Byron York has a piece at the Washington Examiner about how supporters of the Ground Zero mosque are asking George W. Bush to show support for President Obama:

“It’s time for W. to weigh in,” writes the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd. Bush, Dowd explains, understands that “you can’t have an effective war against the terrorists if it is a war on Islam.”
[...]
Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson is also looking for an assist from Bush. “I…would love to hear from former President Bush on this issue,” Robinson wrote Tuesday in a Post chat session.
[...]
And Peter Beinart, a former editor of the New Republic, is also feeling some nostalgia for the former president. “Words I never thought I’d write: I pine for George W. Bush,” Beinart wrote Tuesday in The Daily Beast. “Whatever his flaws, the man respected religion, all religion.”

Are they asking the same George W. Bush who started an illegal and immoral war, lied about WMDs so his buddies could profit from the invasion and tortured exclusively Muslim detainees to come to the rescue of a president who was supposed to save America from all the horror Bush hath wrought? That’s fine, I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page.

I know many on the left support the mosque, but I didn’t expect some of them to sell their souls for it.

Either the Obama administration is losing its base or this has been the most successful billboard campaign ever:

**Written by Doug Powers

Twitter @ThePowersThatBe

He is frantic to get away from her because he can’t keep carbo-loading to relate to the common people.

In the final days in Pennsylvania, he dutifully logged time at diners and force-fed himself waffles, pancakes, sausage and a Philly cheese steak. He split the pancakes with Michelle, left some of the waffle and sausage behind, and gave away the French fries that came with the cheese steak.

But this is clearly a man who can’t wait to get back to his organic scrambled egg whites.

I don’t think I’ve ever recommended a MoDo column before, but this one’s kind of clever. (Hat tip to DRJ.)

As for SnObama, apparently the Boss had it right:

Too late, Mr. Dainty Fingers. You only get one chance to make a first impression. The odor of elitism is like onion breath: Quick to acquire, hard to get rid of.

___________
{Post by See-Dubya; front-page image is a perfect cheesesteak for liberals: a meatless vegan imitation cheesesteak.}

He writes 851 words about Maureen Dowd’s stomach bug and how a White House doctor was kind enough to treat her.

He gave her Pepto-Bismol.

I think you’ll needs some, too, after reading that crap journalism. A snippet:

Presidential aides, including press secretary Dana Perino, made clear early on that Dowd could see Dr. Richard J. Tubb, the Air Force brigadier general who oversees the White House medical office and takes care of the president at home and abroad.

But Dowd declined. With no medication, she tried to soldier on by grabbing whatever rest she could in her hotel room–not easy to do in a trip of constant movements. By the time the presidential entourage moved to Bahrain from Kuwait on Saturday, she felt even worse. She was so sick, in fact, that she could not write her regular Sunday column.

Dowd finally decided to take up the White House on its offer.

A young press aide, Carlton Carroll, helped arrange for Dowd to visit Tubb at the Emirates Palace, the over-the-top $3 billion luxury hotel where the president and his aides were staying. The hotel is so vast that Dowd and her escorts got lost twice in the marble and gold hallways. She finally found herself in a fully-staffed doctors’ office with a trunk full of various medications, a solicitous nurse and a super-competent White House physician.

Tubb gave her a few tablets of Cipro and some Pepto-Bismol and told her to check back with him the next day. She turned down Tubb’s offer of an IV (so there was no chance of an “accidental” poisoning, she joked).

“He was wonderful–just really sweet,” Dowd said in an interview Tuesday afternoon in the press filing center in Riyadh, where she appeared to be on the mend and said she was feeling much better.

Hey, WaPo: I’ve got a hangnail. Send a reporter! I’m in nearby Maryland, so no need to buy your intrepid investigavie sleuth a plane ticket. I’ll give you the exclusive on my backache, too.

He’s talking about you, not himself:

The Arrogant and Intolerant Speak Out

Well, one thing’s abundantly clear about who will actually defend our rights to say what we believe: It isn’t the hundreds who have written me saying they are soldiers or veterans or war supporters or real Americans — who also advise me to move to another country, to get f@##d, or to die a painful, violent death.

Contrary to the typically inaccurate and overstated assertion in dozens of blogs, hundreds of comments, and thousands of e-mails I’ve received, I’ve never written that soldiers should “shut up,” quit whining, be spit upon, or that they have no right to an opinion.

I said I was bothered by the notion that “the troops” were somehow becoming hallowed beings above society, that they had an attitude that only they had the means – or the right – to judge the worthiness of the Iraq endeavor.

I was dead wrong in using the word mercenary to describe the American soldier today.

These men and women are not fighting for money with little regard for the nation. The situation might be much worse than that: Evidently, far too many in uniform believe that they are the one true nation. They hide behind the constitution and the flag and then spew an anti-Democrat, anti-liberal, anti-journalism, anti-dissent, and anti-citizen message that reflects a certain contempt for the American people.

Allah’s got some choice Arkin audio and asks: “I wonder what Maureen Dowd and the rest of the patriotic dissent crew who granted Cindy Sheehan absolute moral authority because her son died in Iraq would say about this?”

We now have the ability to put remote control cameras on the surface of Mars. Why should we allow enemies to annihilate us simply because we lack the clarity or resolve to strike a reasonable balance between a healthy skepticism of government power and the need to take proactive measures to protect ourselves from such threats? The mantra of civil-liberties hard-liners is to “question authority”–even when it is coming to our rescue–then blame that same authority when, hamstrung by civil liberties laws, it fails to save us. The old laws that would prevent FBI agents from stopping the next al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were built on the bedrock of a 35-year history of dark, defeating mistrust. More Americans should not die because the peace-at-any-cost fringe and antigovernment paranoids still fighting the ghost of Nixon hate George Bush more than they fear al Qaeda. Ask the American people what they want. They will say that they want the commander in chief to use all reasonable means to catch the people who are trying to rain terror on our cities. Those who cite the soaring principle of individual liberty do not appear to appreciate that our enemies are not seeking to destroy individuals, but whole populations.

Three weeks before 9/11, an FBI agent with the bin Laden case squad in New York learned that [9/11 hijackers Khalid] al-Mihdhar and [Nawaf] al-Hazmi were in this country. He pleaded with the national security gatekeepers in Washington to launch a nationwide manhunt and was summarily told to stand down. When the FISA Court of Review tore down the wall in 2002, it included in its ruling the agent’s Aug. 29, 2001, email to FBI headquarters: “Whatever has happened to this–someday someone will die–and wall or not–the public will not understand why we were not more effective and throwing every resource we had at certain problems. Let’s hope the National Security Law Unit will stand behind their decisions then, especially since the biggest threat to us now, \[bin Laden\], is getting the most ‘protection.’”

The public has listened to years of stinging revelations detailing how the government tied its own hands in stopping the devastating attacks of September 11. It is an irresponsible violation of the public trust for members of Congress to weaken the Patriot Act or jeopardize the NSA terrorist surveillance program because of the same illusory theories that cost us so dearly before, or worse, for rank partisan advantage. If they do, and our country sustains yet another catastrophic attack that these antiterrorism tools could have prevented, the phrase “connect the dots” will resonate again–but this time it will refer to the trail of innocent American blood which leads directly to the Senate floor.

Read the whole thing, then fax a copy to your congressional rep.

***

Speaking of connecting the dots, check out this new ad at GOP.com. Perhaps inspired by Junkyard Blog?

***
Reader Laurence Z. writes:

Strikes me that Debra Burlingame has “absolute moral authority.” I can’t wait for Maureen Dowd to declare that. When do you think she will?

When the skating rink opens in Hades…

***

A new pro-Patriot Act ad featuring Burlingame will air during “24.” Expose the Left has it.

Brad Wilmouth at Newsbusters has the full transcript and more:

Olbermann: “Who has enabled this? I mean, in a perverse way, is it almost necessary to say that Bill Clinton paved the way for George Bush to conduct a kind of fingers-in-his-ears, shout la-la-la-la-la presidency?”

Dowd: “No, they’re two entirely different things because when Bill Clinton would deceive, he would throw in a semantic clue that let you know he was deceiving. ‘I did not have sexual relations with that woman.’ We knew what he meant by that. You know, ‘I did not,’ about dope, ‘I didn’t break the laws of this country.’ So it was sort of poignant and endearing. He would let you know he was lying, and then the right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him. And in the case of Bush, he’s just in a completely different reality. You know, they call us the ‘reality-based community,’ and they create their own reality, and so Bush is just in a bubble. And when you’re in the bubble, you don’t know you’re in the bubble.”

So, the “right wing would come down so hard on him and overpunish him,” eh, Maureen? Sort of like this:

The President was asked before the Starr grand jury about Robert Bennett’s assertion during the deposition for the Paula Jones case that “there is absolutely no sex of any kind” between the President and Monica Lewinsky.

Mr. Bennett was right, Mr. Clinton said, because he was using the present tense. “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is,” the President explained helpfully.

The same footnote offers three other Clintonian gems before the grand jury: “I have not had sex with her as I defined it.” “It depends on how you define alone.” And, “There were a lot of times when we were alone, but I never really thought we were.”

Mr. Clinton’s double-talk had a contagious effect on Betty Currie. “I don’t want the impression of sneaking,” the secretary said, about Monica, “but it’s just that I brought her in without anyone seeing her.” And, “The President, for all intents and purposes, is never alone.”

Mr. Clinton’s greatest sin is not sex or dissembling about sex, as the heavy-breathing Kenneth Starr believes. His greatest sin is swindling and perverting the American language. He is like the cursed girl in the fairy tale: Every time he opens his mouth, a toad jumps out.

His problems stem from his instinct, when he runs into trouble, to shroud rather than illuminate.

He tries to make words subjective, insisting they mean only what he wants them to. Just as he made the Democratic Party about himself, and the Democratic Conventions about himself, and the Presidency about himself, he tries to make the language about himself.

But he can’t. Laws are composed of words. The President is in charge of our laws. When he drains meaning from words, he jeopardizes his ability to govern. He has made Washington Orwellian. His corrupt language corrupts thought.

Oh, wait. That was Maureen Dowd’s September 16, 1998 NYTimes column–one of 10 columns about Clinton’s language-perverting lies that won her the Pulitzer Prize for her “fresh and insightful” commentary.

Hmmm. What does that make her commentary now?

***

Reader Michael V.:

What’s with [MSNBC's] “Deciphering Dubya” footer on the Dowd clip you posted? What a thoroughly disrepectful slime job on the President! Would the MSM have posted a “Believing Bubba” footer on a talking head defense of Clinton?

Notice anything missing?

The Ben Franklin quote that has been so misused and abused by the civil liberties absolutists since Sept. 11 originally appeared in 1755:

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

The version that appears on the Statue of Liberty’s pedestal reads:

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

The omission of those key qualifiers–”essential” and “little”– makes all the difference in the world. Ben Franklin has been hijacked to endorse an untenable and deadly view that no sacrifice of any liberty for any amount of safety at any time should ever be made.

Is there a single adult on campus who will correct the miseducated protesters and teach them to think rationally about trade-offs? Or is Georgetown’s educational mission to produce the next generation of ignorant Chicken Littles who’ll proclaim the collapse of civilization every time our government fingerprints a temporary foreign visitor, detains an illegal alien, interrogates an enemy combatant, prevents bogus charities from raising money for terrorism, refuses to admit radical Muslim clerics into the country, or monitors the internationally routed e-mails and phone calls of known and suspected al Qaeda operatives?

***

Naturally, the Dowdified quote received an endorsement this morning from none other than Maureen Dowd:

At a Georgetown University speech, W.’s legal lickspittle ignored a few student protesters, but he might have learned something from their banner, emblazoned with words of Benjamin Franklin: ”Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.”

***

John Hinderaker at Power Line has much more on the Gonzales speech and highlights this key part:

The conflict against al Qaeda is, in fundamental respects, a war of information. We cannot build walls thick enough, fences high enough, or systems strong enough to keep our enemies out of our open and welcoming country. Instead, as the bipartisan 9/11 and WMD Commissions have urged, we must understand better who they are and what they’re doing – we have to collect more dots, if you will, before we can “connect the dots.” This program to surveil al Qaeda is a necessary weapon as we fight to detect and prevent another attack before it happens.

John asks: “Didn’t that “collect the dots” theme originate on the internet? I think so.”

Flashback: See Bryan Preston’s “Collect the Dots…Connect the Dots” movie.

They should show it at Georgetown to all the brainwashed kids who’ve been watching Fahrenheit 9/11 in class.

***

Related:

The Conservative Cat: “[I]t’s worth noting that Franklin was talking about liberty, not privacy. There is a relationship between the two, but I find it strange that no one bothers to quote Franklin when we’re talking about the liberty to choose how your children are taught or smoke cigarettes in public.”

Bryan Preston reminds the Left’s Ben Franklin quote doctors (funny how they’ve finally found a Founding Father they can love) of other relevant sayings that don’t quite fit their agenda.

Scott Johnson at Power Line points to some serious Ben Franklin scholarship worth reading.

Reader Jeff T. writes:

The misquotation of Franklin in the argument about “domestic wiretapping” strikes me as particularly amusing in light of Franklin’s role as one of the premier intelligence agents during the Revolutionary War. The CIA has a nice summary of the intelligence activities undertaken in that war, and no one is so prominent as Franklin, including in covert activities. More to the point here, Franklin was a member of the original committee, appointed by the Continental Congress, to review and publish intercepted communications from England. Hmm, Benjamin Franklin: Domestic Spy! If he meant what the liberals think he meant, we’re going to have to change his statues to read “Printer, Inventor, Statesman, Hypocrite”!

Stop The ACLU has more on essential liberties.

***

Previous:

You can’t connect the dots…
The White House and the War on Terror
Take a leak
How the Times is ringing in the New Year
Finally: Justice Dept. opens NSA leak probe
The NYTimes vs. America
The NYTimes strikes again
Eavesdropping for me, but not for thee
Red alert: Chicken Littles on the loose

Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman offer stiff competition on a weekly basis, but Crowley’s embarrassing little squib (283 words) has to be one of most insipid, shallow, and uninformed wastes of space to grace the NYTimes’ pages.

Based on a single “expert” source–”liberal activist Matt Stoller”–Crowley makes
sweeping assertions about the content, nature, effectiveness, and media penetration of partisan blogs. Liberal blogs criticize Democrats more, while conservatives march in lockstep with the GOP leadership to “to provide maximum benefit for their issues and candidates,” the piece asserts.

What? Clue-by-four for you, Mr. Crowley: A name that rhymes with Marriet Hyers.

Another dose of reality for the clueless Crowley: Technorati search – Bush + open borders + amnesty.

And another: The fissures in the conservative blogosphere over Terri Schiavo.

And another: Porkbusters.

Anyone who swallows the idea that conservative bloggers are an organized arm of the Republican machine who are easily mobilized at the command of Karl Rove does not read conservative blogs–and should not be paid by the NYTimes or anyone else to write about them.

But hey, since when did the NYTimes let ignorance get in the way of its “journalism.” Crowley goes on to conclude:

…what really makes conservatives effective is their pre-existing media infrastructure, composed of local and national talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh, the Fox News Channel and sensationalist say-anything outlets like the Drudge Report – all of which are quick to pass on the latest tidbit from the blogosphere. “One blogger on the Republican side can have a real impact on a race because he can just plug right into the right-wing infrastructure that the Republicans have built,” Stoller says.

Yup, it’s that darned Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, again.

Three syllables for you, Mr. Crowley: BWAH-HAH-HAH.

Hate to bother Mr. Crowley and his editors with some facts, but here’s Matt Drudge on blogs from a Sunday London Times interview in April 2005:

Back in the 1990s Drudge was a believer in the empowering potential of the internet. In a speech he said, “We have entered an era vibrating with the din of small voices. Every citizen can be a reporter, can take on the powers that be.”

Now he sounds disillusioned and says that the “din” is growing into a cacophony: “There’s a danger of the internet just becoming loud, ugly and boring with a thousand voices screaming for attention.” He is no fan of the blogging phenomenon (weblogs linking sites): “I don’t read them. I like to create waves and not surf them. And who are these influential bloggers? You can’t name one because they don’t exist.”

Blog links on the Drudge Report are extremely rare. Glenn Reynolds’ observation is right: “Drudge is, in fact, pretty aloof where the blogosphere is concerned.”

Citations of conservative bloggers’ work on Rush Limbaugh are increasing, but also very rare. And appearances by non-MSM bloggers on Fox News Channel are few and far between. (CNN has assigned reporters who cover blogs. MSNBC featured bloggers regularly on the recently canceled Connected: Coast to Coast. Fox has a few in-house blogs. But when I’m booked to appear, the majority of producers have no idea I have a blog–and I have good reason to believe that the same goes for most if not all of the network’s senior management. So much for VWRC collusion.)

Some of the most high-impact blogging by conservatives this year got little, if any, buzz in the conservative “media infrastructure.” Case in point: Ed Morrissey’s ground-breaking work on the Canadian Adscam scandal. And when conservative bloggers did organize for a single cause this year, it wasn’t to advance GOP interests. It was to raise money–more than 1,800 blogs raised more than $1.3 million–for Hurricane Katrina victims.

If sensationalist say-anything Crowley was trying to convey the impression of familiarity with the blogosphere and pay a back-handed compliment to conservative blogs, he failed miserably. There is a good piece to be written about the fascinating cacophony of conservative and liberal voices in the political blogosphere and their real/imagined impact on current affairs.

Crowley’s lousy piece of toilet paper sheet-sized opinionating was not it.

***

P.S. Did the NYTimes pay for Crowley’s brain dropping? How much? And what yahoo thought it was worth hyping in E&P?

The Roanoke Times weighs in against the nomination.

Maureen Dowd tries to do her best impression of a liberal who cares about border security. No need to pay or register. Just look at the headline and summary.

And via AP, there’s this news of how dense Democrats are. Sen. Carl Levin is on some tangent about terrorist interrogations and using it as an excuse to block Myers’ nomination. As if her abysmal lack of experience in immigration and customs enforcement isn’t enough to disqualify her from the top spot at the the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

Debbie Schlussel, who has been on top of the story from the beginning, has a new column: Desperate ICE-wives: Who is Julie Myers?

***
Here’s a list of the members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

***
Update…

RedState weighs in: Myers not qualified.

***
Previous:

No more cronyism: Bush DHS nominee doesn’t deserve the job

***

Related:
- The Dowdifier strikes again
- AP: John McCain is “front-runner” for GOP nomination
- The Associated Press and its sources
- The Associated Press makes it up
- The crowd that didn’t boo
- Associated Press continues to stonewall
- The Associated Press twists the truth
- Another whopper from the Associated Press
- The Asscociated Press spins the ISG report
- How the Associated Press operates
- Associated Press serves Democrats’ agenda
- Associated Press spins the news
- Kristof defends bogus abortion analysis
- The evolution of the Maureen Dowd ellipsis-distortion story
- Krugman lies

***

Disclosure: The New York Times is now advertising on this site (see ad in the left hand column just below the search engine). Yeah, they’re giving me money.

Rumsfeld’s full remarks are here.

For the straight scoop and informed analysis of Rumsfeld’s comments on IED attacks in Iraq, read Wretchard at The Belmont Club.

Anti-war activists and far-left organizations have been galvanized by Cindy Sheehan’s continuing protest outside President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch. MoveOn.org has hopped on the bandwagon with a newspaper ad and Internet campaign. Air America hosts, all too happy to talk about something other than their own unpleasant political and financial woes, have embraced Sheehan. Dem activist Joe Trippi is plugging a “Meet with Cindy” website, which in turn plugs the Crawford Peace House. Even the “Hip Hop Caucus” has hitched a ride:

On Wednesday, a coalition of anti-war groups in Washington called on Bush to speak with Sheehan, who they say has helped to unify the peace movement.

“Cindy Sheehan has become the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement,” said Rev. Lennox Yearwood, leader of the Hip Hop Caucus, an activist group. “She’s tired, fed up and she’s not going to take it anymore, and so now we stand with her.”

And they’ll follow her wherever the cameras take them. According to one Democrat blog report:

Cindy is scheduled to appear in Italy, Colorado, Louisiana, and Washington, DC for the September 24th mass rally. But for now, she seems content to make her stand in the Lone Star State. When we spoke this evening, she said that she has a few questions for the president and that she’s heading to Crawford to get the answers. “I am not leaving until George answers me or I am arrested. I may stay there the entire month of August.”

Mrs. Sheehan has made a splash with the far Left and in the MSM. Her tenacity is impressive. But the dishonesty and disingenuousness of her benefactors and cheerleaders is intolerable. David Brock’s Media Matters and others, for example, have attacked Bill O’Reilly and me for “lying” and “smearing” Mrs. Sheehan, when any sane person can see that’s not the case. I’m re-posting the link to the video of our discussion (here) and the full, un-Dowdified transcript below in the extended entry. [Update: Cindy Sheehan responds here and also posts on her good friend Michael Moore's site.]

Meanwhile, MSM reporters continue to ignore the glaring contradiction in Mrs. Sheehan’s accounts of her meeting with President Bush. Reading comprehension-challenged leftists can’t seem to grasp that the issue is not whether Mrs. Sheehan was anti-war before her son died in Iraq (she was), but why she has completely changed and embellished her account of Bush’s behavior and her and her family’s impressions of him. Patterico spells it out for the slow wits at the Los Angeles Times.

Speaking of slow-wittedness, the Cindy Sheehan juggernaut has resulted in an uptick in profanity-laced moonbat hate mail from Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers incapable of rational debate. Here’s just a sample. Excuse the language.

An e-mailer named Dan Opacki, whose name appears on this anti-war manifesto, writes:

X-Originating-IP: [206.190.38.172]
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 03:54:29 -0700 (PDT)
From: dan opacki danopacki@yahoo.com
Subject: oriental dolls
To: malkin@comcast.net

Didn’t you pose for Oriental Dolls magazine a couple of years ago? You look just like one of those little fuck sluts with her wide open legs and sloppy cunt – Oh no excuse me, that’s your face.

Sincerely,
Dan

[Update: A different Dan Opacki with a comcast account sent the following e-mail this afternoon to clarify...]

From: danopacki@comcast.net
To: malkin@comcast.net
Subject: What’s going on?
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 22:35:51 +0000
X-Mailer: AT&T Message Center Version 1 (Dec 17 2004)
X-Authenticated-Sender: ZGFub3BhY2tpQGNvbWNhc3QubmV0

Hello Michelle,

A friend of mine called me and told me that she was e-mailed by someone else telling of my name on your web-site. I’m not sure what’s going on but I can assure you that I did not write such crass words as what appears attributed to my name. I’m a real person with a real profession and a reputation and while yes, I singed a petition, I did not call you those nasty names. I have hardly little time to read ANY website, let alone yours, and I’d appreciate that you also post this letter too. Or, take my name off of your website immediately. I am tempted to seek legal recourse about this if you don’t. Any idiot can open a yahoo account free of charge and apprently someone did, using my name – why? I have no clue, but it was NOT the real Dan Opacki. While we disagree politically we share common decency. I hope you respond so. And I am not selling a sofa. I don’t know what’s going on here.
Peace,
D

E-mailer Williams cuts to the chase:

X-Originating-IP: [68.142.206.95]
Date: Wed, 10 Aug 2005 13:42:24 -0700 (PDT)
From: William us96143@yahoo.com
Subject: TIP

To: malkin@comcast.net

Here’s a tip for you, I hope your entire family perishes in a war of your liking. Fucking cunt.

And Patrick Mitchell, who works [Update: he has been canned. Please don't bother the company anymore. Thanks] at the Los Angeles office of Ogletree and Deakins, writes from work:

X-Originating-IP: [216.105.154.202]
From: “Mitchell, Patrick” Patrick.Mitchell@ogletreedeakins.com
To: “‘malkin@comcast.net’”
Subject:
Date: Thu, 11 Aug 2005 11:41:22 -0400
X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2657.72)

YOU STINK you nasty CUNT! Eat Shit and DIE bitch!!

You tell me who the hate-mongers are.

***
Other views:

Debra Saunders has a sane column available at Real Clear Politics.

Instapunk gets brutally candid.

Other members of the Sheehan family apparently do not share Mrs. Sheehan’s views. The Anchoress takes a closer look. [Update: Drudge is now headlining the family's e-mail.]

More from Brainster’s Blog.

***
Update, 1:50 pm eastern time: I have just received an e-mail and phone call from
Gray L. Geddie of Ogletree Deakins. Here’s the e-mail…

Dear Ms. Malkin,

I am the Managing Shareholder of the law firm of Ogletree Deakins with offices located across the country. I was very disturbed to learn today that a legal secretary in our Los Angeles office sent you the vile e-mail referenced on your home page. Such remarks are clearly inappropriate in any context and an e-mail such as this certainly should not have been sent during working time using our firm’s equipment. The comments of this employee are not reflective of the views or opinions of the firm and are directly in violation of our e-mail policy. As Managing Shareholder, I wanted to extend to you our apologies and let you know that this serious violation of our firm’s work rules has resulted in the discharge of this employee.

Once again, let me offer you our deepest apologies for any discomfort that the referenced e-mail has caused. It will not happen again.

Sincerely,

Gray Geddie

Thanks to Mr. Geddie and to all who wrote.

***
Update II: The New York Sun editorializes on Cindy Sheehan’s Crowd…

It’s easy to see why Cindy Sheehan, the 48-year-old mother of a soldier killed in Iraq, has become the new face of the anti-war movement, featured in a New York Times editorial on Tuesday and a Maureen Dowd column yesterday morning. Camped out in Crawford, Texas, near President Bush’s ranch, she’s a more sympathetic face than a lot of the alternatives. But as sad as Ms. Sheehan’s loss is – and we don’t belittle it – she has put herself in league with some extreme groups and individuals.

For starters, Ms. Sheehan has been posting on Michael Moore’s Web site, writing, “We have such a strong coalition of groups. GSFP, Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, Military Families Speak Out and the Crawford Peace House. I talked with John Conyers today and he wrote a letter to George signed by about 18 other Congress members to request that he meet with me. I also talked to Maxine Waters tonight and she is probably going to be here tomorrow.”

It turns out that the Crawford Peace House Web site includes a photo depicting the entire state of Israel as “Palestine,” and it carries a link to a report that when Prime Minister Sharon visited Crawford, the “peace house” greeted him with an “800-foot-long banner containing all of the United Nations resolutions that Israel is in violation of.” The Crawford Peace House site also features a photo of Eugene Bird, who has suggested that Israeli intelligence was responsible for the abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Code Pink, Veterans for Peace, and Military Families Speak Out all have representatives on the steering committee of United for Peace and Justice, an anti-war umbrella group. They share that distinction with the Communist Party USA. UPJ organized the march during the 2004 Republican Convention in New York, at which a New York Sun poll of 253 of the protesters found that fully 67% of those surveyed said they agreed with the statement “Iraqi attacks on American troops occupying Iraq are legitimate resistance.” In other words, Ms. Sheehan’s “coalition” includes a lot of people who think the persons who killed her son were justified.

Read the whole thing.

***
Update III: More info on the Sheehan family’s dissenters here.

President Bush responds.

Greg at Deep Down in Texas photoblogs the protest site.

Update IV:

Paul at Power Line shares thoughts on the nation’s fortitude.

The Astute Blogger shines light on more insanity.

Jeff Goldstein spots a moonbat celebrity equating Mrs. Sheehan with the Chinese protester who ran in front of the tank at Tiananmen Square. Really.

The Vacaville Reporter files a new story on the split between Mrs. Sheehan and other members of the Sheehan family.

***
Previous:

“The Grief Pimps”
The friends of Cindy Sheehan

TRANSCRIPT FROM O’REILLY FACTOR, TUESDAY, AUGUST 9

Hi, I’m Bill O’Reilly. Thanks for watching us tonight. The fascinating saga of Cindy Sheehan. That is the subject of this evening’s “Talking Points Memo”.

Mrs. Sheehan is protesting in Crawford, Texas, trying to convince Americans the Iraq War is wrong and the president should be impeached. She is doing so because her son Casey, an Army specialist, was killed last year in Iraq.

No one has the right to intrude on Mrs. Sheehan’s grief. That’s number one. She’s entitled to her opinion on a situation that has deeply affected her. And she’s angry at the White House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CINDY SHEEHAN, SON DIED IN IRAQ: Because Joe Hagen, the deputy chief of staff said that I can tell you the president really cares. And I said you can’t tell me that because I met with him and I know that he doesn’t care. And I told them that I feel that my son didn’t die for a noble cause.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’REILLY: Well, here’s something very strange. Two months after her son died, Cindy and her husband Patrick did meet with President Bush, as she said. After that meeting, Cindy was quoted by a California newspaper as saying, “I now know [President Bush] is sincere about wanting freedom for the Iraqis. I know he’s sorry and feels some pain for our loss.”

So Mrs. Sheehan has apparently changed her mind about the president. How did that happen? Well, for some reason she’s teamed up with Michael Moore and a man named Sam Husseini, both anti-war radicals. Husseini said this on “The Factor” just two days after 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SAM HUSSEINI, INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC ACCURACY: What sickened me was the act of what happened and that people would kill so many innocent people. But now I hear a drumbeat of having our soldiers kill women and children.

Colin Powell advocated, apparently, during the build-up of the Gulf War of flooding Baghdad and killing possibly four million people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O’REILLY: Now that kind of lunacy is what Mrs. Sheehan is associating with. You would think the media would be cautious here with obvious inconsistencies and radicalism in play, but no.

In an editorial today in The New York Times, it says, “Mr. Bush obviously failed to comfort Ms. Sheehan when he met with her and her family. More important, he has not helped the nation give fallen soldiers like Casey Sheehan the honor they deserve.”

Well, let’s go back to the California article. Cindy Sheehan quoted as saying, “that was the gift the president gave us, the gift of happiness, of being together.” It sounds like comfort to me. What say you, New York Times?

Finally, honest people could disagree about the Iraq War. Most Americans now oppose it. That could turn around with some progress. And “Talking Points” hopes it does.

But remember this. For every Cindy Sheehan, there’s a Sergeant Leroy Scott who’s recovering from the terrible wounds he received, attempting to go save a soldier’s life while serving as a medic in Iraq. Sergeant Scott is proud of his service, proud of his country. I talked with him today. I sense no bitterness at all.

I don’t know what is driving Mrs. Sheehan, but I do know she’s being used. And maybe she knows it as well. And that’s the Memo.

Now for the top story tonight. Another take on this. Joining us from Washington, FOX News analyst Michelle Malkin. Cindy Sheehan says she will appear on “The Factor” tomorrow. We shall see, Michelle.

This is a tough one, because you know, a woman lost her son, can’t — you got to be sensitive to that. But now she’s — I think she has been hijacked by some very, very far left elements. What do you think?

MICHELLE MALKIN, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Well, I do want to emphasize what you said, Bill, which is that losing a child in any situation, whether it’s in a war, from an accident or disease, is one of the most painful of human experiences. And Mrs. Sheehan deserves compassion and sympathy.

And apparently, according to the accounts from last year when President Bush met with her, that’s exactly what she got. I don’t think that anybody should demonize her, but I do think that she has turned her private personal pain into a public circus.

And just look what it’s like down there in Crawford, Texas. You’ve got people surrounding her, people who are all too happy to help push her over the edge, yelling and screaming that the president was the one that killed her son.

No, it wasn’t. And it’s a shame that she doesn’t have anybody to help bring her back down to reality to remind her that it was Iraqi terrorists who ambushed her son on a roadside and killed him and many, many other of his colleagues in the military.

She has aligned herself now with Michael Moore, who considers those very Iraqi terrorists Minutemen. That’s what he calls them. He’s likening them to the American revolutionaries and considers them heroes. I can’t imagine that Casey Sheehan would approve of such behavior, conduct, and rhetoric.

O’REILLY: Well, I have to say that she obviously does because she’s the lead story on Michael Moore’s Web site on an almost daily basis. And she knows – I mean, Michael Moore isn’t a subtle guy. Everybody knows where he stands.

So I mean, I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this, and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous.

You know, you got to think about those people as well. What about their feelings?

MALKIN: Of course.

O’REILLY: What about the sergeant I talked about? What about his feelings, you know, that this woman is now saying that the U.S. government are murderers and all this crazy stuff?

So I think we have to be compassionate, as you said, toward Mrs. Sheehan, but I do believe that she has to take responsibility for her actions.

MALKIN: No question.

O’REILLY: Now she’s being used by The New York Times and other, you know, people who have an agenda. Don’t you think she’s being used?

MALKIN: Well, it must be mutual exploitation, because clearly, I believe that she believes what she is saying now. And when she writes op- ed pieces for far left groups like the Common Dreams Web site, accusing the Bush administration of being the worst and biggest terrorist outfit in the world, I don’t think anybody is putting those words in her mouth.

I do think that there are a lot of free riders in the anti-war, anti-military left, who are getting a lot of mileage out of her grief. And I would hope that there are other members of her family who find this very unseemly.

You mentioned Sam Husseini, who’s with the Institute for Public Accuracy. This is the outfit that sent Sean Penn to do pro-Saddam propaganda before the invasion of Iraq. There’s a larger group involved here, a coalition called the United for Peace and Justice Coalition.

And among them are a group called Code Pink, which is headed by Madea Benjamin, who’s a terrorist sympathizer, dictator worshipping propagandist. And Mrs. Sheehan has hooked up with her at various counterdemonstrations. And these people have an agenda of basically undermining the military.

O’REILLY: She has thrown in — there is no question that she has thrown in with the most radical elements in this country. That is — now, it happened before. Some of the 9/11 families also took this road, you’ll remember, and are still active to this day. There’s a big controversy about the 9/11 Museum down at the World Trade Center.

And you know, there are some people who hate this government, hate their country right now, and blaming Bush for all the terrorism and all the horror in the world.

Here’s a question, Michelle. Do they have a right to this opinion without being scorned?

MALKIN: No, without being scorned, no. And I wouldn’t call it scorned. I would call it scrutiny. And the mainstream media is not doing it.

I mean, The New York Times editorial board is all too eager to prop her up as some sort of martyr and to buy her line when clearly her story hasn’t checked out.

O’REILLY: Yes, her story hasn’t changed.

MALKIN: And so I think – and I think that angle you’re emphasizing is absolutely right here, which is the mainstream media just lapping this up and perpetuating myths and inaccuracies when they know it’s not the truth.

O’REILLY: Yes. They don’t identify — in The New York Times editorial today, it was obvious they did not say her story has been inconsistent. And they did not pinpoint that she is in bed with the radical left.

Michelle, thanks very much as always.

Nick Kristof’s powerful column taking the MSM to task for ignoring the genocide is Darfur is also a must-read.

Yes, I’m feeling okay.

This rising dissatisfaction with press coverage of the military doesn’t mean, however, that the public wants the press to become a propaganda outlet for the Pentagon. A large majority consistently agrees that “neutral” coverage of the war is better than coverage that is explicitly “pro-American,” but the public simply doesn’t think it is getting neutral coverage. Public perceptions of political bias in the press are up to 60 percent from 53 percent in 2003, and 72 percent think the press “favors one side in politics.”

These numbers combined with declining favorability ratings for all news media suggest that it is time for a reorientation in the way the press covers the military. This study suggests that almost half of the population thinks that press coverage of the military — suspicious, cynical, focused on the negative — is weakening the nation’s defenses. In order to realign themselves with their audiences’ priorities, the news media must start treating critics of the military with the same skepticism they apply to Pentagon spokesmen.

The New York Times now acknowledges its shortcomings. According to E&P, executive editor Bill Keller has announced a new “diversity” initiative:

The aim, he wrote, is “to stretch beyond our predominantly urban, culturally liberal orientation, to cover the full range of our national conversation.”

The point, Keller wrote, “is not that we should begin recruiting reporters and editors for their political outlook; it is part of our professional code that we keep our political views out of the paper. The point is that we want a range of experience. We have a recruiting committee that tracks promising outside candidates, and that committee has already begun to consider ways to enrich the variety of backgrounds of our reporters and editors.

“First and foremost we hire the best reporters, editors, photographers and artists in the business. But we will make an extra effort to focus on diversity of religious upbringing and military experience, of region and class.”

Laughably too little, and much too late. The MSM has been left in the dust by milbloggers and alternative media. Who needs the NYT with far superior reportage and analysis from the likes of Austin Bay, Michael Yon, Mudville Gazette, Blackfive, Belmont Club, and Victor Davis Hanson–for starters–available at your fingertips?

On a related note, my friend Buzz Patterson, in conjunction with Move America Forward, is headed to Baghdad with 10 other radio talk show hosts from July 10th through July 15th to give you the straight scoop on the progress being made in Iraq.

Cassandra at Villanous Company (who would have a column on the NY Times op-ed page in place of the insipid Maureen Dowd if there were justice in the world) has more details.

Update: Iowa bloggers are covering a related MSM screw-up by an anti-war columnist. First, read the controversial column here. Then read here and here for the real story.

Update II: Lisa at Two Babes and a Brain weighs in on impatience, overlooked facts, and some examples of what victory looks like.

Update III: Part 30 of Arthur Chrenkoff’s indispensable series, Good News from Iraq, is up.