Those of us who support President Bush just don't accept many of your premises. We perceive that opposition to the war in Iraq by France and Germany was because of an unwillingness to stand up to evil, just as much of Europe refused to stand up to the evil of Hitler in the 1930s. We perceive that the world was happy to love the U.S. when we were a victim, but hate to see us fight back. We perceive that it is hypocritical of many Europeans to call us arrogant as you look down your noses at us and suggest we are all idiots because we do not agree with you. We perceive that you are convinced that the U.S. is carrying out a war on all Muslims no matter how many times President Bush has said that we are not, no matter how little evidence you have to support that outrageous accusation.
And on the subject of Islamic fundamentalists... They hate America, and they hate members of all other religions. Why should we try to make them like us? Truly, suggesting that we need to make them like us is like saying that black people (and Catholics and Jews) in the American South in the late 1800s should have just tried to make the KKK like them. Or maybe the Jews in the 1930s should have just tried to make the Germans like them better.
After all, most of the rank-and-file of the KKK and the Nazis were normal folks who were very poor and who listened to charismatic leaders who convinced them that all their problems were the fault of the evil [blacks, jews, catholics, whoever], who were taking all the jobs or disrepecting the old time religion or whatever.
Some ideologies and world views are just evil, and must be fought.
How does having Germany and France mad at us make us less safe? Are they going to attack us? Of course not. Our danger comes from Islamic fundamentalists such as Osama Bin Laden and dictators bent on obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction such as Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and whomever is the theocrat running Iran today.
All of these people already hated us long before Bush became president. It was during the Clinton administration that the first major foreign terrorist attack on U.S. soil occured, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. It was during the Carter administration that Iran held our embassy staff hostage for 444 days.
I say this not to blame the Democrats for them, but to point out that our lack of safety comes from the hatred that Islamic fundamentalists and dictators of all stripes have for the United States and our culture and values (universal suffrage for all, equal rights for women, religious tolerance, etc.). It's got absolutely nothing to do with President Bush. They hated America under Clinton, they would hate America under Kerry.
And Halliburton is under serious investigation right now for alleged abuses. Hardly sweeping their behavior under the rug, as would be expected if the fix was in. The fact is that there are not that many companies in this country that can do the sort of things we need done over there. So it's hardly surprising, and certainly not proof of corruption, that the military contracted with them. And sometimes you just don't have time to bid everything out. Like in the middle of combat operations!
And I can certainly accept that some countries can disagree with us. Why do you seem to be saying that we can never disagree with them? Why do you ignore the many countries in Europe who DID agree with us on Iraq?
Al Qaeda's hatred for the United States has nothing to do with who our president is or what our foreign policy is. According to the 9-11 Commission, here's why Al Qaeda hates us:
Bin Ladin's grievance with the United States may have started in reaction to specific U.S. policies but it quickly became far deeper. To the second question, what America could do, al Qaeda's answer was that America should abandon the Middle East, convert to Islam, and end the immorality and godlessness of its society and culture: "It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind." If the United States did not comply, it would be at war with the Islamic nation, a nation that al Qaeda's leaders said "desires death more than you desire life."
And yet somehow global terrorism increased during the Carter administration, and Americans were taken hostage and held in brutal and terrible conditions for 444 days. Not to mention the sky-high oil prices, gas lines, and general "malaise".
I liked President Carter too, and considered him honorable and principled. But he was a terribly ineffective President.
Yes, because something like remaking the entire political structure of a company which has been lead by a sadistic despot for 30+ years is something which can be accomplished in just a year or so.
Just because Iraq has not become a full-fledged democracy yet does not mean that it won't, or that we aren't vastly closer to that goal today than we were when Saddam was still in power. Short term thinking is a bad problem in this country. If we don't like the looks of something at this particular instant, too many of us decide that we should just forget the whole thing. Remember when all the critics told us we would get bogged down in Afghanistan just like the Russians? That we would never be able to take over the country without years and years of fighting and slogging through the mountains? How about those reports of "quagmires" when our troops slowed up for a day in the march to Baghdad? Just take a deep breath and wait a bit. It's going to turn out ok.
Remember the advice on the cover of that great book: Don't Panic!
Actually, President Clinton DID sign the Kyoto protocol... he just did not bother submitting it to the Senate for ratification, because he knew that it would never pass. Even leading Democratic Senator Robert Byrd wrote President Clinton urging him NOT to sign the protocol, and noting that signing it would be contrary to the terms of a Senate resolution passed by a vote of 95-0. After leaving office, a number of Clinton aides spoke out against the protocol, acknowledging that it would be both more difficult and more expensive to comply with than they thought when they were in office. And the Democratic Party has dropped support for the Kyoto protocol from their party platform this year.
Why is it that when President Bush obtains the advice and consent of Congress to go to war he is criticized and ridiculed, but when President Clinton signed the Kyoto protocol in defiance of a unanimous Senate who tells him it will not consent to the treaty, he is praised?
The lawyering up will be happening very quickly now. The latest news from the AP is that Mary Mapes, the CBS producer, called Joe Lockhart in the Kerry campaign a few days before the report aired and recommended that he call Burkett, that Burkett was going to be providing some documents to CBS regarding President Bush's National Guard service. The AP report is coming directly from Joe Lockhart himself. A major news media producer called political campaign headquarters and gave him non-public information about upcoming news stories about their political opponent. That is such a tremendous breach of journalistic standards as to boggle the mind.
There will be a criminal investigation into all this very soon. Lockhart is clearly trying to get ahead of the game and pin everything on Mapes. A New York Times article yesterday or this morning cited CBS sources also starting to push the blame onto Mapes. I bet she won't sit still for it, myself. It's only a matter of time now. This is going to finish Dan Rather, and it may finish 60 Minutes and the entire CBS News organization. And I don't see how Lockhart can stay with the Kerry campaign after admitting to collaborating with CBS news. It's pretty obvious that the timing of the DNC's "Operation Fortunate Son" attack wasn't coincidental in the slightest.
You have misstated the U.S. Supreme Court's decisions on libel and slander of public figures. A news program can be held liable for libel or slander of a public figure if 1) the story is in fact false and (2) the news program acts with actual malice, which is defined as "knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." New York Times v. Sullivan
In subsequent decisions, the Court has interpreted "reckless disregard" to include the following:
The defendant in a defamation action brought by a public official cannot, however, automatically insure a favorable verdict by testifying that he published with a belief that the statements were true. The finder of fact must determine whether the publication was indeed made in good faith. Professions of good faith will be unlikely to prove persuasive, for example, where a story is fabricated by the defendant, is the product of his imagination, or is based wholly on an unverified anonymous telephone call. Nor will they be likely to prevail when the publisher's allegations are so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation.
Likewise, recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports. (emphasis added)
(I'm only responding again here because you were modded up as "insightful" for your erroneous explanation of the law)
In fact, I was slightly off in my recollection of New York Times v. Sullivan, but not in the way you suggest. I said that the actual malice test was separate from the reckless disregard test. In fact it is not. Here's what the court said:
The constitutional guarantees require, we think, a federal rule that prohibits a public official from recovering damages for a defamatory falsehood relating to his official conduct unless he proves that the statement was made [376 U.S. 254, 280] with "actual malice" - that is, with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.
Sullivan does not itself define reckless disregard. Its definition has been flushed out in several subsequent opinions of the court. Fundamentally, the court has said that it must ultimately come down to a case-by-case analysis. In St. Amant v. Thompson, the Supreme Court in 1968 fleshed out what it meant by reckless disregard. The court stated:
The defendant in a defamation action brought by a public official cannot, however, automatically insure a favorable verdict by testifying that he published with a belief that the statements were true. The finder of fact must determine whether the publication was indeed made in good faith. Professions of good faith will be unlikely to prove persuasive, for example, where a story is fabricated by the defendant, is the product of his imagination, or is based wholly on an unverified anonymous telephone call. Nor will they be likely to prevail when the publisher's allegations are so inherently improbable that only a reckless man would have put them in circulation.
Likewise, recklessness may be found where there are obvious reasons to doubt the veracity of the informant or the accuracy of his reports.
In Curtis Publishing Co. v. Butts, the Supreme Court found actual malice through reckless disregard because of a newspaper's extreme departure from the normal standards for investigation followed by responsible journalists:
In short, the evidence is ample to support a finding of highly unreasonable conduct constituting an extreme departure from the standards of investigation and reporting ordinarily adhered to by responsible publishers.
Now, was it really necessary to resort to infantile personal insult?
IAAL, and I can tell you that, in a libel suit, President Bush would not have to prove that CBS "knew" that the documents were forged, but could simply prove that CBS published them "with reckless disregard" for the truth.
We now find out that CBS, who previously had the utmost confidence in their source, did not even trouble to learn who actually provided them. They allowed Bill Burkett, who is not a reporter, to withhold the identity of his purported source for the documents. In other words, CBS published very damning documents without even knowing who had obtained the originals. A simple Google search on Bill Burkett would have revealed numerous detailed reports of his attacks on Governor and President Bush, and the subsequent undermining of his claims when subjected to scrutiny such as done by the Boston Globe.
CBS knew or easily should have known that Burkett had a long-standing axe to grind with President Bush. They knew he was not the original source of the documents. They knew that he was not the original source for the documents, and had only his word, with no confirming details, that the documents came from a legitimate source. They knew that THEIR OWN DOCUMENT EXAMINERS warned them of problems with the documents, and the one expert they finally relied on vouched only for the signature, not the rest of the document, and specifically stated that it is impossible to fully authenticate a photocopy. To report on documents obtained by Burkett, trusting only his clearly biased word that the documents are authentic, showed, in my opinion, reckless disregard for the truth.
Rather's and CBS's recklessness is further shown in their initial response to the immediate and substantive criticism of the documents. Instead of admitting that they really didn't know where the documents came from, or that the source was a known and persistent critic of the President, they accused their own critics of being partisan. They slapped up a typwritten document with a small "TH" on it as proof positive that typewriters back then could do superscripted "TH", despite very clear differences between that typewritten example and the forged documents.
Did Dan Rather actually know that these documents were forged when he reported them? I doubt it. Did he show reckless disregard for that truth? I believe so, yes.
To prevail in a libel lawsuit, President Bush would also have to show actual malice on the part of Dan Rather and CBS. Personally, I believe that the whole course of conduct showing Rather's and CBS's reckless disregard for the truth is itself evidence of malice. There is no other conceivable motive for their actions. I would be willing to bet quite a bit of money that they have rejected similar stories which portrayed Democrats negatively.
Truly, if one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had brought Dan Rather or his producer a set of documents looking exactly like this but supposedly from the "personal files" of one of Kerry's Vietnam commanders, claiming that Kerry did not deserve one of his medals, does anybody truly believe CBS would have run that story without a great deal more fact checking and certainty than they required here?
Re:Site is incredibly biased...
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You are correct, I overlooked the part of your post condemning the other news media. I agree that you must sift through the news reported by ANYBODY very carefully in order to get to the truth in any given circumstance.
Given the choice of: 1) a news media free and unfettered by government oversight; and 2) a news media where the courts or the government can impose its version of the "truth" on us, I'll take the free and uncensored version any time.
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Let's see... Dan Rather claimed in prime time, several times over several different days, that documents discovered by CBS News proved George Bush had disobeyed a direct order when in the Texas Air National Guard. Then it turns out that the documents were forged, and CBS's own analysts had warned them they were likely forged. And you claim this is the same as posting some random promotional clip somewhere on the web?
Where does that clip of Hannity come from? Does it claim to be a full or representative recording of the entire interview, or simply a brief promo? If ABC, NBC, or CBS air a 5 second clip of President Bush to promo a news story coming up after the commercial, is this bias? Did Fox News reair the Hannity interview in the abbreviated format, while claiming it was the entire interview? If they did that, then I agree it's very wrong. But I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that they actually did that. I tried to check the archives of the show, but it only goes back to sometime in August.
Did any of you communists bother to read the article? Every single nurse interviewed by the Boston Globe spoke favorably of it. They liked the flexibility it offered them (presumably, they preferred it to being ordered to work extra shifts when the boss decided, rather than when they wanted them).
Moreover, most of them said they were "more often than not" able to get the maximum rate being offered by the hospital. One nurse regularly bid for about $5.00 less than the maximum ($37.00 as opposed to the maximum of $42.50), and has gotten the shifts she wanted every single time.
I would suggest the reason this works is because nurses are very well educated and certainly know the value of their labor. And because there is a high demand for their labor, they have plenty of opportunities to go elsewhere should their current hospital treat them unfairly.
No, then the hospital hires a nurse from a temporary nurse service just like they had been doing previously.
Re:Site is incredibly biased...
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In the first place, the issue with Fox News is not nearly as clear-cut as the anti-growth-hormone movement makes it out to be. Here is a slightly less biased article on the affair which appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review. According to it, the TV station was trying to navigate difficult legal and editorial decisions, while:
"the people at WTVT trying to work with the correspondents regarded them, especially Wilson, as combative, contentious, insulting, and unprofessional. The Fox lawyer participating in the editorial review complained to them that they were stating "in almost every way possible that you are fed up with our process of legal and editorial review."
In the second place, does your opinion mean that you believe the Beef Industry's lawsuit against Oprah should have succeeded?
Re:Site is incredibly biased...
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You really should acknowledge that 5 other major media companies sided with the legal arguments made by Fox in that case: Belo Corporation, Cox Television, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., Media General Operations, Inc., and Post-Newsweek Stations, Inc. (which are cited in the web site you linked to).
It's not a matter of supporting fraudulent reporting, it's a matter of whether the courts can, consistently with the First Amendment, second-guess the editorial decisions made by a free press.
Re:Before the comments start...
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That all sounds wonderful.
But how does one actually do it? How do you "make the U.N. more effective and then enforce its resolutions swiftly and firmly. with U.N. garb", when the United Nations is clearly unwilling to do so? How do we deal with an organization that allows Sudan to retain its current seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights at the very time that Sudan is committing genocide (or, in the words of the U.N.'s own High Commissioner for Human Rights, "a disturbing pattern of disregard for basic principles of human rights and humanitarian law, which is taking place in Darfur for which the armed forces of the Sudan and the Janjaweed are responsible."
This is, of course, the same U.N. Commission on Human Rights that was chaired by Libya in 2002 at the same time Libya was defying U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on it to turn over the terrorists who blew up Pan Am 103 and answer for other terrorist attacks around the world.
Look, I would like the support of the rest of the world. But I have absolutely no faith in the U.N.'s ability to actually resolve conflicts which involve dictators (all of whom, of course, are members of the U.N. itself) and terrorists. The U.N. almost presupposes a certain amount of rationality and good will among its members when it tries to end conflict. This is just not always the case, and when it isn't, the U.N. is organizationaly incapable of dealing with it effectively.
Remember that one of the main reasons President George H. W. Bush did not invade Baghdad during the first Gulf war was because he did not have unanimous support from the international community to do so. That didn't pan out so well.
Again, I agree that your goals are laudable. But I don't see how to change it in the current global situation, and I certainly don't think we will make it better by refusing to do what me must to defend ourselves.
And in terms of the current presidential race, if John Kerry were saying how corrupt the U.N. was and his first job would be to bring about U.N. reform so that it would actually have the will and desire to enforce its own resolutions, then I might support him. But he has offered no vision other than his own ability to somehow persuade our allies to go along with us in the future.
Do you have any sources you can cite for that? Where did President Bush ever oppose this investigation? And what evidence might be destroyed? Novak had a verbal conversation with a "Senior Administration Official". What records are going to exist of that? And how is President Bush in any way controlling this investigation? If he wanted to hide things and was controlling the investigation or its timing, why would he be allowing reporters to be subpoenaed to testify about off-the-record conversations they had with administration officials? How exactly does that constitute "keeping it out of the public eye"?
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Thank you for the citation. I first read the document that Podesta was trying to get Hannity to confront. Personally, I think it has some good points (such as the very good James Madison article about the Congressional chaplains), and some bad points (claiming that Hannity was wrong in claiming that Bush inherited a recession, when in fact the recession officially began in March 2001, a mere 2 months after he took office).
As for the transcript you cite, I disagree that the edited version is terribly distorted. Hannity cited Dean as saying the pre-9/11 theory was an "interesting theory". And in fact Dean did say it was an interesting theory. Yes, he also said he himself didn't believe it, but if he doesn't believe it, why does he even bringing it up? Bringing it up suggests that it is possible. It asks his supporters to consider the possibility, no matter how much he may say he himself, of course, would never dream that an actual president could do such a thing. So in fact it was Podesta being inaccurate in this precise exchange:
HANNITY: Howard Dean advanced the theory. He said it was an interesting theory.
JDP: He never said that, Sean.
And I would note 2 other things. First, even the clip you complain about does in fact leave in Podesta stating that he doesn't agree with Dean if Dean were in fact saying it was a possibility. Second, there is no context for where this clip was actually taken. I can't even tell whether it came from an official abcradio or Sean Hannity web site. The American Progress story makes it sound like Hannity altered the full transcript or full recording of the exchange. The clip sounds to me like it's just a brief web sound clip, which you would expect to be edited to a very short length, not purporting to be a full transcript.
Like President Bush, I fully support the Justice Department's vigorous investigation into the leak of Valery Plame's name to Robert Novak. (I would also support a vigorous ethics investigation into how she used her power in the CIA to get her husband some work.)
Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott would disagree with you. He believes that it's more important to blow the whistle on alleged wrong-doing than to follow the law. He is the Congressman who, in 1997, accepted an illegally-made tape recording of a phone call between Newt Gingrich and Rep. John Boehner and distributed it to the news media. Rep. McDermott, who was held liable to Rep. Boehner for damages in a ruling by a judge last month, had this to say about his law breaking:
McDermott defended his conduct. "I believed important public issues were involved," he said in a statement, "and that I had the right under the First Amendment to release the taped conversation to the news media."
Note that McDermott is not the one who made the illegal recording. He merely distributed it to the news media. But distribution of illegal wiretaps is itself illegal.
It's one thing to believe that internal policy discussions by politicians and others should be allowed to remain confidential, and another to push for the prosecution of someone who for whatever reason chooses to breech that confidentiality and leak the documents anyway. If the Democrats want to exchange memos like this and agree amongst themselves not to share them with outsiders, that's fine with me. Same with the Cheney energy executive meetings. But if someone in the White House chose to leak, say, the minutes of the Cheney meetings to the public, I would not be calling for the criminal prosecution of the leaker.
All I'm asking for is that the Democrats and the news media not be hypocritical about it. If YOU believe that the Cheney energy records should be released, then you should also believe that the Democratic Judiciary Committee memos should have been released. If you believe that "whistle-blowers" should be protected after disclosing non-public documents, then you should believe that Mr. Miranda should not be prosecuted for revealing those Democratic memos.
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Assuming you really do want an answer...
Those of us who support President Bush just don't accept many of your premises. We perceive that opposition to the war in Iraq by France and Germany was because of an unwillingness to stand up to evil, just as much of Europe refused to stand up to the evil of Hitler in the 1930s. We perceive that the world was happy to love the U.S. when we were a victim, but hate to see us fight back. We perceive that it is hypocritical of many Europeans to call us arrogant as you look down your noses at us and suggest we are all idiots because we do not agree with you. We perceive that you are convinced that the U.S. is carrying out a war on all Muslims no matter how many times President Bush has said that we are not, no matter how little evidence you have to support that outrageous accusation.
Can you provide some links about that? I would like to read more about it. Thanks!
And on the subject of Islamic fundamentalists... They hate America, and they hate members of all other religions. Why should we try to make them like us? Truly, suggesting that we need to make them like us is like saying that black people (and Catholics and Jews) in the American South in the late 1800s should have just tried to make the KKK like them. Or maybe the Jews in the 1930s should have just tried to make the Germans like them better.
After all, most of the rank-and-file of the KKK and the Nazis were normal folks who were very poor and who listened to charismatic leaders who convinced them that all their problems were the fault of the evil [blacks, jews, catholics, whoever], who were taking all the jobs or disrepecting the old time religion or whatever.
Some ideologies and world views are just evil, and must be fought.
How does having Germany and France mad at us make us less safe? Are they going to attack us? Of course not. Our danger comes from Islamic fundamentalists such as Osama Bin Laden and dictators bent on obtaining and using weapons of mass destruction such as Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and whomever is the theocrat running Iran today.
All of these people already hated us long before Bush became president. It was during the Clinton administration that the first major foreign terrorist attack on U.S. soil occured, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. It was during the Carter administration that Iran held our embassy staff hostage for 444 days.
I say this not to blame the Democrats for them, but to point out that our lack of safety comes from the hatred that Islamic fundamentalists and dictators of all stripes have for the United States and our culture and values (universal suffrage for all, equal rights for women, religious tolerance, etc.). It's got absolutely nothing to do with President Bush. They hated America under Clinton, they would hate America under Kerry.
And Halliburton is under serious investigation right now for alleged abuses. Hardly sweeping their behavior under the rug, as would be expected if the fix was in. The fact is that there are not that many companies in this country that can do the sort of things we need done over there. So it's hardly surprising, and certainly not proof of corruption, that the military contracted with them. And sometimes you just don't have time to bid everything out. Like in the middle of combat operations!
And I can certainly accept that some countries can disagree with us. Why do you seem to be saying that we can never disagree with them? Why do you ignore the many countries in Europe who DID agree with us on Iraq?
And yet somehow global terrorism increased during the Carter administration, and Americans were taken hostage and held in brutal and terrible conditions for 444 days. Not to mention the sky-high oil prices, gas lines, and general "malaise".
I liked President Carter too, and considered him honorable and principled. But he was a terribly ineffective President.
Yes, because something like remaking the entire political structure of a company which has been lead by a sadistic despot for 30+ years is something which can be accomplished in just a year or so.
Just because Iraq has not become a full-fledged democracy yet does not mean that it won't, or that we aren't vastly closer to that goal today than we were when Saddam was still in power. Short term thinking is a bad problem in this country. If we don't like the looks of something at this particular instant, too many of us decide that we should just forget the whole thing. Remember when all the critics told us we would get bogged down in Afghanistan just like the Russians? That we would never be able to take over the country without years and years of fighting and slogging through the mountains? How about those reports of "quagmires" when our troops slowed up for a day in the march to Baghdad? Just take a deep breath and wait a bit. It's going to turn out ok.
Remember the advice on the cover of that great book: Don't Panic!
Actually, President Clinton DID sign the Kyoto protocol... he just did not bother submitting it to the Senate for ratification, because he knew that it would never pass. Even leading Democratic Senator Robert Byrd wrote President Clinton urging him NOT to sign the protocol, and noting that signing it would be contrary to the terms of a Senate resolution passed by a vote of 95-0. After leaving office, a number of Clinton aides spoke out against the protocol, acknowledging that it would be both more difficult and more expensive to comply with than they thought when they were in office. And the Democratic Party has dropped support for the Kyoto protocol from their party platform this year.
Why is it that when President Bush obtains the advice and consent of Congress to go to war he is criticized and ridiculed, but when President Clinton signed the Kyoto protocol in defiance of a unanimous Senate who tells him it will not consent to the treaty, he is praised?
The lawyering up will be happening very quickly now. The latest news from the AP is that Mary Mapes, the CBS producer, called Joe Lockhart in the Kerry campaign a few days before the report aired and recommended that he call Burkett, that Burkett was going to be providing some documents to CBS regarding President Bush's National Guard service. The AP report is coming directly from Joe Lockhart himself. A major news media producer called political campaign headquarters and gave him non-public information about upcoming news stories about their political opponent. That is such a tremendous breach of journalistic standards as to boggle the mind.
There will be a criminal investigation into all this very soon. Lockhart is clearly trying to get ahead of the game and pin everything on Mapes. A New York Times article yesterday or this morning cited CBS sources also starting to push the blame onto Mapes. I bet she won't sit still for it, myself. It's only a matter of time now. This is going to finish Dan Rather, and it may finish 60 Minutes and the entire CBS News organization. And I don't see how Lockhart can stay with the Kerry campaign after admitting to collaborating with CBS news. It's pretty obvious that the timing of the DNC's "Operation Fortunate Son" attack wasn't coincidental in the slightest.
In subsequent decisions, the Court has interpreted "reckless disregard" to include the following: (I'm only responding again here because you were modded up as "insightful" for your erroneous explanation of the law)
IAAL, and I can tell you that, in a libel suit, President Bush would not have to prove that CBS "knew" that the documents were forged, but could simply prove that CBS published them "with reckless disregard" for the truth.
We now find out that CBS, who previously had the utmost confidence in their source, did not even trouble to learn who actually provided them. They allowed Bill Burkett, who is not a reporter, to withhold the identity of his purported source for the documents. In other words, CBS published very damning documents without even knowing who had obtained the originals. A simple Google search on Bill Burkett would have revealed numerous detailed reports of his attacks on Governor and President Bush, and the subsequent undermining of his claims when subjected to scrutiny such as done by the Boston Globe.
CBS knew or easily should have known that Burkett had a long-standing axe to grind with President Bush. They knew he was not the original source of the documents. They knew that he was not the original source for the documents, and had only his word, with no confirming details, that the documents came from a legitimate source. They knew that THEIR OWN DOCUMENT EXAMINERS warned them of problems with the documents, and the one expert they finally relied on vouched only for the signature, not the rest of the document, and specifically stated that it is impossible to fully authenticate a photocopy. To report on documents obtained by Burkett, trusting only his clearly biased word that the documents are authentic, showed, in my opinion, reckless disregard for the truth.
Rather's and CBS's recklessness is further shown in their initial response to the immediate and substantive criticism of the documents. Instead of admitting that they really didn't know where the documents came from, or that the source was a known and persistent critic of the President, they accused their own critics of being partisan. They slapped up a typwritten document with a small "TH" on it as proof positive that typewriters back then could do superscripted "TH", despite very clear differences between that typewritten example and the forged documents.
Did Dan Rather actually know that these documents were forged when he reported them? I doubt it. Did he show reckless disregard for that truth? I believe so, yes.
To prevail in a libel lawsuit, President Bush would also have to show actual malice on the part of Dan Rather and CBS. Personally, I believe that the whole course of conduct showing Rather's and CBS's reckless disregard for the truth is itself evidence of malice. There is no other conceivable motive for their actions. I would be willing to bet quite a bit of money that they have rejected similar stories which portrayed Democrats negatively.
Truly, if one of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth had brought Dan Rather or his producer a set of documents looking exactly like this but supposedly from the "personal files" of one of Kerry's Vietnam commanders, claiming that Kerry did not deserve one of his medals, does anybody truly believe CBS would have run that story without a great deal more fact checking and certainty than they required here?
You are correct, I overlooked the part of your post condemning the other news media. I agree that you must sift through the news reported by ANYBODY very carefully in order to get to the truth in any given circumstance.
Given the choice of: 1) a news media free and unfettered by government oversight; and 2) a news media where the courts or the government can impose its version of the "truth" on us, I'll take the free and uncensored version any time.
Let's see... Dan Rather claimed in prime time, several times over several different days, that documents discovered by CBS News proved George Bush had disobeyed a direct order when in the Texas Air National Guard. Then it turns out that the documents were forged, and CBS's own analysts had warned them they were likely forged. And you claim this is the same as posting some random promotional clip somewhere on the web?
Where does that clip of Hannity come from? Does it claim to be a full or representative recording of the entire interview, or simply a brief promo? If ABC, NBC, or CBS air a 5 second clip of President Bush to promo a news story coming up after the commercial, is this bias? Did Fox News reair the Hannity interview in the abbreviated format, while claiming it was the entire interview? If they did that, then I agree it's very wrong. But I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that they actually did that. I tried to check the archives of the show, but it only goes back to sometime in August.
Did any of you communists bother to read the article? Every single nurse interviewed by the Boston Globe spoke favorably of it. They liked the flexibility it offered them (presumably, they preferred it to being ordered to work extra shifts when the boss decided, rather than when they wanted them).
Moreover, most of them said they were "more often than not" able to get the maximum rate being offered by the hospital. One nurse regularly bid for about $5.00 less than the maximum ($37.00 as opposed to the maximum of $42.50), and has gotten the shifts she wanted every single time.
I would suggest the reason this works is because nurses are very well educated and certainly know the value of their labor. And because there is a high demand for their labor, they have plenty of opportunities to go elsewhere should their current hospital treat them unfairly.
No, then the hospital hires a nurse from a temporary nurse service just like they had been doing previously.
And of course many non-Fox news organizations have out-and-out fabricated major components of stories before. Dateline NBC, 60 Minutes, and (of course) 60 Minutes II and Dan Rather.
You really should acknowledge that 5 other major media companies sided with the legal arguments made by Fox in that case: Belo Corporation, Cox Television, Inc., Gannett Co., Inc., Media General Operations, Inc., and Post-Newsweek Stations, Inc. (which are cited in the web site you linked to).
It's not a matter of supporting fraudulent reporting, it's a matter of whether the courts can, consistently with the First Amendment, second-guess the editorial decisions made by a free press.
That all sounds wonderful.
But how does one actually do it? How do you "make the U.N. more effective and then enforce its resolutions swiftly and firmly. with U.N. garb", when the United Nations is clearly unwilling to do so? How do we deal with an organization that allows Sudan to retain its current seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights at the very time that Sudan is committing genocide (or, in the words of the U.N.'s own High Commissioner for Human Rights, "a disturbing pattern of disregard for basic principles of human rights and humanitarian law, which is taking place in Darfur for which the armed forces of the Sudan and the Janjaweed are responsible."
This is, of course, the same U.N. Commission on Human Rights that was chaired by Libya in 2002 at the same time Libya was defying U.N. Security Council resolutions calling on it to turn over the terrorists who blew up Pan Am 103 and answer for other terrorist attacks around the world.
Look, I would like the support of the rest of the world. But I have absolutely no faith in the U.N.'s ability to actually resolve conflicts which involve dictators (all of whom, of course, are members of the U.N. itself) and terrorists. The U.N. almost presupposes a certain amount of rationality and good will among its members when it tries to end conflict. This is just not always the case, and when it isn't, the U.N. is organizationaly incapable of dealing with it effectively.
Remember that one of the main reasons President George H. W. Bush did not invade Baghdad during the first Gulf war was because he did not have unanimous support from the international community to do so. That didn't pan out so well.
Again, I agree that your goals are laudable. But I don't see how to change it in the current global situation, and I certainly don't think we will make it better by refusing to do what me must to defend ourselves.
And in terms of the current presidential race, if John Kerry were saying how corrupt the U.N. was and his first job would be to bring about U.N. reform so that it would actually have the will and desire to enforce its own resolutions, then I might support him. But he has offered no vision other than his own ability to somehow persuade our allies to go along with us in the future.
Do you have any sources you can cite for that? Where did President Bush ever oppose this investigation? And what evidence might be destroyed? Novak had a verbal conversation with a "Senior Administration Official". What records are going to exist of that? And how is President Bush in any way controlling this investigation? If he wanted to hide things and was controlling the investigation or its timing, why would he be allowing reporters to be subpoenaed to testify about off-the-record conversations they had with administration officials? How exactly does that constitute "keeping it out of the public eye"?
As for the transcript you cite, I disagree that the edited version is terribly distorted. Hannity cited Dean as saying the pre-9/11 theory was an "interesting theory". And in fact Dean did say it was an interesting theory. Yes, he also said he himself didn't believe it, but if he doesn't believe it, why does he even bringing it up? Bringing it up suggests that it is possible. It asks his supporters to consider the possibility, no matter how much he may say he himself, of course, would never dream that an actual president could do such a thing. So in fact it was Podesta being inaccurate in this precise exchange: And I would note 2 other things. First, even the clip you complain about does in fact leave in Podesta stating that he doesn't agree with Dean if Dean were in fact saying it was a possibility. Second, there is no context for where this clip was actually taken. I can't even tell whether it came from an official abcradio or Sean Hannity web site. The American Progress story makes it sound like Hannity altered the full transcript or full recording of the exchange. The clip sounds to me like it's just a brief web sound clip, which you would expect to be edited to a very short length, not purporting to be a full transcript.
Like President Bush, I fully support the Justice Department's vigorous investigation into the leak of Valery Plame's name to Robert Novak. (I would also support a vigorous ethics investigation into how she used her power in the CIA to get her husband some work.)
It's one thing to believe that internal policy discussions by politicians and others should be allowed to remain confidential, and another to push for the prosecution of someone who for whatever reason chooses to breech that confidentiality and leak the documents anyway. If the Democrats want to exchange memos like this and agree amongst themselves not to share them with outsiders, that's fine with me. Same with the Cheney energy executive meetings. But if someone in the White House chose to leak, say, the minutes of the Cheney meetings to the public, I would not be calling for the criminal prosecution of the leaker.
All I'm asking for is that the Democrats and the news media not be hypocritical about it. If YOU believe that the Cheney energy records should be released, then you should also believe that the Democratic Judiciary Committee memos should have been released. If you believe that "whistle-blowers" should be protected after disclosing non-public documents, then you should believe that Mr. Miranda should not be prosecuted for revealing those Democratic memos.