As I noted the other day, the L.A. Times‘s David Shaw recently had a silly article about bloggers. In that piece, he said:

When I or virtually any other mainstream journalist writes something, it goes through several filters before the reader sees it. At least four experienced Times editors will have examined this column, for example. They will have checked it for accuracy, fairness, grammar, taste and libel, among other things.

Remember that quote. I’ll probably be alluding to it several times throughout the course of this year.

In an unrelated point, I was perusing the corrections today when I noticed this gem:

Restaurant review — In last week’s Food section, the restaurant review listed Covina as an example of towns that are not in the San Gabriel Valley. Covina is in the San Gabriel Valley.

See, I’m just a blogger, but I could give you a million examples of towns that are not in the San Gabriel Valley — and I’d get them all right. Watch, as I list just five of them: San Francisco. Modesto. Sacramento. Eureka. San Diego.

I just did that without the benefit of four experienced Times editors. Impressed?

Instapundit says of the Schiavo case:

[T]his is one of those episodes that seems to bring out the worst in people. That’s why I didn’t really want to weigh in to begin with — I knew that I was unlikely to persuade anyone, because very few people seem to care about the facts, or about arguments.

(My emphasis.)

It does not seem to me a stretch to interpret this as saying: Those who disagree with me don’t care about the facts or rational argument.

I hope (and assume) that’s not what Glenn meant. After all, some of us do care about the facts and valid argumentation — we just disagree with Glenn on this issue.

UPDATE: Glenn e-mails to say that’s not what he meant. But it sounds like he is taking a lot of nasty abuse on this issue, which is unfortunate. I know full well that people on the right can be as nasty as those on the left when you disagree with them about an emotional issue.

UPDATE x2: Glenn has updated his post to clarify. He also gives an example of the sort of e-mail he has been getting. Some people have e-mailed him to say they hope that his wife suffers Terri Schiavo’s fate. Disgusting. It just goes to show you that there are totally classless people on both sides of the aisle.

John Hawkins has a well-researched and balanced set of FAQ on the Schiavo case.

As you have probably heard, the 11th Circuit denied an en banc rehearing. You can read the order here.

I think Judge Tjoflat’s dissent is quite good, in particular where he notes that the appellate court could not possibly have conducted the necessary thorough review in the limited time available. Indeed, the 11th Circuit essentially admits that it didn’t even try, dragging out the old principle that “It is not the role of an appellate court to second-guess credibility determinations.” (It was arguably the role of the District Court in this case to do so, but that point isn’t really addressed.)

If courts were to behave this way in a death penalty appeal, there would be howls of outrage from the left from coast to coast — and rightly so. But as soon as the appellant raises claims that the left doesn’t like, many leftists are perfectly happy to have a court shrug off the analysis with the typical disdain appellate courts have for detailed factual analysis.

UPDATE: By the way, I feel the same way about the appellate courts’ ability to correct injustices in death penalty cases:

Innocents who have been released from Death Row have almost never gained their freedom through the orderly workings of the system. In many cases, the defendant’s innocence has been established due to the efforts of activists who have no official role in the criminal justice system. The fact that innocents have left Death Row is no tribute to the criminal justice system.

The simple fact is that the appellate process is not a great place for correcting incorrect factual findings by the trial court.

Interesting challenge from CodeBlueBlog. He will show any neurologist 100 CAT scans of brains, and ask them to determine whether the patients in question are PVS. If they get at least 60 of 100 right, they will win $100,000.

To play, you need only put up $25,000.

All of you commenters who say Terri Schiavo’s CAT scan was conclusive proof that she is PVS — round up your neurologist and go play CodeBlueBlog’s game. If you’re right, it’s easy money.

(Via Xrlq.)

A headline in today’s L.A. Times reads: Police Shoot Unarmed Suspect. It’s another shooting of a guy who backed towards police in a car. So now we’ll have to hear about that issue again.

One lucky thing: the suspect apparently wasn’t black. Preliminary indications are that this suspect was Hispanic:

Jose de Leon, who lives down the block from Carter, said the sounds of four or five shots awakened him. Then he heard a voice from a helicopter loudspeaker.

“I heard a man’s voice saying in Spanish, ‘Get down with your hands on your head. Get out of the car,’ ” he said.

The guy LAPD killed in Santa Monica under similar circumstances, Nicholas Hans Killinger, was white. We never heard anything about his race; it was never offered as a reason officers shot him. In fact, you probably didn’t even know his name.

Devin Brown was black — and that’s all we heard about.

The fact that this suspect was apparently Hispanic means we’ll probably get some focus on his ethnicity. But — unlike the L.A. Times‘s treatment of the Devin Brown case — we probably won’t have story after story pounding the “racism” issue into our skulls over this incident.

Thank goodness for small favors, eh?