Posted on 10/15/2006 4:30:54 AM PDT by Pokey78
Who is James Vicini? Well, he works for Reuters, the storied news agency. By "storied," I don't mean in the Hans Christian Andersen sense, though these days it's hard to tell. But they have an illustrious history and they're globally respected and whatnot. And last week newshound Vicini got assigned quite an interesting story:
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A California-born convert to Islam, accused of making a series of al-Qaida propaganda videos, became on Wednesday the first American charged with treason since the World War II era, U.S. Justice Department officials said."Fugitive Adam Gadahn, 28, who is believed to be in Pakistan, was accused of treason, which carries a maximum punishment of death . . ."
Wow! Treason! First time in half-a-century, since the Tokyo Rose days. Since then, of course, the very word "treason" has come to seem arcane, if not obsolescent, like something some fellow in doublet-and-hose might accuse somebody of on "Masterpiece Theatre" but otherwise not terribly relevant and frankly no big deal: Indeed, the campus left usually gives the impression that "treason" is little more than an alternative lifestyle, like transvestism.
Yet the Justice Department wants this fellow over in Pakistan for treason. Now why would they do such a thing? After chugging through the various charges, Vicini got to the meat of his story: "Justice Department officials denied the case was timed to deflect attention from the fallout over lewd computer messages sent by a former Republican congressman to young male aides, a scandal that may help Democrats seize control of Congress in the Nov. 7 elections."
Cut out that paragraph and have it framed. Or now that the nights are drawing in, if you're at a loose end of an evening, sew it into an attractive sampler and hang it in your parlor. In years to come, you'll spend many precious moments treasuring it as the perfect summation of the 2006 U.S. election.
"Justice Department officials denied . . . " What Reuters means by those words is that a reporter -- possibly the great Vicini himself or his colleague ("Additional reporting by Rick Cowan") -- gets the press release about this once-in-a-half-century treason thing and says to the relevant feds, "C'mon, you guys are just nailing this dude in Pakistan to distract from Mark Foley, right?"
And the Justice Department fellow no doubt replies, "Mark who?"
And Cowan (or Vicini) goes, "The ex-congressman. Teenage pages. Horny gay Republican predators. Hastert's notorious pedophile ring. You must have read about it. It's been in all the papers." And the Justice guy says, "Sorry, I've been been working the fax machine to Pakistan all week, typing up the relevant indictments in triplicate, and so forth."
Originally, only the Republican Congress was covering for Foley. But, as Vicini and Cowan see it, the conspiracy now extends to the Justice Department. We should be grateful Reuters imputed merely the "timing" of the treason indictment to the "lewd computer message" scandal, not the indictment itself. After all, why would the Bush administration have earmarked some nobody in Pakistan for a cockamamie charge of "treason" if it weren't for just such an eventuality as this? Also, notice the way the most damaging "lewd computer messages" and the toppling of Saddam Hussein both occurred in 2003: Did the neocons stage the entire Iraq war in order to set Foley up with an endless supply of fetching young Arab houseboys? As Al Jolson liked to sing, climb upon my knee, Sunni boy.
And what about that North Korean nuke? That timing's pretty suspicious, too. And in that goofy outfit of his Kim Jong Il looks a bit like a teenage congressional page at a slumber party. Well, from a distance and in a poor light, and if you've had a couple drinks.
And how about this for convenient timing? From the BBC on Thursday:
"A man has pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder people in a series of bombings on British and U.S. targets. Dhiren Barot, of north London, planned to use a radioactive 'dirty bomb' in one of a series of attacks in the UK, Woolwich Crown Court heard . . ."
In my new book (out this week, folks: you'll find it at the back of the store past the 9/11 Conspiracy section and the Christianist Theocrat Takeover of America section and the ceiling-high display of the new Dixie Chicks six-CD box set of songs about how they're being silenced), I say that some of us looked at Sept. 11 as the sudden revelation of the tip of a vast iceberg, and I try to address the seven-eighths of that iceberg below the surface -- the globalization of radical Islam, the free-lancing of nuclear technology, the demographic weakness of Western democracies. Other folks, however, see the iceberg upside down. The huge weight of history -- the big geopolitical forces coursing through society -- the vast burden all balancing on the pinhead of the week: in this instance, Mark Foley.
Thomas Sowell says the question for this election is not whether you or your candidate is Republican or Democrat but whether you're "serious" or "frivolous." A lot of Americans, and not just their sorry excuse for a professional press corps, are in the mood for frivolity. It's like going to the theater. Do you really want to sit through that searing historical drama from the Royal Shakespeare Company? Or would you rather be at the sex comedy next door?
In the 1990s, Americans opted for the sex comedy -- or so they thought. But in reality the searing historical drama carried on; it was always there, way off in the background, behind the yuk-it-up narcissist trouser-dropper staggering around downstage. The mood of the times was to kick the serious stuff down the road so we could get back to President Lounge Act offering to feel our pain. With North Korea, the people delegated to kick the can a few years ahead -- Madeleine Albright, Jimmy Carter -- are now back, writing self-congratulatory op-eds about their genius and foresight. Not at all. Albright's much-touted "agreement" was a deal whereby Washington agreed to prop up a flailing basket-case state in order to enable it to buy enough time to become a serious destabilizing threat to its neighbors and beyond. Many of our present woes -- not least Iran -- derive explicitly from the years when Carter embodied the American "superpower" as a smiling eunuch.
Thanks in part to last decade's holiday from history, North Korea and Iran don't have to buy any more time. They've got all they need. Life isn't a night on Broadway where you can decide you're not in the mood for "Henry V" and everyone seems to be having a much better time at "La Cage Aux Foley." Forget the Republicans for a moment. In Connecticut, the contest is between a frivolous liberal running on myopic parochial platitudes and a serious liberal who has the measure of the times and has thus been cast out by the Democratic Party. His state's voters seem disinclined to endorse the official Dems' full-scale embrace of trivia and myopia. The broader electorate should do the same.
If only more of the relatively ignorant and disinterested prospective voters knew this ..... things could be different on election day.
****
Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the press, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. -Mark Twain
****
"A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim, and he wears their face and their garments and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague." - Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman Orator --- 106-43 B.C.
****
"How often we recall, with regret, that Napoleon once shot at a magazine editor and missed him and killed a publisher. But we remember with charity, that his intentions were good. - Letter to Henry Mills Alden, published in the Chicago Daily Tribune, November 11, 1906, pg. 3.
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The socialist/Marxist/liberal media is the most destructive, relentless, and ruthless enemy of this Republic.
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I'd like to hear Mark every day for three to six hours on the radio. The day he took over for Rush he was brilliant --- pleasant, funny, and wise --- simply perfect.
perhaps jettison that puke Colmes and repackage the program as "Hannity & Steyn" ---
How about JUST Steyn!?
Vannity is getting real old.
Hannity wouldn't stand up under the glare of Mark's intelligence and wit!
Right. It would be like having Jack Nicklaus and Michelle Wie discussing how to win a golf tournament.
Vannity is a weak link. I know his heart is in the right place but he is a poor interviewer, is self-absorbed, and repeats the same thing over and over again.
His lame radio commercials scream: "I KNOW I'm right, stay on the high ground, and keep the personal out of it.” — Sean never stops calling names and ridiculing callers. He is a genuine hypocrite with those commercials.
Steyn should be alone. He's a fabulous man. He would be a great aid in the conservative media.
Frankly, President Bush blew it when he didn't hang Jihad Johnny Lindh. GWB, much as I support him, has his frivolous moments as well.
Tks for the ping.
This election coulkd well be pivotal. In fact, every election down this line is gonna be pivotal, seems like. So far sanity and the inherent strength of America has managed to hold the line. But then, the Dems need only to win once. They will then doom America and the rest of the civilized world forever.
In my new book (out this week, folks: you'll find it at the back of the store past the 9/11 Conspiracy section and the Christianist Theocrat Takeover of America section and the ceiling-high display of the new Dixie Chicks six-CD box set of songs about how they're being silenced),This bitter quote has more than a little truth to it.
I tried to find "The Looming Tower", which explains how Al Queda came to be, among all the conspiracy and "we must get out now!" books, and I had to go all the way back to the store, to find one copy hidden in the Current Events section.
You'll have to do the same thing for Mark's book. Don't expect it to be out on the tables in front.
D
A quarter of Americans are retards.
BTTT
Yes but he's "A Great American!"
Hint: Real great Americans: Washington, Lincoln, Audie Murphy, etc., not some talk show host or one of his callers.
Ping
I ordered Steyn's new book at his website, where he'll personally autograph it.
I asked him to write
To (me)
Wisdom defeats stupidity every time it's tried
Best wishes,
Mark Steyn
120 Proof STEYNAHOL!!!
Go to steynonline.com and order an autographed copy.Five bucks postage and worth it.
Much as I love Hannity, he is not on par with Steyn. Mark Steyn needs his own show. I would watch.
Speaking of "par", Sean double bogeys the last three holes for a total of 77, does not make the cut, and Steyn shoots a 66 with great creativity and skill on the course, and leads the tournament.
Those two men's minds are in two different universes to be totally honest.
...
Great quotes.
The Clinton Legacy that won't go away.
:-)
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