Editorial Judgement 101

Drudge report: "This just in... Both TIME and NEWSWEEK are planning high impact covers of Cheney for newsstands starting tomorrow, with each magazine rolling out top staff bylines and thousands of words on the (Cheney) hunting incident."

Either the news cycles are just too quick, as Drudge suggests, for print media to react and drop what should be a dead story, or there's an agenda at work here.

Or maybe there's a kind of third answer, which is that the media are purposely making the unimportant seem important, while ignoring issues such as the revelations of the recent Saddam tapes, the treasonous speeches of Al Gore in the Middle East, and others. Are we being distracted from something bigger? I wonder.

The new appeasement culture needs to look at history

Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: "I'm tired of these excuses for self and actual censorship, saying free speech is only legit if it doesn't offend someone's religion. Free speech is at its most legitimate when it is offending people. That's how societies change. And the absence of it is one reason so much of the Arab-Muslim world is an economic, cultural and political basket-case. These cultures need confronting, not enabling."

First Grader Suspended for Harassment

Reported in Breitbart.com. I certainly hope Diane Gosselin, the principal of Downey Elementary School in Brockton, Mass, is proud of herself for mishandling this. Now a little boy is potentially scarred for life and has to worry about something that only exists in the minds of the adult perverts in the Brockton school system. Playtime and little girls are now something to be feared by this child. Little boys tease little girls sometimes. Little girls tease little boys, too. Kids touch each other. Someone should grow up in Brockton, and it's not any of the kids in question. Things like this can be handled in a much more mature way. The problem is the adult in this case, along with an institutionalized bias against boys, and a perverse sense of political correctness. Congratulations, Ms. Gosselin.

It's not just "Bush's war."

As if it ever was. The "Islamic Rage," which now appears to have been orchestrated (the infamous cartoons appeared in September), is threatening everyone. More proof here. These bastards want to reserve the right to say anything they want to about us and our culture, but deny the same right in reverse to the rest of the world. Freedom of speech means people can say bad things about you right along with the good things. Europe and the rest of the world should not be apologetic to this perverse philosophy. A number of years ago, Ayn Rand made the case for the importance of philosophy, at a time when the fashion was to think it was strictly an academic exercise. The deaths of Theo Van Gogh and numerous journalists, not to mention the 9/11 tragedy, prove it is anything but that.

What the...? Dept.

USATODAY.com reports that the Federal government is going to now help us have better marriages.

Feds turn eye to healthy marriages: "Congress approved a $750 million, five-year plan aimed at building healthier marriages Wednesday as part of its deficit reduction bill.

The measure now goes to President Bush. It includes $100 million a year for marriage-related programs and $50 million a year for fatherhood programs. This is the first time Congress has earmarked money for marriage programs, says Ron Haskins of the Brookings Institution's Center on Children and Families."

Do we actually need a government program for this? I mean, aren't there enough counselors, churches and bartenders out there to give us advice on this subject? Why does government know what a "better" marriage is?

I'm ashamed of Republicans for coming up with it. Just because I don't want my government subsidizing welfare moms (a family-destroying policy, by the way) doesn't mean I want them "helping" me or anyone else with our marriags. This goes for busybody Republicans as well as nanny-state Liberals: leave us the hell alone.