Times Select be damned. This op-ed is too provacative to stay in the walled garden.

Leading By (Bad) Example
By Thomas L. Friedman
Washington, Oct. 18, 2005

A delegation of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were ”bewildered” by some of the behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of ”her religion.” She is described as a devout evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to separate ”mosque from state” in the new Iraq, he was also floored to read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson that Miers deserved support because she was ”a very, very strong Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to people in the households of faith around the country.”

”Now let me get this straight,” Judge Mithaqi said. ”You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an evangelical Christian.

”How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis: ‘Don’t pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.’ Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to die for? I don’t think so. We can’t have our people exposed to such talk.”

A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban ”cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of P.O.W.’s.

”I survived eight years of torture under Saddam,” Unfi said. ”Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don’t want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk.”

Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq’s new newspapers, said he wanted to go home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

”I had nightmares watching this,” Sahafi said. ”It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: ‘Thank you very much for everything. I like you.’ It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops.”

Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal propaganda — an attempt by the government to buy good press.

”Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab world,” Sahafi said. ”It makes me sick to see even a drop of that in America.”

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America’s image among Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President Bush. She said, ”The more they know about us, the more they will like us.”

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren’t so true.)

I was going to be upset if The New York Times decided to hide this article under the Times Select. Alas… they did not.

Brian Greene, a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia, has penned the most well written piece on science, for general consumption, that I have ever read. His illumination of the ubiquitous, but little understood (at least by science-phobic persons such as myself) E=MC² left me wishing that men and women of letters were regularly assigned by newspapers to demystify some of the underlying (and often taken for granted) systems that have a deep effect on out daily lives. And I don’t just mean science. For instance, I can imagine that many folks look at the deficit in much the same way they look at Einstein’s theory. They know what it is, but they don’t really understand what it means and how it works.

Thank you for not hiding this educational and vitally important article in the “secret garden” that is the Times Select.

Marc Fisher of the Washington Post:

While you were focused on Memorial Day weekend doings, the Prince George’s County school board tried to slip a scandalburger onto the grill without anyone noticing. It won’t be easy to scrub the smoke from this cynical maneuver.

Guy: Come on…. You can’t tell me you didn’t like Wesley Snipes.

Girl: Nope… Cause he don’t date black women. *

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* I suppose it could be true that Mr. Snipes in fact only dates white women, but I refuse to search the Internet for indicia of Wesley’s dating preferences. Instead, I am going to assume that this young lady based her opinion solely on Mr. Snipes performance in Jungle Fever.

In today’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof takes on Mssrs. LaHaye and Jenkins the authors of the ridiculously lucrative Left Behind franchise. Noting that the authors believe that “this generation will witness the end of history,” Kristoff offers the duo a challenge:

If Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins honestly believe that the end of the world may be imminent, why not waive royalties? Why don’t they use the millions of dollars in profits to help the poor - and increase their own chances of getting into heaven?

Mr. Jenkins told me that he gives 20 to 40 percent of his income to charity, and that’s commendable. But there are millions more where that came from. Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Jenkins might spend less time puzzling over obscure passages in the Book of Revelation and more time with the straightforward language of Matthew 6:19, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Or Matthew 19:21, where Jesus advises a rich man: “Sell your possessions and give the money to the poor. . . . It will be hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

So I challenge the authors to a bet: if the events of the Apocalypse arrive in the next 10 years, then I’ll donate $500 to the battle against the Antichrist; if it doesn’t, you donate $500 to a charity of my choosing that fights poverty - and bigotry.

Gentlemen, do we have a deal?

I was intrigued by a link on the Rolling Stone website that said “Lifetime Subscription”. It turns out that you can get RS for life for only $99.00. That seems remarkably… inexpensive.

If you haven’t seen Jon Stewart lay the lumber to Carlson Tucker on CNN’s Crossfire, go directly. It is a must see.

Transcript / iFilm stream (Windows Media or Real Player) / Quicktime

Make no mistake, while parts of this show are funny, Stewart is dead serious. Stewart starts almost immediately by telling his hosts, Paul Begala and Carlson that he thinks their show is bad.

“I made a special effort to come on the show today, because I have privately, amongst my friends and also in occasional newspapers and television shows, mentioned this show as being bad. And I wanted to — I felt that that wasn’t fair and I should come here and tell you that I don’t — it’s not so much that it’s bad, as it’s hurting America.”

Stewart and Carlson then engage in the following exchange:

STEWART: See, the thing is, we need your help. Right now, you’re helping the politicians and the corporations. And we’re left out there to mow our lawns.

BEGALA: By beating up on them? You just said we’re too rough on them when they make mistakes.

STEWART: No, no, no, you’re not too rough on them. You’re part of their strategies. You are partisan, what do you call it, hacks.

Carlson proceeds to take Stewart to task for the softball questions he asked Senator Kerry during his visit to the Daily Show. Stewart shoots back:

“If you want to compare your show to a comedy show, you’re more than welcome to…. I wouldn’t aim for us. I’d aim for “Seinfeld.” That’s a very good show…. But my point is this. If your idea of confronting me is that I don’t ask hard-hitting enough news questions, we’re inbad shape, fellows.”

Stewart concludes with the following gem:

You’re on CNN. The show that leads into me is puppets making crank phone calls.

Stewart was on a mission:

CARLSON: Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny.

STEWART: No. No. I’m not going to be your monkey.

BEGALA: Go ahead. Go ahead.

STEWART: I watch your show every day. And it kills me.

CARLSON: I can tell you love it.

STEWART: It’s so — oh, it’s so painful to watch.

STEWART: You know, because we need what you do. This is such a great opportunity you have here to actually get politicians off of their marketing and strategy.

CARLSON: Is this really Jon Stewart? What is this, anyway?

STEWART: Yes, it’s someone who watches your show and cannot take it anymore. I just can’t.

It gets down right nasty after that (be sure to look for the moment where Stewart calls Carlson a “dick”). Stewart looks demoralized by the end. As the camera pans away for the closing credits, you can hear him say “Well that was just great…”

Did anyone else feel like they were on drugs as they watched the opening ceremonies for the Olympics last night? On a related note, did any of you spend just a little too much time trying to figure out how the back legs of the centaur worked?

This is why I need to get into government. The FCC is caving to pressure from Jack and the gang and is about to sign some laws in to effect that are down right scary. You can read about it here.

Basically, the FCC wants to have “broadcast flags” embedded in all digital television. They also want all hardware manufacturers (computers, DVD players, etc.) to build “broadcast flag” compliant products. Supposedly this will help thwart the copying and disseminating of “high value”content on the Internet.

There are so many problems with this. Top on my list is the fact that the government should not be regulating how our emerging technology gets built. This could have a drastic effect on innovation. Smaller issues include the fact that consumers may be forced to buy new systems, and I cannot believe that the MPAA has this much say. The quote below is from the article linked above:

Of greatest concern to some opponents, including major technology companies such as Microsoft Corp., is that device makers, tech firms and the entertainment industry could not agree on the technology that would be used in devices to recognize the flag and act accordingly.

Instead, the FCC has been working from a proposed rule drafted by the Motion Picture Association of America, which gives the moviemakers a strong hand in evaluating which technologies to use.

That is terrifying… the MPAA has the only seat at the table. They are literally writing the rules.