Patterico's Pontifications

10/15/2007

NYT Tips off Terrorists Again?

Filed under: General,Media Bias,Morons,Terrorism — Patterico @ 11:34 pm



Big Media is more careful and responsible than a bunch of bloggers . . . right?

Wrong.

Michael Moss of the New York Times has outted Inshallashaheed, the al Qaeda supporting blogger who we’ve been investigating for over a year. I’ve been sitting on his true identity for months, but in one fell swoop Samir ibn Zafar Khan, who lives in Charlotte North Carolina, has been identified.

Thanks a lot to Michael Moss and the New York Times for blowing an ongoing investigation into a known al Qaeda sympathizer who lives here in the United States. I’ve known about this piece for a few weeks and wrote the NY Times to ask Moss not to run it. No reply from the Times.

While we appreciate Moss’s commitment to spreading the word about the Internet Jihad, we really wish he would have consulted with us on the matter. He has a right to out Inshallahshaheed as Samir Khan, but doing so has jeopardized an ongoing investigation into a terror ring which begins in the US and ends in Somalia.

But that’s just like the NY Times, isn’t it?

Warning terrorists? Why, yes. It is just like them.

Allah asks whether the accusation is true, and comes up with a firm: Maybe! That’s good enough to start the outrage juices flowing!

Garrow Reviews Thomas’s Book

Filed under: Books,General,Judiciary — Patterico @ 11:11 pm



David Garrow on Clarence Thomas’s autobiography:

[F]atuous op-ed columnists who insistently declare that Thomas is just bitterly wallowing in self-pity have either failed to read this book or possess an undeclared bias that overwhelmed their critical faculties.

Unfortunately, there is no short of fatuous op-ed columnists.

More on the Amazing Disappearing Blog Posts and Comments at the L.A. Times

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 9:51 pm



This is the latest in the saga of the Amazing Disappearing Blog Posts and Comments at the L.A. Times. Background here, here, and here.

This morning, I showed you a screencap of a parenthetical remark Andrew Malcolm made at the bottom of a comment posted on October 12, 2007 at 5:03 a.m. Mr. Malcolm’s parenthetical remark read as follows:

(Ans: Rielle Hunter is identifying herself as the woman. This item doesn’t.)

Here is the parenthetical in context:

As I noted this morning, this remark was amusing, because the post initially did mention Rielle Hunter — and strongly implied that she was the alleged Other Woman. As I also noted this morning, the passage implicating Hunter was later dropped without acknowledgment.

Meaning the parenthetical remark circled in the above screencap is a wee bit deceptive.

Judging from the history of this saga, what do you suppose has happened to that parenthetical remark?

If you said: “it was removed without any indication that it was ever there,” you win the grand prize! Here’s how it looks now:

This is why I’m screencapping everything. You never know what’s going to disappear from this blog from one moment to the next.

P.S. Mr. Malcolm still hasn’t replied to my e-mails asking what in the hell is going on here.

Raise your hand if you are surprised.

I see no hands.

UPDATE: I found even more! Stay tuned . . .

Danish Speed Bumps

Filed under: Miscellaneous — DRJ @ 8:47 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

The Instapundit proves the Danes know how to control traffic. I don’t think it would work in the US but I know several guys who think we should give it a try.

— DRJ

Journalism 101: The Importance of Underpants

Filed under: Miscellaneous — DRJ @ 8:24 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Any story about “underpants” has got to be good:

“An Australian man dressed only in his underpants survived a fall from his ninth-storey apartment when an apparent incident of high jinks went badly wrong, police said Tuesday.”

The importance of underpants to this event escapes me but I’m just a Yank. Maybe underpants have special powers down under or maybe Australian journalists just know a good story when they see one.

— DRJ

Did you Know Michelle Malkin Quit The O’Reilly Factor?

Filed under: General — DRJ @ 8:14 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

I didn’t.

Here’s Michelle Malkin’s post and this is a gossip columunist’s dish. Maybe I need to spend less time on the internet and watch more TV.

— DRJ

GOP Fundraising Numbers Should Raise Some Eyebrows

Filed under: 2008 Election,Current Events,Politics — WLS @ 6:51 pm



[Posted by WLS]

Reporting on recent GOP fundraising and campaign spending numbers are all out as of midnight tonight. Some reporting from earlier today on GOP numbers should raise some eyebrows among the various supports of various GOP candidates.

First, lets simply do away with the obligatory “the Dems are outraising the Reps”. Fine. It is what it is. Anyone who thinks the GOP nominee won’t have plenty of money for the general election is an idiot.

Now, let’s look at the reported income, spending, and cash-on-hand of the major candidates as of the end of the third quarter as best I can decipher it from this report:

(more…)

Immigration and the Jobs Americans Won’t Do

Filed under: Immigration — DRJ @ 4:20 pm



[Guest post by DRJ]

Is immigration the answer to the “Jobs Americans Won’t Do”?

(more…)

L.A. Times Post on Edwards Had More Content Than Previously Thought

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 5:50 am



This post assumes familiarity with my posts over the weekend, regarding what Kevin Roderick calls “some weird, must-be-explained edits of a staff-written post about John Edwards’ denial of an affair.”

The L.A. Times has turned “must be explained” into “must be covered up at all costs.”

Meanwhile, there’s more to be explained.

I wasn’t the only site to cover the L.A. Times blog post in question. If you do a Google search on “Andrew Malcolm” and the Edwards quote “I’ve been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years,” you come up with two results besides the L.A. Times: a Pat Dollard blog entry, and a Political Bulletin from U.S. News and World Report.

Did USN&WP know that the blog item they had quoted had been unceremoniously killed without acknowledgement? I doubt it.

The Pat Dollard piece — which mysteriously disappeared while I was writing this post, but we’re screencapping everything, baby! — reveals that Malcolm’s blog post was previously more extensive than the version I quoted. Dollard’s quotation contains the original version that I screencapped in this post, plus three additional quite fascinating paragraphs, circled below:

Cached version here.

This is especially interesting because, although several Malcolm-authored parenthetical remarks were removed from comments, one remains:

Yeah, but an earlier version of your post mentioned her!

Were the quoted paragraphs the end of the original post, or was there originally even more? I have no idea. The way these folks delete content without explanation, there’s no telling what used to be there.

P.S. Our commenter Christoph tried posting a comment to the L.A. Times blog entry in question, asking about all this. Christoph’s comment was never posted. If you want to read it, you can do so here, on my site. Christoph’s comment to the L.A. Times, which they never published, begins:

Publishing this comment will be a test of your honesty. I expect you to pass. We’ll see.

Heh. Christoph, how long have you been reading my blog??

Comments to the L.A. Times blog post have apparently been frozen as of October 12, 2007 at 09:05 AM. Meanwhile, more recent comments are being approved on other posts. They’re just covering up Christoph’s questions.

So, to sum up: the L.A. Times is censoring outside comments on their censorship and deletion of their own blogger’s comments regarding censorship of Edwards’s denial — a denial they later censored, then uncensored . . . but not completely.

Got that?

P.S. Are you getting the sense that some L.A. Times lawyers are getting nervous right about now?

Yeah, me too.

UPDATE 10-15-07 at 6:20 p.m. Pacific: After L.A. Observed linked this post, Christoph’s comment was finally approved. It appears we can make the posts and comments reappear — but only when they know we have them anyway.

Who knows what else we have?

P.S. Commenters have asked me to elaborate on my comment about the lawyers. I don’t think there’s any reason they should be nervous. I just think they probably are.

UPDATE x2: I have discovered that they censored even more material. There’s another example here, and there’s even more censored material to come. Stay tuned . . .


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