The Supreme Court decided on Thursday that lying about medals and military service, while "contemptible," is protected under the First Amendment's free speech clause. The court said the federal "Stolen Valor" law was overly broad and imposed a chilling effect on free speech. This news enraged Rush Limbaugh, who responded on is radio show with disdain, facetiously wondering, "I don't know if they legalized pedophilia or not." An interesting non sequitur, but back on point: Limbaugh's comprehension of freedom of speech has always been a crabbed affair, pretty much limited to the view that he and his conservative allies–people who enjoy [...]
Jun
22
2012
NYT Discovers the Other Side of Spending Cuts
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It's been said (by me!) that the big spending cuts set to hit the federal budget next year–so-called "sequestration"–are not created equal, at least in the eyes of the corporate media. The cuts, as designed, hit the military budget and non-military spending in roughly equal measure. The political calculation was that Republicans would object to the military cuts while Democrats would object to cuts in social spending. But in the corporate media, those non-military cuts hardly ever get any attention–perhaps because there are not powerful lobbyists and Cabinet officials complaining loudly about how the safety of the country is at [...]
Jun
06
2012
NYT: Drone Strikes 'Combat Militancy' by Increasing Militants
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In today's New York Times article (6/6/12) about the apparent drone killing of Al-Qaeda "deputy leader" Abu Yahya al-Libi, Declan Walsh and Eric Schmitt write: If his death is borne out this time, it would be a milestone in a covert eight-year airstrike campaign that has infuriated Pakistani officials but that has remained one of the United States' most effective tools in combating militancy. That's revealing. It's inarguable that the drones kill people the U.S. government wants to kill, and some it doesn't intend to kill. But does this really qualify as "combating militancy"? In Yemen, the increase in drone [...]
Jun
04
2012
NYT: How Can We Be No. 1 if Pentagon Budget Is Cut by 1/12th?
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Part of the 2011 Congressional debt reduction deal called for automatic cuts to social spending and military budgets over the next 10 years. The idea was that a deal to avoid these cuts would be struck, because Republicans wouldn't want to cut the Pentagon, and Democrats would try to protect safety net programs. That didn't happen, so these so-called "sequestration" cuts are prompting some alarm bells in the corporate media–ringing loudly at the mere thought of cutting the military budget. The New York Times (6/4/12) sounded the alarm today in a piece by Jonathan Weisman that framed things like this: [...]
Jun
01
2012
Cyberwar Is War, White House Said—but NYT Didn't Notice
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For the second time this week, the New York Times has published a revealing report on a secret, legally questionable Obama administration program, but failed to include independent legal analysis of the controversial program. Tuesday's Times report on the White House's drone assassination program included no critical analysis of the thorny legal issues raised by the program. Surely independent legal experts would have something to say about the program at large, but particularly about such details as the White House's bizarre definition that counts any military-aged male found in the vicinity of a bombing target as a combatant, and thus [...]
Jun
01
2012
MSNBC: No Time for Obama's Kill List?
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The New York Times' lengthy report (5/29/12) on Barack Obama's drone "kill list" should provoke serious questions: Is such a program legal? How does it square with Obama's criticism of the Bush administration's "war on terror" policies? What does it tell us about how the administration identifies "militants" who are targeted for assassination? But those questions have been raised only in fits and starts–and are basically absent from the liberal cable news channel MSNBC. In fact, a far more interesting discussion of these questions can be heard on Fox News Channel. It's not all good on Fox, naturally. Host Bill [...]
Jun
01
2012
On Chris Hayes and Heroism
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It is a very good thing that the Nation's Chris Hayes has a weekend show on MSNBC. The panelists are smart and the lively conversations dig deeper than virtually anything else on cable news. (The same can be said for MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry.) In other words, sounds like a recipe for trouble. And trouble arrived after a Memorial Day show that aired on May 27. Here's the clip that caused the controversy. To me, his words sound carefully measured, and I think you get a better sense of that tone from seeing the clip rather than from reading a transcript [...]
May
23
2012
Give Friedman a Chance–to Rewrite His Own History
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Thomas Friedman on Face the Nation this past Sunday (5/20/12): You know, I believed from the beginning we had four choices in Afghanistan, Bob: lose early, lose late, lose big, or lose small. And, you know, my hope was that we would lose small and early. Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, November 2, 2001: A month into the war in Afghanistan, the hand-wringing has already begun over how long this might last. Let's all take a deep breath and repeat after me: Give war a chance.
Apr
13
2012
On Drones and Democracy
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Yesterday (4/12/12) Pakistan's parliament unanimously voted in favor of a resolution that, among other things, calls for an immediate end to CIA drone strikes in their country. The Washington Post's account of this news included this curious observation: From Washington's perspective, the debate in Parliament was a healthy exercise in democracy but one that is unlikely to affect the drone war. The military leaders of both nations see the drones as efficient and effective in eliminating hard-core Islamic militants that plague both the U.S. and Pakistani armies. I know that the Post is merely conveying "Washington's perspective," but let's think [...]
Mar
02
2012
Bill O'Reilly and the Invention of the Internet
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Last night Fox's Bill O'Reilly (3/1/12) asked guest Tamara Draut from the think tank Demos to name just one green energy success story. She tried to resist the question, explaining that in some cases, the benefits of government funding can come much later. Like, she mentioned, what happened with the Internet. But O'Reilly wasn't going to let those facts get in the way: O'REILLY: Let me break this to you. The Internet– DRAUT: It's too short of a time frame. O'REILLY: — private money. DRAUT: No, it was public money. Department of Defense, federal money. O'REILLY: Hold it. Have you [...]
Feb
29
2012
Tom Friedman Is Waiting For Afghans to Shape Up
By 47 Comments
I think most sensible people understand that the current uproar in Afghanistan over the desecration of the Quran isn't really just about the defiling of a holy book. But if there's sense in the world, there's also nonsense. Enter Tom Friedman's New York Times column today (2/29/12): U.S. troops accidentally burned some Qurans, and President Obama apologized. Afghans nevertheless went on a weeklong rampage, killing innocent Americans in response–and no Afghan leader, even our allies, dared to stand up and say: "Wait, this is wrong. Every week in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslim suicide bombers kill other Muslims–holy people created [...]
Feb
22
2012
James Traub Bids a Fond Farewell to an Era of Constant Warfare
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James Traub seemed a little bummed in a Sunday New York Times op-ed ("The End of American Intervention?," 2/18/10), that military cuts and changing priorities will mean fewer humanitarian interventions in America's future. So we must accept, if uneasily, the future which now seems to lie before us: We will do less good in the world, but also less harm. A leading advocate of "humanitarian intervention," Traub doesn't waste many words on the "harm" produced the by two decades of them, but he seems pretty sure about the "good." For instance, he writes that the post-Cold War period "raised the [...]
