Last week I made a brief mention of ABC News' Web coverage of the recess appointment of Sam Fox to be ambassador to Belgium. The headline was anything but unbiased: "Bush Swift Boats Belgium, Congress." The subhed wasn't any better: "President Slips Swift Boat Ambassador Past Congress." Rule No. 1 of headline writing: Don't use […]
On Wednesday, President Bush made a recess appointment to make Sam Fox the U.S. ambassador to Belgium. Democrats had blocked Fox because he had the audacity to donate money to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. For those into media criticism, I encourage you to compare the aforelinked AP story to this story from ABC […]
Since perhaps the beginning of time, and certainly most of American history, ambassadorships to certain nations have been used as political payback to a president's supporters. While career diplomats can rise to the ambassadorships of nations like Guinea-Bissau, if you want to be ambassador to, say Belgium, then your best bet is to help get […]
Last week, House Democrats (and two Republicans) voted through a supplemental defense bill that included a deadline for withdrawal from Iraq and more than $20 billion in pork projects. (Fourteen Democrats voted against the measure, seven because it continued funding the war and seven because the measure was wrong.) The entire process was despicable and […]
Sen. Dianne Feinstein on "Fox News Sunday" on the eight fired U.S. Attorneys: Six out of seven [sic] of them were involved in public corruption cases. This is in particular my interest. I think before you remove somebody in the middle of a public corruption situation, you ought to be very sure of what you're […]
I haven't written about this because it's much ado about nothing -- and that may be an overstatement. The eight U.S. Attorneys are political appointees and serve at the pleasure of the president. He can fire them for any reason -- any. The only way that there is a scandal here is if Bush was […]
Former CIA agent Valerie Plame appeared before a House committee this afternoon and played the victim. I won't go line by line, but let's just say that just about everything Plame said was a lie, including "the" and "and." Tom Maguire over at Just One Minute has a post up with helpful links, including this […]
That might be an interesting question to ask your senators and representatives -- especially if they are in a different party politically than you are. I pose the question because of this letter to the editor in the March 19 edition of Time magazine: [Sen. Joseph] Lieberman [I-Conn.] lost the democratic primary because his constituents […]
I caught a bit of this morning's "Meet the Press" journalist roundtable on NBC. It should come as no surprise that there were four journalist guests, and not an identifiable conservative to be seen. The assembled members of the high council expressed the consensus view that a pardon for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby would not […]
For the record, you should check out this post by McQ over at QandO. McQ takes on the new "truth" that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth were in "reality" a bunch of liars. Also worth reading is this editorial on the verdict in the Libby case from The Washington Post. An excerpt: Mr. Wilson […]