Right about now I bet the Old Media is longing for the days where it didn’t have to engage in a public dialogue and simply told us how things were.

Watching the boys at Powerline reminds me of a young prize fighter taking on an old man who should have left the boxing ring years ago.

The new Townhall.com is up and running. The conglomerate of conservative radio hosts, columnists and bloggers offers up a one-stop location for all your conservative intellectual needs. Impressive indeed.

The conservative superblog has arrived.

So the NYT has taken on the role of deciders-in-chief, regarding what is truly in America’s national interest. And their decision: it is more important that Americans know the details of an anti-terrorism program (one that breaks no laws whatsoever) than it is to keep the details from the terrorists, who will surely exploit their newfound intelligence.

Of course, as we’ve seen time and time again, the “right to know” is premised on the right to know what the Times wants you to know about, and what they want you to know about is how much of a failure the Bush administration has been.

So while the NYT’s stated justification for jeopardizing our security is America’s right to know, the underlying reason is their right to attack the Bush administration. As the Times appears to see it, sacrificing the security of every man, woman, and child in America is necessary collateral damage in their war against Bush. How ironic this is, given that the collateral damage caused by U.S. forces has become a regular focal point in the media’s anti-Bush coverage.

We all know about the problems with the media reporting an error in a prominent story and then “correcting” it in some small corrections section that is rarely read. The effect is that an error has entered into the mainstream discourse, while the correction is barely noticed.

Now, check out Powerline’s reference to a NY Times “Katrina was Bush’s failure” type story. The “corrections” section noted that the number of evacuee children in the Houston area remained at just over 5,000, not 30,000 as reported, and the federal aid received in the area was 222 million dollars, not 22 million as reported.

Correcting an error that is off by a factor of ten in a story like that is like doing a story on the President being shot then putting in the corrections section that it wasn’t a bullet, but rather a small sliver, and it wasn’t his heart that was penetrated it was his big toe.

When does biased reporting become conspiracy to commit crimes against the state?

Just Wondering.

Update: Ace is on a tear, a must read today. He’s got a few posts up on the subject so just keep scrolling.

Busted. Heh.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) has an article in the L.A.Times that must have been music to the ears of the Iranian leadership. After admitting that Iran should not be allowed to possess nuclear capabilities, she goes on to detail reasons why Iran should not be attacked militarily. The reasons being the “failure” of the Iraq mission. She says the “diplomatic” course is the way to go. Apparently the U.S. should “push for a complete halt to Iran’s enrichment activities.”

I guess up till now the U.S. hasn’t been formally “pushing”, but instead only nudging or perhaps prodding. A full push should do the trick.

Ms. Feinstein doesn’t refer to the fact that Iran has not only been ignoring the collective demands of the World’s leading powers to halt its enrichment, it’s been openly flaunting its enrichment successes, and threatening to destroy Israel in “one storm” to boot.

She doesn’t address what increasingly appears to be the most likely scenario – Iran continuing with its enrichment process. Of course, that would require some semblence of agreement with Bush’s doctrine of pre-emptive military action. That would also require accepting some responsibility for the outcome of this impasse. Finally, and most importantly, that would entail favouring a responsible, united approach in combatting America’s enemies, over partisan politics.

But there’s nothing to suggest that’s about to happen any time soon. I know it. You know it. And you can bet the Iranian leadership knows it.

I don’t know what’s more shocking; that Iran’s president again vowed to destroy Israel, soon, in “one storm”,or CNN’s coverage of the story in which they omit reference to these horrific statements, and then characterize the speech as more moderate than previous speeches.

I guess the whole prospect of the Jewish state being wiped off the map is too much for us common folk to handle. Might as well give us the watered down, less scary version. The last thing we’d want is us little people going and supporting some sort of aggressive stance against the misunderstood mullahs.

I’ve been reading about increasing calls for a “creative solution” to the Iran crisis in editorials. Today the USA Today cites the Cuban missile crisis solution as an example. Earlier in the week the Washington Post also cited Kennedy’s actions towards Cuba as the type of “creative” conduct that the U.S. should be engaged in.

The problem is that the Iran crisis is the diametric opposite of the Cuban missile crisis.
With the Cuban crisis, the U.S. was faced with the prospect of dangerous rogue regime acquiring nuclear capabilities. What brought the world to the brink of WWIII was the fact that the missiles were being sent from the Soviets. Stopping a gathering threat had to be weighed against the possibility of the complete annihilation of the U.S. via a Soviet first strike. Consider that for a moment: the U.S. was seriously contemplating taking out the Cuban missiles, even in the face of a nuclear attack.

In order to draw an honest comparison with the Iran crisis, we need to imagine a Cuban missile crisis absent the prospect of the immediate annihilation of the U.S. Imagine Castro, as the leader of a rogue state, was not directly backed by the Soviets, but simply developed the missiles on his own. Is there any doubt the U.S. would have taken out the sites, and/or taken over Cuba entirely? In that scenario there would have been no “crisis” at all.

Here we are, five decades later, and a rogue regime which has repeatedly declared hostile intentions towards the U.S., actively supports terrorism, and has called for the destruction of Israel, is openly pursuing nuclear capabilities. In the 1960’s would this have been a “crisis”?

The paradigm pertaining to the use of the military in the face of gathering threats certainly has changed over the last half century. Are the risks of not taking military action are any different today?

Caught a glimpse of “This Week” this morning. In their memorial section at the end of the show they did a little bit on Caspar Weinberger’s life – two lines worth actually. Two lines: that he oversaw the largest “peacetime” military buildup in history, and that he was prosecuted for his role in Iran/Contra.

Ahh yes, that nasty “peacetime” military buildup under Ronald Reagan that cost America so many billions. I guess there’s no need to mention that whole Cold War thing. Now that the decades long fear of Soviet attack is safely behind us, we can now call that era one of “peace”. Forget that it was precisely because of that military buildup that we now have the luxury of cozying up with our comfy peacetime historical revisionism.

That is how the liberal mainstream press sums up your life’s accomplishments (failures) when you hold the wrong (conservative) beliefs.