Men In Black

ABOVE: Actual photo from recent meeting of College Democrats (Princeton, NJ)


Sure, it's easy to dismiss most College Republicans
as a bunch of slack-jawed, bed-wetting, chickenhawk
cowards who prefer to let others fight their dirty
little wars for them while they empty another keg
and jerk-off to old Chuck Norris movies.

But that wouldn't be fair.

Especially once you learn about guys like Francisco
Nava, who do so much to advance the cause of American
Conservatism by exposing dangerous, new enemies that
are poisoning our institutions of higher learning:

Imaginary Hippie Ninjas!

Clueless Joe

For anyone who hasn’t been following the latest rounds of
Joe Klein’s increasingly desperate War Against Journalism
(or if you just can’t get enough), check out this excellent
analysis by John Cook at Radar.

Klein's reactions on Swampland to his FISA critics
are precious goldmines of self-aggrandizing pretense
that must be savored at length to appreciate their
rich subtleties and overtones. His first response
acknowledged--in an insufferably cloying way--that
although partisan murk clouded the issue, he "may"
have made a mistake, before going on to claim that
if he indeed had made a mistake, "we are talking
about relatively obscure and unimportant technical
details." In other words, Klein sat down to write
a column about obscure and unimportant technical
details.

Klein's next weigh-in on the blog, two days later,
was headlined "FISA: More Than You Want to Know,"
as though his responsibility to assess the veracity
or lack thereof of the claims he made in his columns
involved some kind of burdensome slog through
legislative thickets beyond the comprehension of
mere mortals. Why are you making me do this? This
is hard! His post artfully shifted the issue from
whether the bill says what he said it says to whether
his Republican sources or Democratic sources were
correct in their interpretations (who knows? This
law stuff is complicated) before actually committing
to pixels the following words, which will live on as
one of the finest specimens of sheer journalistic
hubris ever issued from one of the genre's most
accomplished practitioners: "I have neither the time
nor legal background to figure out who's right."
I don't have time find out if what I write is true,
people! I'm too busy claiming that other things are
true. And even if I did have time, I'm not qualified
to say whether the things I write are true anyway!

Of course, it’s not news that Joe Klein is an incompetant
stooge who can never admit when he is wrong. The real
headline here is that Time continues to employ this hack
while denying its readers a chance to learn the truth from
others who actually do understand what the hell they’re
writing about. Glenn Greenwald covers it all, here.

Scary Shit

Cheesy Question: Which is most frightening?

- The fact that the warmongers in Washington brought us
thisclose to starting another war with a country that
gave up trying to develop nukes years ago.

- The fact that Congressional Democrats were so easily
duped into supporting this reckless policy.

- The fact that President Bush claims he did not know
this information until the story broke this week.

- The fact that the Beltway Media still does not recognize
its essential role in creating this horror show.

Choose carefully. Write your answer on a 3x5 postcard,
and mail it to 7 years ago, where there might still be
someone in a position of power who hasn’t completely
lost his fucking mind.