From the WSJ Opinion Archives

by JAMES TARANTO
Wednesday, July 25, 2007 4:32 P.M. EDT

Today's Video on WSJ.com: John Fund talks to James Taranto about the Democrats' YouTube debate.

Homeland Security as Backwater?
Here's an interesting point about the Eliot Spitzer scandal, which we noted yesterday: One of the aides to New York's governor who was implicated in the improper use of state police to gather material for a smear campaign against state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno was William Howard, Spitzer's assistant secretary for homeland security.

Readers may remember that three years ago, New Jersey's Gov. Jim McGreevey declared himself a "gay American" and confessed to an affair with a male aide, whom the media described as his "homeland security czar." (The ex-aide, Golan Cipel, denies the affair, accuses McGreevey of sexual harassment, and says "czar" overstates his role, which was to act "as a liaison between the governor's office and the various state agencies responsible for law enforcement and homeland security.")

Homeland security is the common thread linking these two very different scandals, both involving Democratic administrations in states that were among the hardest hit by 9/11. Democrats tend to talk a lot about homeland security, because by and large they aren't wild about either military or intelligence operations. But this at least makes us wonder if they take homeland security all that seriously either.

It may be that this is a bipartisan problem, as evidenced by President Bush's abortive nomination of Bernard Kerik as secretary of homeland security. On the other hand, Kerik had held a serious homeland-security-related post, police commissioner of New York City. Then again, he served there under the man who is now the Republican front-runner for president.

Is homeland security a dumping ground for dubious political characters? It's a question worth pondering.

All the News That's Fit to Reprint
Yesterday's New York Times carried a story on a new poll that found an increase in the number of Americans retrospectively backing the liberation of Iraq:

Americans' support for the initial invasion of Iraq has risen somewhat as the White House has continued to ask the public to reserve judgment about the war until at least the fall. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted over the weekend, 42 percent of Americans said that looking back, taking military action in Iraq was the right thing to do, while 51 percent said the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. . . .

Support for the invasion had been at an all-time low in May, when only 35 percent of Americans said the invasion of Iraq was the right thing and 61 percent said the United States should have stayed out.

Today, the Times Web site carries a follow-up story:

The war in Iraq is the single most important ongoing news story right now. Public opinion about the war is a critical part of that story. That's why when we had a poll finding about the war that we could not explain, we went back and did another poll on the very same subject. We wanted to make sure we had gotten it right.

It turns out we had gotten it right. Support for the initial invasion of Iraq, as measured by a question The New York Times/CBS News poll has asked since December 2003, increased modestly compared to two months ago.

The Times explains why it thought a second poll was necessary:

The polling took place during a week when there was no shortage of news about the war. Congress was debating the war, the Bush administration issued a report saying the Iraqi government had failed to meet many of the benchmarks it was supposed to meet and prominent Republicans were distancing themselves from Mr. Bush on the conflict. . . .

The July numbers represented a change. It was counterintuitive.

Well, two cheers for the paper's diligence, but this also seems to be about as close as we're going to get to an admission of bias: an acknowledgment that those at the Times are flummoxed that the public is not responding the way they expect to all the bad news they've been reporting.

Meanwhile, check out this piece from today's Times:

President Bush sought anew on Tuesday to draw connections between the Iraqi group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and the terrorist network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks, and he sharply criticized those who contend that the groups are independent of each other.

The Times spends over 1,000 words covering the "debate" between President Bush and the Democrats over whether al Qaeda in Iraq has anything to do with al Qaeda everywhere else, without noting that the leading institution pushing the notion that they are unconnected is the Times itself, which is so eager to disjoin the two al Qaeda subsets that it insists on referring to Iraq, in this context only, as "Mesopotamia."

Bienvenue Vers l'Israel
"Two flights carrying 600 new immigrants from France landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday," the Jerusalem Post reports:

The general strike declared Tuesday night by the Histadrut Labor Federation raised concerns that the flights might not be able to land in Israel. But the delay in the airport strike by 24 hours provided the window of opportunity needed for the new Israelis to arrive.

It's awfully considerate for the Histadrut guys to call a general strike just as immigrants from France are arriving. It ought to ease whatever homesickness they may feel.

Strange Bedfellows
Agence France-Presse reports on the Iranian regime's "fashion police":

It all starts with one simple sentence, spoken almost in a whisper, but which has a thunderous effect.

A female police officer deployed in Tehran's latest moral crackdown tells a woman that her manto (overcoat) is too short and infringes Iranian Islamic dress rules.

"Azizam (my dear), good afternoon, if possible could we have a friendly chat, please allow us to have a small chat," the officer, a graduate of Tehran's police academy, tells the young woman.

"My dear there is a problem with your manto. Please do not wear this kind of manto. Please wear a longer manto from now on."

Some are just let go there, but others are escorted to waiting minibuses with dark black tinted window panes and labelled "Guidance Patrol."

Breitbart.tv has a video (warning: nonlascivious partial nudity at link) of a group called Breasts Not Bombs: "Naked anti-warriors protest Hillary Clinton." One wonders what the BNB ladies would do if confronted by the Guidance Patrol.

Life Imitates Television
"A woman whose sister died in the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the World Trade Center has sued Consolidated Edison, claiming the utility failed to properly maintain a steam pipe that exploded last week outside the office where she works as a legal secretary," reports New York's WINS-AM. The story is both sad and funny:

"I thought a building was going to collapse,'' said Francine Dorf, 52, who was in a building on East 42nd Street when the pipe exploded. . . .

Dorf's sister, Maria La Vache, was an employee of insurer Marsh & McLennan and was on the 99th floor of the north tower when it collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001. La Vache's body was never recovered. . . .

[Dorf's lawyer] said his client suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder--what he called "a legacy of fear'' from Sept. 11.

Dorf, who lives in Brooklyn, said she called her brother and mother to say goodbye on Wednesday after the blast.

It reminds us of the episode of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" in which Larry David's rabbi informs Larry that his brother-in-law "died on 9/11"--when a bike messenger hit him in midtown Manhattan.

Estupendo Clasificarme
The New York Times reports on a disturbing development:

Remember Supersize sodas? They're back, except this time the chain is trying a new name. Meet the "Hugo," a 42-ounce drink now available for as little as 89 cents in some markets. A Hugo soda contains about 410 calories.

McDonald's might as well have called it the Tubbo.

Making matters worse, Hugo ads are available in several languages, making sure that minorities--who are disproportionately affected by the obesity epidemic--are aware of the budget beverage.

Who'd have expected the Times to join the English-only movement?

With Friends Like These . . .--I
In response to yesterday's item on Jim Ronca, a reader calls our attention to this passage in his letter to Jennifer Hunter of the Chicago Sun-Times:

This campaign against you and me is ridiculous and I think evidence of how the Republican Party works. They make an effort to pressure journalists to print what they want and avoid what the Republican Party does not like. No free thinking or free press is allowed. They smear everyone who opposes them from big fish like Joe Wilson to small fries like me.

What do you call someone who says such things about the Republican Party? Jennifer Hunter calls him a "staunch Republican."

With Friends Like These . . .--II
"Man Cuts Up Friend's Body, Stuffs It Into Barrel"--headline, Star Tribune (Minneapolis), July 25

'Oh Yeah, Now I Remember Him!'
"Principal Who Died Suddenly Remembered at Gathering"--headline, KATU-TV Web site (Portland, Ore.), July 24

Dude, You Call This a Preserve?
"20,000 Marijuana Plants in Preserve Destroyed"--headline, Chicago Sun-Times, July 24

'Al, He's Much Heavier Than the Regular Prosecutor'
"Special Prosecutor Weighed for Gonzales"--headline, Associated Press, July 24

Big Deal, So Can a Baby
"Computer Program Can Learn Baby Talk"--headline, Reuters, July 24

Breaking News From 1966
"Panel Approves Cigarette Packs Warnings"--headline, Associated Press, July 25

News You Can Use

  • "Fitness Means Less Belly Fat"--headline, Sydney Morning Herald, July 25

  • "Group Psychotherapy May Be More Effective Than Other Treatments for Erectile Dysfunction"--headline, Medscape.com, July 23

Bottom Stories of the Day

So Much for the Prime Directive
"The Star Trek actor Walter Koenig yesterday urged fans of the iconic sci-fi series to turn their wrath on Burma's military junta, an earthly 'outpost of tyranny,' " the Scotsman reports:

Koenig, who battled alien Klingons and Romulans as an original member of the Starship Enterprise crew, said he hoped to mobilise Trekkies to join a campaign against the ruling generals blamed for human rights abuses in Burma, renamed Myanmar by the junta.

"I can tell people what I experienced, meeting people without limbs, the ex-political prisoners, the squalor, all that I have seen in these brief days," Koenig, 70, said after visiting a refugee camp on the Thai-Burma border last week.

Yeah, well, neocon Trekkies love to talk about intergalactic war, but have any of these armchair admirals ever fired a phaser in anger? They're nothing but a bunch of chickenspocks.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to James Trager, Mark Van Der Molen, Ed Lasky, Mike Hoverman, Brett Garver, Michael Segal, Edward Weinhaus, Ami Avivi, Mike Daley, David Raske, Todd Gunther, Bill King, Don Reeve, Ray Hendel, Dennis Lund, John Forsberg, Michael Aracic, James Tucker, William Golden, Don Stewart, Alan Jones, Mary Stagg, Mark Davies, Christopher Thompson, Jonathan Kisko and Stuart Creque. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

  • Review & Outlook: The Spitzer method: His nasty tactics get exposed in Albany.
  • David Hogberg (from The American Spectator): Congressmen push a cigar tax, proving they've learned nothing from history.
  • Mark Lasswell: Can you get rich by working four hours a week? There is reason to be skeptical.

Click to email this article EMAIL THIS Click to format this article for printing FORMAT FOR PRINTING
ARCHIVE