Allah is continuing to keep an eye on E&P for an acknowledgement of Michelle Malkin’s findings on the non-destroyed mosques. Yesterday’s caveats still hold, but as time passes, E&P’s silence will become more meaningful. And like Allah, I have a hunch that the silence will be lasting.

[posted by Justin Levine] 

Two prominent libel cases in the news.

First off, today will be the court hearing to toss out the defamation lawsuit against DontDateHimGirl.com – one of the more high profile Internet libel suits going on right now. I made an early prediction that this lawsuit would lose from the start – and made a gentleman’s bet with a commenter who felt otherwise. (Be sure to read the comments section in the post – which has seemingly become one of the main Internet gathering points for debate about this case. But be warned, it gets ugly!)

Related links here and here. Interesting comments here. Meanwhile, The Happy Feminist is admittedly “unamused” at my misogyny. 

I’ll confess that I have some sympathy for the Plaintiff in the DontDateHimGirl.com lawsuit. But I’m still very glad to know that his lawsuit will likely fail because of the bigger picture regarding threats to Internet freedoms. 

Such sympathies do not extend to Gary Condit, the Frankenstein Monster of libel lawsuits. He has regretfully risen from the grave once again. This time,

(more…)

Steve Lopez has a cute column about berating the local transportation chief for driving a Hummer. Lopez’s snide mocking of the transportation chief is entertaining, no doubt. But with the space and prominence he has, it’s too bad that he chooses to make a mountain out of this particular molehill, while ignoring an actual mountain in plain view.

The molehill is the issue of the chief’s Hummer. After the mayor’s press secretary told Lopez that questions about the Hummer were off limits, Lopez made it his first question:

What’s with the Hummer? I asked as soon as we were seated in de la Vega’s office.

De la Vega gave me a cold stare, his lips sealed. Then he looked at Szabo, who said we were there to talk transportation.

I asked about de la Vega’s background and he dropped the mummy act, telling me he’d gotten a master’s in urban planning from UCLA. He was also Mayor Dick Riordan’s traffic chief and a member of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board.

So you’d think he’d know better.

I just can’t get past it, I told de la Vega. A Hummer?

And then I noticed a quote on his wall from Rosa Parks.

“Every person must live their lives as a model for others.”

I read the quote to de la Vega, who clammed up again.

“Should we all drive Hummers?” I asked.

Silence.

Very clever.

But I have a serious question: what do you figure causes the traffic in L.A.?

I’m no expert, but I’m thinking that having a couple million illegals can’t be helping matters much.

Remember when we had a Day Without [Illegal] Immigrants? The traffic was never better.

I couldn’t help but think of that day when I read Lopez’s column.

But Lopez doesn’t mention the issue of illegal immigration in his traffic column. No, it’s far more important to yap on about whether a single city official is driving a Hummer or some other type of vehicle. Because that’s what’s really causing the problem.

Bill Ardolino has his third Examiner piece up from Iraq. It’s about recruiting Iraqi police. Quotable, from a discussion with one of the recruits:

I asked another fellow what he thought of the Americans. He said he thought bad and good things. His negative opinion focused on collateral damage — he said that “when the Americans are fired upon, they fire back and kill civilians.”

The positive: “If it weren’t for the Americans, Fallujah would have been destroyed a long time ago.”

Bill has accompanying pictures in this post.

I get more out of his pieces than I do from any dozen standard Big Media pieces on Iraq. One big reason is that he just tells it like it is, with no Grand Theme or overwhelming spin that I can detect. His pieces are colored by the fact that he is embedded, but he’s forthright about that. It’s just more genuine reporting than I’m used to seeing from traditional media

Good stuff.