IT'S EASIER TO BOYCOTT THAN TO WIN A DEBATE

THOMAS MITCHELL

We will not tolerate intolerance!

Set fire the faggots (No, the first definition in the dictionary, not the current vernacular) and throw the heretic on the auto-da-fe.

Kill the messenger.

Burn the books.

Put the infidel to the sword.

Shun them. Silence them. Do not let them speak, lest they despoil tender minds.

Why does the first recourse seem always thus?

Perhaps it is the baser side of human nature. The raw animal instinct that needs to be mitigated by the nobler philosophies of rational and civilized minds.

First, the rabid left of the Democratic Party demanded a boycott of a planned debate of Democratic presidential candidates in Nevada because it was to be broadcast on the hated Fox News cable television network, the cable news outlet with the highest ratings. The state party acquiesced and canceled.

When the Review-Journal editorially criticized the state party, we got several dozen e-mails, most like this from a Californian: "Fox News is an agenda-driven operation more adapt at cheap shots than news gathering. For Fox to host the Democrats would be like holding a convention of postal workers in a dog pound."

Next came the thousands of e-mails from all over the country to editorial page editors demanding that they stop publishing the columns of conservative bombastician Ann Coulter after she quipped at a political conference, "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word faggot, so I -- so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."

A number of newspapers, promptly complied, though she had never used such language in her column. The Review-Journal continues to publish Coulter.

People let us know they did not like Coulter's slurs and did so with a few of their own.

Another Californian offered, "Please drop Ann Coulter, a buffoon and proponent of hatred ... You should stop publishing ravings of psychosexual neurotics by calling them opinions. It is truly shameful to do so, like calling smut art. Your readers know it when they see it."

At least radical lefty Ted Rall, whose editorial cartoons and occasionally a column appear on the op-ed pages of this newspaper, weighed in with support for Coulter. As well he should, because he himself has been the target of boycott demands.

"As a fervent proponent of the First Amendment and an opinion monger who relies upon the right to free expression to earn a living, however, I must set aside my personal resentment -- and I ask you to do the same," Rall wrote.

But perhaps the best response came from a Las Vegas Army officer who said he despises Coulter but reads her columns and analyzes her claims.

"I have given the devil consideration, and dismissed her on the lack of merit in her claim rather than the lack of agreement with my own personal viewpoint," Ryan Jean wrote in a letter published Saturday. "Ann Coulter must be allowed to speak, even if it is worthless, because the First Amendment to that cherished document protects her right to do so. The real test of this right isn't what we do to the speech we agree with, but what we do with the speech we don't. If you want to secure liberty, this is fundamental."

And finally, when Review-Journal columnist Erin Neff suggested that Gov. Jim Gibbons' legal entanglements had mounted to the point that he should resign, we promptly received a letter declaring, "I've read enough, it's time for Erin Neff to go!"

I wonder if these people ever stop to consider that their demands to silence those with whom they disagree is in the same vein, differing only by degrees, as the demands of Muslims that Muhammad never be depicted and that the cartoonists who did so for a Danish newspaper be put to death.

As for this newspaper, we will not cower just because a few brats throw a tantrum.

I'm not saying that people should not call for bans on speakers and writers, that would be a tad hypocritical. Calling for a ban on bans, so to speak. But I will suggest that the civilized thing to do is to curb the animal instinct and answer speech we abhor with countervailing and superior speech, rather than boycotts or violence.

Thomas Mitchell is editor of the Review-Journal and writes about free speech and press. He may be contacted at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@ reviewjournal.com.

WHO HATES AMERICA?

by Michael Reagan

If you believe the media and the cry-baby left, the entire world hates the United States of America. I don’t believe that. The reality of it is they don't hate us; they just love our money and wish they could get their hands on more of it. That's all the rest of the world ever cared about.

Sure, a lot of the French hate America, but they hate every nation that isn’t France.

Lefties across the globe hate America because they are insanely jealous of our prosperity and our standard of living, but they are not anything like a majority.

Ask yourself this: If America is so hateful, why does half the world want to come here to live in such a hateful country?

If you really want to know who really hates America don’t look abroad. Look right here in the United States for the real hate-America crowd; look at the left-wing crazies who run the Democrat party.

Think about it. America is at war. Tens of thousands of Americans in the armed forces are fighting that war, and more than three thousand of them gave their lives battling the terrorists sworn to destroy this nation.

Yet aside from Osama bin Laden and his crew of merciless killers, the people most dedicated to seeing the United States defeated in a battle for the future of the world are the liberal Democrats now feebly trying to run the Congress.

You really have to hate America and its people to lust after the defeat of your own country.

Sure, they don’t come right out and say it. They cover their tracks by calling a headlong – and shameful -- dash for the exits a “redeployment,” their way of saying cut and run. They say they fully support our troops, while they mutter about cutting the funding for them and leaving them defenseless far away from home.

As the new strategy for winning the war in Iraq begins to take hold, they refuse to recognize any of the signs of progress. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and the despicable John Murtha announce to the nation that we are losing the war, and moreover, can’t possibly win it.

You really have to hate America to stand on the sidelines, root for an enemy triumph and do everything you can to make sure we lose a war.

If you want to know who really hates America look at the Democrats who jumped on the media bandwagon to attack Walter Reed Army Medical Center charging that they have not given good medical care to our wounded troops coming back from a Iraq when they are fully aware that these wounded heroes have received the finest medical care ever a given to anyone, soldier or civilian, in the entire history of the world.

Thousands of wounded members of our armed forces who would have died of their wounds in previous wars are alive today as a result of the medical care available at Walter Reed and other armed services hospitals.

But what do we hear from the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid? Praise for the great care the Army and Navy have provided for the wounded and disabled? No.

Instead we hear allegations that slyly suggest that the conditions in substandard living quarters are in actuality symptoms of poor medical care being given to our troops. That's a flat-out lie, and you have to hate America to tell it.

The fact of the matter is that those veterans forced to live in substandard quarters and receiving extraordinary medical care were victims, not of the Army, but of the federal bureaucracy which operates under rules and restrictions dictated by the Congress when it was under the control of the Democrats.

Moreover it was the Congress which allowed Walter Reed medical center to be scheduled to shut down in 2010 -- just three years from now -- putting it in that category to deprive them of adequate funding.

You really have to hate America to attack -- for purely political reasons -- a system of medical care that is saving huge numbers of Americans. They have no shame.

LYING LIARS AND THEIR LIES

Gabriel Schoenfeld

Was Valerie Plame under oath today when she testified before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and declared that she played no role in sending her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, on a fact-finding trip to Niger? “I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority,” she said.

Does this contradict an exhaustive Senate Intelligence Committee report on pre-war intelligence about Iraq, which looked closely at the genesis of the Wilson visit?

The report, issued in 2004, notes that some officials at the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) of the CIA “could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador [Wilson].” But it states unequivocally that “interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip.” In particular, the CPD reports-officer told the Senate committee “that the former ambassador’s wife ‘offered up his name.’”

What’s more, the Senate committee obtained a memorandum addressed to the deputy chief of the CPD from Plame herself, in which she wrote: “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light” on Iraqi uranium purchases. The Senate report goes on to say that Plame also approached her husband “on behalf of the CIA and told him ‘there’s this crazy report’ on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.”

An additional sidelight: the Senate committee also notes that Wilson had previously traveled to Niger on a CIA mission in 1999. He had been selected for that trip “after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future.”

Did Plame lie to the House committee today, or does that question hinge on the meaning of the word “recommend,” or the meaning of the word “suggest,” or the meaning of the words “did not”?

PHONY SCANDAL PUTS CONSERVATIVES IN A QUANDRY

By Jack Kelly

To its enemies, the most endearing quality of the Bush administration must be the frequency with which the Bushies act as if they've done something wrong, even when they haven't.

President Bush caused himself no end of grief when he apologized for saying in his 2003 state of the union address "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," even though every word of it was true.

That blunder may have been topped by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at his news conference last Wednesday. The "senior Justice Department official" who told reporters Mr. Gonzales' performance was "disastrous" was being kind.

Mr. Gonzales called the news conference to respond to the manufactured "scandal" of the administration's decision to fire eight of the 93 U.S. attorneys.

"Mistakes were made," Mr. Gonzales said, without explaining what those mistakes were, or who made them. The Justice department has issued shifting explanations for why these U.S. attorneys were dismissed. The Attorney General said he supported the firings, but was unaware of the specific details of how they came about. Which is curious, because his chief of staff was heavily involved in them.

That he didn't know what was going on under his nose is, however, the most credible thing Mr. Gonzales said. Only President Bush, with his apparently boundless enthusiasm for mediocrities (Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job), imagined that Mr. Gonzales was a good choice to be attorney general, and he has lived down to the expectations most held for him. The FBI's bungling of the issuance of national security letters is just the most recent bit of a mountain of evidence the Justice department under Mr. Gonzales is as well managed as was the Federal Emergency Management Agency under the hapless Michael Brown.

U.S. Attorneys are political appointees who usually are recommended for their jobs by the U.S. senators from their states who are members of the president's party. They serve at the pleasure of the president, and can be dismissed at any time for any reason. When President Clinton took office, he dismissed all 93 U.S. attorneys in one fell swoop, a fact which somehow hasn't made it into most news accounts of the current controversy.

If any of the U.S. attorneys had been dismissed because of how they were conducting an ongoing investigation, that would be improper. But there is no evidence of this. The emails released by the Department of Justice indicate seven of the eight were dismissed because they weren't pursuing the administration's enforcement priorities, or because they'd bungled earlier cases, or both. (The eighth was fired because the Bushies wanted to give his job to another guy.) This is perfectly ok.

If the boss wants you to do something, and it isn't illegal, immoral or fattening, you should do it. If you choose not to do it, you shouldn't be surprised to find yourself pounding the pavement.

Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. Attorney, said the brouhaha pits incompetence against hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is winning. Democrats and journalists who saw nothing amiss when President Clinton dismissed a U.S. attorney who was actively investigating him and his wife in the Whitewater land deal, and another who was actively investigating criminal activities by Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, then the chairman of the House Ways and Means committee, express mock outrage over these firings.

None have done it as dishonestly as the Los Angeles Times. The Times implied that Carol Lam, the U.S. attorney in San Diego, was dismissed because of her investigation of the corruption of GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

But as the Times well knows, the Justice department emails reveal Ms. Lam had been targeted for dismissal months before a story in the San Diego Union-Tribune triggered Ms. Lam's investigation of Rep. Cunningham. The Bushies were unhappy with her because of her unwillingness to pursue immigration law violations, not her eagerness to pursue political corruption.

The phony scandal puts conservatives in a quandary. Alberto Gonzales is a bumbling fool who ought not to be attorney general. His efforts to shift blame for the curt and clumsy manner in which the firings were conducted are both pathetic and deplorable.

But there is a big difference between being a bumbling fool and being a crook. If Mr. Gonzales is forced from office for these spurious reasons, we can expect more bogus assaults on administration officials. Sigh. I suspect conservatives, even more than liberals, long for an end to the Bush administration.

THE LATEST NON SCANDAL CONTINUES

Oh boy...now we're reading that Karl Rove may have had a hand in the firings of the U.S. Attorneys. Hmm...since he's the president's political consultant and since those attorneys are political appointees....what's the big deal? The media sure is worked up over this. Funny how there wasn't the same outrage when Bill Clinton canned all of his U.S. Attorneys. But, as you know, there is a different standard between Republican and Democratic presidents. It's called media bias.

There is absolutely nothing to this story. U.S. Attorneys are political appointees...they serve at the pleasure of the president. Why they were fired, how they were fired, who fired them...what they were fired for.. none of it matters. Just like cabinet secretaries, the president can fire them all whenever he wants. There is no explanation needed. There is no controversy here. This is all just an invented scandal by the media and the left.

And some spineless "Republicans" are actually going along with it. Calling on the Attorney General to resign? What for? Doing his job? There are already some media outlets comparing this non-scandal to Watergate. How? In what way? When you serve at the pleasure of the president, you can be fired at anytime for any reason. There is real story here. The president exercised his prerogative ... and some U.S. Attorneys were fired. The Dems know, however, that they can make this into a major scandal because they have a media establishment that is not only willing, but positively eager to help them out.

POOR, POOR KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMED

The media is now downplaying the claims of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed...saying he may be exaggerating his testimony. Of course, this is being done to try and minimize the threat of Islamic terrorism. As if being responsible for 9/11 weren't enough. Democrats, who are in denial about the terrorist threat, are seeking to minimize any success the Bush Administration may be having with fighting the war on terror. And naturally the media is along for the ride.

You know what the implication is here. We obviously tortured him, right? He's just telling us what we want to hear....lying about his conquests. One man couldn't possibly be responsible for all of that. Funny how every time we capture or kill an Al-Qaeda bigwig, Democrats downplay it as just one person. But in the same breath, they turn around and mock the Bush Administration for not capturing or killing Osama Bin Laden yet. Wait a minute...I thought he was just one man?

So now we get to watch the media and liberals stir up sympathy for an Islamic terrorist. Rosie O'Donnell defended poor Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on 'The View.' That's not far off the mark when it comes to the latest Democratic response.