Do you hear that? (crickets chirping) Things must be going well in Iraq. Our friends at OpiniPundit dug a little deeper and found this report of more insurgents getting a good ol’ fashioned southern butt kicking.

On the other hand, news from Afghanistan???? After ignoring one of the greatest democratic success stories in history occurring over the past year, they turned their cameras on for the Taliban.

I’ve had a couple of days to reflect on Terri Schiavo’s death. Below you’ll find pages and pages of our views on this matter. I wish to add my two cents on what I feel is the bigger picture, which seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle.

To those who sought comfort in the fact that Terri’s death came as a result of what appeared to be an extensive legal process, we must never lose sight of the fact that those processes are merely the means by which our society strives to achieve justice. Far too many appeared to be content with the fact that the process was fully played out according to the prescribed rules and procedures as if this was an end unto itself.

Pundits scoffed at the fact that morality and religion entered into the equation implying that these concepts have no place on our legal system. Yet our laws were founded on Judeo-Christian ethic. Murder is against the law because our society says murder is wrong. Stealing is a crime because stealing is wrong. These are not rules arbitrarily assigned to give meaning to our legal processes. Rather it is the processes that are created to give effect to our notions of right and wrong.

It seems that to some, right and wrong doesn’t really matter any more.

He was a great spiritual leader for untold millions. Kim has some prayers below. The Anchoress is the site to be at today.

Also check out Powerline covering the NY Times showing more of its true colors.

Does anyone believe that Terri would not have wanted her parents to be with her in her last dying moments? Does anyone believe that Terri would have wanted to keep the location of her burial site from her parents and siblings?

We see this type of behavior in child custody disputes, where one parent callously uses a child as a tool to hurt the other parent. It’s all about control, and using control over the child to hurt the other parent by denying access. Fortunately, divorce courts have become live to this type of narcissistic behavior in determining which parent is capable of looking out for the child’s “best interests”. Sadly, I doubt judge Greer ever considered this type of dynamic.

Watching the liberal pundits interpret the latest 600 page intelligence report reminds me of an obsessive patient taking a Rorschach test:

Doc: OK Try this one.

MSM: That one looks like umm… a…..a monkey….Bush the monkey.

Doc: Good, and this one.

MSM: that one’s sort of hazy…..but I’d say…….Bush ignoring the UN.

Doc: And this.

MSM: That’s Bush ignoring the UN again…..except from a different angle.

Doc: Yes very good, and this.

MSM: I see two figures there………one’s Bush …..and the other…..let’s see…..a CIA agent…..that’s it, Bush telling a CIA agent the answers he wants to hear on the WMD issue.

As I’ve posted below, here’s the principal conclusion of the intelligence report:

“We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.”

In short, it wasn’t Bush’s fault. But how does David Ignatius interpret the report, in an article entitled (this is too good) “Fooling Ourselves”? While the failure to expressly blame the Bush administration was “unfortunate”, he goes on to explain what the report really “hints at”, prefacing his conclusions with the following:

The Bush administration must examine its role in the process of self-deception over Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, above all to guard against future mistakes. (emphasis added)

You see, it really was Bush’s fault after all. OK David, you can get off the couch now, the nurse has a nice lollypop waiting for you in the next room.

Welcome Polipundit and Jawa Report readers. Please look around.

Let’s recap media’s track record post-911.

Aided by their carefully selected future telling experts, the MSM’s preconceived narrative of U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was a fate similar to the Russians. They couldn’t have been more wrong, as they unscrupulously tried in vain to erase that country from their news pages while a once enslaved people voted in real democratic elections for the first time in history.

Then came Iraq where the media proclaimed the U.S. was “rushing to war” as if the ten or so year period of repeated U.N. violations never existed. Forgetting that the Balkan bombardment lacked U.N. sanction, the left-leaning media loudly declared the war illigitimate without explicit U.N. endorsement. The oil-for-food scandal simply exposed what many had believed all along- that the U.N. was a corrupt institution run by a motley collection of bureaucrats and dictators scratching each other’s proverbial backs. So much for putting U.S. foreign policy under U.N. control.

After the invasion came the incessant predictions of a civil war, Vietnam style quagmire and, my favorite, the proclamations that Iraqis weren’t ready for democracy. Well, we all know what happened there. Funny how those of us in the blogosphere weren’t as “shocked” at the elections as the media claimed to be. Could it be that they were actually believing their own spin?

Notwithstanding that democracy began to take root throughout the region, the media still clung to one last bit of anti-Bush spin – that the results may have worked out for the best, but Bush was still wrong to push for war under the guise of a false WMD threat, utilizing the intelligence agencies as his propaganda tools. He wasn’t just wrong, he knew he was wrong and actively sought out intelligence to further his political goals. Now comes the 600 page report on the U.S. intelligence failures in Iraq. It’s key conclusion:

“We conclude that it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments.”

Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. (Hat tip Powerline)

The PDF of the Appeals Court ruling in the Schiavo matter is out. The dissenting judgement is very strong. Check out this passage where they take on the separation of powers issue:

I believe that it is fully within Congress’s power to dictate standards of review and to waive in specific cases nonconstitutional abstention doctrines. Indeed if Congress cannot do so, the fate of hundreds of federal statutes would be called into serious question. I wish to dispel any questions of jurisdiction in this case. (emphasis added)

The above quote was in specific response to Judge Birch’s newly proclaimed position that the legislation was unconstitutional (he would have said it before apparantly, but he was too rushed). I’m not kidding, that was pretty much his explanation for it not being raised in their previous decision. He was the only judge that raised the lack of jurisdiction, whereas the remainder simply disregarded the substance of the legislation.

I’ve previously said about this case that strong dissenting judgements are often a prelude to positive legal developments. A lot of questions are going to be asked when the dust clears on this one. Legislation is already being considered, and I’ve heard rumblings of impeachment, although that may be a bit premature at this point. One thing’s for sure – we haven’t seen the last of this dissent.
UPDATE: Andrew Cohen of cBS is proclaiming one of the judges a “hero.” Hmmm…cBS, I wonder which one he’s referring to.

The Court of Appeal’s Schiavo ruling shows a complete and utter contempt towards Congress. Just in case you’re wondering folks, Congress passes the laws, and the courts interpret them. Yes, they can declare them unconstitutional, but that’s not what appeared to have happened here. They simply disregarded the law.

I agree with Ed at Captain’s Quarters that this raises some very serious questions about the power of the judiciary. What I find particularily alarming is not only the fact that the court disregarded the law, but also the manner in which they did it, as if to remind the other two branches who really calls the shots around here.

E. J. Dionne Jr. has a piece in the Washington Post which examines the current discord between liberals and conservatives. He has a point with the following quote:

Liberals have so little respect for conservatives these days that people on the left are genuinely astonished when people on the right have principled disagreements with each other. The left assumes the right marches in lock step under orders from the White House.

Conservatives have so little respect for liberals that they see every liberal action as inspired by hatred of President Bush, opposition to religion and contempt for people in “the heartland.”

I agree entirely. What I find amusing though is how E. J. seems to elevate himself above the arena of discord, as if he were some reluctant spectator rather than a willing participant. While both sides have contemptuous views of one another, the liberal view is also the one that is perpetuated in the mainstream media as the one that is “correct”, which in turn increases conservatives’ contempt of the liberals.

It’s sort of like a hockey game where the referee is only calling penalties against one team. It often gets out of hand. But I have a feeling E. J. doesn’t watch hockey.

Have the media kicked the nasty, self destructive habit of anti-Republican partisan hackery in light of Rathergate, Easongate, the predictive reporting of an Iraqi “quagmire” and the vanishing Afghan elections? Like an alcoholic watching his life fall apart while promising himself just one more drink, the political cravings of the MSM are apparently too strong. After years of being schooled by left leaning universities and protected by their comfy cocoon throughout their careers, they simply weren’t equipped with the necessary journalistic integrity to resist the temptation they were about to face.

And so came the Schiavo story. It seemed that telling it straight would have been so easy. It was an amazing story that raised some incredibly thought provoking issues: the inherent problems with the legal system applying civil standards to life and death situations, the “untold” facts about Michael Schiavo that cast doubt on whether he (or anyone else for that matter) should be trusted with the decision to end Terri’s life, the details of competing doctors that suggested Terri may not have been vegetative, but merely disabled. Putting a disabled person to death against her will is earth shattering news. But more importantly, telling it straight was the right thing to do and may have changed the political winds enough for us to ponder whether its right to put someone to death when we’re not really sure if they’re vegetative or if it’s really in accordance with their true wishes.

But with the painful hangover of Bush being credited with spreading democracy in the Middle East still lingering and the enticing prospect of being able to use the story as a wedge issue between Christian and fiscal conservatives/libertarians, it was near impossible for old media to resist.

The first drink came when the media framed the story as a typical “right to die” case, reporting the medical conclusions as fact and portraying the parents as misguided loved ones who just couldn’t let go of a daughter who “died” long ago. Supporters of Terri were cast as religious zealots. Michael Schiavo – he was to be just as much a victim as the parents, with none of those messy allegations of abuse getting in the way. Reporting of his living with another woman was kept to a minimum. There would be no reporting of the timing of his decision to reveal Terri’s “true” wishes which came only after the receipt of proceeds from a legal settlement which was premised on Terri being cared for by Michael ad infinitum.

After a few rounds, the media began covering the “political implications” of the Schiavo story. Not just any political implications, mind you. No, they focused specifically on the Republicans being perceived as capitalizing on Terri’s tragic circumstances for political gain (it didn’t matter that a large number of Democrats voted for the Schiavo legislation). Since this was just another right to die case, the only possible explanation for passing legislation requiring a trial de novo must have been sheer political opportunism. The possibly that it was actually an attempt to correct a grave injustice unfolding before our eyes was scarcely mentioned.

Next came the polls. The media’s equivalent of a good stiff chaser. It wasn’t enough for the media to tell us their narrative. They needed to convince us that we believed in the story. The polls didn’t ask such questions as: “if some doctors believe Terri is in a vegetative state but others say she is not, would you favor removing her feeding tube?” Instead the questions were premised on Terri being vegetative as a fact. But even that may not have produced the desired results, so they slipped in couple of references to Terri being permanently unconscious or in a coma. Apparently they weren’t too concerned about those videos going around of Terri smiling and laughing. But hey, they were already on to their fourth or fifth round and things were starting to get a little crazy.

It didn’t stop there. They reached for the same cheap bottle of tequila that almost did them in once before: the media ran with the talking points memo. Without the memo the media’s narrative only suggested that the Republicans were cold, evil political opportunists. Already intoxicated by their self-fulfilling reporting that Republicans were losing public support, the media decided to go all the way and report specific evidence that was to confirm what they had already inferred. It didn’t matter that the memo had errors on its face, was not authored and was substantively inconsistent with legitimate congressional talking points. Nor did it matter that there appeared to be no evidence that Republicans circulated it or that it appeared to have first surfaced in the hands of Democrats and not Republicans.

I’m not sure if this will be the binge that does them in. But the MSM are surely in a pathetic downward spiral.

UPDATE: For an excellent analysis of the talking points scandal check out John Hinderaker’s piece in the Weekly Standard.

UPDATE II: Michelle Malkin has a good entry on pro life supporters of Terri being treated like freaks.

Welcome Anchoress readers!