Quite frankly, if any journalist is not willing to ultimately die in the cause of publishing truth, then they don't deserve to hold the pen. Not that I'd wish death on any of them, but an apoplectic distaste for lies, cronyism, hypocracy, and the like are hallmarks of a real journalist. That goes for columnists, in my opinion, and not just journalists. I think one can have an opinion, but I don't care two cents for anyone who doesn't base their opinions on objective facts. The objective facts are, as Greenwald explains, that the CIA opened the case with the Justice Department, and that said CIA and Justice Department were wholly Republican-owned, although by a dying breed that's similar to my ideal journalist.

Damn the Cohens of the world who think they're above prison. May they be condemned to do 40 days in jail in a cell next to Paris Hilton, where they can drive each other crazy with their tinfoil-hat talk about the conspiracy that landed them there. Then, when they're released, they can be deported to Saudi Arabia where people are forced by law to acknowledge the supremacy of the King and his Court. Our papers and airwaves are much too sacred to be darkened by drivel of Cohen's variety.

"Lights Out" Cohen]: My own state of mind combines some of the blue with some of the red to produce my own political hue. Color me purple.

I perceive Cohen in different colours. Perhaps a six letter one beginning with "y" and ending with "w". But more, I think towards the darker hues; five letters on beginning in "b" and ending in "n"....

Cheers,

Cohen and company aside, there's also this:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070616.BAUER16/TPStory/TPNational/Television/

Long story short: Antonin Scalia holds the fictional Jack Bauer as an example for why torture is both practical and necessary, doing so a panel discussion with his peers at Ottawa concerning terrorism law this week.

Maybe we all really have fallen down the rabbit hole.

In days of old it was the exclusive property of royalty. But ever since the 60s, it's been claimed, not just by gays and lesbians, but by all sorts of factions and individuals on the broad counter-cultural left. Summed up, perhaps most famously, in the following poem:

When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple
by Jenny Jacobs

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we've no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I'm tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobrietry of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people's gardens
And learn to spit.

You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickles for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beer mats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.

But maybe I ought to practice a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.

Richard Cohen is grey. He is a Hollow Man. He has no right to even speak the word "purple".

Let Bush commute Scooter Libby's sentence to six months, only on the condition that it be served in Abu Ghraib. Let's see if six months neck-and-jowl with people whose families have been butchered by the lies he told to bring about the war will wipe the smirk off the bastard's face.

Arne,

A rebuttal for you on the Preordering thread about old-time music, and fiddlers specifically.

Thanks for your shout-out yesterday. Our traffic blipped up a bit. Too soon to know about today.

What's really strange is that Cohen has forgotten that Scooter Libby let Cohen's fellow reporter Judy Miller spend months in jail-- rather than him telling the truth that he was her source. If Cohen didn't like what Fitzgerald did, why didn't he call on Libby to be a man and come forward so she could be released? (I gather that her attorney pretty much resuscitated a pro forma release Libby didn't really mean, or Miller would probably STILL be in jail).

I guess Cohen didn't think that Libby was doing wrong there. It was just fine with him for Libby to leak, and then suddenly shut his mouth, so that one woman's whole covert network was exposed, and another woman spent months in jail. Hey, Libby is SUCH A MAN... not. He's a coward as well as a liar, and Cohen's sympathy is beyond misaimed.

I'll always love Walker's _The Color Purple_ and Jenny Jacobs's poem.

Ahh, Cohen, you'll have to work hard to be up to that!

People, you're not listening to me.
Glenn GREEN wald.... Why are we even dis CUSS ing his so-called i DEAS !?? He's GAY !!!!!!! That COMPLETELY INVALIDATES what he has to say... don't you people GET it ??!

Not really. We're having a little trouble understanding what it is you're trying to say. Your "voice" is unclear -- it's almost as though there were some obstruction in your mouth, impeding the movement of your tongue......
Perhaps you should turn the lights on, dear.

"A deadly dart from Paul's glorious mighty bow,

Will lay the fake-warrior's neurons real low."

I dig Paul Rosenberg, too, bebop-o.

Glenn writes: "The relationship between official Washington and the permanent Beltway media class has become infinitely closer and more cooperative than ever before. Rather than acting as adversarial to one another, the most powerful political officials in Washington and the most influential media stars are part of the same system and nearly all are abundant beneficiaries of it. Many elite national journalists are incentivized to protect and defend powerful political leaders with whom they so frequently interact and on whom they depend for their access and their 'scoops.'"

This is the thing. And so these "journalists" must become adept at glib lying and obfuscation and drawing emphasis away from things that should be minutely examined. Last night was one of the rare nights that I took a look at a network news program. What did I see? A report on how some American soldiers had "saved" a group of mistreated and starving Iraqi orphans. Of course, if these orphans ended up in a better situation, I am not complaining about it. But this report only serves the interests of the warmongers and in no way represents the larger truths of this war and our crimes against Iraq. For example, speaking of children, our embargo on Iraq for many years before the war, which denied the Iraqis chlorine to make their water safe, killed half a million children. And the larger truth of the current occupation is that uncounted numbers of children have died and continue to die every day; moreover, polls taken among U.S. troops show that only 47 percent of soldiers and 38 percent of Marines said noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, a third reported insulting or cursing at civilians in their presence, and 10 percent reported mistreating civilians or damaging property even though they believed it was not necessary. Only about half would report a member of their unit for killing an innocent civilian.

But what we see is troops saving grateful orphans.

I have to wonder what college students with journalism majors are being taught these days. Are professors still working from the premise that the press should have an adversarial relationship with those in power? If so, I wonder how they deal with the gross discrepancies between what they teach and what their students see every day. Students who long for an alternative to this reality watch The Daily Show for its satire, but even there we see Brian Williams's "giant head" in the background--the MSM has co-opted this show. The MSM is "in" on the joke and has even drained TDS's mild satire of its bite.