[Guest post by Jack Dunphy]

In a post from January 14, I wrote about LAPD officers being ordered not to wear their helmets and face shields while facing pro-Palestinian demonstrators at the Federal Building in West Los Angeles. The wearing of helmets, the officers were told, might inflame the protesters. Sadly but predictably, an officer was injured when he was struck in the head with a protest sign. On January 20, the controversy at last attracted the attention of someone at the Los Angeles Times, which published this story. Now, finally, a member of the Los Angeles city council is demanding answers from the LAPD commanders who gave the boneheaded order.

Councilman Dennis Zine, himself a retired LAPD officer, introduced a motion in the council that would require the LAPD to produce a report on how officers are prepared and equipped for crowd-control operations. The motion cites the LAPD’s Emergency Operations Guide, which explicitly states that officers should not be deployed on such operations without helmets.

All well and good for Councilman Zine to act, but things in the LAPD may be even worse than he realizes. I’ve come to learn that at a similar protest at the Israeli consulate earlier this month, an officer was assaulted by a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, who was then promptly detained. But instead of being hauled off to the station for booking as he should have been, he was released on the orders of senior command officers. This was done in the name of “de-escalating” the situation.

If this attitude of cowardly appeasement is allowed to prevail here in Los Angeles, surely it won’t be long before we see disgraceful spectacles such as the one shown in this video, shot during a pro-Palestinian march in London. To back down from mob violence is like feeding a crocodile in the hope it will eat you last. America, behold your future.

–Jack Dunphy

. . . in France.

But it could never happen here.

Right?

Thanks to Dana.

They told me if I voted for John McCain that we would get a president that would get more U.S. troops killed. And they were right!

“Let’s talk straight here. This is the network that has opened its heart to change. To change and its possibilities. Let’s be honest about it.”

Courtesy of commenter Pablo comes a link to an L.A. Times article I had missed about Sarah Palin shopping around a book deal. The article drips with venom towards Palin. Little commentary is necessary; for the most part, all that is needed to demonstrate the reporter’s bias is to simply quote the article.

If you thought being governor of Alaska and a new grandmother would be enough to fill the cold, dark nights in the Arctic state, you underestimate Sarah Palin, the failed vice presidential candidate.

If you thought the bankruptcy of its parent company and the prospect of yet another round of layoffs would be enough to occupy the minds of L.A. Times reporters, you underestimate the hatred they have for Sarah Palin over at that failing newspaper.

Throughout the campaign, Palin was kept under wraps by staff, and her appearances were carefully orchestrated in the failed hope of protecting her from ridicule. Frequently when she did engage the media, she appeared ill prepared at best and hopelessly naive at worst. Her comments on Russia and politics were a steady diet for late-night comedians.

There is some truth to this, but the whole truth is a little more complex than revealed by reporter Muskal.

I’m not really interested in revisiting the debate over who is blame for Palin’s poor performance in a couple of interviews. I think she got screwed by unfair questions and editing in her interview with the insufferably smug Charlie Gibson. But I think Palin had only herself to blame for flubbing some simple questions floated by the leftist bubblehead Katie Couric. Ultimately, Palin was under a lot of pressure, with Big Media teaming up with promiscuous Wikipedia-quoting muttonheads from the Atlantic to question the parentage of her children, Saturday Night Live (aided by the aforementioned deceptive Gibson editing) recreating Americans’ memories of what Palin really said about Russia, and scumbag McCain advisors who overmanaged her. At the same time, all the unfairness aside, she turned out to be less ready for prime time than many of us had hoped based upon her impressive performance in Alaska.

The truth is a little less cartoonish than the simplistic version offered by Muskal of the Amazing Shrinking and Imploding L.A. Times. I guess offering a version of events lacking in subtlety and (dare I say it?) nuance might be Mr. Muskal’s attempt to appeal to his newspaper’s leftist base in Los Angeles.

During the campaign, there were charges that Palin tried to censor books at the Wasilla, Alaska, library when she was mayor of that community. Though the reports turned out to be overblown (she did ask the librarian about removing some books and then dismissed her along with other officials), the ink stuck to her, helping with conservatives and hurting with other voters.

That (“she did ask the librarian about removing some books”) sorta makes it sound like Palin actually tried to get books banned, doesn’t it? Of course, that didn’t happen. Even the notoriously pro-Obama FactCheck.org acknowledged that. In fact, the title of FactCheck’s post on that issue and others, Sliming Palin, would have made a nice title for Mr. Muskal’s article.

The Washington Post gushes:

Soon after the November election, al-Qaeda’s No. 2 leader took stock of America’s new president-elect and dismissed him with an insulting epithet. “A house Negro,” Ayman al-Zawahiri said.

That was just a warm-up. In the weeks since, the terrorist group has unleashed a stream of verbal tirades against Barack Obama, each more venomous than the last. Obama has been called a “hypocrite,” a “killer” of innocents, an “enemy of Muslims.” He was even blamed for the Israeli military assault on Gaza, which began and ended before he took office.

“He kills your brothers and sisters in Gaza mercilessly and without affection,” an al-Qaeda spokesman declared in a grainy Internet video this month.

The torrent of hateful words is part of what terrorism experts now believe is a deliberate, even desperate, propaganda campaign against a president who appears to have gotten under al-Qaeda’s skin. The departure of George W. Bush deprived al-Qaeda of a polarizing American leader who reliably drove recruits and donations to the terrorist group.

See, if al Qaeda attacked Bush, it would be because Bush did such terrible things to the Arab world. If al Qaeda attacks Obama, it’s because Obama is getting under al Qaeda’s skin by being so gosh-darn popular with Arabs.

The idea that al Qaeda is just going to attack any American president doesn’t appear to have occurred to these chowderheads. The article is filled with analysis from “experts” telling us how the über-popular Obama is scaring the h-e-double-hockey-sticks out of the terrorists with his enormous popularity.

P.S. Re: Zawahiri’s description of Obama as a “house Negro”: what’s next? I think I know: Osama bin Laden praying: “I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like many black men do, of heart disease.”

P.P.S. Look for much more tough scrutiny of Obama along these lines. The AP gave us a good example with this article:

Barack Obama opened his presidency by breaking sharply from George W. Bush’s unpopular administration, but he mostly avoided divisive partisan and ideological stands. He focused instead on fixing the economy, repairing a battered world image and cleaning up government.

Right-leaning bloggers are going to play a more important role during Obama’s administration than we did during Bush’s. Big Media “watchdogs” are now lapdogs. Obama is preparing to mortgage our children’s future with money for contraceptives, the NEA, pork, and other pet Democrat programs. Someone has to speak out. And based on what we’re seeing, it ain’t gonna be the press.