unacceptable."

When Hillary Clinton made a funny eye gesture and repeated a question from someone in an Iowa audience this weekend, the media jumped all over it, and her. She later complained, ""You guys keep telling me, 'Lighten up, be funny,'" yet when she does, they attack her. (Howard Kurtz' account in the Washington Post is here.) She is absolutely right about that. The media can't allow politicians to kid, to tease, and to speak with spontaneity. All jokes must be rehearsed and examined for problems by advisors, before they can be tried out. Reporters will not allow any little mistake or secondary meaning.

These are the same reporters who complain that celebrity politicos like Sen. Clinton don't make themselves available to the media except in set-piece conversations where they are very much on their guard--while pretending (as they must) to be at ease. As the old Hollywood adage about acting goes, "Just be natural. When you can fake that, you're a pro."

Already John McCain, who made his reputation with the media by his informality and accessibility back in the 2000 presidential primaries, is finding that he has to watch himself more these days. Reporters loved his maverick role then; he was the in-house Republican critic. Now he is backing President Bush on Iraq (most of the time), so they don't like him any more and will be looking for opportunities to find a verbal misstep, any little quip that can be twisted or taken out of context. You, the reader, can watch for it; it will come. If some trigger-happy interest group's leader can be found to denounce him and claim the joke "wasn't funny" and was in fact an "insult" to somebody somewhere, then the media have a new "gotcha!" trophy. The off-hand quip will be paraded as a supposed insight into the true character of the man, etc., etc.

The reason we cannot allow politicians to let their hair down and be amusing in front of reporters is the same reason that we have packaged discussion on serious issues, instead of sincere rumination. Politicians know that whatever they say can be subjected to invidious interpretation by rivals and by the accommodating media. Some marginal observation suddenly becomes tomorrow's headline. Again, the false assumption of the news is that the subject on the politician's mind is not the important one. It isn't even his true view. Rather some slip of the tongue--or something that can be construed as a slip--reveals his real purpose.

This is nonsense. Ask yourself whether you could be fairly judged by your off-hand quips, comments or thoughts.

Ronald Reagan was an amusing raconteur and his stories usually had a bite. But by the time he was running for president for real in 1980 his managers had to keep him away from informal situations. The same with George W. Bush. Ditto former Vice President Mondale--a wit much appreciated in his Senate years--and even former V.P. Al Gore, who in private is not at all the stuffed shirt of his political image. Hillary of course, has been totally swathed in a kind of publicity burkha ever since she was First Lady.

It isn't just the candidates and office holders that are given an inappropriate examination that usually misses the truths in plain sight in favor of the supposed illumination provided by a gaffe or side-comment. In the realm of serious ideas, we are not learning real news from the media much of the time, but instead seem to be following a script developed by editors and mouthed by anchormen and columnists. For several years, the script has been that the war on terror is really about whether the US was right to go into Iraq and whether our presence there is not perhaps the cause of terrorists' activities. This script is spelled out as the likely explanation in a number of dispatches that focus on Iraqis' weirdness (message: we should not be there) and the myriad problems in the war (there were no problems in the American Revolution, the Civil War or World War II, of course). We learn at length about the failure of our friends, the Israelis, to live up to the highest possible standards of civilized warfare (while their opponents are treated merely as a force of nature). Worst, there is very little news about the development of terrorists in places where no one could possibly blame the US (e.g., Bangladesh, as Yehudit Barsky reports here today). We don't learn about such stories because they seem to dispute the script that the US is not just trying to stop the advance of terrorism, but is somehow, as a result, the cause of it. To the media, the US is guilty of thinking too highly of its goals. But to the media, if something goes on that doesn't directly involve the US (much African news, for another example), then it isn't even important! Who's the real "ethno-centrist"?

There are plenty of stories about the global nature of the terror threat waiting to be written. Plenty of people in the know would talk with a reporter whom they didn't suspect of trying to expose the official for some misconduct (think Libby indictment). I believe that such stories are downplayed because they would tend to validate a very different script than that favored by the cynical media.

In short, studied humorlessness and cynicism are part of a mindset that sees the media's main job as policing the political class, and doing so as adversaries. Finding fault with elected officials especially is more significant a purpose than letting the public know what those officials actually think and what actually is facing America.

The above is a generalization. There are exceptions. Certain politicians not only are allowed to be informal, they are lionized (as Sen. McCain was in 2000 and Sen. Obama is today). Of course, that is precisely because they fit the media script of the moment. There are certain exceptional and serious reporters, too, who try to cover the real news. Since, as a result, they are badgered and second-guessed by others in their profession and rarely get the professional awards and recognition, they deserve especial gratitude from the public.

So, like I said, I am making a generalization that I think has validity. Please, Mr. Reporter, please don't jump on something I just wrote and distort it. Please. Please!

Discovery Institute fights against the conceit that only a secularized culture can have a legitimate public life. Indeed, we would argue that people of serious religious perspectives not only have a full, long-recognized right to contribute to the leadership of political culture (broadly defined), but also that they often provide intellectual insights beyond the reach of the culturally deracinated secularist. In consequence of this stand we find ourselves described by foes on the Darwinist evolution debate as a "Christian" or "religious" think tank. That is really an ignorant, philistine description, though one that always amuses those Discovery fellows who are Jewish or non-religious.

We do weigh many issues in the scales of ethics that have been employed for centuries in the Judeo-Christian world. We do so without apology. The standards are sound even without reference to religion. In staking out this ground, we are constantly intrigued by a number of brilliantly edited magazines that look at politics and culture through a religious lens. The wonderful thing about such magazines as Touchstone, First Things, Crisis, World, Christianity Today and Commentary is that within their respective circles of writers, one actually finds more diversity of religious backgrounds--and more true tolerance--than, say, at The Nation or The New York Times magazine, and more relevance to lasting consequences of public policy than one encounters at certain increasingly rudderless conservative journals.

Commentary is an example that stands out in this group of magazines because its Jewishness is ethnic as much as religious, and because it has an utterly unique history and record of achievements. (One of our own senior fellows, David Berlinski, has been responsible for some of those achievements.) A new account of Commentary's history by Nathan Abrams obviously doesn't do the subject justice, if Benjamin Balint is to be believed. And my own familiarity with the magazine over the decades suggests that Balint is to be believed, indeed. His review of Abrams' book, running in the new issue of The Weekly Standard, has real authority.

Balint explicitly asserts that "Commentary showed that there is no contradiction between ethnic particularities and participation in the larger culture," and that the path to full participation need not fall into the trap of cultural relativism or "multiculturalism". Abrams apparently doesn't come close to grasping that point.

Overall, Balint's fine review suggests that the full story of one of America's most under-recognized cultural resources--Commentary magazine--has still to be written.

What they found out is, not very far. I had to learn this lesson myself, I regret, as I've dealt with the evolution issue in the past couple of years. When the MSM have an agenda, you either agree to validate it or you stay away from them. They are not going to let you represent your own views responsibly.

Unfortunately, some foreign policy neo-conservatives who probably think themselves sophisticates just got taken in by Vanity Fair in a pre-election hit piece on the Iraq War. As soon as I heard about it on NPR Saturday (where it was presented with breathless urgency, of course) I figured out that the neo-cons in question (Richard Perle, Ken Adelman and David Frum, among others) had been bamboozled into doing interviews on the war with the the understanding (now betrayed) that the Vanity Fair issue with the resulting article wouldn't come out until January. In monthly magazine scheduling, that normally means issues with the "January" article would not hit newsstands and mailboxes until early December. But this is early November, isn't it?

Why would the magazine do a promotional story a full month ahead of time? Well, because it was a way to influence the election and get the magazine's name some major publicity, that's why. It really is funny, in a sad way, that men as well-schooled in politics and media as Perle and Frum were taken in by bogus promises made to them by the magazine. But, the magazine editors probably are saying (tongue in cheek): We only said the January issue wouldn't be out until December, we didn't say we wouldn't publicize it before then! Ha, ha, ha! Gotcha!

The neo-cons should have anticipated as much. Now their reported criticisms of Iraq war tactics are not being treated as constructive, but as crass political desertion that can be used to defeat candidates they themselves probably favor in Tuesday's election. They are now protesting in National Review Online that they not only were misrepresented, but also taken out of context by the Vanity Fair leak. And they seem to have a case. But, again, they should have thought about this ahead of time. Vanity Fair HATES conservatives and has no scruples at all about abusing the trust of such people. Why should the interviewees have expected otherwise?

I do sympathize with the neo-cons who inadvertently lent themselves to this bit of election campaign trickery. They thought they were contributing to a deliberative review of Iraq policy that is probably not only desirable but inevitable before the new Congress takes office--regardless of how the election comes out. The trouble is, the review needs to be conducted with clear eyes, and not in the political fog of political war that exists up to the closure of the polls.

America cannot abandon Iraq any more than it can abandon the war on terror as a whole. Of course people feel tired of it all. The terrorists may even feel tired, some of them. But reality is not about feelings.

Politics sometimes is about feelings, however. And the media are almost entirely about feelings these days.

There has been some amazing political journalistic chicanery in election coverage and some truly inspired political public relations activities on the left. The conservatives in general are not up to the game.

I close with John Bunyan, Pilgrim's Progress (1678):

"When they were got out of the wilderness, they presently saw a town before them, and the name of that town is Vanity; and at the town there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair. At this fair are all such merchandise sold as houses, lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures....lives, blood, bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious stones, and what not."

What were the nice neo-con gentlemen doing in a place like that, anyhow?

The work of Discovery Institute and its fellows is varied, and so are the blogs that report on aspects of it--but not diverse enough to cover many of the exciting subjects encompassed in our mission to "make a positive vision of the future practical."

You get foreign policy and defense news from John Wohlstetter's Letter from the Capitol (letterfromthecapitol.com), technology and democracy news and commentary on Disco-Tech (disco-tech.org), media critique about evolution on EvolutionNews.org, intelligent design commentary on idthefuture.com, bioethics coverage on Second Hand Smoke (wesleyjsmith.com/blog/), and Russian and Eastern Europe reporting from the Real Russia Project at Russiablog.org.

Discoveryblog.org will cover the rest, including the views of institute officers and fellows on transportation, regionalism, economics, politics, current cultural developments, and developments of the institute itself. The writer, as is customary, is the only one responsible for the blogs written, of course.

I personally am delighted at this development because it provides an outlet for my own opinions, which extend to subjects not always embraced by DI projects. I also will be able to share news promptly about the institute, its people and events that otherwise might have to wait for the printed publication, Discovery Views. We can't manage a thread for comments, but you all somehow find ways to reach us about the other blogs, and I'm sure the same will be true here.

Thanks, meanwhile, for noticing.

Bruce Chapman, President, Discovery Institute