In the unlikely event that you are still under the impression that the 911 commission is comprised of representatives who are earnestly and soberly examining shortcomings in intelligence leading up to the attacks on New York and Washington… I direct your attention to commission panelist Bob Kerrey [D] and his appearance on the “Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” a couple of nights ago.
Michelle Malkin

Now, it would be one thing if Kerrey used his privileged position to inform Stewart’s younger audience of the gravity of the 9/11 panel’s task. But instead, Kerrey yukked it up. First, he dished with Stewart about President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney’s upcoming private meeting with the commission. When Stewart mocked the president’s “buddy system,” Kerrey guffawed: “He is bringing his buddy, that’s exactly right, for safety.” Emboldened by audience applause, Kerrey riffed that it was more like “Screw you, buddy.” Asked by Stewart whether people were really blaming each other over the terrorist attacks during closed hearings, Kerrey snorted: “Oh, Jee-zus, yeah.” More audience approval. (Taking the Lord’s name in vain is always good for a few cheap laughs.)
Next, echoing a profanity uttered earlier in the show, Kerrey blurted out with a clownish grin: “Life is [expletive bleeped].” When Stewart proposed that Kerrey ask the vice president, “What the [expletive bleeped] is wrong with you people?” Kerrey cracked up and promised to use the question. And when Stewart called Attorney General John Ashcroft a “big [expletive bleeped],” Kerrey chortled some more.
After nearly ten minutes of knee-slapping hilarity, it was time for Kerrey to wrap things up. Instead of paying lip service to those who died in the terrorist attacks, Kerrey used his last moments on the program to suck up to Stewart. The Daily Show, Kerrey cooed, was one of the few shows he TiVo’ed. The other, he joked, was [the PBS kids’ show] Boohbah. Ho-ho-ho.
House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R., Mo.) was spot on Tuesday in his reaction to Kerrey’s performance: “His appearance on a program designed to satirize current events proves that Kerrey lacks the seriousness of purpose that this Commission requires and the American people deserve. This is not a laughing matter.”

I saw the show. It was pretty disgraceful, all round. But Stewart stopped being funny a long time ago too. Somewhere in his rabid partisanship, Stewart has forgotten that satire based upon false premises or misinformation isn’t satire anymore – or funny.
In the episode last night, Stewart lobbed his jokes at Bush and Cheney’s interview with commission members yesterday. Yet, he didn’t mention that his guest of a few nights earlier had left before it was over. I wonder why – there’s ripe opportunity for satire there, don’t you think?
“Kerrey explained to reporters: “Yeah, it’s a little awkward to leave early. But the president certainly understood what we were doing.”

This sad story today courtesy Colin Freeze at the Globe and Mail :

Canada, the country of his citizenship, has never been home in any meaningful way for Karim. He was a young boy when he first met Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. At age 11, he watched U.S. bombs rain down as his family became part of the exodus of al-Qaeda-affiliated Arabs who fled the U.S. invasion to go to the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Forced from their homes, with nothing but the Kalashnikovs on their backs, they were.

There, he watched his father and seven other militants die last fall in a fierce battle with government forces. Karim, who was caught up in the battle, emerged partly paralyzed.

Caught at the extreme end of crossfire, so they say.

The towering 6 foot 3 big brother, 21-year-old Abdurahman, embraced Karim. They had not seen each other since being separated in Afghanistan.
Abdurahman’s life has also been eventful since the fall of 2001. He returned to Toronto a few months ago to speak publicly of his capture in Afghanistan, the time he spent as a prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the international spy work he says he did for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

Quote from his news conference – “We were an Al Queda family”.

Increasingly comfortable as family spokesman, he stood alone to address a battery of cameras to say he’d like to see the return of Omar, a 17-year- old brother still held in Cuba on suspicion of killing a U.S. soldier.
Abdurahman said he would like the rest of his family – his 23-year-old brother, who is a fugitive terror suspect in Pakistan, and his two sisters, one of whose wedding was attended by Mr. bin Laden – back here as well.

Can they travel by urn?

One politician, MP Stockwell Day, says it’s outrageous that some members of the Khadr family have been allowed to return to Canada. But onlookers in the arrivals area of the airport were non-judgmental.

Traumatized crippled little boy. Flashes peace sign, carries flowers.
Big, bad US bombs.
Warm embrace from reformed brother.
Reformed from past association with CIA.
Mean judgemental conservative politician.
Kind forgiving Scottish grandmothers.
Oh Canada, The True North Diverse And Non-Judgemental.

Sherry F. Colb, a professor at Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ, shares this essay at CNN today educating us as to the “three types of lies” – the insignificant lie, the harmful, material lie, and the beneficial, material lie. As a backdrop to her essay, she features Condaleeza Rice. She doesn’t actually mention any actual testimony by Rice, she just chose her at random –

“Until the middle of last week, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was engaged in a conflict with the 9/ 11 Investigation Commission over whether or not she would take an oath to tell the truth prior to voluntarily answering their questions.”

But this Colb is a sly fox. She skillfully injects a fourth type of lie – intellectual dishonesty. She makes sure it’s a clumsy one, so we can spot it right away:

Lies, however, can be far more destructive, such as — to pick a purely hypothetical example — misleading the nation into supporting a war and sending young men and women to die for a cause of which the people are unaware and may not support.

Then, this other cleverly disguised type of lie – the lie-once-removed – “many suspect” is the clue here.

Suppose that — as many suspect has already occurred with respect to the Iraq War — our executive branch officials lie to the American people in order to motivate important votes, and those lies lead to unnecessary and unwanted death and injury.

Colb also carefully explains how she lies to get her boring mother off the phone.
So, I’m going to go out on a limb here, but my general take on the article – I think Colb would consider lies told (to pick a purely hypothetical example) to support a Democratic political agenda, to be one of those “beneficial, material lies” types, like the ones told to save Jews from Nazis.

In the past few weeks, a murmer has been growing across the blogosphere that should John Kerry defeat George Bush in November, he is likely to “stay the course” in Iraq and the greater war on Islamic fascism. The comforting argument is this; despite their differences, when it comes to fundamentals about national security and foreign policy, a Bush vs Kerry administration is a Coke Vs Pepsi debate.
Now that you’ve been properly seduced…

In an interview broadcast Wednesday morning, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry defended terrorist Shiite imam Muqtada al-Sadr as a “legitimate voice” in Iraq, despite that fact that he’s led an uprising that has killed nearly 20 American GIs in the last two days.
Speaking of al-Sadr’s newspaper, which was shut down by coalition forces last week after it urged violence against U.S. troops, Kerry complained to National Public Radio, “They shut a newspaper that belongs to a legitimate voice in Iraq.”
In the next breath, however, the White House hopeful caught himself and quickly changed direction. “Well, let me … change the term ‘legitimate.’ It belongs to a voice – because he has clearly taken on a far more radical tone in recent days and aligned himself with both Hamas and Hezbollah, which is a sort of terrorist alignment.”

Yeah. No difference at all, really.
Hat tip – Inoperable Terran
update- Hugh Hewitt covers the non-coverage of this in the big media

This election is about the war.�Yesterday Kerry said a lot of things about the war, some outrageous, some incoherent, some contradicting other statements he has made.� Voters have a right to hear or read Kerry on the crucial subject, even if pro-Kerry reporters and editors suspect that these quotes may not go down well with the public. The Kerry interviews were not hard to come by. I had them and had transcribed and posted the key excerpts by 2:30 PM Pacific time yesterday. No wonder Americans don’t trust the media.� A combination of terrible news judgment, laziness, and bias has infected the coverage of the election, and there’s no excusing this failure on the part of the “objective press.”

Well, wasn’t that clever? And most everyone thought Morissette was making a statement about censorship in the US. Even Drudge – Morissette, hosting Canada’s annual music awards, said the stunt, in which she appeared in a provocative skin-hugging body-suit was intended to expose US “censorship.” and quotes her as saying “They’re in an era when they’re scared, when there’s lots of fear.” I’m sure she said something to that effect. (I didn’t really pay attention, as I was getting up to turn it off.)

But, of course, the tit ‘n bush suit wasn’t about censorship at all. It was about the number one source of angst in Canada – that peculiar inferiority complex we have about our cousins to the south, that we’ve code-named “Canadian identity”.
You see, Alanis Morrisette would still be playing shopping malls if it weren’t for the American market. Nickelback would be slogging the bar scene in Vancouver. Avril Lavigne would be catching the bus to her job at Wendy’s. (And they’d make her tie back that hair.)
One cannot become a bona fide Canadian superstar without gaining the approval of the USA. Not that the Americans give a damn – we do. Nobody cares about Canadian bands if they haven’t had a gig on the Grammys or scored a number one song – a chart topper makes us positively giddy. It just kills these people to admit it.
So, chubby little smirk, desperate to prove she isn’t one of them, (though of course, we all are) – decides that dressing up in Spandex and throwing a little hypocrisy around is the way to make a statement about Canadian superiority. That’s right. Not censorship at all. Throwing off a bathrobe in a faux moment of exposure makes us better than you.
Should be good for about a week of smug.
Don’t believe me? Try mentioning that “only the Europeans and the French” wear visors on their hockey helmets during a CBC Hockey Night In Canada broadcast. Then, get back to me about the freedom of the Canadian airwaves.

About a year or so ago, I got into an online spat with a moonbat in the yahoogroup Global-M, that prompted my adversary to Googlehunt my name. She thought she was really onto something when she found an old page for a flamewars group that I had belonged to. She posted her find to the list and linked to it with an “Aha! Look what I found!” – I believe she thought I’d be embarrassed….
Mensa membership is no guarantee of intelligence. Apparently, Ms. Hsu had not considered the possibility of a page edit. When list members clicked on her link, this is what they found;

Quote of the Day
“I am a big fat idiot. I should have never linked to this site. It was a mistake to spend all night on google searches. I should have gone to bed. I should have put down the bourbon. My deepest apologies. –Tanya Hsu.”

For whatever reason, it seems she didn’t recheck the page after making the post, so remained blissfully unaware of the change. Then, a few months later, Tanya’s new employer did a Googlehunt on her name….
This prompted an email exchange, which she crossposted to her groups, cc’d to an unidentified lawyer (who remained curiously silent) . She demanded that my Mensa membership be revoked. It finally culminated in this:

Date: Sat, 16 Aug 2003 14:09:31 -0400
From: Tanya C. Hsu
To: Catherine McMillan
Subject: Re: Flamer Rips Mensan
You stupid fool. You stupid stupid fool.
I work with a government department in Washington DC. You have *no idea* of what and who can make life very difficult for you.
You ought to rethink fast.

The black sedans are still parked outside my house.
And so, this brings me to the purpose of this post – What is the best email threat or hate mail you’ve ever recieved? Use the trackback feature to link to this post, or share it the comments. You may also enter over at Wizbang where I’m doing a bit of guest blogging. I promise an appropriate prize for the winning entry.
Even Tanya can play if she likes.

Sunday I recieved a call from a casual acquaintance, inviting me to dinner to celebrate a visit home of a mutual friend in the Canadian military. I told her I’d love to come, our friend spent time on the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz and I could hardly wait to hear about it.
The response was cool. And then she volunteered her displeasure at Americans, and the Iraq war.

Globe and Mail – March 16
Vaughan, Ontario.
The chief said that 13 spots were vandalized with racist messages, letters of the alphabet and swastikas, some of them incorrectly drawn. Painted in black, the graffiti were left on garage doors, cars and front doors of homes.

Then she complained, “The jews are always trying to take over other countries.”

Ms. Bromberg said that the individuals vandalized only Jewish homes, leading her to believe that they understand enough about Jewish culture to recognize the traditional scroll-work on these house’s doors.

I asked her, “Oh? Which countries?”

One of these households included an elderly women who had lived through the Holocaust, she said.

“Israel”, she hesitated, not sure of the others. “It shouldn’t exist.”

“Imagine, as you will, the case of one of the individuals that called our hotline, a member of his household is actually a Holocaust survivor,” she said. “And she was the one, an elderly woman as you can imagine, opening the door to see swastikas on it. It’s shocking.”

“And where should the Israelis go?” I asked. “Would you just march them into the sea?”

But she added that the crime is an attack that will be felt by more than just the victims.

“No, it’s too late for that. But they should never have put them there in the first place.” She had clearly given this much thought. “You can’t just set up a country like that. In someone else’s country.”

“This is a crime that affects not only the individuals targeted but the whole community,” she said. “This has shaken the whole community to the core.”

“Why is that? Really? After the war, where were they supposed to go?” I asked. “And you do know that every country that exists came about through claiming of land possessed by someone who arrived earlier. Canada, for example. Why are your rules different for us than for Israel? ”

Chief La Barge echoed her comments.

Yes, she could certainly agree with that. We had stolen the land from the Indians.

“This is a crime that has many victims,” he said. “The prosecution of hate crimes can sometimes be difficult, but we are committed to bringing to justice those individuals that engage in this type of criminal and hurtful activity.”

“So, where should you and I go? I could go back to the British Isles and reclaim my ancestral land and restitution from the British who engineered the potato famine. Somebody should pay for that, don’t you think?” .

The chief said that the number of hate crimes reported in the jurisdiction jumped by 50 per cent from 2002 to 2003, climbing from 61 to 91. So far this year, not even a quarter done, there have 23 such incidents reported, the majority of them anti-Semitic.

She laughed nervously. And the subject changed.
It’s not the hate crimes that worry me.
It’s the hate thought that exists in places you never dreamed of.
(Outside The Beltway: traffic jam addition)

I’m starting a new category here at SDA. I’m calling it the Insufferable Twit Watch. For my inaugeral entry, I feature a local radio personality – Saskatoon’s 650 CKOM program director, Kurt Leavins.
Leavins has an afternoon show, informally known as the Anti-American Bush-Bashing Hour. Leavins does not take calls, so he’s got free reign to spout off with whatever canard-de-jour is floating through the CNN headline banner. I do email him from time to time, when he says something particularly egrarious. To his credit, he always replies, but he never, never admits an error or corrections on air. (I’ve included one such email exchange in the expanded entry)
Yesterday, Leavins offered his thoughts on the train bombings in Madrid. He mentioned that Al Queda had taken responsibility and then, in his usual “I told you so” voice, reminded we memory-challenged listeners of Spain’s involvement in the Iraq war;

[Paraphrased quote] — Don’t get me wrong, I’m sorry that this happened, but you know — given Spains involvement in the Iraq war — “you had to see it coming”.

Memo to Kurt Leavins:
The war with Al Queda was not initiated by George W. Bush. It did not commence with an invasion of Iraq, or the toppling of Saddam Hussein.
Perhaps you slept in on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Perhaps you haven’t heard.
At about 9 am that morning, Al Queda launched an attack using hijacked airliners that destroyed both towers of the World Trade Center, part of the Pentagon, while a fourth plane crashed short of its target in a field in Pennsylvania. Prior to this, Al Queda and its islamofascist affiliates had a long, sordid history of attacking military and civilian targets around the world.
And perhaps you haven’t been reading the papers.
Canadian troops are currently serving in Afghanistan – the same Afghanistan that harboured Bin Laden and provided safe haven for Al Queda training camps and a launching point for terrorism. For our efforts, Canada has been added to the list of official targets for Al Queda retaliation.
I hope that when the day comes that it is the CN Tower lying in a pile of flame and broken bodies, or the Parliament buildings hoplessly contaminated through a dirty bomb attack, you’ll remember those words and remind us, too, that “we had to see it coming”, so that we can be properly reflective and humiliated by our error in backing the American fight against terror and tyranny.

Congratulations, Kurt Leavins – SDA’s Insufferable Twit for March 12, 2004.
Update: Think I’m being harsh? Leavins just announced the topic for his “Afternoon Show” today – “Did They Bring This Bombing Upon Themselves?”
Hitchhiking on the Beltway Traffic Jam.

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