Finally Someone Stands Up to the PC Police

Finally Someone Stands Up to the PC Police

Take what Bob Ryan (search) said a few days ago. Ryan is a sportswriter for the Boston Globe . . . .

Recently, in discussing the NCAA (search) men’s basketball tournament on a program on ESPN Radio, Ryan said that Vanderbilt’s basketball team had “too many white guys” on it to beat Western Michigan. As it turns out, Ryan was wrong; final score: Vandy: 71, Western Michigan: 58.

Ryan’s real error, though, was in the realm of political correctness. The ist vigilantes descended upon him like ants on icing.

Didn’t Ryan insult white guys, not blacks, and isn’t it okay to insult white guys?

Well, yeah, I guess, of course, but . . .

And didn’t he praise black guys, at least indirectly, by suggesting that they are likely to be better basketball players than whites?

Yeah, he did, but, see, that’s the problem. Because if you praise blacks for their athletic skills, you imply a corresponding lack of ability in other realms, such as the intellectual and the moral. Political Correctness 101.

Huh?

So wretchedly loony is political correctness that the ist vigilantes not only pounce when you insult a favored group, they pounce when you praise a favored group for the wrong reason.

Bob Ryan’s response to the furor, which, admittedly, is a furor of more limited scope than that being caused by the Iraqi occupation, is worth quoting at length:

“The audience at ESPN is presumably a sports-savvy audience, which means that in terms of basketball they know the code, ethics and culture of basketball, which is, in case anyone new to the game like some of these idiots that apparently have responded in a negative fashion, the code is it’s a black man’s game and the white man is privileged to be allowed to step on the court. That is known by both blacks and whites. If it weren’t easy to joke about this in the culture, you wouldn't be able to have a movie entitled White Men Can’t Jump.”

Ryan is right. I have played basketball all my life — junior high school, high school, college, and now in various geriatric competitions. Race is openly discussed, casually joked about; the atmosphere on a basketball court is so free and easy when it comes to matters of race that it should be the envy of the society as a whole.

I take issue with Ryan on only one point. He called those who criticized his comment “idiots.” They are worse. They are poisoners of the well, people so eager to dress themselves up in robes of virtue that they will impute vice to others in order establish their own superiority.

White men can't jump. The politically correct can’t think.

A Logical Truism in Effect

A Logical Truism in Effect

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

"There’s absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al Qaeda," said former White House counterrorism official Richard Clarke to Lesley Stahl on 60 Minutes. It’s a statement often made by Democrats and critics of the Bush administration.

The problem is it’s flat out wrong. As CIA Director George Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2002, "We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs." The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes has documented copious evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

Such evidence is not conclusive. But it is evidence. Clarke and others who state with certainty that we know of no ties between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime are simply wrong. On the basis of the evidence currently available, we cannot know for sure that there was no connection between al Qaeda and Iraq or that Saddam was not connected in some way to the September 11 attacks. And we probably never will know those things for certain.

Clarke = Partisan?

Clarke = Partisan?

Giving only to Dems for 10 years and teaching a course with one of Kerry's advisors isn't proof per se, but it does raise some interesting questions about Clarke's motives.

And that's on top of the purely financial motive that controversy sells more of his book.

Records Show Richard Clarke Gave Only to Democrats

Former counterterrorism czar Richard A. Clarke insists his attacks on President George W. Bush have nothing to do with politics, but an Insight check of Federal Election Commission (FEC) records shows that his only political contributions in the last decade have gone to Democrats.

Clarke is suspected of using his former post in the Bush White House as a weapon with which to slash and wound the president during his re-election campaign against Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). The Kerry campaign's coordinator for national security issues, Rand Beers, has described Clarke as his "best friend." According to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where Clarke and Beers are adjunct lecturers, they teach a course together about terrorism. Clarke's detailed Harvard biography specifically mentions his service under President Ronald Reagan and the elder President Bush, but says nothing about his eight years working for President Bill Clinton.

MRC Skewers Media Coverage of Clarke's Claims

MRC Skewers Media Coverage of Clarke's Claims

Networks Undeterred by Any Doubts About Clarke’s Credibility

Three events on Wednesday served to undermine former counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke’s contention that the Bush administration failure to adequately pursue al-Qaeda in it first months in office made the attacks possible: First, the Fox News Channel released the text and audio of an August 5, 2002 background briefing given by Clarke in which he countered claims that the incoming Bush team had in any way fumbled the pursuit of terrorists in taking over from the Clinton administration; second, during his testimony before the 9-11 Commission hearing, Clarke conceded that any actions by the Bush team coming into office in early 2001 would have been too late to prevent the 9-11 attacks; and third, during the hearing commissioners pointed out how Clarke hadn’t made any of his anti-Bush claims in 14 hours of private testimony.

Lowry on Clarke

Lowry on Clarke

Sick today. Not much commentary. Just resources to use against those who think Clarke will bring down GW.

CLARKE'S COLLAPSE

Was he merely parroting talking points given to him by the Bush team? That's the explanation he offered at yesterday's hearing. But he can't get off the hook so easily.

At the very least, what he said in August 2002 must have been factual. Otherwise, Clarke has revealed himself to be an opportunist who will lie at the direction of his superiors.

So, if what Clarke said was true (and no one has contradicted it), why didn't he include it in his book?

A crucial (false) claim of Clinton defenders is that the Clinton team forged an anti-al Qaeda war plan that was then handed over to the Bush administration and ignored. In his August 2002 briefing, Clarke said, "I think the overall point is, there was no plan on al Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration." His book seems to confirm that, but nowhere puts it so starkly.

In his 2002 briefing, Clarke said that the Bush administration decided in "mid-January" 2001 to continue with existing Clinton policy while deciding whether or not to pursue more aggressive ideas that had been rejected throughout the Clinton administration. Nowhere does this appear in his book.

He said in 2002 that the Bush administration had decided in principle in the spring of 2001 "to increase CIA resources . . . for covert action, five-fold, to go after al Qaeda." Nowhere is this mentioned in his book. . . .

Finally, in his 2002 briefing, Clarke made it clear that there was no "appreciable" change in U.S. terror policy from October 1998 until the Bush team began to reevaluate policy in the spring of 2001 and get more aggressive. His book implausibly argues the opposite, that Clinton was on the ball and Bush dropped it.

This is just the beginning of the contradictions and mistakes.

* In his testimony yesterday, Clarke said that the Clinton administration had "no higher priority" than fighting terror. No. In his own book, he says trying to force a Middle East peace agreement was more important to Clinton than retaliating for the attack against USS Cole.

* Clarke says in his book that Bush asked him to look into a possible Iraq connection to 9/11 in an "intimidating" way. No. Two other witnesses say there was nothing intimidating about Bush's manner.

* Clarke says Condi Rice appeared as if she hadn't heard of al Qaeda before he mentioned it to her in early 2001. No. Rice made public statements in late 2000 noting the threat from bin Laden.

Given all of this, it's hard to believe that anyone takes Richard Clarke seriously - including himself.

Time's Up Clarke

Time's Up Clarke

Even Time, noted conservative media bastion that it is, says that Clarke "sexed up" his stories about the Bush Administration.

Isn't "lied"the Lib word for "sexed up"?

Richard Clarke, at War With Himself

Perhaps Clarke's most explosive charge is that on Sept. 12, President Bush instructed him to look into the possibility that Iraq had a hand in the hijackings. Here's how Clarke recounted the meeting on 60 Minutes: "The President dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this'.....the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said, 'Iraq did this.'" After Clarke protested that "there's no connection," Bush came back to him and said "Iraq, Saddam — find out if there's a connection." Clarke says Bush made the point "in a very intimidating way." The next day, interviewed on PBS' The NewsHour, Clarke sexed up the story even more. "What happened was the President, with his finger in my face, saying, 'Iraq, a memo on Iraq and al-Qaeda, a memo on Iraq and the attacks.' Very vigorous, very intimidating." Several interviewers pushed Clarke on this point, asking whether it was all that surprising that the President would want him to investigate all possible perpetrators of the attacks. Clarke responded, "It would have been irresponsible for the president not to come to me and say, Dick, I don't want you to assume it was al-Qaeda. I'd like you to look at every possibility to see if maybe it was al-Qaeda with somebody else, in a very calm way, with all possibilities open. That's not what happened."

How does this square with the account of the same meeting provided in Clarke's book? In that version, Clarke finds the President wandering alone in the Situation Room on Sept. 12, "looking like he wanted something to do." Clarke writes that Bush "grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room" — an impetuous move, perhaps, but hardly the image that Clarke depicted on television, of the President dragging in unwitting staffers by their shirt-collars. The Bush in these pages sounds more ruminative than intimidating: "I know you have a lot to do and all, but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way." When Clarke responds by saying that "al-Qaeda did this," Bush says, "I know, I know, but see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred....." Again Clarke protests, after which Bush says "testily," "Look into Iraq, Saddam."

Nowhere do we see the President pointing fingers at or even sounding particularly "vigorous" toward Clarke and his deputies. Despite Clarke's contention that Bush wanted proof of Iraqi involvement at any cost, it's just as possible that Bush wanted Clark to find disculpatory evidence in order to discredit the idea peddled by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that Baghdad had a hand in 9/11. In the aftermath of 9/11, Bush rejected Wolfowitz's attempts to make Iraq the first front in the war on terror. And if the President of the United States spoke "testily " 24 hours after the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history, well, can you blame him? . . .

In a few other instances, Clarke's televised comments seem designed to disparage the President and his aides at all cost, omitting any of the inconvenient details — some of which appear in the pages of his book — that might suggest the White House took al-Qaeda seriously before Sept. 11. Bush, Clarke says, "never thought [al-Qaeda] was important enough for him to hold a meeting on the subject, or for him to order his national security advisor to hold a cabinet-level meeting on the subject." This has been a constant refrain in Clarke's public statements — that Bush's failure to call a "Principal's Meeting" of his cabinet to discuss terrorism until the week before Sept. 11 showed a lack of interest in al-Qaeda. While it is technically true that the White House did not hold a Cabinet-level meeting on al-Qaeda until Sept. 4, the charge is still misleading, since Bush, as early as April 2001, had instructed Rice to draft a strategy for rolling back al-Qaeda and killing bin Laden, saying he was tired of "swatting flies" —, a line Clarke does include in his book. Rice's response was to task a committee of deputies to study the U.S.'s options for rolling back the Taliban; the group ultimately concluded that the U.S. should increase its support to the Northern Alliance and pressure on Pakistan to cooperate in a campaign to remove the Taliban. It was essentially the same plan Clarke had drafted during the Clinton Administration. As his book details, the plan was scuttled by intransigence at the CIA and the Pentagon, neither of which Clinton wanted to confront head-on.

The Big Picture

The Big Picture

A President's Job

Or consider this episode from the 9/11 Commission's staff report on the U.S. response to news that terrorists linked to Iran had killed 19 Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996:

"Albright emphasized to us, for example, that even if some individual Iranian officials were involved, this was not the same as proving that the Iranian government as a whole should be held responsible for the bombing. National Security Adviser Berger held a similar view. He stressed the need for a definitive intelligence judgment. The evidence might be challenged by foreign governments. The evidence might form a basis for going to war."

Yes, it might. But the failure to act without "definitive" evidence and "foreign" agreement might also encourage the terrorists to think that they can get away with it and so hit us again.

The idea that every President would have toppled the Taliban after 9/11 is also wishful thinking. The press at the time was full of hand-wringing about the dangers. The establishment consensus, even so soon after 9/11, was that the U.S. could end up bogged down in Kabul like the British and Soviets. President Bush is the one who took the risk of using force to rout the Taliban and the al Qaeda camps they were protecting.

All of this is what we ought to be debating this election year, not how selective Dick Clarke's memory is. Even if everything Mr. Clarke says is true--and he's already contradicted himself numerous times--it is beside the point. What matters is which strategy against terrorism the U.S. should pursue now and for the next four years.

This is also the case that Mr. Bush needs to make, rising above the Lilliputians who want to fight over intelligence and yellowcake uranium in Niger. Mr. Bush should tell Americans that he too is disappointed that U.S. intelligence in Iraq wasn't as good as it might have been, though even Bill Clinton was convinced Saddam Hussein had WMD.

Krauthammer on Clarke

Krauthammer on Clarke

Partisan Clarke

Clarke's answer is unbelievable; ``Well, I'm not prepared to call it a mistake. It was a judgment made by people who had to take into account a lot of other issues. ... There was the Middle East peace process going on. There was the war in Yugoslavia going on. People above my rank had to judge what could be done in the counterterrorism world at a time when they were also pursuing other national goals.''

This is significant for two reasons. First, if the Clarke of 2002 was telling the truth, then the Clarke of this week -- the one who told the 9/11 commission under oath that ``fighting terrorism in general and fighting al Qaeda, in particular, were an extraordinarily high priority in the Clinton administration -- certainly (there was) no higher priority'' -- is a liar.

Second, he becomes not just a perjurer but a partisan perjurer. He savages Bush for not having made al Qaeda his top national security priority, but he refuses even to call a ``mistake'' Clinton's staggering dereliction in putting Yasser Arafat and Yugoslavia(!) above fighting al Qaeda.

That Darn Christ is Making People Do Things Again

That Darn Christ is Making People Do Things Again

Yeah . . . the RIGHT things.

'Passion of Christ' moves
man to confess killing 'suicide' victim

RICHMOND -- Detectives say the death of a 19-year-old woman originally ruled a suicide has turned into a murder case after a repentant man who'd watched The Passion of the Christ confessed to killing her because she was carrying his child.

The Economy Tanks Again

The Economy Tanks Again

4.1% and looking to get even better as the year goes on. Isn't it just awful? ;-)

Economy Grows at Solid 4.1 Percent Pace

WASHINGTON (AP) - America's economic recovery ended 2003 on a good note, growing at a solid 4.1 percent annual rate, and is expected to do even better in the opening quarter of this year.

The latest reading on gross domestic product for the October-to-December quarter was the same as a previous estimate made a month ago, the Commerce Department reported Thursday. That was consistent with economists' forecasts.

GDP measures that value of all goods and services produced within the United States and is considered the most important barometer of the economy's health.

Economic growth in the current January-to-March quarter is expected to clock in at a rate of 4.5 percent, according to some analysts' forecasts. Growth in the April-to-June quarter also should be around that pace, they said.

Tax refunds and other tax incentives should motivate consumers and businesses to spend and invest more - energizing the economy in the first half of this year, economists said.

Hope Springs Eternal

Hope Springs Eternal

Libya's Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, Moammar Gadhafi's son, is urging Arab nations, including Libya, to take up Democracy.

YEEEEEHAAA!

We can only hope that there are others who feels as he does.

Gadhafi's Son Says Arabs Should Support U.S. Call for Democracy - from TBO.com

"Instead of shouting and criticizing the American initiative, you have to bring democracy to your countries, and then there will be no need to fear America or your people," said Seif al-Islam Gadhafi. "The Arabs should either change or change will be imposed on them from outside."

Seif denied reports that he is a candidate to succeed his father, who rules Libya with little tolerance of opposition.

"Many Arab countries are now following the policy of inheriting the leadership, but there are hundreds of Libyans who are better (suited) than I," Seif said.

How To Approach Statistics

How To Approach Statistics

A great primer for approachng statistics if you have never studied the concept.

Reading Between the Numbers

How can we trust research?

The question is not trivial, since studies and statistics form the basis for many of the laws under which we live. If they are wrong, then the laws may be as well.

Short of taking a course on statistics and poring over data, the best way to get a sense of which data to trust is through common sense. There are five questions you should demand of any statistic.

1. Who Says So?
2. How Does He Know?
3. What does the competition say?
4. Did Someone Change the Subject?
5. Does It Make Sense?

Our society rewards those who construct problems. They receive financing and media attention, write books and become "experts." Statistics are tools and those who wield them should be neither glamorized nor ignored. But they should be required to answer basic questions before being included in that rare category: purveyor of truth.

You might also find and read the following books:

• Damned Lies and Statistics: Untangling Numbers from the Media, Politicians, and Activists by Joel Best, a look at the use of numbers in modern society; and
• How to Lie With Statistics
  by Darrell Huff - a classic from the 50's.

Ijaz on Clarke

Ijaz on Clarke

Uh-oh. Direct contradiction of Clarke's claims . . . from someone who supplied the intelligence which provides the contradiction with specific dates, times, and acts.

Yet another listing of Dick Clarke's credibility gap.

Politicized intelligence . . .

Mr. Clarke's premise that Bush national security officials neither understood nor cared to know anything about al Qaeda is simply untrue. I know because on multiple occasions from June until late August 2001, I personally briefed Stephen J. Hadley, deputy national security adviser to President Bush, and members of his South Asia, Near East and East Africa staff at the National Security Council on precisely what had gone wrong during the Clinton years to unearth the extent of the dangers posed by al Qaeda. Some of the briefings were in the presence of former members of the Clinton administration's national security team to ensure complete transparency.
Far from being disinterested, the Bush White House was eager to avoid making the same mistakes of the previous administration and wanted creative new inputs for how to combat al Qaeda's growing threat.
Mr. Clarke's role figured in two key areas of the debriefings -- Sudan's offer to share terrorism data on al Qaeda and bin Laden in 1997, and a serious effort by senior members of the Abu Dhabi royal family to gain bin Laden's extradition from Afghanistan in early 2000.

Podhoretz on Clarke

Podhoretz on Clarke

The final bit from Joh Podhoretz' column on Dick Clarke.

Good stuff.

DICK'S TALL TALE

They were not Bush's fault, and they were not caused by his inattention. Nor were they Clinton's fault. They were the fault of Osama bin Laden, who attacked and killed 3,000 Americans and would happily have seen that number read 30,000 or 50,000.

We need to remember this, and we are in danger of forgetting it in the raging partisan kerfuffle.

In the months after 9/11, the Bush administration refused - absolutely refused - to try to blame the attacks on the Clinton administration's failure of vision. The nation needed to be united in its determination and could not afford to surrender to finger-pointing.

Well, guess what? The Clinton administration's senior foreign-policy officials will be appearing this week before the 9/11 commission - to do to the Bush administration exactly what the Bush administration refused to do to them.

"It is essential that we prevent further attacks, and that we protect the Constitution," Clarke writes, "against all enemies." It is clear from the context of this sentence that he includes George W. Bush among the enemies along with Osama bin Laden.

Is this really a sentiment that mainstream Democrats want to support and echo?

Yeah, Alleged, That's It

Yeah, Alleged, That's It

I think the final paragraph of this article says it all.

Summary: the Georgia legislature passed a non-binding bill "urging" universities "encourages schools to recognize and promote intellectual diversity on campus".

But Lib professors don't like it because:

Students fight alleged political prejudice

"We feel it's OK for a teacher to talk about political perspectives as long as it's done in a learning situation," Harty said. "Not to the point where you're attacking the ability of someone else to express an opinion."

In other words, politics in the classroom is fine unless it isn't liberal or "attacking."

"Present everything you want in a biased way, just don't yell" seems to be the message.

Combining Popular Threads: Outsourcing and Foreign Policy

Combining Popular Threads: Outsourcing and Foreign Policy

Sowell intertwines the current buzzword "outsourcing" with an analysis of foreign policy.

Outsourcing foreign policy

Spain's decision to turn tail and run, in response to a terrorist bombing, not only tells terrorists how to get their way in the future, it should also tell us about the dangers of outsourcing our foreign policy to our allies or to the United Nations, as so many on the left want us to do. . . .

The sheer repetition of words -- the mantra of "the international community" and the anathema of "unilateral action" -- has become a substitute for examining the hard realities and the track record of those to whom we are supposed to defer when it comes to a mortal threat in a nuclear age.

Even the Soviet Union, with its huge nuclear arsenal, was a threat that could be deterred by the prospect of retaliation. But suicide bombers cannot be deterred. They can only be annihilated -- pre-emptively and unilaterally, if necessary.

The so-called "international community" that the left has so long envisioned consists in reality of disunited nations, too many of whom are short-sighted enough to cooperate with terrorists in hopes of deflecting their wrath toward someone else.

Throwing others to the wolves is a strategy that has been tried before. France threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves in 1938 to try to buy off Hitler. Less than two years later, Hitler's armies invaded France -- using, among other things, tanks made in Czechoslovakia.

Steyn on Appeasement

Steyn on Appeasement

A well-constructed essay by Mark Steyn.

The overall impact of appeasement on terrorists, much like deadly schoolyard bullies, is to let them know that they are immune to retribution. No matter what they do, they will not face true punishment.

Imagine the schoolyard bully: he attacks those he dislikes and is never stopped. Oh, well, yeah . . . he's told not to do it. In fact, he's been told a hundred times. But when he does it again, he is told to stop, again. How long do you think it will be until he stops beating the other kids?

Not until the other kids, including the sleeping big kid on the sidelines, STOP HIM. Too bad for the bully he finally gathered the necessary stones to mess with the big kid and woke him up. His mistake.

We tried appeasement once before...

For more than a week now, American friends have asked me why 3/11 wasn't 9/11. I think it comes down to those two words you find on Holocaust memorials all over Europe: "Never again." Fine-sounding, but claptrap. The never-again scenario comes round again every year. This very minute in North Korea there are entire families interned in concentration camps. Concentration camps with gas chambers. Think Kim Jong-Il's worried that the civilised world might mean something by those two words? Ha-ha.

How did a pledge to the memory of the dead decay into hollow moral preening? When an American Jew stands at the gates of a former concentration camp and sees the inscription "Never again", he assumes it's a commitment never again to tolerate genocide. Alain Finkielkraut, a French thinker, says that those two words to a European mean this: never again the führers and duces who enabled such genocide. "Never again power politics. Never again nationalism. Never again Auschwitz" - a slightly different set of priorities. And over the years a revulsion against any kind of "power politics" has come to trump whatever revulsion post-Auschwitz Europe might feel about mass murder.

That's why the EU let hundreds of thousands of Bosnians and Croats die on its borders until the Americans were permitted to step in. That's why the fact that thousands of Iraqis are no longer being murdered by their government is trivial when weighed against the use of Anglo-American military force required to effect their freedom. "Never again" has evolved to mean precisely the kind of passivity that enabled the Holocaust first time round. "Neville again" would be a better slogan.

Among all the foolish apologists for the murderers of Madrid, it was the Reverend Mark Beach who happened to catch my eye. Preaching at St Andrew's Church, Rugby, nine days ago, Mr Beach said: "The people of Madrid are reaping the fruits of our intolerance towards those of different races and religions. The war in Iraq was never going to solve the problems of that region but instead inflamed Arab people all over the world to new heights of anger towards the West."

God Almighty. The sooner the Potemkin Church of England is sold for scrap the better. Almost every word of Mr Beach's is false; there are mosques in the English Midlands, but no Christian churches in Saudi Arabia. Its official tourism commission lists among prohibited categories of visitor "Jewish persons".

It is precisely because the West is so open to different races that Islamist bombers can blend in on Madrid commuter trains, and the Tube and the Paris Metro, in a way that, say, a team of blond, blue-eyed Aryan bombers certainly couldn't in Damascus. The war in Iraq has actually solved quite a few problems in that region, and Arab people all over the world aren't inflamed - the allegedly seething Arab street is as somnolent as ever.

Anti-American, Pro-Terrorist Protestors

Anti-American, Pro-Terrorist Protestors

A great set of photos and a couple of movies from James Lileks.

Way to go James!

Global Action Day Photos

Another good site for protestor truth, Protest Warrior!

CBS Hides $$$$ Trail in Book Promotion

CBS Hides $$$$ Trail in Book Promotion

At least they aren't biased or anything. They promote ALL anti-administration books.

NEWS FOR SALE: CBS PUSHED BOOK IT OWNS; '60 MINUTES' DID NOT REVEAL PARENT COMPANY'S FINANCIAL STAKE IN CLARKE PROJECT

CBSNEWS did not inform its viewers last night that its parent company owns and has a direct financial stake in the success of the book by former White House terror staffer turned Bush critic, Dick Clarke, the DRUDGE REPORT can reveal. . . .

60 MINUTES aired a double-segment investigative report on the new book "Against All Enemies" -- but did not disclose how CBSNEWS parent VIACOM is publishing the book and will profit from any and all sales! . . .

CBS even used heavy promotion for the 60 MINUTES/book launch during its Sunday sports shows. . . .

Earlier this year, it was Stahl who also profiled another author on 60 MINUTES -- for another book owned by VIACOMCBS -- without any disclaimer!

"The Price of Loyalty" by former Treasury Secretary, turned Bush critic, Paul O'Neill was financed, produced and released [and rolled-out at CBSNEWS] by VIACOM's SIMON & SCHUSTER. . . .

[EDITOR'S NOTE: STAHL'S INTERVIEW WITH CLARKE WAS THE TOP-RATED SHOW OF SUNDAY NIGHT WITH 11.9 RATING/19 SHARE.]

Education Booster or Bush Mistake?

Education Booster or Bush Mistake?

Bush is pushing to allow more choice for our students trapped in gov't schools. Of course, the teacher's unions and educrats are screaming bloody murder.

Single-Sex Schools Score Big Victory

Supporters of girls-only and boys-only schools also say evidence is mounting to indicate that boys and girls can learn better in such atmospheres. Carroll said girls can achieve more in non-traditional subjects like math and science. Boys, particularly those coming from disadvantaged families and with emotional problems, benefit from more focused, disciplined curricula. Both have positive results from stripping away social pressures of co-education.

“We found in our schools, in the last year and a half, tremendous differences where the boys and girls were learning because academically, we’ve been able to tailor to what their needs are,” he said. Brighter Choice runs two schools — one for boys and one for girls, from kindergarten through grade 10. The Brighter Choice schools have been receiving public money because they comply with the old Title IX rules.

Opponents of girls-only and boys-only schools say there is no hard evidence to suggest that separating the genders in school will help solve these problems. Currently, 24 publicly-funded girls-only and boys-only schools in the United States are subjects of educational studies that have yet to be concluded.

Bloody Brilliant!

Bloody Brilliant!

They should have made this mandatory looooong ago.

Ohio Requires DUI 'Scarlet Letter' Licenses

A new state law in Ohio requires judges to brand convicted drunk drivers with special “scarlet letter” license plates — with red numbers on a yellow background so other motorists will know exactly what they’ve done.

You're Kidding, Right?

You're Kidding, Right?

The Calgary Sun: Prison guards forbidden to wear protective gear

Quick: Call a Police Officer!

Quick: Call a Police Officer!

John Kerry wants to treat terrorist activity as a law enforcement issue AND does not believe that going into Iraq to thwart a terrorist sponsoring mass murderer was a good thing. . . just which "law enforcement" agency should we call on here? Maybe Briscoe and Green from Law & Order are available.

And who's the unlucky person who has to serve a summons on these guys?

FOXNews.com - Top Stories - Report: Al Qaeda Has Nukes

SYDNEY, Australia — Usama bin Laden's (search) terror network claims to have bought ready-made nuclear weapons on the black market in central Asia, the biographer of Al Qaeda's No. 2 leader was quoted as telling an Australian television station.