Read the article at businessandmedia.org

The evidence came in the form of more than a decade’s worth of e-mails from within the global warming cabal. They were published online after a hacker hit the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit. The e-mails appeared on the Internet on Thursday, and the revelations within them quickly became scandalous.

Revkin covered the scandal, already predictably dubbed “ClimateGate,” in the Times on Friday and has been blogging and “tweeting” about it, too. His body of work on the story further solidifies Revkin’s reputation as a journalist with an agenda who can’t be trusted to fairly report the facts about the environmental community.

The bias began in the headline, “Hacked E-Mail Is New Fodder for Climate Dispute.” It avoided the substance of the scandal — what the e-mails actually say — and downplayed it to nothing more than just another he-said-she-said debate among global warming alarmists and critics.

Revkin took the same tack in the lead. The story as his biased mind saw it wasn’t that scientists have been conspiring to “hide the decline” in temperatures that would undermine the theory of global warming but that the e-mails had given “skeptics” new ammunition to make that case.

Six paragraphs into the story, Revkin kicked his spin machine into overdrive. “The evidence pointing to a growing human contribution to global warming is so widely accepted that the hacked material is unlikely to erode the overall argument,” he wrote.

In short, he dismissed the evidence rather than reporting it. While he couldn’t ignore the story because it’s too big, he did the next best thing — tell his readers the news doesn’t matter.

Revkin also tried to win sympathy for climate scientists. “Some of the correspondence portrays the scientists as feeling under siege by the skeptics’ camp,” he wrote. Plus his repeated use of the loaded word “skeptics,” a favorite tactic of environmental reporters, cast critics of global warming in a negative light.

The only time Revkin played the role of objective reporter was when he cited the spin of his friends in the global warming community. He repeated, without comment and with a straight face, this nugget from Michael Mann, a professor at Pennsylvania State University:

He said the choice of words by his colleague was poor but noted that scientists often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem, “and not something secret.”

Got that? A trick isn’t a trick if scientists do it; it’s a solution. Mann seems destined for a future in politics — and Revkin for a job as his flack.

Revkin also has been spinning the story on his blog and Twitter account. His blog post on Friday emphasized the illegal behavior of hackers. Revkin called the e-mails “purloined documents” that were “uploaded surreptitiously” to a pro-climate blog, and he assumed a self-righteous stance.

“The documents appear to have been acquired illegally and contain all manner of private information and statements that were never intended for the public eye, so they won’t be posted here,” he wrote — as if the Times hasn’t published illegally obtained news before.

Blogger Ed Driscoll aptly called that sentence “a staggering moment of hypocrisy” on Revkin’s part. Michael Goldfarb of The Weekly Standard added: “If Revkin’s position is that he will not reproduce publicly available e-mails simply because they put the authors — whom he happens to agree with and whose increasingly questionable agenda he happens to support — in a bad light, then he ought to consider another career.”

On Twitter, meanwhile, Revkin turned to his global warming buddies to add context to the e-mails. Why bother spinning the evidence himself when he can just link to their spin?

And when labeling the release of the e-mails as a case of “cyber terrorism,” Revkin included a hashtag for the liberal blog Daily Kos in his tweet. He clearly wants the spin to make its way into the left’s online echo chamber.

The other angle that Revkin has addressed only in passing thus far is the fact that his close connections in the global warming community make him a part of the story. E-mails to, from and about Revkin were part of the online document dump. Power Line dug into some of those notes.

Add it all together, and it’s clear that Revkin has no desire to objectively report the news about the e-mails. His agenda is to limit the damage, and the Times is giving him multiple forums to do it.

“I’m thinking “hide the decline” could be a slogan for a lot of folks right about now,” blogger Glenn Reynolds wrote at Instapundit. Revkin and the Times certainly are in decline. They’re just not very good at hiding it yet.

Because the Florida paper’s “newsroom is not unionized and has lower salaries.”

According to Reuters, “the New York Times Co informed non-union employees that it would stop contributions to their pensions at the end of the year. The company plans to instead contribute 3 percent of non-union employees’ salaries each year to their 401K plans.”  Reuters adds, “The New York Times Co has experienced declines in advertising and mounting debt that have forced it to cut costs and sell assets.”

Certainly, it would be foolhardy to expect anything but a decline in profits for the Times.  All newspapers are struggling these days as a result of free news on the Internet; and the Times is now up against an ever-growing tidal wave of grassroots conservatism.  As the number of progressives and the uninformed shrinks, so does New York Times readership.

But of course, the Times has never seen it that way.  Take, for example, this article by Edward L. Glaeser.  In this article, Glaeser argues that state taxes on millionaires are bad—but only because they make millionaires move to different states.  Instead of state taxes on millionaires, the federal government should tax millionaires even more—because that way the “rich” can’t escape to a different state.

Glaeser writes, “Taxing the rich always has costs, like reduced entrepreneurship and hours of work, but those costs may be worth paying to achieve greater equality.”  And also: “It is perfectly consistent to be in favor of soaking the rich at the national level but to be against such policies at the state or local level. If New York taxes its financiers heavily, it can be sure that Greenwich will grow.”

On October 12, 2009, David M. Herszenhorn and Robert Pear wrote an article about taxes on high-cost health insurance plans.  In the beginning, they point out critics’ views, including that such taxes would hurt the middle class.  But later on, they only cite one group of experts who happen to favor the higher taxes.  They write, “The tax, a provision of the bill to be voted on Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee, is one of the few remaining proposals under consideration by Congress that budget experts say could lead directly to a reduction in health care spending over the long term, by prompting employers and employees to buy cheaper insurance.”  In fact, the article seems to favor the tax so much that it comes as a shock to read that this bill “Republicans and Democrats alike” support actually has a strong Democratic opposition: “At least 173 House Democrats, two-thirds of the party caucus, have signed a letter to Ms. Pelosi voicing opposition to the insurance tax.”  Why wasn’t that at the beginning of the article, again?  Herszenhom and Pear mention the opposition halfway through the article, and then go back to quoting all the nice things Max Baucus’ aides have to say about the tax.

In January of this year, Times writer Steven Greenhouse strongly defended both unions and Hilda Solis.  In the article, Greenhouse implies that Republicans were guilty of harassing Solis, who “took pains to avoid any contention or debate,” “calmly deflected [Republican] jabs,” and “talked abut her humble roots and her ability to identify with struggling workers.”  And why would the Republicans attack Solis?  Well, Greenhouse writes, it’s because of her support for the Employee Free Choice Act, which Republicans hate “because it would enable unions to add millions of workers over the next few years and would largely eliminate use of the secret ballot to determine whether workers want a union… The bill would give employees at a workplace the right to gain union recognition as soon as a majority of them sign cards saying they want to join a specific union.”  In other words, it’s because those evil Republicans hate it when nice Democratic women make life easier for the poor workers, right?

Throughout the article, the Times writer complains about Republicans seeking to “trip [Solis] up,” while also focusing on things like the Democrats who “invited her to praise labor unions for how they have helped lift wages and preserve the middle class.”

Also in January, Times writer Paul Krugman wrote glowingly of “public”—by that, he meant “government”—investment, stating “We need stimulus fast, and there’s a limited supply of ‘shovel-ready’ projects that can be started soon enough to deliver an economic boost any time soon.”  He later on complains about those Republicans again, standing in the way of more taxes: “Make 40% of the package tax cuts, they’ll demand 100%. Then they’ll start the thing about how you can’t cut taxes on people who don’t pay taxes (with only income taxes counting, of course) and demand that the plan focus on the affluent,” he writes.

A March article by that same Steven Greenhouse praised unions again, calling the United Automobile Workers union “a much humbled but still proud union” that was “reluctant to ask others for help.”  He quotes the UAW union president John Sweeney saying, “The way the U.A.W. has been treated is a disgrace,” and notes that once again, those meanie Republicans have been standing in the way of union progress.

It really is fitting that after all of this flagrant support for progressive tax and union policies, the Times has to move to Florida.  Now the real test will be if the Times continues supporting all the policies that forced the move in the first place.

“The piece is long and has the appearance, amid many pointless digressions, of substance,” Noah Pollak noted in Commentary magazine. “But there is almost nothing to it — certainly nothing warranting being printed in a reputable newspaper.”

Pollak outlined numerous qualifying phrases throughout the piece, including “they did not know” and “it was not clear.” The article also cited a State Department official — yet another anonymous source — who said U.S. diplomats are not aware of any bribes by Blackwater.

As a responsible journalist, on the other hand, Pollak went straight to the source and cited him by name. Pollak interviewed Cofer Black, a Blackwater employee at the time who the Times said worked out a compensation agreement with the families of Iraqi victims in the incident.

That’s not what Black told Pollak: “I never confronted Erik Prince or any other Blackwater official regarding any allegations of bribing Iraqi officials and was unaware of any plot or guidance for Blackwater to bribe Iraqi officials.”

Anonymous sources should not be abandoned altogether because sometimes protecting a source’s identity is essential to breaking important news. But as granted by the Times and other outlets these days, anonymity is often nothing more than a shield designed to hide a liberal agenda.

Such behavior rightly makes readers less trusting of any story that is anonymously sourced.

From the New York Times

THE TIMES published an especially embarrassing correction on July 22, fixing seven errors in a single article — an appraisal of Walter Cronkite, the CBS anchorman famed for his meticulous reporting. The newspaper had wrong dates for historic events; gave incorrect information about Cronkite’s work, his colleagues and his program’s ratings; misstated the name of a news agency, and misspelled the name of a satellite.

“Wow,” said Arthur Cooper, a reader from Manhattan. “How did this happen?”

The short answer is that a television critic with a history of errors wrote hastily and failed to double-check her work, and editors who should have been vigilant were not.

But a more nuanced answer is that even a newspaper like The Times, with layers of editing to ensure accuracy, can go off the rails when communication is poor, individuals do not bear down hard enough, and they make assumptions about what others have done. Five editors read the article at different times, but none subjected it to rigorous fact-checking, even after catching two other errors in it. And three editors combined to cause one of the errors themselves.

The Times is not alone when it comes to sloppy reporting.  As papers have cut back staff and tried in vain to compete on internet time they have found themselves publishing stories that have not been proof read or fact checked at all leading to far more errors than before.

What is interesting with the Cronkite story is that Hoyt said that it was written by someone who has a history of errors.  And yet the editors neglected to review her story with a fine tooth comb.  Also if Stanley has a history of errors why is she still employed by the Times?  What does that say about their standards?

Crossposted at Accuracy in Media

The premise of the show is that a team of individuals goes around the globe to confront and attempt to bring to justice terrorists and international war criminals who live in plain sight, yet seem to be escaping justice. In the premier episode, the target was Najmuddin Faraj Ahmed, also known as NAJMUDDIN FARAJ AHMEDMullah Krekar. Krekar, by various accounts, either started or inspired the terrorist organization based in Iraq, Ansar Al Islam (Helpers of Islam), described on the show’s website as “a group which has targeted U.S.-led coalition forces as well as Iraqi and non-Iraqi civilians.” It describes Krekar as allegedly having been complicit in the 2003 bombing of the United Nation’s mission in Iraq, and “training and recruiting foreign fighters to serve as snipers and suicide bombers.” Also, Krekar was convicted in Jordan for his role in terrorism and his links to al Qaeda.

The show’s cast includes a retired Navy Seal and a retired Green Beret, who organize the surveillance and confrontation of their target. In addition, the cast includes an NBC News producer and David Crane, a former international war crimes prosecutor. According to the New York Times, in a preview of the show, “Crane praised the series for tackling cases of possible criminals who are ‘living normal lives under the protection of a domestic law and are trying to avoid justice.’” He told the Times that “We’re just here to seek justice for people that have been so victimized by international terrorists.”

Here is where the Times has a problem: “It is the ‘we’-the cooperation between the former intelligence officers and NBC News-that has raised red flags among a number of veteran journalists, including some within NBC. They say they find it troubling that ‘The Wanted’ blurs the boundaries between government agents and supposedly impartial journalists.”

The Times also compared the show to “To Catch a Predator,” “the ‘Dateline NBC’ franchise that showed police officers and journalists working in concert to catch possible sex offenders when they tried to meet minors. Some have even pre-emptively labeled the series ‘To Catch a Terrorist.’”

And they worry that the network’s pursuit of these characters could hamper the role of law enforcement officials in putting these people away.

A guest column in the New York Daily News calls the show “outright dangerous,” and says NBC should be ashamed. The author of the column, Lydia Khalil, a former counterterrorism analyst for the New York City Police Department and currently a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that Mullah Krekar is “by all accounts, a marginalized and constricted figure.” Even if that was true, we shouldn’t forget or forgive his past, which I will get to shortly.

And the Washington Post-owned Slate.com really took offense. Slate TV critic Troy Patterson blasted the show for its content, its glitzy style, and its manner of journalism. “The staging of conversations,” says Patterson, “just for instance-render The Wanted inadmissible as journalism. Despite some others-frenetic pandering to base instincts, risible action-flick camerawork-the show nonetheless fails to amuse. If it’s not news and not entertainment, then what might it be?”

Some of these criticisms are justified, in terms of lines being crossed, or blurred. But speaking of lines crossed, what about how a network like NBC’s cable news network MSNBC has turned over its evening line-up to a series of shows completely biased in favor of the current Administration, and so hostile to the previous one? This, at a time when NBC’s parent company, General Electric, used a loophole to get the government to guarantee close to a hundred billion dollars of its debt, according to a recent report by ProPublica. “The company [GE] did not initially qualify for the program under which the government sought to unfreeze credit markets by guaranteeing debt sold by banking firms,” cited the report, which also was carried by the rival Washington Post. “But regulators soon loosened the eligibility requirements, in part because of behind-the-scenes appeals from GE.”

And what about the New York Times working with government agents to expose classified government programs designed to track al-Qaeda financial transactions, or to intercept their communications?

While “The Wanted” has potential journalistic problems, the first episode at least provided a great service, and did so in a way that was entertaining, and even compelling. It showed the best of U.S. servicemen, who had recently served for and fought for their country, and who helped to liberate Iraq. The person they were pursuing, Mullah Krekar, is a convicted terrorist-convicted in Jordan in 2004-who was allowed to live freely in Norway, though all the branches of Norway’s government wanted him sent back to Iraq to face justice. Their laws prevented them from sending him to a country where he might be executed or tortured.

It showed how Iraqis, especially those from Kurdistan, viewed the positive changes that the U.S. had brought to Iraq; namely, freedom from Saddam Hussein’s reign of terror, a measure of freedom and democracy, and a functioning justice system.

How does the military’s Special Ops community view this show? According to an article in the Washington Times, many of them are pleased. “‘Initially, they were very suspicious of [the show] because they thought it was Hollywood trying to make something dramatic out of this situation,’ said one person in the Department of Defense’s special operations community who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of his position.

“They thought these guys were going to be out bagging and tagging folks and violating all kinds of laws and it was going to turn into a fiasco….Everyone I’ve talked to said that it was well done, didn’t reveal a lot of our trade secrets-if you will-and left me feeling that somebody’s doing something about a problem we all know exists and, frankly, we can’t do anything about,’ he added.”

Through a lengthy interview, “The Wanted” exposed Krekar for the bloody terrorist that he is. Normally, what is found in this interview can only be found on MEMRI.org, the great website that monitors and translates much of the hateful rhetoric coming out of the Middle East.

Too often, such as when Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was captured and his mug shot shown, it became fodder for Saturday Night Live, and treated as a joke. Anyone who saw Mullah Krekar being interviewed on “The Wanted” was watching the mind and face of a terrorist, someone who is perfectly willing to kill for his twisted ideology. This was the best part of “The Wanted”-the interview with Mullah Krekar. The interview was conducted by several members of “The Wanted” team:

Question from “The Wanted” team:

What kinds of weapons and tactics are acceptable for a Muslim to carry out Jihad?

Mullah Krekar:

From shoes to an atomic bomb. They are all defense, they are all weapons. If I can get Kalashnikov I will use Kalashnikov.

Question:

By that token suicide bombings are okay?

Krekar:

Yes, of course it’s okay.

Q:

Sniper squads? Assassinations? Chemical weapons?

K:

And even if I poison the water wells from which American soldiers drink in Iraq, it is Halal and permissible for a Muslim.

Q:

You are teaching jihad?

K:

I’m now also teaching Jihad. You must know. And against American soldiers. You must know this also. Now and future.

Q:

Are American soldiers legitimate targets in Iraq?

K:

Yes. Of course. What is the difference between American civilians and Norwegian civilians? No different.

Q:

What about journalists? Paul Moran, an Australian journalist died in an attack carried out by your group.

K:

Where he was?

Q:

He was working for the Australian broadcasting corporation.

K:

No, he was with your soldiers.

Q:

He was wearing the word press on his jersey, wasn’t he?

K:

Lies, lies.

Q:

Do you regret his death?

K:

I had no tears left in me to shed for your sake, or for the sake of the Australian.

Q:

Earlier we were talking about jihad. The bombings of the USS Cole, the U.S Embassy in Kenya, 9/11; are those defensible?

K:

I didn’t say that was jihad.

Q:

So you do not support the 9/11 attacks?

K:

I said that the people in America need this reaction.

Q:

You’re saying that America needed to be taught a lesson?

K:

Yes, of course. And still they need it.

Q:

When I served in Iraq I went over thinking that I would put my life on the line to liberate not occupy and I served along side Iraqis that I would call my brothers.

K:

You deserved to be killed when you were in the streets of Baghdad.

Q:

I did not serve on an American post. I went to work every day and served on an Iraqi base. There were seven Americans and over 150 Iraqis. I was their guest.

K:

There is no “guest.” You say that I came. I was very safety people, I am civilization man. And I belong to America. What are you saying. You are one of the soldiers of the new Hitler. And you came to kill us. You came to destroy our mosques. You came to tear our Koran.

Q:

The U.S. has branded you a terrorist. The U.N. has branded you a terrorist. The Canadians have branded you a terrorist. The Iraqis have branded you a terrorist. The Jordanians have branded you a terrorist.

K:

(laughing) This is only by one thing.

Q:

Mullah Krekar, we’re not meeting with you in a vacuum. Your past is in Iraq. Your past is jihad. Your present is jihad and your future is jihad.

K:

But I didn’t do anything more than any Kurdish…which they did.

Q:

Your group committed suicide bombings, assassinations, murder of civilians.

K:

Against you. Against you. Not against civilian people. It’s not true. You did this. Why is it only Ansar al Islam?

Q:

This is about what you did in Iraq, and you’re wanted in Iraq. Iraqi officials went on camera and put in writing assurances that they won’t kill or torture you. Those assurances will be passed to Norwegian authorities.

K:

This talk was uttered during the trial. But the Norwegians, they were not convinced of this kind of talk. How could they surrender me to a lake of blood?

Q:

You have contributed to that lake of blood.

While it may seem incredible, and contrary to his own best interests that Krekar would say all this on camera, he has actually given a number of interviews over the years, though they didn’t mention that on the show. In 2004, for example, he confirmed to Al-Jazeera that he was still the leader of Ansar al Islam and proudly boasted of his role in killing Americans and others in Iraq. According to the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, Krekar appeared in the interview on Al-Jazeera as a guerrilla leader. “Wearing a head covering and military fatigues, he offered no protest or correction when he was identified several times as zaim, or leader, of Ansar al-Islam. Moreover, Krekar confirmed in the debate program…that Ansar al-Islam was behind a suicide bombing in Northern Iraq on March 22. Three people were killed in the bombing, and that incident plays a key role in Norwegian prosecutors’ charges against him.”

Krekar, according to Aftenposten, also “displayed detailed knowledge of the incident,” saying that after “the Americans bombed us in our areas…one of our brothers, one of the martyr candidates, fastened explosives to himself and his car and drove into an American position.” Krekar also revealed that the suicide bomber “gave USD 5,000 that he had to his brothers and exchanged his new shoes with old ones.”

Then he left, continued Krekar, “and detonated the explosives, and in that manner hit five Americans and 19 from the PUK and an Australian journalist who was with the American in a military vehicle.”

Krekar also had good things to say about Osama bin Laden, the most wanted terrorist in the world, presuming he is still alive, and about developments in the Muslim world. “The whole world must see that Jihad…is increasing in its scope with Allah’s pardon,” he said. “This trend represents solidarity in the Muslim community.” Krekar added that he “thinks ‘Jihadists’ won’t ease up ‘until they see Islam’s house equipped with Saladin’s sable, Mohammed’s conquering turban and Osama bin Laden’s vision.” These are apparently all considered to be important symbols used by Islamic extremists.

Following Krekar’s interview on NBC’s “The Wanted,” they then showed Siv Jensen, chairman of the Progress Party in Norway. She said this was dreadful. “We cannot sit still accepting this to happen.” She said the letter that the show was able to get from the Iraqis, assuring that Mullah Krekar would not be tortured or executed, would be very helpful and that she would send it to the prime minister and demand his response.

“The only thing that worries me,” said Jensen, “is that it took an American television team to provide the letter. On behalf of, I believe, the majority of the Norwegian people, thank you very much for doing this. Thank you.” They also spoke to Carl Hagen, the vice president of the Norwegian parliament. He said he would take that piece of paper and arrange for the Iraqi authorities to take him back. He said that “The Wanted” was doing what the Norwegian government should have been doing.

At the conclusion of the show, this message came on the screen:

“Hours before this broadcast, the Foreign Minister of Norway went on national television to announce that his country has entered into direct negotiations with Iraq to find a way to extradite Mullah Krekar. He vowed, ‘Mullah Krekar will be deported from Norway.’”

While “The Wanted” may have crossed some journalistic lines, and mixed high-tech and glitzy production values with a journalistic, investigative venture, it produced some compelling TV that showed Americans something that conventional news shows have shown us way too little of. It showed a level of cooperation between U.S. military people and Iraqis, a post-Saddam mentality toward terrorists and terrorism in Iraq, and the depths and depravity of a modern-day jihadist. It also may result in justice for a terrorist.

On July 27, NBC aired the second and only remaining episode scheduled of “The Wanted.” Four more have been produced, but none are slated to air at this point. Neither of the two episodes drew good ratings. In the second episode, their target was Mamoun Darkazanli, who has been indicted in Spain for “providing logistical and financial support to al Qaeda,” according to the show’s website. They also made a convincing case that he has ties to al-Qaeda operatives who were convicted on charges related to the African embassy bombings in 1998. They say he was known as bin Laden’s financier, and also had links to Mohamed Atta, the ringleader of the 19 terrorist hijackers on September 11, 2001.

Spain had been seeking extradition of Darkazanli from his home in Hamburg, Germany since his indictment in 2003. But the German government had refused, citing a law that didn’t allow them to extradite German citizens to other countries to stand trial. The law has since been changed, but until the team from “The Wanted” came along, no one had pressed for the extradition. The bottom line of the show was that German and Spanish officials went on camera to say that Spain would again request extradition, and this time the German government would cooperate.

We’ll see how the efforts of “The Wanted” team turn out. But it has brought attention to a serious issue that had gotten way to little attention from the mainstream media, who aren’t comfortable making such moral judgments as this show was willing to do. You can actually watch both episodes online, at least as of this writing, and decide for yourself.

Crossposted at Accuracy in Media.

Mr. Herbert takes the occasion to spew toxic invective perfumed by the stench of tunnel vision in what can only be described as a truly vulgar form of ritual urination on the grave of Robert McNamara. Criticism in obituaries and memorials is nothing new, and should be expected in articles about a man who arguably did more harm than good in his management of a controversial war, but clearly, the Times has no intention of observing the fine line between legitimate criticism and morally obtuse narcissistic rants ripe with contradictions.

Mr. Herbert begins his screed by dropping the unsubstantiated claim that the deaths of Vietnam veterans were “utterly pointless” while insulting the late Mr. McNamara’s appearance and character, calling him “icy-veined, cold-visaged and rigidly intellectual.” What exactly qualifies Mr. Herbert to diagnose the temperature of Mr. McNamara’s veins, or the relative coldness of his face is not detailed. We are then treated to an extended period of navel-gazing, in which Herbert opines that “youngsters 18, 19, 20 and 21” were “shipped off to Vietnam in droves” and “would die there, and…would come back forever scarred.” Former President Johnson and Mr. McNamara, Mr. Herbert exclaims, “should have been looking out for those kids, who knew nothing about geopolitics, or why they were being turned into trained killers who, we were told, could cold-bloodedly smoke the enemy — ‘Good shot!’ — and then kick back and smoke a Marlboro.”

For all his talk of cold blood and “icy veins,” Mr. Herbert’s own selfish, short-sighted worldview is the only thing which emerges from these passages, whose scandalously self-indulgent tone of outrage makes them all the more repulsive. Mr. Herbert seems to have unlimited sympathy for the “kids” who lost their “buddies” to the bullets of unrepentant communists and terrorists, but apparently has no compunctions about the fact that in his ideal world, Marxist tyrants like Pol Pot and Ho Chi Minh would have been allowed to butcher millions of their own people and tighten the grip of Communist imperialism uninterrupted by the West.

Mr. Herbert then proceeds to further insult his readers’ intelligence by ignoring the causes of war. “The hardest lesson for people in power to accept is that wars are unrelentingly hideous enterprises, that they butcher people without mercy and therefore should be undertaken only when absolutely necessary,” Mr. Herbert writes. Apparently when it’s his “buddies” being killed rather than innocent anti-communist Asian civilians, Mr. Herbert’s selective moral outrage kicks in.

Yet even if we excuse him for his mysterious double standard, he seems to be singularly unaware that wars do not simply blossom in the minds of craven politicians – they are an inevitable outcome of rival ideologies, especially when those ideologies have made it their mission to crush each other. Communism and freedom are two such ideologies, and for better or worse, one of their battlegrounds was Vietnam. Surely, one can make arguments in hindsight about how the war could have been prosecuted differently, or outright avoided, but Mr. Herbert is uninterested in making such serious arguments.

Rather, he seems to view the occasion of Mr. McNamara’s death as a convenient podium from which to deliver yet another assault on the War in Iraq, writing that “More than 4,000 Americans have died in Iraq, and no one knows how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Even as I was writing this, reports were coming in of seven more American G.I.’s killed in Afghanistan…None of these wars had clearly articulated goals or endgames.” Someone had better send the memo to Barack Obama and David Petraeus, who seem to both agree that these wars can be fought and won using an already successful escalation strategy.

Yet perhaps the most hilariously ironic piece of Mr. Herbert’s column comes at the end, when he laments the passing of “common purpose and shared sacrifice that marked World War II.” If Mr. Herbert wants to find the culprit for the demise of this “common purpose and shared sacrifice,” then perhaps he ought to take a quick look in the mirror. After all, as Robert McNamara himself pointed out in 1995, unlike World War II, Vietnam was “the first war in which the press acted without censorship.” So perhaps there is a glimmer of hope in Mr. Herbert’s prescriptions for the improvement of war, after all—if nothing else, a return to censorship would certainly serve to keep ill-informed, historically unjustified rants of the kind Mr. Herbert writes out of print forever.

Mr. Krugman, perhaps the only economist whose status as a Nobel Prize winner has been used to prove his credibility in all manner of non sequiturial rambling, recently took it upon himself to try and save the idea of universal health care from being drowned by the waves of political and economic reality. Unfortunately, in so doing, he employs the conventional left-liberal arsenal of logical fallacies, fallacies which his prodigious skill at magical thinking transfigures into facts before his readers’ very eyes.

The title of Mr. Krugman’s column refers to the newly released health care reform bill which has been drafted by the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. This bill, which Mr. Krugman reminds us has been circulated already as “two incomplete Senate health reform proposals” and has been ‘scored’ (the derisive air quotes are his) unfavorably by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) both times, apparently finally got it right the third time around, as Krugman writes: “Last week the budget office scored the full proposed legislation from the Senate committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). And the news — which got far less play in the media than the downbeat earlier analysis — was very, very good. Yes, we can reform health care.”

Presumably, given the lack of dismissive air quotes around the word “scored,” Mr. Krugman means his readers to take the estimates of the bill’s costs to be official. A pity that Douglas Elmendorf, Director of the CBO, disagrees with him. In the letter preceding the officially released estimate of the bill’s costs, Mr. Elmendorf writes:

“The figures presented in this letter do not represent a formal or complete cost estimate for the draft legislation. This estimate reflects the major provisions of the legislation but CBO has not yet completed an analysis of all of its effects. Specifically, the agency has not yet estimated the administrative costs to the federal government of implementing the specified policies or the costs of establishing and operating the new insurance exchanges, nor has it taken into account all of the proposal’s likely effects on spending for other federal programs or their potential effects on revenues from corporate taxes.”

Now, aside from a single sentence mentioning that the estimate “doesn’t include the cost of insuring the poor and near-poor, whom HELP suggests covering via an expansion of Medicaid (which is outside the committee’s jurisdiction),” one searches Mr. Krugman’s op ed in vain for any acknowledgement of the unofficial nature of these results.

Apparently, when issues of ideological purity are at stake, Nobel Prize-winning economics professors behave like their students and skim the required reading. They also apparently forget basic logic, as Mr. Krugman’s next argument for health care “reform” shows: “every other advanced country offers universal coverage, while spending much less on health care than we do. For example, the French health care system covers everyone, offers excellent care and costs barely more than half as much per person as our system.”

Judging by Mr. Krugman’s extensive use of the fallacy of uniformity and the fallacy of composition in these two sentences, one can only assume that he believes that what is true of one ‘advanced’ country is true of all ‘advanced’ countries, and what is true of most ‘advanced’ countries is automatically true of any individual ‘advanced’ country. By this logic, what is good for France is good for the entire ‘advanced’ world and what is good for the whole ‘advanced’ world is also true for any individual part of the ‘advanced’ world, so therefore, we should all mimic France, and forget the fundamental differences between our respective systems of government, lack of cultural homogeny and larger population!

With any luck, the few Senators needed to pass the orgy of Statism that is the current plan for universal health care will stay seated comfortably on the fence despite Mr. Krugman’s harangues. One only wishes that the editors of The New York Times would also bother to check the sources of their columnists.

Mytheos Holt is an intern at the American Journalism Center, a training program run by Accuracy in Media and Accuracy in Academia.

In the second paragraph, the paper informed readers, “The vote was the first time either house of Congress had approved a bill meant to curb the heat-trapping gases scientists have linked to climate change.” (Emphasis added.) Which scientists? The Times doesn’t say. Maybe it considers Al Gore — who claims he invented the Internet, after all — to be a scientist.

The Times doesn’t even acknowledge the existence of scientists on the other side of the debate.

Last year, the Petition Project released the names of more than 32,000 scientists — including 9,000 Ph.D.s –in such fields as climatology, atmospheric science, Earth science and environmental science — who assert: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.”

The ideological journal which calls itself a newspaper also claims that “the average American household would pay an additional $175 a year in energy costs by 2020” under the bill. Where this sunny estimate comes from is anyone’s guess.

According to an analysis of similar legislation which was before the Senate in 2007, it would have cost the average American household between $800 and $1,300 by 2015 and $1,500 to $2,500 by 2050.

The Times also doesn’t acknowledge that cap-and-trade will result in 1.2 million to 2.3 million jobs lost, according to an estimate by Charles River Associates, and drive more business overseas – all to lower the earth’s mean surface temper by 0.07 degrees (seven one-hundredths of one degree) by 2050.

Stories in The New York Times are to news coverage what the theory of global warming is to science.

Collins makes it clear she considered this an amusing peccadillo.  “I think I speak for us all when I say that if a governor wants to fly off for a rendezvous with his mistress, the first rule should be: leave a phone number.”

The “first rule” should be for an elected official not to betray his spouse. If he can’t set a moral high-tone for the public, at least he should avoid becoming a public disgrace. That The Times, which has spent decades chipping away at our nation’s moral foundation, finds sexual sin amusing, is hardly surprising.

What does give one pause is Collins’ definition of sin. The Times columnist is outraged that Sanford refused $700 million in federal stimulus spending, which — she claims – would have been used to stop “massive layoffs of public school teachers.” I’m only surprised she didn’t add police and firemen.

The very idea that a governor would want his state to stand on its own two feet, instead of looting the taxpayers and burdening posterity, The Times considers repugnant.

Collins closed with a call for Republicans to “apologize for putting us through the Clinton impeachment,” which she termed “sexual stone-throwing.”

It doesn’t mater how often or how patiently it’s explained, The Times continues to distort history. Clinton wasn’t impeached for committing adultery with an intern in the Oval Office, but for lying under oath — for perjury — which is a felony.

Well, at least, as Arkansas Governor, Bill Clinton never turned down a federal buck, which makes him an OK-guy in Collins’ book, even if he did violate his oath of office by committing a felony – and his marriage vows repeatedly, over the course of decades..