31 October 2006 @ 9:52AM >> It seems that New York Times readers complain of the paper’s political agenda so frequently when canceling subscriptions that customer service operators actually have a code for recording that type of complaint.

The Times may continue the charade of claiming to be a non-biased source of information, but (former) readers apparently know better. Perhaps that’s why circulation of the Times fell another 3.5% in just six months. You can fool some of the people some of the time...

30 October 2006 @ 1:06AM >> NBC reporter Richard Engel describes himself as “basically a pacifist” in a Washington Post profile.

Engel, who is currently covering Iraq, also says, “I think war should be illegal.”

In the same profile, NBC anchor Brian Williams says that Engel “is the most agenda-less person I’ve met in our business, I think, in the past 20 years.”

If a self-proclaimed “pacifist” who thinks “war should be illegal” is what passes for “agenda-less” in the establishment media, then I can understand why reporters deny media bias so fervently. They refuse to see it even when their colleagues admit to it.

And if Engel is “the most agenda-less person” Brian Williams has met in twenty years in the business, what does that say about everyone else in the news media?

26 October 2006 @ 8:59AM >> Political rumblings in Amsterdam:

Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk is in favour of imposing a ban on the wearing of a burka in public spaces.

The Liberal VVD told MPs on Thursday night the face-covering clothing is a symbol of division (between the West and Islam) and was not in harmony with the integration of Muslims and the emancipation of women.

[...]

One of the options being studied is whether a general ban on the burka is possible under current regulations. It will then also be assessed whether a ban wearing a burka can be justified based on issues of safety and public order.

The final option is whether a ban can be imposed via existing regulations such as a general local ordinance or compulsory identification laws.

Government ministers had been called back to the Parliament to explain why they had not yet imposed a ban on the burka, as demanded by MPs in December at the initiative of Geert Wilders. It had previously been revealed that the cabinet was divided over the issue.

By itself, the wearing of a burqa in public is not “symbol of division” in a Western society, it’s merely a symbol of that society’s ability to incorporate people from different backgrounds. There’s nothing wrong with a burqa per se, as long as it is worn voluntarily.

A grave threat to Western culture is the murderous intolerance shown by some radical Muslims to our core values, like that of free thought and free speech. But we have other important values, such as the freedom to worship (or not) as we please—as long as one’s actions don’t infringe upon someone else’s rights.

The way to address the fact that there are some Jihadists in the Muslim world who need to be defeated is not to strip all Muslims of their right to wear religious attire. Doing so does nothing to further the integration of Muslims, it only serves as a signal that they are not welcome.

Western cultures will go down a dangerous path if we start outlawing legitimate, non-violent and uncoerced expressions of faith.

25 October 2006 @ 9:13AM >> David Zucker, the writer and director of Airplane! and a number of other comedies, has recently been releasing humorous political ads online. Political involvement among Hollywood insiders is nothing new, but what makes Zucker’s recent work a man-bites-dog story is that he’s been doing ads for those evil Republicans, something which is sure to make him an anathema in his industry.

One of his recent ads, a send-up of the Clinton Administration’s foreign policy—complete with a Madeleine Albright stand-in who looks a little too accurate to be flattering—was deemed too hot for establishment Republicans, who declined to air it. No matter; these days, you can reach audiences online without expensive media buys.

Zucker’s latest piece looks at what life might be like if Democrats captured Congress and dictated the nation’s tax policy.

Has David Zucker stumbled onto a new model in political advertising? I think so.

25 October 2006 @ 8:15AM >> Imagine The View (but with younger women) combined with The Daily Show (but with a more right-of-center sensibility), and the result might look something like The America Show.

24 October 2006 @ 8:08AM >>

The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America’s children.Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who’s convinced she will soon be Speaker of the House

(Hat tip: Mickey Kaus.)

23 October 2006 @ 11:06PM >> Britain’s Daily Mail reports that bigwigs at the BBC—which publicly claims to be objective—privately admit to being anything but:

It was the day that a host of BBC executives and star presenters admitted what critics have been telling them for years: the BBC is dominated by trendy, Left-leaning liberals who are biased against Christianity and in favour of multiculturalism.

A leaked account of an ‘impartiality summit’ called by BBC chairman Michael Grade, is certain to lead to a new row about the BBC and its reporting on key issues, especially concerning Muslims and the war on terror.

It reveals that executives would let the Bible be thrown into a dustbin on a TV comedy show, but not the Koran, and that they would broadcast an interview with Osama Bin Laden if given the opportunity. Further, it discloses that the BBC’s ‘diversity tsar’, wants Muslim women newsreaders to be allowed to wear veils when on air.

[...]

Political pundit Andrew Marr said: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities and gay people. It has a liberal bias not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’

Washington correspondent Justin Webb said that the BBC is so biased against America that deputy director general Mark Byford had secretly agreed to help him to ‘correct’, it in his reports. Webb added that the BBC treated America with scorn and derision and gave it ‘no moral weight’.

Former BBC business editor Jeff Randall said he complained to a ‘very senior news executive’, about the BBC’s pro-multicultural stance but was given the reply: ‘The BBC is not neutral in multiculturalism: it believes in it and it promotes it.’

If I were British, I’d be demanding to know why my television tax was funding what BBC insiders now privately admit is essentially political propaganda.

21 October 2006 @ 5:32PM >> The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a recent study of university faculty:

A report released on Wednesday on the political views of faculty members accuses professors of liberal “groupthink,” a stance that the report says puts them at odds with the beliefs of most Americans on national and international issues.

The report, by the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, was based on an online, nationally representative survey of 1,259 professors at four-year colleges and universities in the spring of 2005. It found that, in general, professors are critical of American business and foreign policy and are skeptical of capitalism.

[...]

Professors, says the report, are at the “forefront of the political divide” over U.S. foreign policy that has developed since the 2001 terrorist attacks. Faculty members have “aligned themselves in direct opposition to the political philosophy of the conservative base voting for the prevailing political power” in America, it says. Unlike most Americans, it adds, faculty members “blame America for world problems” and regard U.S. policies as “suspect.”

The report labels the faculty’s overall stance as liberal “groupthink,” and says it is dangerous because faculty members “are supposed to provide a broad range of ... approaches to addressing problems in American society and around the world.” Professors are role models for students and frequently are called upon to act as “pundits” by the media and as experts on foreign policy, it adds.

[...]

“The fact that there are more liberals than conservatives on campus is not the key issue,” Gary A. Tobin, president of the institute, said during a teleconference on Wednesday. “We argue that were the political ideology reversed — that three of every four identified themselves as conservatives rather than liberals — the problem would be exactly the same. The presence of a dominant ideology has the potential to interfere with unbiased, honest, and creative scholarship and teaching.”

20 October 2006 @ 8:45AM >> First, they came for the satellite dishes. Now they come for the broadband Internet connections:

Iran’s Islamic government has opened a new front in its drive to stifle domestic political dissent and combat the influence of western culture - by banning high-speed internet links.
In a blow to the country’s estimated 5 million internet users, service providers have been told to restrict online speeds to 128 kilobytes a second and been forbidden from offering fast broadband packages. The move by Iran’s telecommunications regulator will make it more difficult to download foreign music, films and television programmes, which the authorities blame for undermining Islamic culture among the younger generation. It will also impede efforts by political opposition groups to organise by uploading information on to the net.

You’ve got to wonder about a government that believes the only way to survive is to cut off its citizens from the outside world.

19 October 2006 @ 5:25PM >> Even fictional currencies in virtual words are within the reach of the taxman:

Users of online worlds such as Second Life and World of Warcraft transact millions of dollars worth of virtual goods and services every day, and these virtual economies are beginning to draw the attention of real-world authorities.

“Right now we’re at the preliminary stages of looking at the issue and what kind of public policy questions virtual economies raise — taxes, barter exchanges, property and wealth,” said Dan Miller, senior economist for the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress.

“You could argue that to a certain degree the law has fallen (behind) because you can have a virtual asset and virtual capital gains, but there’s no mechanism by which you’re taxed on this stuff,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview.

The increasing size and public profile of virtual economies, the largest of which have millions of users and gross domestic products that rival those of small countries, have made them increasingly difficult for lawmakers and regulators to ignore.

...in much the same way that a weekend invitation to the Kennedy compound is hard for alcoholic philanderers to ignore.

19 October 2006 @ 8:22AM >> Reporters often spout noble-sounding platitudes when defending decisions to publish sensitive national security information, but at the BBC, “the public’s right to know” is apparently not absolute:

The BBC has spent thousands of pounds of licence payers’ money trying to block the release of a report which is believed to be highly critical of its Middle East coverage.

The corporation is mounting a landmark High Court action to prevent the release of The Balen Report under the Freedom of Information Act, despite the fact that BBC reporters often use the Act to pursue their journalism.

The action will increase suspicions that the report, which is believed to run to 20,000 words, includes evidence of anti-Israeli bias in news programming.

The court case will have far reaching implications for the future working of the Act and the BBC. If the corporation loses, it will have to release thousands of pages of other documents that have been held back.

Like all public bodies, the BBC is obliged to release information about itself under the Act. However, along with Channel 4, Britain’s other public service broadcaster, it is allowed to hold back material that deals with the production of its art, entertainment and journalism.

In Britain, anyone with a television must pay an involuntary tax—the “license fee”—in order to fund the BBC and other outlets. It’s too bad the BBC doesn’t think those taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent.

18 October 2006 @ 9:56PM >> Several months after Reuters cameraman Adnan Hajj was caught doctoring photos to make an Israeli air strike look broader than it actually was, another Reuters cameraman has been arrested for apparently inciting Arab rioters to attack Israeli vehicles:

The cameraman, Imad Muhammad Intisar Boghnat, was arrested and charged as a result of violent riots in the Arab village of Bil’in, in the Modi’in region, on October 6, 2006. A videotape that the prosecution presented to the judge shows Boghnat encouraging and directing rioters in Bil’in to throw large chunks of rock at Israeli vehicles in such a way as to cause maximum damage. The accused is heard shouting, “Throw, throw!” and later, “Throw towards the little window!”

Boghnat is a resident of Bil’in, so it can be assumed that he either sympathized with the rioters or was attempting to stage the event for maximum visual impact, a tactic that isn’t a new phenomenon among the establishment media.

Either way, Reuters needs to take a serious look at the people it hires to cover events in the Middle East.

18 October 2006 @ 1:02PM >> We’re told the world dislikes the United States for, among other things, holding terror suspects in facilities like Guantanamo Bay. But if the criticism has merit, I wonder why other countries seem unwilling to take these prisoners:

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett last week issued the latest European demand to close down the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The existence of the prison is “unacceptable” and fuels Islamic radicalism around the world, she said, echoing a recent chorus of complaints from Europe about U.S. counterterrorism policy.

Behind the scenes, however, the British government has repeatedly blocked efforts to let some prisoners leave Guantanamo and return home.

According to documents made public this month in London, officials there recently rejected a U.S. offer to transfer 10 former British residents from Guantanamo to the United Kingdom, arguing that it would be too expensive to keep them under surveillance. Britain has also staved off a legal challenge by the relatives of some prisoners who sued to require the British government to seek their release.

Other European governments, which have been equally vocal in assailing Guantanamo as a human rights liability, have also balked at accepting prisoner transfers. A Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany was finally permitted to return from Guantanamo in August, four years after the German government turned down a U.S. proposal to release him.

The complaints against America’s policies seem like the tantrums of petulant adolescents. They gripe about living under daddy’s rules, but the last thing they’d do is move out if it meant having to pay their own way in the world.

It’s much easier to take principled stands when there aren’t any consequences.

16 October 2006 @ 12:13PM >> When readers of this site hear that an old media company is embracing virtual reality, it might conjure up memories of Dan Rather and some not-quite-real documents. But in this case, one of the oldest media companies in the world is breaking new ground by dedicating a full-time reporter to covering the economic happenings within a virtual universe called Second Life:

In preparing to open a Reuters bureau on a bustling island, Adam Pasick has been introducing himself to residents and interviewing entrepreneurs. After finishing such interviews, Mr. Pasick often levitates for a moment, then flies over buildings.

Mr. Pasick, a Reuters technology reporter who was formerly earthbound with the news agency, is heading up Reuters’ first virtual news bureau inside the online role-playing game Second Life. While many independent journalists and bloggers have published inside such virtual worlds, Reuters is the first established news agency to dispatch a full-time reporter to do so.

[...]

“The fact that it’s in a virtual world doesn’t change things as much as you’d think,” said Mr. Pasick, 30, a Michigan native based in London. “It’s not any different than when Reuters opens up a bureau in a part of the world that has a fast-growing economy that we weren’t in before. The laws of supply and demand hold true, it has a currency exchange, people open businesses and get paid for goods and services.”

Scientific American has more:

Created by Linden Lab in San Francisco, Second Life is the closest thing to a parallel universe existing on the Internet. Akin to the original city-building game SimCity, Second Life is a virtual, three-dimensional world where users create and dress up characters, buy property and interact with other players.

More than 900,000 users have signed up to build homes, form neighborhoods and live out alternative versions of their lives in the 3D, computer-generated world. Players spend around US$350,000 a day on average, or a rate of $13 million a year. Usage is growing in rapid double-digit terms each month.

Players buy and sell goods and services using a virtual currency, known as Linden Dollars. An online marketplace allows users to convert the currency into real U.S. dollars, enabling users to earn real money from their activities.

Adam Pasick, a Reuters’ media correspondent based in London, will serve as the news organization’s first virtual bureau chief, using a personal avatar, or animated character, called “Adam Reuters,” in keeping with the game’s naming system.

“As strange as it might seem, it’s not that different from being a reporter in the real world,” Pasick said. “Once you get used to it — it becomes very much like the job I have been doing for years.”

Over the last month, I’ve been helping Reuters launch their presence in Second Life; I was brought in as an outside consultant and was responsible for much of the programming work. It’s been a fun gig, and has helped me fill the downtime while we work out distribution kinks with the upcoming film Indoctrinate U.

But what I found most intriguing is that an old-school company like Reuters would even consider embracing virtual reality, much less with this level of commitment. Ten years ago, such a move would likely have been met with derision by other establishment media companies. But covering online communities like Second Life makes sense: there’s real economic activity, and there are important issues to cover—such as how real-world laws will be applied to environments like Second Life.

It’s a sign of a changing world...both real and virtual.

15 October 2006 @ 3:59PM >> The New York Times reports that in Europe, “those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians — are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and multiculturalism should have limits.”

15 October 2006 @ 3:50PM >> For British Airways employees, whether you’re allowed to wear religious garb depends on what religion you are:

British Airways has suspended a Christian woman who wears a necklace with a crucifix to work, even though it allows Muslims and Sikhs to wear headscarves and turbans, a newspaper reported overnight.

Nadia Eweida, 55, told the Daily Mail that she decided to sue her employer for religious discrimination after having been suspended without pay for three weeks.

“I will not hide my belief in the Lord Jesus. British Airways permits Muslims to wear a headscarf, Sikhs to wear a turban and other faiths religious apparel,” Ms Eweida said. “Only Christians are forbidden to express their faith.”

[...]

In a statement, British Airways said: “The case is ongoing, and is still under investigation, and as such it would be inappropriate to discuss it in detail. An appeal is due to be heard next week.

“British Airways does recognise that uniformed employees may wish to wear jewellery including religious symbols. Our uniform policy states that these items can be worn underneath the uniform,” it said.

“There is no ban. The rule applies for all jewellery and religious symbols on chains and is not specific to the Christian cross,” it said. “Other religious items such as turbans, hijabs and bangles can be worn as it is not practical for staff to conceal them beneath their uniforms.”

12 October 2006 @ 6:52PM >> Columbia University’s Teacher’s College employs “ideological litmus tests for students,” according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). The civil rights group says the policies of Columbia Teacher’s College conflict with the school’s “written promises of free speech and academic freedom as well as with Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s recent statements on the importance of free expression at Columbia University.”

The university found itself embroiled in controversy last week when a student mob assaulted a speaker invited by Columbia’s College Republicans club. The incident, which was caught on video, involved left-wing students storming the stage and assaulting the speaker, an act that shut down the entire event. It is apparently being investigated by Columbia University, but no punishments have been handed down.

Personally, I doubt that the students will be punished at all, or that the penalty will be so minor as to have no deterrent effect on students inclined to behave like fascist thugs in the future. I fully expect the university to assign a portion of the blame to the folks whose free speech rights were trampled by the mob; after all, the College Republicans had the temerity to express views that run counter to the campus majority.

Just how deeply embedded in Columbia’s culture is the ideological monopoly? At the university’s Teacher’s College, students are effectively required to agree to a political loyalty oath. According to FIRE:

[The] Teachers College’s Conceptual Framework, which represents the “philosophy for teacher education at Teachers College,” requires students to possess a “commitment to social justice.” Moreover, students are expected to recognize that “social inequalities are often produced and perpetuated through systematic discrimination and justified by societal ideology of merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility.”

The term “social justice” has been adopted by the new left after recognizing that the word “socialism” isn’t terribly popular these days. It’s a clever term; after all, what fair-minded, kind-hearted person could oppose social justice?

But, as always, the devil is in the details. What exactly is social justice? The way the debate is rigged on campus these days, social justice means that you have to believe in specific political policies. You must support racial preferences. You must support a massive welfare state. You must believe that capitalism is inherently evil and that government is the only remedy. You must believe in redistribution of wealth.

Is that justice? How can the belief that forcibly taking wealth from someone who earned it and giving to someone who didn’t be considered justice? Where I come from, it’s called theft. It’s grand larceny.

But at the Columbia Teacher’s College, you must demonstrate a “commitment to social justice.” In other words, if you want to be a teacher trained at Columbia University, you must adopt their political beliefs.

“The freedom of the mind is perhaps our most essential liberty. Sadly, Teachers College’s policies include ideological requirements for future teachers,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “While social justice may sound nice, no two people define social justice in exactly the same way. This policy presents a serious problem for students who define it differently from the university.”

FIRE wrote to Columbia President Lee Bollinger and Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman on September 15, urging them to abandon the “policy of assessing student commitment to controversial, politicized, and wholly personal concepts like ’social justice.’” FIRE pointed out that “the twentieth century well demonstrates that one man’s idea of ’social justice’ potentially is another man’s idea of totalitarian tyranny,” and implored Teachers College to “live up to its public promises” of freedom of thought and expression. FIRE received no response to its letter.

“According to Teachers College, students who believe that merit, social mobility, and individual responsibility are positive values rather than the hallmarks of injustice are not cut out to be teachers,” Lukianoff said. “Such political litmus tests all but guarantee that students will be evaluated on their opinions rather than their abilities.”

While Columbia requires students at its Teacher’s College to adopt the school’s preferred political views, they’re supposedly investigating students who—like the school—tried to impose them on others. If Columbia believes that students can be forced to adopt the university’s political dogma, is it any surprise that the school produces students who believe that they have the duty to act as the enforcers of that dogma?

Make no mistake about it: the environment at Columbia produced the thuggish behavior of that mob. If the school decides to punish those students, the students will only be punished for learning their lessons a little too well.

9 October 2006 @ 8:41AM >> I have always thought that Peter Beinart of The New Republic is one of the more sensible, intellectually honest voices on the left. His latest piece is an example why:

Last week, I went searching the liberal Web for discussions of Idomeneo. The Deutsche Oper, a Berlin opera house, had recently canceled the Mozart classic because it feared Muslims would react violently to a scene featuring Mohammed’s severed head. Germans declared that free speech was under siege. The New York Times covered every wrinkle. Right-wing websites buzzed. And, on the big liberal blogs, virtual silence.

If pressed, most liberal bloggers would probably have condemned the opera house’s decision. But they didn’t feel pressed. Blogging thrives on outrage (see, for instance, my colleague Martin Peretz’s outraged blogging on the affair at tnr.com/blog/spine), and the Idomeneo closure just didn’t get liberal blood flowing. And why is that? Perhaps because it didn’t have anything to do with George W. Bush.

[...]

In much of Europe, Muslim violence has become a serious threat to free speech. In publishing its cartoons of Mohammed last fall, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten performed a test: Is it possible to safely caricature the Prophet? The answer—received loud and clear by the Deutsche Oper—was no. Lower profile incidents confirm the point. Within days of the opera’s cancellation, a French philosophy teacher was placed under police protection for writing an article critical of Islam.

[...]

Liberals are less prone to a “clash of civilizations” mentality that undermines the very notion of free speech as a universal value. And that is why they must make the cause of European free speech their own. The best analogy is the “political correctness” fights that roiled college campuses in the late ’80s and early ’90s. When professors and students were punished for statements that violated racial and gender orthodoxy, it was conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza who most aggressively came to their defense. But many conservatives were tainted by their defense of the McCarthyite assault on campus free speech in the 1950s. In 1991, THE NEW REPUBLIC published a review of D’Souza’s book by the renowned Southern historian Eugene Genovese. “As one who saw his professors fired during the McCarthy era, and who had to fight, as a pro-Communist Marxist, for his own right to teach,” wrote Genovese, “I fear that our conservative colleagues are today facing a new McCarthyism.” Yet the conservatives, he argued, couldn’t defeat it alone. The cause of free speech “will go down, unless it is supported by a substantial portion of the left and center. ... It is time to close ranks.”

We have reached that point again. During the PC wars, many liberals were genuinely conflicted about whether free speech outweighed racial and gender sensitivity on campus. Today, some liberals still excuse censorship in sensitivity’s name. The bigger danger, however, is not sensitivity; it is indifference. Having adapted themselves so fully to a hyper-partisan environment, many liberals seem unable to conceive of a struggle in which the Republican right is not an enemy but an ally. But there are such struggles, and, without today’s activist liberals, they will be harder to win. Free speech is under threat, and Idomeneo should be the last straw. It is time, once again, to close ranks.

9 October 2006 @ 12:40AM >> If you set foot on a college campus these days, you’ll be bombarded with feel-good buzzwords intended to convince you of how caring and inclusive the environment is.

The words “tolerance” and “diversity” are drilled into students’ heads from orientation on, but it doesn’t take savvy students long to figure out just how empty those concepts are in academia these days.

The concept of diversity is only skin deep; everyone is welcomed regardless of color or sexual orientation—as long as they don’t deviate from the narrow ideological framework that dominates many college campuses. Diversity of thought—presumably the most important type of diversity in an institution whose purpose is to enrich the mind—is not valued. And tolerance never seems to extend to those who reject the worldview that schools attempt to impose.

Case in point, Columbia University:

Students stormed the stage at Columbia University’s Roone auditorium yesterday, knocking over chairs and tables and attacking Jim Gilchrist, the founder of the Minutemen, a group that patrols the border between America and Mexico.

Mr. Gilchrist and Marvin Stewart, another member of his group, were in the process of giving a speech at the invitation of the Columbia College Republicans. They were escorted off the stage unharmed and exited the auditorium by a back door.

[...]

The student protesters, who attended the event clad in white as a sign of dissent, booed and shouted the speakers down throughout. They interrupted Mr. Stewart, who is African-American, when he referred to the Declaration of Independence’s self-evident truth that “All men are created equal,” calling him a racist, a sellout, and a black white supremacist.

A student’s demand that Mr. Stewart speak in Spanish elicited thundering applause and brought the protesters to their feet. The protesters remained standing, turned their backs on Mr. Stewart for the remainder of his remarks, and drowned him out by chanting, “Wrap it up, wrap it up!” Mr. Stewart appeared unfazed by their behavior. He simply smiled and bellowed, “No wonder you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“These are racist individuals heading a project that terrorizes immigrants on the U.S.-Mexican border,” Ryan Fukumori, a Columbia junior who took part in the protest, told The New York Sun. “They have no right to be able to speak here.”

As of now, the Columbia administration has taken absolutely no disciplinary action launched an investigation.

If it infuriates you to read this, then you may want to be sure you’ve taken your medications before watching the video.

---

Update: Columbia University president Lee Bollinger released a statement on the incident, which I’ve excerpted:

The disruption on Wednesday night that resulted in the termination of an event organized by the Columbia College Republicans in Lerner Hall represents, in my judgment, one of the most serious breaches of academic faith that can occur in a university such as ours.

Of course, the University is thoroughly investigating the incident, and it is critically important not to prejudge the outcome of that inquiry with respect to individuals. But, as we made clear in our University statements on both Wednesday night and Thursday, we must speak out to deplore a disruption that threatens the central principle to which we are institutionally dedicated, namely to respect the rights of others to express their views.

This is not complicated: Students and faculty have rights to invite speakers to the campus. Others have rights to hear them. Those who wish to protest have rights to do so. No one, however, shall have the right or the power to use the cover of protest to silence speakers. This is a sacrosanct and inviolable principle.

It is unacceptable to seek to deprive another person of his or her right of expression through actions such as taking a stage and interrupting the speech. We rightly have a visceral rejection of this behavior, because we all sense how easy it is to slide from our collective commitment to the hard work of intellectual confrontation to the easy path of physical brutishness. When the latter happens, we know instinctively we are all threatened.

These are reassuring words. And I hope Mr. Bollinger intends to stand by them and see that the principles therein are enforced at Columbia. I’ll believe it when I see it, though; Columbia doesn’t exactly have a stellar reputation when it comes to these politically-charged investigations.

5 October 2006 @ 9:47PM >> In response to my piece on Bob Woodward’s admission that higher-ups at the Washington Post claimed an “obligation” to publish State of Denial before the election, reader Matt S. e-mails:

I’m a regular reader and fan, but yesterday’s post titled “A Question for the Washington Post” was, in my opinion, far below your standard.

Setting aside Woodward’s politics, biases, and agendas, it seems perfectly compatible with standards of professional journalism that a journalist would aim to publish a story before an election if that story contained information relevant to the election.

Citizens are supposed to make informed decisions on Election day; it’s the role of a free press to help citizens become informed. I think it follows that citizens should be informed prior to making such consequential decisions.

I’m perfectly happy to read arguments that question the accuracy, veracity, or objectivity of Woodward’s reporting - I think there are legitimate questions there - but to suggest that there’s something wrong with publishing a relevant story before an election is silly.

Matt,

Of course a more informed electorate is preferable. But the subject of Woodward’s book is not on the ballot in this election, which is why I find it curious.

The book discusses the Bush Administration and reportedly casts the president in a harsh light. If President Bush were up for election, I would understand the civic obligation felt by journalists to get the facts out—however they perceive them—so that voters could make up their minds. But since the voters will not get to pull the lever for or against the president, I’d figure the folks at the Post would be relatively neutral about whether the book launched in the home stretch of a midterm election that, unlike most, has the potential for both houses of Congress to switch party control.

Instead, there was a sense of importance placed on the timing. Woodward, the Post people felt, had a “real obligation” to make sure the book dropped before a specific date. Woodward acknowledged that he and the Post sat on these stories. He said he didn’t want “to make a splash” by reporting individual stories when they happened, but instead he wanted “to assemble the whole story,” which required waiting until the assembly was done. A fair argument, but usually, newspapers are in the business of telling us things when they happen, not months later when the political timing is right. Besides, isn’t waiting until six weeks before an election going to cause much more of a political splash than a story reported in, say, the spring of 2005?

I can’t claim to know Woodward’s motivation or that of the folks at the Post. But I do suspect that if he were given a chance rephrase his statement, he wouldn’t pass it up. I think it was an admission he didn’t intend to make.

Thanks for writing,
Evan

4 October 2006 @ 9:42AM >> Apparently, Osama and his deputies have been having a tough time lately. Al Qaeda commanders describe their organization as being “weak” and in “a state of paucity.” The laments of the terrorists were communicated to the now-dead leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, in a letter that originated from bin Laden and his inner circle, PowerLine reports.

Perhaps there are better ways to fight al Qaeda. (Although I have yet to hear them.) Still, if al Qaeda’s leaders are complaining of weakness and a lack of recruits, then we must be doing something right.

3 October 2006 @ 11:51PM >> Brendan Miniter argues that a cybersex scandal involving a Republican Congressman and an underage male intern is a sign of broader decay within the House Republican leadership:

The larger problem for House Republicans is that they’ve amassed a poor record of policing themselves amid a succession of scandals. Even as Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay and Bob Ney tarnished the party’s image, no one other than a few “moderates” who don’t have much sway in the caucus took the lead in called for drumming any of them out of the ranks. It’s also notable that none of these three men survived their respective scandals. Cunningham is serving time in the federal pen after pleading guilty to corruption charges late last year. Mr. Ney abandoned plans to run for re-election a few weeks ago after it became clear a federal investigation was heading straight for him.

And then there’s Mr. DeLay. After being indicted on money laundering charges last year, he refused for months to clear the path for the election of a new majority leader. Apparently he was unwilling to give up the possibility of coming back from a politically debilitating legal battle. His legacy now includes preventing Republicans from electing a new, forceful leader in the House just as Republicans were being torn asunder for their response to Hurricane Katrina.

The problem isn’t just that there are a few rotten apples in the Republican Party—every bushel has its share. It’s that Republicans seem comfortable with leaving the bad apples in place, even at the risk of tainting all the others. That Mr. Foley is a Republican isn’t itself the issue. It’s that Republicans were unwilling to take a closer look at something that long ago demanded a much more detailed inspection. If the GOP had uncovered Mr. Foley last year or even this past spring, the party wouldn’t now be facing a full blown sex scandal in October. Heading into this election year, Democrats knew they had a chance to retake the House, if everything broke their way. What no one predicted is that they’d be handed so many breaks by Republicans.

I’ve argued before that the Republicans have done little recently to deserve their continued hold on Congress. Repeatedly ignoring scandals in their own ranks is part of what led to the downfall of the Democrats in 1994. Prior to that, the party enjoyed a half-century lock on the House. The Republican collapse may take much less time.

3 October 2006 @ 12:47PM >> Britain’s Daily Mail reports:

A hardline Muslim teacher who caused a furore by denouncing pupils for celebrating Christmas has been made a Government schools inspector.

Israr Khan’s Ofsted appointment was described by a former colleague as ‘absolutely astonishing’.

Mr Khan, now headmaster of an Islamic school, launched into his tirade during a concert rehearsal at Washwood Heath Secondary School in Birmingham in 1996 after the choir including around 40 Muslim youngsters, had sung a number of popular Christmas songs, including carols.

He leapt from his seat, yelling: “Who is your God? Why are you saying Jesus and Jesus Christ? God is not your God - it is Allah.”

As children in the audience began booing and clapping, a number of choir members - both white and Asian - walked out, some in tears.

[....]

It has been claimed that Washwood Heath school was then a ‘hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism’. Rashid Rauf - the airline terror bomb suspect whose extradition is currently being sought from Pakistan - was a pupil there at that time.

[...]

One Muslim father, who asked to be known only as Mohammed, said: “As a governor, Mr Khan will be able to exert a great deal of influence over the school and its policies.

“By his previous actions, he seems to represent what I would call a hardcore attitude to Islam.”

3 October 2006 @ 8:52AM >> A headline from the more-true-than-they’d-like-to-admit department: “Al Qaeda Increasingly Reliant on Media“.

2 October 2006 @ 11:24PM >> The latest book critical of the Bush Administration is from Bob Woodward, the journalist whose work in the 1970s helped take down President Nixon. This morning, Woodward appeared on NBC’s Today show, where Matt Lauer asked about the timing of the book’s release. Editor and Publisher reports:

Lauer had challenged Woodward on the timing, since the charges in the book about the administration allegedly misleading the public on progress in the Iraq war are so significant. How could he hold that for a book? Why didn’t he get them published in his newspaper, The Washington Post, or shout them from a “mountaintop” instead of waiting to “make a splash” with them in a book?

Woodward replied that he had not waited “to make a splash, but to assemble the whole story,” and then go to the White House and Pentagon and CIA and ask, “What did you do?” He added: “Simon & Schuster and my bosses at the Washington Post said the only real obligation here is to tell it before the election.

“That’s what we’re doing. People can judge for themselves.”

I can understand why Simon & Schuster would want the book released in the weeks before the election; they’re publishers, and they want to profit from an atmosphere in which potential bookbuyers are already thinking about politics. Fair enough.

But why would the Washington Post want Woodward’s book published shortly before the election? Theoretically, the folks at the Post are journalists, which means that they should only care about reporting the story, not releasing it at a specific point in the election cycle. The fact that the Post felt Woodward had “an obligation” to publish before the election implies that the paper wanted to affect the election; if the reaction of the voters was of no concern to the Post, it really wouldn’t matter whether the book was released before or after the election.

President Bush isn’t on the ballot in this election, but conventional political calculus asserts that a book damaging to the president would also hurt the president’s party, especially in an election that’s historically dismal for the party occupying the White House. Did Bob Woodward accidentally admit that the folks at the Washington Post want the Republicans to fare poorly in the upcoming elections? Why else would they care when his book got published?