Thoughts from the BBC.

[Via reader John Kavanaugh]

Thoughts from the BBC.

[Via reader John Kavanaugh]

You know, what I’d like to see is some dirt from whistle-blowers within the New York Times organization.

Of course, what would be most interesting is how Bill Keller or Pinch Sulzberger (who’ve never been on any ballot in my memory, when it comes to who I want to trust to declassify information) respond.

At long last, Ward Churchill is on his way to the unemployment office (I wish–I’m sure that some wacko college is just slavering to pick him up, if he can just burnish his native American creds).

I wish that reporters would call his lawyers on this kind of nonsense, though:

“We’re going to a real court because we can trust juries to do the right thing,” said Churchill’s attorney David Lane. “Churchill says this all completely bogus. Let’s see if a jury and a Federal District Court agrees with the committee. Or see if everything that’s happened here is retaliation for Ward Churchill’s First Amendment free speech relating to 9/11.”

…When his essay was brought to light in January 2005, Gov. Bill Owens, state lawmakers and relatives of Sept. 11, 2001 victims in New York immediately denounced it. University officials concluded Churchill could not be fired for the essay, but in March 2005 they launched an investigation into allegations of plagiarism and other research misconduct.

“A committee last year began to look at his writings including his essay on 9/11,” said DiStefano. “We determined his writings were protected under the First Amendment. However, during that process there were allegations of research misconduct.”

Instead of wrapping himself in a flag, Chuch has wrapped himself in the First Amendment, and thus despoiled it. And unfortunately, the university has aided and abetted this misconception.

There are no First Amendment issues at stake here, at all. Churchill has the right to say whatever he wants, but the First Amendment does not grant him the right to remain a university professor (any more than it protects the New York Times from prosecution for violating the law regarding disclosure of secrets, should Alberto Gonzales grow a pair and decide to prosecute Bill Keller and company).

Contra the findings of the university committee, Churchill has no “First Amendment right” to say whatever he wants and suffer no repercussions. If they wanted to fire him for his “little Eichmanns” statement, they’d be perfectly within their constitutional rights to do so. The only thing preventing it is his contract that goes along with tenure.

Fortunately, while that contract does in fact allow him to say the vile things he chooses to say, it doesn’t extend so far as to protect him against his repeated and egregious acts of academic fraud. I hope that this case does go to trial, so that both he and his attorney can waste their time and money in fighting a pointless case, in futile support of a truly disgusting human being.

If only he’d released this version. Iowahawk has a rough draft of Bill Keller’s letter explaining his publishing decision:

It’s an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press. Who are the editors of The New York Times (or the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Jihadi Accountant and other publications that also ran the banking story) to disregard the wishes of the President and his appointees? I’ll tell you who we are, pal. We are journalists – the people whom the inventors of this country specifically appointed to be the protectors of this little experiment we call the “human race” against the privations of out-of-control Texas Oil Nazis. And if you check your Constitution, I don’t think you’ll see anything in there about the right to clog up the press’s inbox with your stupid Rush Limbaugh talking points.

Thomas James (and Dr. Sanity) says that the media are treating the American public like children. Or irascible excitable red-state rednecks. Or perhaps they don’t make a distinction. Of course, the funny thing is that the Canadian press is doing the same to the Canadian people.

[Update on Monday evening]

Alan K. Henderson has further thoughts.

Dan Rather has finally been fired from SeeBS. One can only think that the long delay was a way to save face, and hope that everyone had forgotten what a fiasco it was.

He’s still in denial, of course:

Rather has said several times that “my best work is still ahead of me.” He is described by friends as hurt and puzzled by the attitude of CBS management.

Yup, I don’t care what anyone says, those Emperor’s new duds looked great!

It had to be a slow newsday, with a reporter who hasn’t been paying much attention, to generate a thumbsucker like this: “Politics is clouding message of antiwar activist Sheehan.”

When Cindy Sheehan burst on the national scene, it was as an aggrieved mother whose son had died in Iraq. Plainspoken and unscripted, Sheehan delivered an easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority.

OK, so what is the “easily relatable story that gave her a kind of moral authority”? Our intrepid reporter can’t be bothered to say. Just how does one derive “moral authority” from a dead son, anyway? Can someone explain this to me?

She deserved, and to the degree that she actually mourns her son (questionable, at this point–if there’s anyone of whom it could be said, in Ann Coulter’s much-criticized words, that they are “enjoying” a death, it is Mother Sheehan–she was obviously having the time of her life when she got arrested at the White House), continues to deserve our pity, but that doesn’t give her “moral authority,” absolute (to use Maureen Dowd’s silly adjective) or otherwise.

Since then, some have questioned whether Sheehan has strayed too far politically.

Gee, do ya think? What cave has this reporter been in?

And in not describing the “easily relatable story” (I guess we’re just supposed to infer it–“My son died in Iraq, you have to listen to my opinions about the war, and the war-mongering, lying terroristic Bush administration”), he can avoid telling the other side of the story. That is, she had already met with Bush once and was demanding a revisit with her Crawford histrionics, she couldn’t be bothered to put a stone on her son’s grave, her husband and son disowned her over her loony antics, etc. None of that can be found in this story. No, it’s just a noble woman who suffered a grievous loss, and who (in consorting with dictators and making common cause with the monsters who are actually responsible for killing her son) may have gone “a little too far.”

Sickening.

Instapundit has an on-the-spot report of the brutal storm in northwest Florida. From the Piggly Wiggly in Apalachicola.

It’s Katrina redux! With profiteering!

Well, not really.

Thomas Lifson points out demonstrations in Spain in which the media seem to have no interest. I wonder why? Oh, yeah:

Something between 200,000 and one million people took to the streets of Madrid (see photo) for a demonstration against appeasement of terrorists.

No news value there, I guess.