iowahawk has the latest in his “First Drafts Found Behind the Dumpster” series. The latest installment lampoons David Bell’s L.A. Times piece questioning whether 9/11 was really that bad. Here’s how iowahawk’s piece opens:

IMAGINE THAT on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. Okay, I know we’re talking a fantasy here, but just roll with it. Guess what? This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and I don’t remember Uncle Joe Stalin getting his panties in a bunch about it. Maybe these stoic Bolsheviks could teach us crybaby Americans a thing or two about perspective in our current “war” “against” “terrorism.”

Does it get better? Why, yes it does.

No disrespect to the victims of 9/11 or to the men and women of our armed forces, but by the standards of past wars, 3000 yuppie bond traders and a couple of high-rise developments is basically geopolitical chump change. Okay, so the widdle Jihadis want to level an occasional Manhattan office building, let the baby have his bottle. As the big star on the international stage, the United States needs to show it is secure enough to take a few zingers from the B-list comedians at the annual global Friars Club Roast. When we nuked Hiroshima, did the Japanese whine and bitch and send their armies to invade us out of spite? No, they made a couple of Godzilla movies, got over it, and moved on to making transistor radios and Toyotas. In the history biz, we call this “making lemons into lemonade.”

As always, read it all.

Confederate Yankee is soliciting comments about whether he should reveal the actual name of the man who may have been quoted by the AP as Jamil Hussein.

I’m going to assume that this is a rhetorical question, but it’s not completely obvious from the post itself. If it really is a serious question — which I doubt –then the answer is obviously “no.”

I understand that a lot of leftist lunatics jumped around like screaming, poo-flinging monkeys claiming that any conservative who ever questioned Jamil Hussein’s existence and/or identity was a Bonafide Idiot. I understand that these monkey-displays were completely inconsistent with the claim that revealing Jamil Hussein’s “real” name is somehow a danger to him. If the claims of the fringe left were correct — and if the conservatives in question were really Morons, and Jamil Hussein was really who he said he was — then, the argument goes, what’s the harm in releasing the name of a different person? And if releasing his name really would harm him, then yes, the AP was either duped or unethical.

The left can’t maintain both claims at the same time. And yes, many of them are. And yes, many of them are genuinely stupid and illogical.

Shocking, I know.

But because one of the possibilities entails the theory that the AP used a pseudonym for Hussein (knowingly or not), releasing his actual name could kill him.

So Bob, if you’re making a point — and if that point is that certain vocal elements of the fringe left are often shrill, stupid, and illogical — then I suggest that the point is already obvious.

But if you’re serious in your question, then the answer is: don’t do it. There’s no need to risk anyone’s life to provide more proof of the fringe left’s lunacy.

A piece in Slate is titled The Irrational 18-Year-Old Criminal. Its subtitle is: “Evidence that prison doesn’t deter crime.”

That headline should have you chuckling. But you’ll chuckle even harder if you read the article and understand the pseudo-science forming the evidentiary basis for this ridiculous conclusion.

If the only point of the article were to discuss the possible effect of increased penalties on criminals, that would be one thing. But the study described in the piece, as it is described, doesn’t even come close to supporting the broader claim that “prison doesn’t deter crime” as to society at large.

Details in the extended entry.

(more…)

In an L.A. Times review of a PBS documentary on the Supreme Court, Times Staff Writer Robert Lloyd fills us in on some little-known “facts” from the history of the Supreme Court. Here is perhaps the littlest-known of those little-known facts:

There was a justice named Hamburger and a justice named Frankfurter.

There was a justice named Hamburger?

As Howard Bashman notes:

Chief Justice Warren E. Burger was not widely known by the nickname “Ham” as best as I can tell.

I don’t know, though, Howard. That’s a pretty bold statement for a mere Internet blogger like you to make, knowing that this review was carefully scrutinized by those “four experienced Times editors” that the late David Shaw so famously told us about.

Oh hey — by the way, I looked over the list of Supreme Court Justices and found some other meaty selections that Robert Lloyd (and his four layers of editors) apparently overlooked, including:

• Fred M. Venison

• Potroast Stewart

and my personal favorite:

• “Sloppy” Joe Story

Add your own in the comments, while we await the correction. I’m thinking it will be funny no matter how they word it.

A Santa Clara, California court has reportedly ruled that bloggers have the same right as traditional journalists to protect their sources.

I caution that it’s hard to know what to make of the ruling without reading it. But it certainly does sound like an important development, based on the linked article’s coverage.

The New York Times reports:

Dean Baquet, the editor of The Los Angeles Times who was fired in November for refusing to cut jobs from his newsroom, is returning to The New York Times as chief of its Washington bureau and an assistant managing editor, effective March 5.

The L.A. Times begs to differ, claiming that Baquet wasn’t fired — he quit! The story is titled Editor who quit over staffing cuts hired by N.Y. Times.

I think the New York Times’s version is a little closer to the truth.

I wish Mr. Baquet well. I think his paper demonstrated clear leftist bias during his tenure, but he wasn’t the first editor to preside over a leftist Los Angeles Times and he won’t be the last. It’s true that I cancelled the paper over a decision he made to reveal classified counterterror secrets — a decision that was also made, ironically enough, by Bill Keller at the New York Times — Baquet’s new boss. But while I think that was a terrible decision, I have nothing personal against Baquet, and hope that he has the best of luck at his new job.

Thanks to readers Stacy M., Marty M., and numerous commenters.

The L.A. Times has an entire article about Bush having dropped the “ic” from the end of “Democratic” to describe the Democrat(ic) party in the State of the Union.

Understand, this is not just a passing reference by The Times. It’s a whole article, complete with consultation with “experts on political locution.”

Save this for the next time some fan of the paper tells you that we need newspapers — for the substance.

A fellow named David Bell, writing in the L.A. Times, asks: Was 9/11 really that bad?

His answer appears to be “no.” Bell’s thesis is that we are overreacting to a terrorism threat that poses no mortal danger to this country:

The people who attacked us in 2001 are indeed hate-filled fanatics who would like nothing better than to destroy this country. But desire is not the same thing as capacity, and although Islamist extremists can certainly do huge amounts of harm around the world, it is quite different to suggest that they can threaten the existence of the United States.

He goes on to suggest that the terrorists don’t pose an “apocalyptic threat”:

[D]espite the even more nightmarish fantasies of the post-9/11 era (e.g. the TV show “24’s” nuclear attack on Los Angeles), Islamist terrorists have not come close to deploying weapons other than knives, guns and conventional explosives. A war it may be, but does it really deserve comparison to World War II and its 50 million dead? Not every adversary is an apocalyptic threat.

So why has there been such an overreaction?

This is reminiscent of a similar statement made a few years back:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact. … While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

That statement was made by “Larry Johnson, a retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert” . . . in July 2001. (Hat tip Mike K.)

Ouch.

Shortly after 9/11, Tim Noah called Johnson’s analysis “bold, persuasive, and 100 percent wrong.”

I sure hope David Bell is not similarly wrong.

But I’m afraid he may be. And I’m not willing to risk my family’s safety on Bell’s complacent analysis.

[posted by Justin Levine]

Maybe its the “broken clock” theory, but law professor Eriwn Chemerinsky manages to be right on the money about the First Amendment when it comes to judicial remedies in defamation cases.

Need I remind you that he isn’t always right when it comes to this area of the law?

Nice to have you on the right side Professor! The notion of permanent gag orders as a remedy for libel claims is a dangerous notion that needs to be firmly struck down. If you give courts that power, they will surely abuse it and hand down orders that are ridiculously overbroad. Money damages and (in limited cases) physical restraining orders should be enough in these cases.

So says I! [Fun factoid: Balboa Island, where the current case stems from seems to have the highest per-capita-ratio of chocolate covered frozen banana stands than any other place I have visited. Has anyone else who has been there ever noticed that?]

[Update: The Appeals Court decision at issue can be found here. Interesting reading.]

[Update II: Oral arguments have been completed.

Justice Carlos R. Moreno asked if the order would prohibit Lemen from making the statements “to anyone, anywhere in the world.”

Russo, the restaurant’s owner, conceded that it would.

“Why, isn’t it overly broad?” asked Justice Ming W. Chin.

You go Mingy!

Justice Joyce L. Kennard noted that homes on Balboa Island cost millions of dollars, and she doubted that the Village Inn would have trouble collecting monetary damages if it could show that Lemen affected business.

“When we are dealing with a restraint on one of the most cherished constitutional provisions — protection of speech — we should only in extremely narrow circumstances allow permanent injunctions,” she said.

Sweet! It’s never a done deal until the decision is written, but I’m hopeful.

[posted by Justin Levine]

Ace recently published what I’m sure is an old gag, but which I’d never seen before. It’s a “list of man rules” — rules men have (or should have) for women.

Here are some samples:

Learn to work the toilet seat. You’re a big girl. If it’s up, put it down. We need it up, you need it down. You don’t hear us complaining about you leaving it down.

. . . .

Whenever possible, please say whatever you have to say during commercials.

. . . .

ALL men see in only 16 colors, like Windows default settings. Peach, for example, is a fruit, not a color. Pumpkin is also a fruit. We have no idea what mauve is.

. . . .

If we ask what is wrong and you say “nothing,” we will act like nothing’s wrong. We know you are lying, but it’s just not worth the hassle.

Feel free to add your own in the comments. And ladies, if you have rules for men, feel free to let us know what those are.

Just don’t ask us to put the toilet seat down.

An L.A. Times article about Washington officials’ blabbing about Valerie Plame ends with this zinger:

Assessing Grenier’s testimony, Larry Johnson, a retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert, said, “They wanted to avoid any unpleasantness with the vice president.”

Besides, Johnson said, “If you can’t give the vice president and president information with any degree of confidence that it is going to be protected, then you know, the entire game is up.”

BAM! What a burn! Because, of course, Plame’s identity wasn’t protected, and the L.A. Times has been busy implying that it’s Cheney’s fault. Now an independent “retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert” has given them the quote they need to drive the point home. And when a “retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert” says it, the credibility of the statement is undeniable. Especially since there’s no indication in the article that Johnson has any pre-existing bias against anyone in the Bush Administration.

But, like Columbo always said . . . there’s just one more thing. Unbiased “retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert” Larry Johnson? Here’s what he once said about Karl Rove:

Karl is a shameless bastard. Small wonder his mother killed herself. Once she discovered what a despicable soul she had spawned she apparently saw no other way out. It would be one thing if his vile tactics were simply mere smears of politicians like Kerry and Murtha. They are big boys and should be able to defend themselves quite ably against this turd.

An isolated outburst? Well, back when blogger Seixon was questioning the Jason Leopold story about Karl Rove’s alleged indictment, Seixon said that Larry Johnson wrote Seixon a threatening e-mail in which Johnson “repeated my mother’s name, my parents’ address, and even my birth month and year.” Seixon says that Johnson then told him: “I am prepared to ratchet this up several levels,” adding: “I know where you are living.”

None of this information appears in the L.A. Times article. It might spoil that zinger, don’t you know. Better to describe him simply as a “retired CIA and State Department counter-terrorism expert.” That’s how the Journalism Experts do it.

UPDATE: More from unbiased Mr. Johnson, courtesy of Seixon:

Until Patrick Fitzgerald calls off the dogs that Porcine Ass called Rove ought to worry about who he might be getting up close and personal with in jail.

and:

Now, if fat Karl had been at the head of the line to enlist in the Army and help lead the invasion, I wouldn’t be so cranky. But he didn’t, and Cheney didn’t, and Wolfowitz didn’t, and Rummy didn’t and the Bush daughters were busy getting drunk in DC bars. What is it about Republican chickenhawks who played every angle during the Vietnam War to avoid going to war but have no hesistation to start a war in Iraq and send other peoples children into the fray?

More at the link.

Just an unbiased expert, Mr. Johnson is.

I am late linking this excellent Wall Street Journal piece by ABC legal correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg, who has a new book out titled Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story of the Struggle for Control of the United States Supreme Court. The linked WSJ piece explodes the myth of Clarence Thomas as a Scalia lackey, providing proof that Thomas has changed the mind of Scalia and others on many occasions:

Clarence Thomas has borne some of the most vitriolic personal attacks in Supreme Court history. But the persistent stereotypes about his views on the law and subordinate role on the court are equally offensive — and demonstrably false. An extensive documentary record shows that Justice Thomas has been a significant force in shaping the direction and decisions of the court for the past 15 years.

That’s not the standard storyline. Immediately upon his arrival at the court, Justice Thomas was savaged by court-watchers as Antonin Scalia’s dutiful apprentice, blindly following his mentor’s lead. It’s a grossly inaccurate portrayal, imbued with politically incorrect innuendo, as documents and notes from Justice Thomas’s very first days on the court conclusively show. Far from being a Scalia lackey, the rookie jurist made clear to the other justices that he was willing to be the solo dissenter, sending a strong signal that he would not moderate his opinions for the sake of comity. By his second week on the bench, he was staking out bold positions in the private conferences where justices vote on cases. If either justice changed his mind to side with the other that year, it was Justice Scalia joining Justice Thomas, not the other way around.

Greenburg provides some specific examples:

Consider a criminal case argued during Justice Thomas’s first week. It concerned a thief’s effort to get out of a Louisiana mental institution and the state’s desire to keep him there. Eight justices voted to side with the thief. Justice Thomas dissented, arguing that although it “may make eminent sense as a policy matter” to let the criminal out of the mental institution, nothing in the Constitution required “the states to conform to the policy preferences of federal judges.”

After he sent his dissenting opinion to the other justices, as is custom, Justices Rehnquist, Scalia and Kennedy changed their votes. The case ended up 5-4.

Justice Thomas’s dissents persuaded Justice Scalia to change his mind several times that year. Even in Hudson v. McMillan, the case that prompted the New York Times to infamously label Justice Thomas the “youngest, cruelest justice,” he was again, initially, the lone dissenter. Justice Scalia changed his vote after he read Justice Thomas’s dissent, which said a prison inmate beaten by guards had several options for redress — but not under the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishment.”

Interestingly, his independence was only reinforced by his nasty confirmation hearings, which confirmed for him that his critics have no credibility.

I am looking forward to reading Greenburg’s new book, which I recently ordered. Based on this article, she appears to be willing to tell the truth, even if it benefits conservatives. That’s a refreshing attitude from a Big Media reporter.

UPDATE: One of the contributors to Confirm Them has the book and says that, so far, it is very good. Of course, he got a complimentary copy, whereas yours truly is paying the big bucks for his. I (almost) never seem to get these free advance copies of books that bloggers are always talking about. What am I doing wrong?

One of the problems could be that, for some reason, people don’t seem to see this blog as a “legal blog” — even though, after media criticism, that is probably the primary topic of the blog. I cover confirmation wars and court decisions, and I think I get the legal analysis right most of the time — far more often than, say, the L.A. Times, to take one example. Still, people don’t seem to see me as a legal analyst. I guess you have to be a law professor to be taken seriously on that front.

In any event, I’ll have a review of the book out once I get it and read it. But since I always elect “Super Saver Shipping” from Amazon, that may be a while.