lying

Three Strikes; You’re Out!

Calvin Freiburger fondy, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, liberalism, lying, me, public schools, reporter, stupidity
My latest in today’s paper:
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Last month, I noted that Glenn Perry’s letter highlighted a problem within our schools: political partisans who advance left-wing agendas in the classroom. Two educators and one student challenged me, yet they actually support my thesis, if unintentionally.
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First, none of them can get the basic facts straight. Local teacher Dan Sitter characterizes my objection as “there were some liberals…that felt the Iraq war was a big mistake.” UW Madison student Brent Schmitz suggests I characterized Fond du Lac High School as “full of” liberals. Professor Omer Durfee of Northern Michigan University writes, “since you supposedly received such a poor education.”
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All of this is wrong. I credited my “many outstanding teachers,” and noted there were “some” “liberal fanatics” and “hyper-partisans”—NOT teachers who simply held liberal views (Indeed, I’ll be the first to say several of my good teachers were liberal).
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Second, their own liberal prejudices inadvertently shine through in their writing. Mr. Sitter surmises that my “self-righteousness” must be caused by that predictable left-wing boogeyman: “radio hosts spewing hate.” Professor Durfee simply rails on that I’m a “neocon,” that “King George” Bush is a liar, and plays the Nazi card. Nope, no left-wing bias here…
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Lastly, Mr. Schmitz says I seem “to devalue debate and disagreement,” and imagines I propose some sort of ideological purity test for school employment. These are lies, and I believe he knows it.
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Three people may not make a pattern, but it doesn’t speak well of our educational system that it employs and churns out such intellectual laziness, bias, and dishonesty; and that theirs are the only voices we seem to hear from the educational community on the matter. Silence really is deafening.

A Village in Arkansas Is Missing Its Idiot

Calvin Freiburger 2008, dishonesty, GOP, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, lying, Medved, Pakistan, RINOs, War on Terror
Good Lord, where to begin…
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Yet another smarmy episode for the “Why Mike Huckabee Is Wildly Unfit to Be President” file: whining that Mitt Romney is mean to him, Huck prepares an attakc ad of his own, then decides to take the supposed high ground by not running it—just before airing it for reporters.
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You might be surprised to hear that such defense hawks as Frank Gaffney, John Bolton, and Richard Allen are foreign policy advisors to Mike’s campaign. Y’know who else was surprised? Gaffney, Bolton & Allen.
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The governor took some, uh, interesting lessons from Benezir Bhutto’s assassination.
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A lot of people have things to say about the Huckster. And they ain’t pretty.
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Despite what the decreasingly-credible Michael Medved may say, it’s way past time to get this bozo off the national stage.
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UPDATE: Here’s the video of Huck’s press conference to show the ad he doesn’t want you to see (think about that for a minute), as well as the revelation that—surprise!—he’s lying again. It seems Huckabee is claiming he decided not to run the ad ten minutes before making his speech, yet TV stations were told not to run the ad two hours before.
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As for the ad itself, you notice that it doesn’t actually address any of Romney’s anti-Huck claims?

Coulter Strikes Back

Calvin Freiburger Coulter, demagogues, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, lying, media, Shepard Smith
Ann unloads some righteous fury on her richly-deserving detractors. I do disagree with Ms. Coulter in one area, though—I would make one change to this sentence (in red): “I’m a little tired of losers trying to raise campaign cash, Web traffic, or TV ratings off of my coattails.”
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Meanwhile, it’s noteworthy that Fox News’ Shepard Smith embraced the Left’s smear. Is FNC still a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy ™?

Responding to Iraq Lies

Calvin Freiburger http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Iraq, lying, reporter, War on Terror
The Reporter has published my latest letter, a brief rundown of lie vs. truth in Iraq.
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The truth about Iraq:
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Lie: “Bush lied about WMDs.”
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Truth: 2002’s National Intelligence Estimate concluded “Iraq is continuing … its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs.” British, German, French, Russian, Chinese and Israeli intelligence all agreed. The Robb-Silberman Commission found “no evidence of political pressure to influence the intelligence community’s pre-war assessments.” We found 1.77 metric tons of uranium. Polish forces found chemical warheads. Charles Duelfer testified that Hussein intended to restart his programs, and there’s reason to believe WMDs were smuggled to Syria.
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Lie: “Iraq’s unrelated to terrorism.”
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Truth: A few examples to the contrary: We’ve found rolls of jihadists trained in Iraq at places like Salman Pak. We know of repeated meetings between Iraqi and al-Qaeda operatives, including the planning meeting for the USS Cole bombing. Jihadists have found safe haven in Iraq.
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Lie: “U.S. forces terrorize innocent Iraqis.”
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Truth: Almost all troops have fought heroically and humanely. Incidentally, antiwar hero Jesse MacBeth, a supposed Iraq vet who “confessed” to partaking in American atrocities against Iraqi civilians, was recently exposed as a fraud who never once set foot in Iraq.
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Lie: “Iraq’s a civil war.”
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Truth: Writing for Middle East Quarterly, Sgt. David Patten explains: “While the government is weak, there is no political force presenting it with a serious challenge. Iraq is, indeed, an unstable nation, but there is little danger of regime change, the ultimate purpose of a civil war. The armed groups most likely to participate in an eventual civil war lack both the capacity and the will to enter into such a conflict in earnest at the present time…[but] Premature withdrawal could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy, creating the conditions for a civil war that do not currently exist.”
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“Without victory, there is no survival.” – Winston Churchill

Pardon Scooter Libby

Calvin Freiburger Armitage, Bush, Democrats, Fitzgerald, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, Krauthammer, lying, prosecution, Wilson
Charles Krauthammer analyzes the pathetic trial, spearheaded by a pathetic prosecutor, that ended in Scooter Libby’s conviction:

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“There are lies and there are memory lapses. Bill Clinton denied under oath having sex with Monica Lewinsky. Unless you’re Wilt Chamberlain, sex is not the kind of thing you forget easily. Sandy Berger denied stuffing classified documents in his pants, an act not quite as elaborate as sex, but still involving a lot of muscle memory and unlikely to have been honestly forgotten.

“Scooter Libby has just been convicted of four felonies that could theoretically give him 25 years in jail for . . . what? Misstating when he first heard a certain piece of information, namely the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife.

“Think about that. Can you remember when you first heard the name Joe Wilson or Valerie Plame? Okay, so it is not a preoccupation of yours. But it was a preoccupation of many Washington journalists and government officials called to testify at the Libby trial, and their memories were all over the lot. Former presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer testified under oath that he had not told Post reporter Walter Pincus about Mrs. Wilson. Pincus testified under oath that Fleischer definitely had.

“Obviously, one is not telling the truth. But there is no reason to believe that either one is deliberately lying. Pincus and Fleischer are as fallible as any of us. They spend their days receiving and giving information. They can’t possibly be expected to remember not only every piece but precisely when they received every piece.
“Should Scooter Libby? He was famously multitasking a large number of national security and domestic issues, receiving hundreds of pieces of information every day from dozens of sources. Yet special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald chose to make Libby’s misstatements about the timing of the receipt of one piece of information — Mrs. Wilson’s identity — the great white whale of his multimillion-dollar prosecutorial juggernaut.
“Why? Because on his essential charge as special prosecutor — find and punish who had leaked Valerie Plame’s name — he had nothing. No conspiracy, no felony, no crime, not even the claim that she was a covert agent covered by the nondisclosure law. Fitzgerald knew the leaker from the very beginning. It was not Libby but Richard Armitage. He also knew that the ‘leak’ by the State Department’s No. 2 official — a fierce bureaucratic opponent of the White House, especially the vice president’s office — was an innocent offhand disclosure made to explain how the CIA had improbably chosen Wilson for a WMD mission. (He was recommended by his CIA wife.) Everyone agrees that Fitzgerald’s perjury case against Libby hung on the testimony of NBC’s Tim Russert. Libby said that he heard about Plame from Russert. Russert said he had never discussed it. The jury members who have spoken said they believed Russert.

“And why should they not? Russert is a perfectly honest man who would not lie. He was undoubtedly giving his best recollection.
“But he is not the pope. Given that so many journalists and administration figures were shown to have extremely fallible memories, is it possible that Russert’s memory could have been faulty?
“I have no idea. But we do know that Russert once denied calling up a Buffalo News reporter to complain about a story. Russert later apologized for the error when he was shown the evidence of a call he had genuinely and completely forgotten.
“There is a second instance of Russert innocently misremembering. He stated under oath that he did not know that one may not be accompanied by a lawyer to a grand jury hearing. This fact, in and of itself, is irrelevant to the case, except that, as former prosecutor Victoria Toensing points out, the defense had tapes showing Russert saying on television three times that lawyers are barred from grand jury proceedings.
“This demonstration of Russert’s fallibility was never shown to the jury. The judge did not allow it. He was upset with the defense because it would not put Libby on the stand — his perfect Fifth Amendment right — after hinting in the opening statement that it might. He therefore denied the defense a straightforward demonstration of the fallibility of the witness whose testimony was most decisive.

“Toensing thinks this might be the basis for overturning the verdict upon appeal. I hope so. This is a case that never should have been brought, originating in the scandal that never was, in search of a crime — violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act — that even the prosecutor never alleged. That’s the basis for a presidential pardon. It should have been granted long before this egregious case came to trial. It should be granted now without any further delay.”
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Look up “travesty of justice” in the dictionary, and you’ll see a picture of Patrick Fitzgerald.
But the Democrats don’t care. Just when you thought the Party of Babykilling couldn’t come up with fresh ways to disgrace itself, they manage to come through. They’re glad Libby’s been nailed. After all, it makes the Bush Administration look bad. When chronicling the despicable double standard for political prosecutions (and how Republicans have been “gutless appeasers” in standing up to it) this week, Ann Coulter called this exactly what it is: “a surrogate for political warfare.” It’s official: the Democrat Party will send innocent people to jail for political gain. If this is not evil, what is?
Mr. President, you have been silent on this witch hunt against one of your own from Day 1. Still you’re silent. Why haven’t you pardoned Scooter Libby already? If you’re worried about your image (which would be disgraceful), can it—your reputation is in a shambles, and the only chance you have of salvaging any of it is to start showing true courage in your leadership.
There aren’t too many people on Capitol Hill who should feel proud of themselves these days.