A brave, truth-telling whistleblower has emerged to tell the White House's side of the story in the Libya War. The inside scoop appears in a Los Angeles Times article by Christi Parsons (4/2/11) headlined, "For Obama, a Carefully Calculated Delay on Justifying Libya Airstrikes."

Are you confused by the White House's decision-making on Libya? Fear not--everything has gone according to plan. Like, for instance, the delay in public explaining the decision to bomb:

The timing was deeply controversial, but was designed to be a major part of the message itself, unfolding as the U.S. chalked up a measure of achievement in Libya and appeared to back away from lead management of the international military effort there.

The delay helped to underscore the key ideas Obama wants to drive home: that the commitment differs dramatically from the deep investment of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars he inherited, largely because the U.S. shares responsibility for it with a broad coalition of international and regional partners.

To an American audience weary and skeptical after years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama wanted to explain his reasoning when he could also demonstrate some closure.

"Instead of saying, 'I promise this is the way it's going to be,' he was able to go before the American people and say, 'Here's what I said I would do, and I did it,'" said one senior administration official, who requested anonymity to discuss the deliberations....

Some liberals joined with conservatives in objecting that Obama owed the country an explanation right away--if not before the attack.

But Obama's advisers said they wanted to break out of past practice on messaging, much like the president was breaking with the foreign policy of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

"We wanted to make the point that this was not an Iraq-like war engagement," said the official. "The commitment was limited in duration and scope, and so the ways in which you deliver that message help convey it. It's not just what you say but how you say it."

Got it?

The Times also notes that some of Obama's left critics were miffed by the delay in explaining the purpose of the war: "Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D-Ohio) questioned a commitment to act without debate in Congress." To which the paper responded:

But steering clear of the trappings of wartime gravity could help Obama counter skeptical public perceptions.

Did that analysis come from the anonymous White House official, or is that Parsons' own contribution? Whatever the case, if ignoring the constitutional requirement that Congress authorize all wars can help us steer clear of the "trappings of wartime gravity" and "counter skeptical public perceptions,"  perhaps it's all worth it.

On September 17, 2001, Fox host Bill O'Reilly gave his list of countries the United States should attack, including Libya:

Target three is Libya and Qaddafi. Again, he either quits and goes into exile or we bomb his oil facilities, all of them. And we mind the harbor in Tripoli. Nothing goes in, nothing goes out.

We also destroy all the airports in Libya. Let them eat sand.

A decade later, O'Reilly supports the airstrikes on Libya because Qaddafi is attacking civilians (3/21/11):

O'REILLY: But Qaddafi's carpet bombing guys who are driving around in old Chevys with pistols, he's killing them. You know he's going to wipe out the opposition. So you're not willing to go in even on that basis and stop Qaddafi from doing that?

REP. DENNIS KUCINICH: Our intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a disaster. This intervention in Libya is not going to turn out the way you think it will. It'll be another disaster. We have to stop spending the treasure of the United States in these military adventures and start taking care of things here at home, Bill.

O'REILLY: So you are willing to be--to sit by and watch Qaddafi slaughter his opposition and you know he would.

So Qaddafi has killed people--and could have killed other people--that O'Reilly wanted to starve a decade ago.

Washington Post Dana Milbank (3/19/11) skewers the Republicans for their "emergency meeting" to defund NPR:

This particular emergency involved the lower end of the FM radio dial. Republicans, in an urgent budget-cutting maneuver, were voting to cut off funding for National Public Radio. All $5 million of it--or one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the federal budget.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office ran the numbers and calculated the impact this emergency measure would have on government spending: "No effect."

One of the rules of corporate media balance is that if you criticize Republicans, you have to find an example of similar buffoonery on the other side. Milbank finds that in an effort to end the nine-year-old Afghan War, which nearly two-thirds of Americans now say is not worth fighting:

Democrats would have been in a good position to point out the Republicans' lack of seriousness, except they were engaged in their own trivial pursuit. On Thursday, the same day the Republicans were doing battle with Diane Rehm, the House was also debating a bill by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) ordering full withdrawal from Afghanistan by year’s end.

Milbank explains: "Neither a vindictive slap at public broadcasting nor a pell-mell pullout from Afghanistan would be good policy," though in the end he gives the Democrats more credit for opposing majority opinion on the war:

In the end, the Democrats proved somewhat more adult in restraining impulses. Party leaders opposed Kucinich's Afghanistan pullout plan as irresponsible, and most Democrats voted against it.

Well, thank goodness someone in Washington is being a grown up.

The desire to not debate the Afghan War seems to be a popular one at the Post. Today Fred Hiatt (3/21/11) cheers the fact that David Petraeus' Congressional appearances on the Afghan War were free of rancor--unlike his 2007 testimony on the Iraq War:

At a time when our political system is said to be incapable of rising above poisonous partisanship to promote the national interest, Gen. David Petraeus’s visit to Capitol Hill last week was instructive.

Hiatt adds:

Obama's escalation, when 73 percent of Americans want substantial numbers of troops brought home, would seem to open fertile ground to Republicans. But from their leaders on down, they haven't sought to plow there. In this instance at least, politics really has stopped at the water's edge.

For the Post, it seems, democracy is supposed to stop at the water's edge.

Glenn Beck has expressed on-air desires to strangle Michael Moore with his own hands, beat Charles Rangel to death with a shovel, and once aired a sketch on his Fox News show that had him poisoning then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Appearing on the Today show this morning (1/19/11), responding to questions about his frequent murder fantasies (a specialty of Fox News personalities), Beck told host  Meredith Vieira that he was just being funny. Beck said the host should ask Jon Stewart and the Simpsons the same question. "Comedy is comedy," he explained.

Vieira did not point out that while Beck is a political commentator, the Simpsons is a cartoon, and Stewart is a comedian who is not known for fantasizing about the murder of people with whom he disagrees.

The reader can decide if continuous on-air fantasizing about the murderous deaths of one's political foes is okay, as long as one says he is joking.

I think it's a problem, not least because hateful jokes are not always harmless, and because it's often not clear when Beck is joking. After all, when one has just concluded a tirade against someone they portrayed as among the dark  forces trying to steal the country, with a whimsical fantasy about that someone's violent death--well, I think you get the point.

And sometimes Beck's violent fantasies are clearly not jokes.

In March 2003, Beck was one of the most energetic war mongers in the country. He was organizing and addressing pro-war rallies for his radio employer, Clear Channel, and using his national radio show to disparage and smear anti-war figures on a regular basis. In a program I heard on WABC-AM in New York City (3/16/03), Beck inveighed furiously against the anti-war activism of Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D.-Ohio), in a tirade that concluded with the host, in all angry sincerity, wishing to see Kucinich burned alive: "Every night I get down on my knees and pray that Dennis Kucinich will burst into flames."

But comedy is comedy, as Beck would say.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (3/18/10) returns from his excursion into mocking right-wingers to return to his natural role of ridiculing single-payer advocates. His target today is Rep. Dennis Kucinich.  You know what's funny about him? He's short! Or, in Milbank's words, he's a "little man," a "little guy," a "diminutive figure" and--because he announced his support for the healthcare bill on St. Patrick's Day--a "leprechaun."

Actually, Kucinich is the exact same height--5 foot 7--as John McCain, whom Milbank can somehow write about without any elf jokes.

Milbank also includes a sneering reference to how Kucinich "led the city into default" when he was mayor of Cleveland. Yes, that's true--he stopped the plan to privatize the city's power system, which caused some banks to play hardball with the city's credit. He didn't blink, Cleveland still has municipal power and it saved the city and its residents tens of millions of dollars. It's hard to find many people in Cleveland who think Kucinich did the wrong thing.

But also... he's short! Like a leprechaun!

What most struck me as most strange, though, about Milbank's column was this line:

Our Kenyan Hawaiian commander in chief evidently has the luck of the Irish.

First of all, it's weird to refer to a president's state of birth as though it were an ethnicity. Who would anyone describe Bill Clinton as an Anglo Arkansan?  Ronald Reagan as an Irish Illinoisan? It's as if, like Cokie Roberts, Milbank doesn't really consider Hawaii to be part of the United States.

Secondly, Obama is part Irish on his mother's side--he's got Kearneys and McCurrys in his family tree.  But Milbank was apparently too struck by the hilarity of being "Kenyan Hawaiian" to look that up.

Yesterday (3/10/10) there was  a House floor debate on Rep. Dennis Kucinich's push to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.  Kucinich's bill--which is based on the War Powers Act--was defeated, but it sparked hours of rare discussion of the White House's war policy ( in spite of the Washington Post's efforts to minimize the discussion as left-wing "venting").

The most dramatic moment came when Rep. Patrick Kennedy chastised the press corps for skipping out on the discussion:  "There's two press people in this gallery.... We're talking about Eric Massa 24-7 on the TV, we're talking about war and peace, $3 billion, 1,000 lives and no press? No press."

He added: "The press of the United States is not covering the most significant issue of national importance and that's the laying of lives down in the nation for the service of our country. It's despicable, the national press corps right now."

Watch the video:

If you're a politics buff, you probably remember the way National Journal's ratings were used in the 2004 and 2008 elections to establish that the Democratic candidate was the "most liberal voting record in the Senate"--first John Kerry (Extra! Update, 6/04), then Barack Obama (CounterSpin, 3/28/08). FAIR pointed out the flawed methodology that the magazine was using, but the headline-grabbing findings still had a profound--and profoundly misleading--impact on both races.

Now National Journal has released its rankings for 20098 (2/28/1009), and they reveal that Dennis Kucinich is one of the more conservative members of the Democratic caucus--he's the 240th most conservative representative out of 416 ranked by the Journal. He's more conservative, according to the Journal rankings, than Blue Dog Democrats like Mike Arcuri (No. 243), Dennis Cardoza (No. 245) and Robert Marion Berry (No. 248).

Virtually any political observer will tell you that Kucinich is one of the most if not the most progressive member of Congress. Either none of them understand the political spectrum, or the National Journal's rankings are useless--take your pick.

Update: As reader Matt points out, the rankings linked to above are for 2008, not 2009. In the rankings for 2009, which are accessible only to National Journal subscribers at this point, Kucinich is a little farther to the left--270th most conservative out of 435 members--but is still grouped with "The Centrists," part of the "ideological center of the House of Representatives" according to the Journal's dubious rating system.