Howard Bashman has some real breaking news: a link to the opinion reprimanding Judge Manuel Real, as I blogged about recently here. The copy Howard has is of poor quality and is currently missing a page. Still, it’s worth a look if you’re interested in the topic.

Interestingly, Judge Real apparently moved to disqualify Judge Kozinski from hearing the matter, for (spurious) reasons that will become obvious if you read this.

The motion was denied.

(Accepted Wisdom™ is a semi-regular feature of this site, highlighting contradictory viewpoints held by [in this case some of] the elite.)

It is Until recently, it was Accepted Wisdom™ that:

It was wrong for the United States to provide support to Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, despite arguments that it was the only way to achieve stability in the region.

And at the same time:

The best option for ending the violence in Iraq is for the United States to put Saddam Hussein back in power. This is the only way to restore stability to the region.

Oh, well. I guess the elite can’t argue Viewpoint #2 any more. Looks like it’s back to an emphasis on contradictory Viewpoint #1.

And don’t forget: the viewpoints are indeed consistent, if you remember the connecting thread: The United States Is Always Wrong.

UPDATE: Some commenters are objecting that this is hardly a universal view. Fair enough. But some have certainly advanced it.

Jonathan Chait had a column in the L.A. Times titled Bring Back Saddam Hussein, which some people believed was an exercise in Swiftian irony, because they hadn’t read it. Jonah Goldberg said: no, don’t bring back Saddam! Give us a Pinochet! — a silly suggestion which isn’t much different. Psyberian tells us in comments that Imus has made the same argument as Chait. And at least one commenter on this site (our friend Neville Chamberlain) has said restoring Saddam was our best option until he was killed. I’m sure there are other examples besides the ones I have cited. (This guy, for one.)

But OK, I’ll grant you, these folks do not make up the entirety of the elite. For that reason I have added “[in this case some of]” to the first sentence of the post.

Eason “Saddam appeaser” Jordan says:

If an Iraqi police captain by the name of Jamil Hussein exists, there is no convincing evidence of it – and that means the Associated Press has a journalistic scandal on its hands that will fester until the AP deals with it properly.

And the AP responds with a dismissive wave of the hand:

Kathleen Carroll, AP executive editor, told E&P today that she had not read Jordan’s latest item, posted Monday, and likely would not.

(H/t Armed Liberal; emphasis mine.)

This attitude is quite similar to that expressed by humor columnist Joel Stein in today’s L.A. Times (h/t ada):

DON”T E-MAIL me. . . . I don’t want to talk to you; I want to talk at you.

. . . .

I get that you have opinions you want to share. That’s great. You’re the Person of the Year. I just don’t have any interest in them.

. . . .

A lot of e-mail screeds argue that, in return for the privilege of broadcasting my opinion, I have the responsibility to listen to you. I don’t. No more than you have a responsibility to read me. I’m not an elected servant. I’m an arrogant, solipsistic, attention-needy freak who pretends to have an opinion about everything. I don’t have time to listen to you. I barely have time to listen to me.

Heh. That sums up the attitude of the AP‘s Kathleen Carroll towards Eason Jordan and other critics of the Jam(a)il Hussein stories.

The difference is, I’m pretty sure that Joel Stein is kidding. Kathleen Carroll isn’t.

If Carroll were inclined to listen to her critics, she might want to check out Bob Owens’s attempt to corroborate the events described in the 40 of the 60 Jam(a)il Hussein stories. After doing the grunt work, he concluded:

I was completely unable to find a definitive corroborating account of any of Jamil Hussein’s accounts, anywhere.

Owens’s work is not definitive, as he readily admits. His limitations include a lack of access to Lexis/Nexis, and a lack of fluency in foreign languages that limits his search to English-language stories. But his research is likely to be a springboard for further research by people who are not so limited.

Remember how Eric Boehlert said:

Warbloggers also make a big deal that I didn’t mention that the AP has used Jamil Hussein as a source for approximately 60 articles, which proves they’re not obsessed over a single story, but think it represents a wider, systemic problem. But warbloggers have had a month to dissect those 60 articles that quote Hussein and, as far as I can tell, they haven’t found a mountain of factual errors in any of them.

As Boehlert phrases it, his claim is still true . . . but the fact that Owens was unable to find definitive corroboration for a single one of the 40 stories he looked at should be a cause for concern for the AP — that is, if they cared at all what their critics say.

Ms. Carroll, I’ve got “news” for you: this is not going away. The bunker mentality is not going to work.

P.S. While I want to know more about Jam(a)il Hussein, I continue to believe that it is a mistake to focus on his “existence” to the exclusion of focusing on the other problems with the AP story. I am primarily concerned with the fact that the initial AP story on the “burning six” reported that four mosques were burned. The AP later dialed that back to one mosque, but never admitted error. I’d like to see pictures of those mosques — a possibility that Armed Liberal has dangled in front of us for days. Pictures like that would be a hard fact that we could compare to Jam(a)il Hussein’s story — and if they contradict him, then Owens’s lack of corroboration for 40 other stories takes on new significance.

It is time for this blog’s fourth annual review of the performance of the Los Angeles Times, which long-time Patterico readers know as the Los Angeles Dog Trainer. The first annual review was posted here. The second annual review was posted in two parts, here and here. The third annual review was posted here.

This year’s installment covers a number of topics, including the Michael Hiltzik sock-puppetry controversy; the alleged Ramadi airstrike; the paper’s decision to reveal the Swift counterterror program; the firing of the paper’s editor and publisher; the Iraq war and the war on terror; the paper’s shilling for Democrats during the 2006 election; and my decision to cancel the paper — among many others.

This post summarizes an entire year’s worth of work documenting omissions, distortions, and misrepresentations by this newspaper. I have made an effort to document my arguments that this paper is a regular practitioner of liberal bias. As with my previous posts, the proof is voluminous. As a consequence, don’t feel that you need to read the entire post in one sitting. Feel free to bookmark it and return to it in the coming days, browsing through the categories as they interest you.

I hope every new reader who reads this post will bookmark the main page and return often. Bloggers: please blogroll the site if you like it. I’ll be happy to reciprocate the link if I like your site — write me and let me know your URL, and I’ll take a look.

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Without further ado, let’s get to the bias:

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