Moe Lane

Unintentionally.  I hope.

(Via Hot Air) All in the name of the scoop, of course. The title is bad enough (“U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors“), but the fools who wrote the article* gave names and procedures. They also explicitly used still-classified material to break this story:

The American effort, revealed in dozens of interviews, planning documents and classified diplomatic cables obtained by The New York Times, ranges in scale, cost and sophistication.

Which is illegal. It was illegal when it happened to Bush, it’s illegal now, and it will be illegal in the next Republican administration. It’d also be a stupid idea even if it was legal. Why? Well, let me tell you a story from World War I. Supposedly, once the war started British troops in at least one section of the front had made a happy discovery: the Germans artillery apparently thought that the enemy was a bit farther back than they actually were, and were thus essentially overshooting the actual front lines. Great news… at least, that’s what the British media thought, so they wrote stories about the lucky break in the papers. And then the Germans read the newspapers – because that’s one thing that foreign agents do; they pass along relevant information from the newspapers – and proceeded to adjust their firing solutions so that they were actually hitting their targets. (more…)

And it is cynical, in a fundamental way: the New York Times recognizes the need for getting public sector unions under control… in New York (where it will affect the New York Times).  Wisconsin can apparently take a short walk off a long pier, for all that the Old Grey Lady cares.  This is, by the way, a major reason why institutions of the Left are mistrusted by agents of the Right: the former goes out of the way to slander, libel, and dismiss the motivations and actions of the latter even when they agree with them.

And… that’s it, frankly.  Personally, I don’t see why New York gets to have its governor smack back an out-of-control public sector union crisis while Wisconsin can’t, but then I’m not precisely the audience demographic that the New York Times is trying to reach.  Which is a mistake on its part, but never mind that right now.

Moe Lane

(H/T: Instapundit)

Politico volleys; the New York Times counter-volleys; and then there was this guy with a trident…

What? Trust me, the actual dispute is inside-baseball even by my standards, and I read this stuff for fun. You don’t really need to know, or even really care. The point is that the NYT and Politico have found themselves in a position where they may actually decide to break out the family atomics…

It would seem that the New York Times has decided that this is indeed a time of shared sacrifice; and the New York Times has further decided to volunteer public sector union employees in Wisconsin to be the ones… ‘sharing.’  This article is fairly astounding: not because it is inaccurate in making a sharp distinction between public and private sector union employees, mostly to the former’s disadvantage.  And it’s not because the article makes it clear that suffering private sector union workers will not actually benefit from their public sector counterparts being able to keep their inflated privileges and perks.  Everybody sensible knew that already.

No, the article is astounding because it’s on today’s front page of the NYT, apparently.  This is pretty much an indication that public sector unions are now free to be thrown under the bus by the rest of the Democratic party. This is, of course, a regrettable necessity: but the needs of the larger party are at stake, and public sector unions are currently unpopular*.  In fact – and this is kind of shocking – public sector unions are even kind of unpopular among a certain type of liberal/progressive; the ones who actually takes all that nonsense about class warfare and struggle seriously.  Turns out some of those people were quietly unhappy that government employees got to get lumped in with real unions, and are now taking the time to actually articulate their objections on… on… on principle.

Who knew? (more…)

Ah, the New York Times.  Not only did their recent attempt to declare the Tucson shootings an episode of political violence spawned by right-wing rhetoric fail; it actually encouraged a minor episode of political violence spawned by left-wing rhetoric*.  This has made the paper look even worse than usual, so they need a good excuse to explain away the problem.  Said excuse?  It’s all the fault of the media’s genetic condition.

Seriously.

Jerry Ceppos, dean of the journalism school at the University of Nevada, Reno, said journalists’ impulse to quickly impose a frame on a story is “genetic.”

“Journalists developed automatic framing protocols generations ago because of the need to report quickly,” he said. “Today’s hyper-deadlines, requiring journalists to report all day long and all night long, made that genetic disposition even more dominant.”

Two things from this: (more…)

Hi!  This post is for the benefit of whomever, starting next January, is going to be in charge of soon-to-be Chairman Darrell Issa’s Oversight and Government Reform investigation team. I think that there’s a non-trivial chance that this New York Times report of the White House evading its own ethics rules by deliberately meeting with lobbyists off site (and thus, without having to to log in lobbyist visits) for ‘coffee’ may abruptly become not available after November, so I’m taking the time to reproduce the names of everybody in the article after the fold.

You know. Just in case anybody in the 112th Congress’s Oversight committee wanted to have a chat with any of them. (more…)

(H/T: Instapundit) The first paragraph sets the mood:

Keli Carender has a pierced nose, performs improv on weekends and lives here in a neighborhood with more Mexican grocers than coffeehouses. You might mistake her for the kind of young person whose vote powered President Obama to the White House. You probably would not think of her as a Tea Party type.

…and the Old Grey Lady pretty clearly was not in it.  They didn’t do a bad job of reporting this story, but very little of it fits their existing narrative of the Tea Party, and you can tell that the writer was somewhat aware of that. (more…)

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

I have some suggestions for the New York Times.  When you provide stories like this:

Federal agents on Wednesday fatally shot a man they described as the leader of a violent Sunni Muslim separatist group in Detroit.

The 53-year-old man, Luqman Ameen Abdullah, was killed in one of three raids conducted in and around the city, in which six followers of his were taken into custody.

…there are things that you need to mention.

• If the group that this guy was affiliated with is “a group of mostly African-American converts to Islam, which seeks to establish a separate Sharia-law governed state within the United States,” we need to know that. A story about domestic terrorists is a different story than one about foreign terrorists. It just is.
• Likewise, if Luqman Ameen Abdullah – the leader who got shot – was born with the name “Christopher Thomas,” we need to know that.
• And finally: if the guy is saying things like “Obama is a Kafir. McCain, all the rest of them Kuffars, are Kuffars,” we need to know that.  Especially that first sentence.

Let’s be blunt: the FBI shut down a proto-cell* of radical fringe Black Muslim domestic terrorists – which is something that’s going to please everybody, with the possible exception of CAIR.  And as can be seen from the links, most news organizations are capable of reporting on this in a forthright fashion… but the New York Times takes until the second-to-last paragraph to even hint at it.  Which is problematical; after all, the idea here is for a newspaper to report on what happened.  Not to make its readers have to go out and find out what really happened…

Moe Lane

*They were still at the ‘criminal activities to fund illegal firearms purchasing’ stage.  I’m not going to pretend that I haven’t read of this particular organizational arc before.

PS: Glenn Reynolds wonders why we’re seeing more domestic counter-terrorism operations these days.  At a guess, I think that we got some very good intelligence a few years ago and started up a variety of investigations.  We are now rolling them up because the targets are starting to look like they’re ready to switch from rhetoric to action, now that Big, Scary Bush isn’t in the Oval Office any more…

Crossposted to RedState.

I prefer the term ‘Fishbowl,’ myself.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

The New York Times, on its corrected coverage of the ongoing fall of ACORN:

ON Sept. 12, an Associated Press article inside The Times reported that the Census Bureau had severed its ties to Acorn, the community organizing group. Robert Groves, the census director, was quoted as saying that Acorn, one of thousands of unpaid organizations promoting the 2010 census, had become “a distraction.”

What the article didn’t say — but what followers of Fox News and conservative commentators already knew — was that a video sting had caught Acorn workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes. The young woman in streetwalker’s clothes and her companion were actually undercover conservative activists with a hidden camera.

Michelle Malkin grades them for the effort: short version is that they’re still flunking, and will continue to do so until they address the Anita MonCrief matter*. Michelle ended her article by welcoming the NYT to the ‘jungle.’ Personally, I prefer ‘Fishbowl:’ it’s more descriptive.  People notice these things now.  They notice, also, when newspaper websites do their best to avoid linking directly to conservative online sources; I’m pretty sure that Big Government wouldn’t have gotten that link if ACORN hadn’t pulled their own statement from their own website.

I don’t actually want to see newspapers go away, seeing as they’ve got structural advantages on news gathering that I envy.  Like actual budgets: when someone like Robert Stacy McCain** decides that he’s going to go down to Kentucky and cover the Bill Sparkman murder, he has to shake the tip jar, write a few posts highlighting the issue, and hope that somebody comes through for his expenses.  The equivalent NYT editor simply calls up the relevant department and has somebody set it up.  The ability to follow stories that easily is a powerful ability; would that the NYT was willing to take advantage of it.

Moe Lane

*Unless you consider one sentence sans link or details at the end of this piece ‘addressing.’  Michelle clearly doesn’t.  For that matter, I don’t think that I do, either.

**Otherwise known as R.S. McCain, Bob McCain, Stacy McCain, or Robert McCain.

Crossposted to RedState.

From this Politico article on recent media failures (via Hot Air Headlines):

“For Glenn Beck to devote 45 minutes of his show to ACORN and Van Jones says more about his news judgment than mine,” said Dean Baquet, Washington bureau chief of the New York Times.

Given that it can be safely assumed that Glenn Beck viewers were not surprised at either the Van Jones resignation or the Senate’s defunding of ACORN, and that it can be assumed that many New York Times readers were surprised – which, to be blunt (and cruel) about it, means that the former were better informed than the latter – well, put it any way that you like, Baquet.  You’re still suffering from the comparison.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Ouch?

Ah, the first “Is [INSERT GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION HERE] [INSERT PRESIDENT'S NAME HERE]‘s Vietnam?” article written about a Presidential administration.  Always a magical time.

Could Afghanistan Become Obama’s Vietnam?

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead?

Naturally, the NYT is mostly concerned with Afghanistan as it relates to American domestic policy – the idea that the situation might have either national security or humanitarian implications that might affect the decision-making process is carefully ignored – but that’s not unexpected. As the article itself references (but does not admit), the Left has never been interested in Afghanistan as Afghanistan: it was a convenient club with which to try to beat the (Republican) President with, and now that there is no (Republican) President in office the progressive wing is abandoning the illusion of caring, with happy sighs all around. (more…)

I’m not going to ask, Can you tell me what’s wrong with the first map below? I’m going to ask you, How long did it take you to figure out what’s wrong with the first map below?

Don’t worry if it took you a little extra time to find the second one; the fact that you got both still puts you two up on the New York Times.

Crossposted to RedState.