Letters to the Editor
Tone in DC
Published Letters: 148
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Joe favors it, but doesn't know enough about it
[Read the article: Joe Klein: Both factually false and stuck in the 1980s]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Klein the Sage didn't know much about the wiretapping program, but he was in favor of it.
An important national security issue, with significant implications for civil liberties. And he wrote about this program in ignorance. How pundit-like.
This is off-topic, but my outrage threshold has once again been exceeded by the Pentagon/Dubya Administration. Apologies if Glenn and/or the forum have already covered this.
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Pentagon Demands Wounded Soldier Return Re-enlistment Bonus
By Spencer Ackerman - November 20, 2007, 4:42PM
Just in time for the holidays, there's a special place in Hell just waiting to be filled by some as-yet-unknown Pentagon bureaucrat. Apparently, thousands of wounded soldiers who served in Iraq are being asked to return part of their enlistment bonuses -- because their injuries prevented them from completing their tours. From Pittsburgh's KDKA:
One of them is Jordan Fox, a young soldier from the South Hills.
He finds solace in the hundreds of boxes he loads onto a truck in Carnegie. In each box is a care package that will be sent to a man or woman serving in Iraq. It was in his name Operation Pittsburgh Pride was started.
Fox was seriously injured when a roadside bomb blew up his vehicle. He was knocked unconscious. His back was injured and lost all vision in his right eye.
A few months later Fox was sent home. His injuries prohibited him from fulfilling three months of his commitment. A few days ago, he received a letter from the military demanding nearly $3,000 of his signing bonus back.
"I tried to do my best and serve my country. I was unfortunately hurt in the process. Now they're telling me they want their money back," he explained.
Perversely, President Bush phoned Fox's mother to ask after Fox in May. Now his administration is taking money out of the pockets of wounded veterans like him.
Back in October, Rep. Jason Altmire (D-PA) introduced a bill, the Veterans Guaranteed Bonus Act, that would require the Pentagon to pay bonuses to wounded vets in full within 30 days after discharge for combat-related wounds. Back then, the Pentagon's flack vaguely assured The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "We are going to give our wounded warriors and their families what they need to recover and return to duty or private life." But apparently the policy has yet to change. It seems that the enlistment contract that at least some troops sign (whether it's service-specific is unclear) allows for withholding some of the signing bonus if a tour isn't completed. We're in touch with the Pentagon to clear this up, and we'll let you know as soon as we do.
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Great comments today
[Read the article: Bad stenographers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm surprised that Saletan came clean. He was big enough to admit his mistake. I really don't see Klein doing that.
Glenn, great work. Keep it up.
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Good one, Eric
[Read the article: Bad stenographers]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Joe Klein (and not a few other pundits, including but not limited to: Ruth Marcus, Anne Applebaum, Charles Krauthammer, Sebastian Mallaby, Fred Hiatt and any current or former member of the current administration) is indeed E. Coli.
Thanks for making the end of my shift bearable with a good laugh.
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I didn't know...
[Read the article: Time tries again]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just how full of it Hoekstra was and is. Dissembling shouldn't piss me off. This guy and Santorum said the WMDs had been found in a certain place, two years after it was obvious that they hadn't?
Stop it, Pete H. Just put an extra large sock in it.
I learn more from Glenn's blog than I do from the Washington Post (gotta shout out to Dan Froomkin and Eugene Robinson on general principle, though), and thanks to everyone except the very predictable trolls for a very illuminating week.
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Tribune comes clean before TIME
[Read the article: The Chicago Tribune vs. Time magazine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Glenn, great work. Keep it up. You have made that shiftless, sanctimonious blowhard (aka Joe Klein) nervous, and that's good. Painton and Stengel have had to sit up and take notice. That's even better.
Off topic but hilarious in its irony, the National Review says Bush has been reading again.
"And then it was time for Bush's book report: "He shared that he's currently reading A Confederacy of Dunces, and recently finished Jay Winik's new book, The Great Upheaval. He has Joseph Ellis's latest book on the Founders (Karl Rove gave it to him). He called Clarence Thomas's memoir 'a sweet book, and book of courage.'"
Contrary to what its title might lead some to believe, A Confederacy of Dunces is not a White House novel. Library Journal describes it as being about a "loud, lying, hypocritical, self-deceiving, self-centered blowhard who masturbates to memories of a dog and pretends to profundity when he is only full of beans."
Like another post said, you can't make this stuff up.
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Coincidence
[Read the article: The Chicago Tribune vs. Time magazine]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]J. Klein has needed five tries to get his BS straight on this subject.
K. Rove needed five tries to get his BS straight during the grand jury, when P. Fitzgerald was trying I. Scoot Libby.
Must be a neo-con/boot licker thing.