Good news from Bob Beckel

The headline is both cheerful and simple:

Why McCain Can't Win

Democratic operative Bob Beckel makes clear some of the cold, hard political facts I've been trying to explain to hard-headed Republican since February:

The collision of history, the current political climate, and the forces of the conservative right are the seeds that will lay waste to McCain's White House bid. . . .
Ironically, it is McCain's own errors . . . which will be responsible for his political obituary. . . .
What McCain failed to realize was that the right had no intention of embracing him. He had simply spent too many years challenging their out-of-touch agenda. Without conservative support, the press assumed McCain could not win the nomination and his campaign would collapse. Which it nearly did. . . .
Lacking unified Democratic opposition and fortified by an adoring press, McCain has been able to maintain this transparent shadow of his former image.
That will end soon when the Democrats have a nominee who will draw attention to McCain's near total embrace of the Bush agenda. . . .
McCain is now forced to convince the voters that another four years of Bush policies is exactly what the country needs. Democrats, prone to let victory slip away, should give thanks that the reactionaries on the right are still in charge of the Republican agenda.

Beckel is wrong about a great many things, including his characterization of conservatives as "out-of-touch." But where Beckel is absolutely correct is that Crazy Cousin John is the wrong candidate at the wrong time for the Republican Party.

McCain cannot move (further) leftward without losing the GOP's conservative base -- much of which he never had to begin with -- and yet he is already so closely allied with the unpopular president on key issues (notably Iraq) that all Democrats have to do is to paint McCain as the anointed successor to Bush. What McCain faces in November is essentially what happened to Al Gore in 2000, except that the MSM won't be cheerleading for McCain.

The only hope for John McCain to win in November is a self-inflicted implosion on the part of Democrats -- always a possibility, of course, but not much for Republicans to bank on.

Pennsylvania: The expectations game

Nothing annoys me quite as much as Election Day guesswork like this item at the Weekly Standard's blog:

Pennsylvania voters might produce a surprisingly close outcome in today’s Democratic primary. The buzz in Washington from several Democratic operatives I
talked to yesterday suggests Team Obama is fired up and ready to over perform.
"They’re putting out the word they won’t win, but it will be close," a veteran Democratic operative told me. And in this expectations game, "close" is a win, especially since Clinton needs a 8-10 point win to keep her narrative alive. They must see something in their tracking numbers that suggests the race has tightened. . . .

(Via Memeorandum.) Look, people, we'll have actual election results in just a few hours. Why not just wait a little while until they start counting votes in Pennsylvania, instead of bothering the readers with what can only be called pre-spin?

And what the hell is this secondhand blind-source reporting crap? A "veteran Democratic operative" says Team Obama is "putting out the word," and on the basis of that, you boldly declare that the Obama campaign "must" -- must! -- "must see something in their tracking numbers." That's not news, that's gossip.

If I sound a bit testy on this subject, it's because I got a minor secondhand burn from Monday's Drudge Report exclusive about the Clinton campaign's internal poll showing them with a double-digit lead in Pennyslvania. I cited that report in my story about Hillary's Harrisburg wrap-up rally, but today Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee denies that any such poll exists.

This is the trouble with anonymous sources and secondhand reporting, see? I have no idea who Drudge's sources were, so I ended up with poll numbers in my story that I cannot verify, Team Hillary can deny the whole thing, and I've got no way to resolve this factual dispute.

At least I cited Drudge as my source, whereas the Weekly Standard has an anonymous "veteran Democratic operative" feeding them info about what "must"(!) be in Obama's internal polling. While I can blame Drudge for my gaffe, who will the Weekly Standard blame if the "veteran Democratic operative" has it all wrong?

Playing the expectations game on Election Day is a waste of time, anyway, since nothing published on Election Day can have any effect on the outcome. No Democratic primary voter in Pennsylvania is going to log onto the 'Net, surf over to the Weekly Standard site and say, "A-ha! That clinches it! I'm voting for Obama!"

And despite what a "veteran Democratic operative" tells Gary Andres, neither the source nor the reporter has any firm idea what the outcome will be when the votes are finally tallied. If you want to make an actual prediction -- for example, if you'd like to put $20 on the proposition that the margin of victory in Pennsylvania will be less than 6 points -- then, by all means, make that prediction. But knock it off with all this pseudo-predictive "sources say" crap.

People have gotten into this habit of talking in a pseudo-predictive way on Election Day because they've watched TV news people do it for so long. There's the TV news anchor at "Decision '08 Headquarters," waiting for the actual vote counts to start coming in. The anchor's got to fill the time with something, so he brings on pollsters and analysts and commentator types to chatter away about "key demographics," and how Candidate X needs to score big with middle-aged suburban white women in order to have a chance to win.

Some of this "Decicion '08 HQ" blather may actually be true, but that doesn't mean it's not still blather, since whatever actual facts they report -- e.g., the vote counts, the demographics, past voting trends, poll numbers, etc. -- are readily available to the public from other sources.

It ill behooves writers to imitate this kind of idiotic TV news blather.

UPDATE: Jim Antle reacts to the Gary Andres report:

"Remember, closeness counts in horseshoes, hand grenades, and unexpectedly close Pennsylvania primaries!"

For what it's worth, I think the Obama people are blowing smoke. I expect Hillary to win Pennsylvania by double digits, perhaps by as much as 14 points. But I may be biased, because Hillary and I are so close.

Pennsylvania: MSM tells you what to think

The Pennsylvania Democratic primary is a simple thing: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) vs. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) People will vote for whichever candidate they prefer as the Democratic Party's presidential candidate, the votes will be counted, and the candidate with the most votes will win.

Simple, yes? But look at today's MSM headlines:

• 8 Questions About The Pennsylvania Primary

(Dan Balz, Washinton Post)

• Five things to watch in Pennsylvania

(Carrie Budoff Brown & Kenneth P. Vogel, Politico)

• What to look for in the Pennsylvania primary

(Peter Wallsten, Los Angeles Times)

Readers are so stupid, the editors of The Washington Post believe, that you need tol read an 1,800-word Q&A by Dan Balz explaining to you the answers to such questions as, "Has the campaign weakened Obama or Clinton more for the general election?" and "What is Obama's biggest general-election vulnerability?"

Holy freaking crap, Dan! Your readers are capable of operating computers! These are people who have an interest in politics so keen that they're surfing around the Internet for news about a primary election instead of checking out the nude video of Penelope Cruz at Egotastic. We're talking stone-cold political junkies at this point, OK?

So why in the world do the editors of The Washington Post imagine that such readers need Dan Balz to tell them what to think about the Pennsylvania primary?

This insipid format of enumated questions, the bogus Q-and-A -- the reporter essentially interviewing himself -- is an insult to the reader's intelligence.

Hope vs. hopeless

My American Spectator story about Hillary's Pennsylvania campaign finale in Harrisburg espies a glimmer of a chance that Team Clinton may yet manage a comeback:

Almost all observers expect Hillary to win today's primary in a state where every credible poll has shown her leading since last year. But if she can win by the double-digit margin suggested by the internal poll the Clinton campaign leaked to Drudge yesterday, Hillary's people are ready to declare a momentum shift based on Obama's apparent inability to win in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
"Senator Obama has been outspending us three-to-one here in Pennsylvania," Elleithee said. "I think a lot of people are going to have to ask the question, if he fails to win here, despite outspending us three-to-one -- which would be the same pattern as we saw in Texas and Ohio -- he's going to have to start answering a lot of questions as to why."Why can't he close the sale? Why can't he win in these big states, and these swing states in the general election?"

Read the whole thing, and then check out American Spectator staffer Philip Klein's more gloomy prognostication of Hillary's prospects:

The Obama campaign will try to take solace in any loss within single digits. . . . Anything less than a 20-point blowout will all but mathematically eliminate Clinton from overtaking Obama in the pledged delegate count or popular vote.
But in a conference call with reporters yesterday, Clinton's chief strategist Geoff Garin dismissed such numbers as "ridiculous." The campaign argued that Obama had outspent Clinton substantially in Pennsylvania and thus any victory by Clinton would raise further questions about Obama's ability to win working-class voters in big swing states.
Clinton, it's pretty clear, will use any angle to justify continuing her candidacy. The trouble is, financial reports released over the weekend showed Clinton heavily in debt, and Obama with a five-to-one cash advantage.
And that was at the beginning of the month, before all of the spending in Pennsylvania. Unless she and Bill are willing to kick in more of their sizable fortune on a nearly lost cause, this Clinton nostalgia tour may soon be performing its final engagement.

So, is the glass half-empty or half-full? My own article acknowledges the same problems for Clinton that Klein identifies, and any sober observer would estimate her hope for winning in Denver as a longshot.

Perhaps it is my sentimental attachment to underdogs, my love of miraculous comebacks, that causes me to remember that "unlikely" is not the same as "impossible." And I'm beginning to worry that Klein has spent so much time in Pennsylvania lately that he's become bitter, clinging to his guns and religion and poll numbers.

Ultimately, Democrats will choose their own nominee (with some unsolicited help from Rush Limbaugh's "Operation Chaos" crew), so it probably doesn't much matter what a couple of reporters think about the Hillary-vs.-Obama contest, especially a couple of conservatives like Klein and me.

But it's pretty impressive -- though almost entirely accidental -- that the Spectator would have two reporters filing two starkly different assessments of Hillary's prospects on the day of the crucial Pennsylvania primary. Diversity!

Is Hillary history?

Ready to head off to Harrisburg, Pa., to cover a Hillary rally today, and I see this funny video:



(Via Hot Air.) I particularly like the part where Hillary time-travels back to 1865 and leads the Union army to defeat. Speaking of Lost Causes, I'm growing suspicious of the repeated claims that Hillary is already mathematically eliminated from the Democratic nomination. I was hearing this same argument when I covered Hillary in Pennsylvania a month ago.

The problem with the mathematical-elimination argument is that (a) Hillary doesn't seem the least bit interested in quitting, and (b) never underestimate the fiendish treachery of a Democratic convention delegate. If you don't think there will be Obama delegates in Denver willing to peddle their votes for Clinton cash, you are hopelessly naive:

"Excuse me, Jack Jones, obscure county commissioner from some backwater burg in Ohio? Listen, here's $5,000 up front, and there'll be another $10,000 once we get your vote on the convention floor. If Hillary wins this thing, buddy, we're going to get you that tourism bureau gig down in the U.S. Virgin Islands, OK?"

That kind of stuff happens, you know . . .

Selma Freaking Alabama???

So I'm lying in bed this morning, half-awake, getting ready to get up, get dressed and get on the road to Harrisburg.

The TV's on Fox News. They go into the 10 o'clock hour, and suddenly it's Carl Cameron talking about John McCain kicking off something he calls the "Time For Action Tour" in Selma, Alabama.

Selma. Alabama.

Holy freaking crap! That's when I notice that Cameron is telling me this while standing in front of an arched bridge over a river and now I realize that John McCain is about to speak at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Edmund. Pettus. Bridge.

Some clever Republican political strategist has just proven himself too clever by half. Whatever PR value there is in having a Republican talk about the need to "take action" on poverty, it's more than canceled out by the glaring idiocy of sending him to the Edmund Pettus Bridge to talk about civil rights and John Lewis:

"There must be no forgotten places in America, whether they have been ignored for long years by the sins of indifference and injustice, or have been left behind as the world grew smaller and more economically interdependent. In America, we have always believed that if the day was a disappointment, we would win tomorrow. That's what John Lewis believed when he marched across this bridge. That’s what he still believes; what he still fights to achieve: a better country than the one he inherited."

What the bloody hell is this? Going to the buckle of the Bible Belt and talking about "the sins of indifference and injustice"? Talking about "places left behind"?

To start with, nobody in Alabama needs or wants a lecture about "injustice," and certainly not from a Republican senator. Look at the calendar: 2008. Anybody old enough to have marched with John Lewis in the 1965 voting-rights march is now more worried about Social Security and Medicare than anything else.

Second, if you want to talk about "places left behind," leave Alabama out of it. Anybody with Google can easily discover that the economy in Alabama has been growing faster than the overall U.S. economy for several years, for example:

In 2006 and 2007 24 new auto plants opened in Alabama. Although Birmingham residents are most familiar with Lincoln's Honda Manufacturing and the Mercedes-Benz U.S. International plant in Vance, supplier plants also play a significant employment role. Since 2003, supplier plants have reported 6.8 percent growth in jobs. Jefferson County's supplier job growth has increased 41 percent.

But the most obvious blunder involved in John McCain going to Selma and talking about John Lewis is that John Lewis is a Democrat. And not just a generic Democrat, but a feisty liberal Democrat.

John Lewis, partisan Democrat, is sure to be enraged by watching the McCain campaign attempt to co-opt Selma and the Edmund Pettus Bridge for a GOP campaign photo-op. And if the McCain campaign tries to use that photo-op in an advertisement, the Democrats will immediately trot out Lewis to preach a sermon about the transparent bogusness of John McCain.

For crying out loud, while John Lewis was preparing to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, John McCain was preparing to kill Commies in Vietnam.

Who can account for the fathomless idiocy of a GOP strategist who, not content to have a genuine Commie-killing war hero as his candidate, decides it's a clever move to co-opt the most famous episode in the life of a Democrat like John Lewis?

Maybe once Crazy Cousin John figures out what a dumb move this Selma trip was, his infamous temper will take hold of him and he'll strangle the GOP strategist who dreamed up this idiotic stunt.

If any Republican campaign wants to stage a photo-op at a famous bridge and invoke the name of a famous Democrat, my suggestion would be Chappquiddick and Ted Kennedy.

'Searching for Sarah'

Suspected hoaxer Rozita Swinton is the subject of my latest American Spectator Online article:

"Nothing catches an editor's eye like a good rape," gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson once observed, and this month's lurid tales of teenage girls ritually raped in the temple of a Texas polygamist cult caught editors' eyes around the world.
"Documents: Sect married girls at puberty," declared the headline on an April 8 Associated Press story, while the online version of the Everett, Washington, Daily Herald featured this April 10 headline: "Texas cult's girls required to have sex in temple." . . .
Bizarre and illegal though the FLDS sect's practices may be, however, no one at the "Yearning For Zion Ranch" has yet been charged with rape, polygamy, or any other sex crime.
In fact, the only person arrested in connection with the April 4 raid on the 1,700-acre Texas compound is a Colorado woman whose hoax phone calls may be the source of those tales of ritual rape that unleashed a global epidemic of leering headlines.
Officials say Rozita E. Swinton is a "person of interest" in the cult case, and reports of her arrest strongly suggest that it was the 33-year-old Swinton who called a domestic-abuse hotline in Texas, identifying herself as "Sarah Jessop Barlow." . . .

Read the whole thing, please. Different people react to this case in different ways. After reading the draft of my Spectator article, my wife was deeply disturbed by the thought of young children who'd never been away from their mothers being placed into foster care. I suspect that's a common reaction among mothers, however much they reject and condemn the polygamist practices of the FLDS.

It was interesting to write a feature article about a subject that I'd blogged about frequently over the past few days, and the experience illuminates the differences between blogging and journalism. I intend to write about that later, but I've got a freelance reporting assignment today -- Harrisburg, here I come! -- and so blogging will be light until Tuesday.

In the meantime, I'd encourage you to check out the American Spectator blog, or perhaps peruse my previous blogging on the Texas FLDS case:

4/20: 'Are the Amish next?'
4/19: Texas cult: The 'Oprah' factor
4/19: 'Underage sex cult'
4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?
4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?
4/14: Polygamy cult custody case
4/11: Texas teen sex cult update
4/10: Cult's sick sex temple
4/9: Not in the Constitution
4/9: 'Spiritually married'?

UPDATE: My Friday post about Swinton as Obama delegate has been linked by something called "Rezko Watch," a site that a cynic might suspect as a front for the Clinton campaign. Frankly, I don't care if "Resko Watch" is a front for the Chinese Communist Party. Just link me baby -- I'm all about the traffic. (Cynic? Who, me?)

Also, I stumbled onto some interesting comments in a debate over the Texas cult among Protein Wisdom commenters:

• Gamera: FOXnews said that there are 20 pregnant children under the age of 18 among the 400+ kids removed from the ranch.
• Thor: Child abuse is associated with being pregnant and under 18? [Abusive epithet.] East L.A. would have to be stormed with the National Guard.
• Spies, Brigands, and Pirates: 20 out of 400? 5%? I wonder how that compares to the proportion in a garden-variety high school? . . . Answer: the overall pregnancy rate among American teens is 7.5%. For black teens, it’s 13.4%, for Hispanics it’s 13.1%.

See? You can get an education by reading blogs. Take notes, kids. This might be on your final exam.

'Are the Amish next?'

Reacting to the Texas FLDS case, a California reader e-mails to ask, "Are the Amish next?" and adds:

By the way -- aren't there statistics about 13 year olds having babies in the inner cities? And girls that young going to Planned Parenthood.
The mothers of "some" of the inner city pre-teens are on drugs etc.
At least these Texas mothers don't teach their kids to smoke dope.

Excellent point. According to one recent report, Texas had the nation's highest teen pregnancy rate in 2004, and it wasn't because of religious cults:

In the latest statistics available, 24 percent of the state's teen births in 2004 were not the girl's first delivery. . . .
Erandy Gonzalez, 17, of Oak Cliff, could almost be the poster girl for Texas' challenges. She is Hispanic, and Hispanics by far have the highest teen birth rates of any ethnic group. She is the mother of a 15-month-old girl and is pregnant again.
In 2004, Hispanic girls ages 15 to 19 accounted for 61 percent of teen births even though only 39 percent of Texas adolescents were Hispanic, according to the federal National Center for Health Statistics.

Got that? If you're a pregnant Texas teenager named Gonzalez, the Dallas Morning News interviews you for a feature story. If you're a pregnant Texas teenager named Sarah, the SWAT team kicks down your door and arrests your parents.

Both Hispanic culture and FLDS culture seem to encourage early childbearing, but only one of these cultures is labeled a "cult" and targeted for paramilitary raids.

Considering the prevalence of teen pregnancy in Texas and judging from the way the FLDS case is being handled, it would appear that Texas child-protection officials are not so much concerned about teen sex or teen pregnancy -- it's teen marriage that they consider an abomination.

This very common contemporary attitude -- that it's OK for teenagers to screw around as long as they don't get married -- reminds me of I Timothy 4:

Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry . . .

Of course, I guess I need to be careful about quoting apocalyptic prophecies, since somebody's liable to label me a "cult" and next thing you know, there'll be a tank in my driveway and TV news choppers hovering overhead.

One of the funniest items to come from the FLDS hearing is a sentence in this brief Associated Press report:

Earlier, a children's cult expert testified that the belief system at the polygamous compound is abusive and that teen girls are trained to be obedient and compliant.

Obedient teenagers? Whoever heard of such a thing? Clearly, this must involve unimaginable abuse.

Also, the AP story quotes a witness who testified Friday that a bed in the FLDS temple -- which Texas officials had suggested was part of some bizarre sex ritual --"is for naps during the sect's long worship services." Given my own habit of nodding off during sermons, maybe I should suggest this idea to our pastor.

BTW, speaking of culture, in Australia, they're giving Norplant contraceptives to 12-year-old aboriginal girls:

The Mayor of Woorabinda, Roderick Tobane, says he knows of six girls under 16 who have received the implants and says their parents have taken a mature attitude.
"[They are] acknowledging that their children are sexually active and they're putting measures in place to make sure that their children don't get pregnant," he said.

Send in the Texas SWAT teams!

UPDATE: Evidence mounts that Obama delegate Rozita Swinton made the hoax calls that led to the Texas raid:

Rozita Swinton, 33, gave a statement to Texas Rangers, who also seized evidence from her Colorado Springs apartment. While authorities would not say specifically what was in Swinton's home, the Texas Department of Public Safety said in a statement issued late Friday that the officers found "several items that indicated a possible connection between Swinton and calls regarding the FLDS compounds in Colorado City, Ariz., and Eldorado, Texas." . . .
Anti-polygamy activist Flora Jessop said she recorded hours of phone calls between herself and a 16-year-old girl named "Sarah," who claimed to be pregnant and in an abusive plural marriage to an older man. Jessop told the Deseret News she got the first call on March 30 — a day after a family crisis shelter first received a similar call.
The call to the family crisis center triggered the raid on the YFZ Ranch, where 416 children were taken into state protective custody. The man named in the phone calls, Dale Barlow, was questioned in Utah by Texas Rangers and has yet to be arrested.

So this whole thing apparently began with a Colorado hoaxer who became obsessed with the FLDS cult (probably, I surmise, after watching an "Oprah" episode about polygamy that aired in November). Dale Barlow is in Utah and doesn't seem to be a suspect, so what about the 416 children seized in the Texas raid?

"What we're hearing from DPS is that it is a possibility (that Swinton is 'Sarah'), but we don't have any concrete evidence of that," Shari Pulliam, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Family Services, said Saturday. . . .

But then notice how Ms. Pulliam's concern about "concrete evidence" shifts rather strategically:

Regardless of whether "Sarah" is real or not, Texas child welfare authorities said it does not have any bearing upon their case now.
"Our basis is what we found when we got onto the ranch. That is the numerous teenage girls that had been sexually abused and groomed to marry," Pulliam said.

Ah! So she's not willing to believe that Swinton is a hoaxer until she has "concrete evidence," yet she offers only assertions about the "sexually abused" girls. I hate to keep repeating myself, but I will: If Texas officials believe any of the FLDS girls have been abused, all they have to do is ask the judge to order OB-GYN exams. Since the family services officials are so doggone adamant about these abuse charges, why have there been no medical exams of the alleged victims?

A week ago, Texas officials were proclaiming to the world that every FLDS girl was ritually raped and impregnated as soon as she reached puberty. Have the family services people found even one 15-year-old with stretch marks on her belly? A 14-year-old with a Caesarian scar, maybe?

To repeat myself once more, this is starting to look like a Texas-style McMartin Preschool case.

UPDATE II: The Pentagon gave $1.7 million in contracts to FLDS-connected firms.

UPDATE III: At Jawa Report, commenter/guest-blogger Good Lt. warned commenters against going too far with the "presumed innocent" angle on the FLDS, citing the testimonials and court records of the cult's abuses, and saying "just be careful about how far you're willing to go to bat for these loons." I responded in the comments:

I, for one, am not "going to bat for these loons."
To me, the issue is whether Texas officials are justified in seizing custody of all 416 children from the FLDS ranch.
You say, "There are court documents showing that girls as young as 13 have been impregnated." Show me those documents, please. Why aren't those documents posted on Smoking Gun, as were the affidavits that contained all those lurid allegations from "Sarah"?
The Texas officials seem to have created a climate of hysteria in order to justify the seizure of all the FLDS children. And the hoax "Sarah" call was Exhibit A in this hysteria. Now the Family Services people have gotten what they wanted, but where are the actual abuse victims? For that matter, where are the suspected abusers? To my knowledge, no one at the Texas FLDS ranch has been charged with any crime. So you have children (over 100 of them under age 4) being seized by the state, and yet the state has identified neither criminals nor victims.
My arguments have nothing to do with a defense of "loons," and everything to do with a profound suspicion of bureaucratic overkill by Family Services.

And Good Lt. responded in the main thread:

Don't interpret this as my advocacy of rampant government intervention in the affairs of strange religious groups. Let's just say that I'm with the former child brides and ex-FLDS members on this one, and other anecdotal and historical evidence -- including the leader of the cult being convicted of accomplice to rape of a 14 year old with previous members of the cult being convicted of similar crimes in the past -- establishes a pattern of alleged and confirmed abuses by this group that are cause enough to err on the side of the kids and women locked up behind the fences.

An entirely valid perspective, and one that I share, insofar as the suspicion of child abuse is not used as an excuse for government abuse. That's why I keep reiterating that Texas officials are seeking permanent state custody of all 416 children from the FLDS compound.

However pervasive abuse might be within FLDS, can it really be true that all 416 children -- boys and girls from infancy to age 17 -- are abuse victims? Does mere membership in FLDS, or residence at the cult's Texas compound, constitute proof of abuse?

Finally, a lot of my interest in the Texas FLDS story is from the media-criticism perspective. When the affidavits and search warrant were first made public, the MSM jumped to the conclusion -- and, frankly, I followed along -- that not only was every allegation true, but that these lurid allegations were merely the tip of a ritualistic iceberg of bizarre kinkiness at the Texas compound.

I'm always wary when prosecutors (or defense attorneys) attempt to "try their case in the media." That tactic is generally a harbinger of bad outcomes, which is why I keep citing the McMartin Preschool case.

Texas cult: The Oprah factor

Rusty Shackleford says the Texas FLDS compound story has "stunk to high-heaven from the git go," and look at the way Rusty puts two and two together:

Houston Chronicle: "The Texas Rangers told us [hoax suspect Rozita Swinton] was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton's home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people."
Rusty: Hence, how Swinton would be able to "identify" the man who "Sarah" was allegedly married to, but didn't know that Dale Evans Barlow, the man originally pegged as the "50 year old husband", didn't actually live in Texas, but in Arizona.

Right, and now let me add something else to the equation: Notice that the middle (maiden) name for "Sarah" was "Jessop" -- "Sarah Jessop Barlow."

Well, Flora Jessop is the executive director of the anti-polygamy group quoted in that same Houston Chronicle story. And if you do a Google search on "FLDS" and "Jessop," you immediately discover that Carolyn Jessop is the author of a bestselling book, "Escape," about her life inside FLDS -- and that Carolyn Jessop appeared on "Oprah" in November 2007!

Bingo! So what must have happened is that Swinton:

• Watched this "Oprah" episode in November;
• Became obsessed with the FLDS cult;
• Read about the compound in Texas;
• Learned the name Dale Evans Barlow from reports of his prosecution;
• Combined Barlow's name with "Sarah," a common female biblical name, and "Jessop," the name of the two prominent ex-FLDS women, to create a name for her fictional 16-year-old victim; and
• Then did a Google search to find the phone number of a domestic-abuse hotline near the FLDS compound in Texas.

OMG! More than 400 children have been seized by the state of Texas because of an "Oprah" episode?

Also I wonder if Swinton became an Obama delegate for the same reason she became obsessed with the FLDS, namely, she saw it on "Oprah"?

UPDATE: The "Oprah" Web site includes an excerpt from Carolyn Jessop's book, including this bit about physical abuse among FLDS:

[T]he women we'd see in the community when we went shopping were wearing dark sunglasses. I was surprised when a woman took her glasses off in the grocery store and I could see that both her eyes were blackened. I asked my mother what was wrong, but the question seemed to make her uncomfortable and she didn't answer me. My curiosity was piqued, however, and every time I saw a woman in dark glasses, I stared at her to see if they were covering strange, mottled bruises.

Hmmmm. Remember how the hotline tipster "Sarah" talked about beatings? And then this:

We were taught that outsiders were "agents of the devil" who wanted to kidnap us and take us away. They were seen as evil people who wanted to destroy the work of God. If they could get access to the children of God's chosen, then they would try to hurt or destroy us.

Right -- another theme in the tip from "Sarah." But perhaps the telltale clue here is this:

[Oprah producer Lisa Ling's] guide in Colorado City is Carolyn Jessop. Carolyn was raised by three mothers and has 36 brothers and sisters. At 18, she says she was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader, Merril Jessop. Carolyn had eight of Merril's 54 children, but she says she was always desperate for freedom.

The tipster "Sarah" likewise was "was forced to marry a powerful 50-year-old FLDS leader." But whereas Carolyn Jessop was 18 when she was married, the Texas hotline hoaxer Rozita Swinton decided fictional "Sarah" should be 16, having been forced to marry at 15 -- i.e., conveniently below the legal minimum marriage age in Texas, so as to constitute the basis for a search warrant.

Nearly every element of the story that "Sarah" told in her calls to the abuse hotline was included in the November "Oprah" episode or in Carolyn Jessop's book.

UPDATE II: Rusty notes the "fake but accurate" angle on Swinton's hoax, and says:

Sure, she lied about everything, but isn't the goal of removing children from parents who's lifestyle we don't approve of trump truth? . . .
Let's just go into any community and take away all the kids since we know that some of them are abused, some get knocked up young, and some are molested. In some communities, these phenomena are pervasive. . . .
There is a bright line which government cannot cross under normal circumstances. That line is the home.
A raid on an entire community, without probable cause, in peace time is tyranny, plain and simple.
What next, raiding a hippie commune because we know they must smoke dope and we know they practice free love?

As I've pointed out earlier myself, "if every pregnant 16-year-old in Texas is cause for a paramilitary raid, they're going to need more SWAT teams."

UPDATE III: Sorry if these updates are creating a thread longer than God's arm, but stuff just keeps popping up. This is from a Salt Lake Tribune story that Rusty linked:

FLDS women who were in state shelters with their children until Monday say investigators appeared desperate to find "Sarah" and were grilling girls by that name. ...
On Monday, hours after being separated from the children taken into state custody, FLDS women claimed authorities appeared driven to find Sarah.
"They are trying to pin it on anybody named Sarah," said Annette, who is back at the YFZ Ranch after more than a week in custody with her six children and five nieces and nephews she is raising.
Sarah is a common name and several are in custody, she said. One by one, the Sarahs have been interviewed, she said. "They find out and then let them go, then grab another one and try to find out and the let them go."
"There is just not a Sarah that fits what they said," said Annette.
Investigators have zeroed in on one Sarah in particular, Annette said. The girl, who has a 5-month-old daughter, is petite and looks young, so the investigators don't believe she is 18, she said.

So while the Texas attorney general says "the case really doesn't hinge upon that particular 16-year-old," investigators spent days grilling every teenager named Sarah from the Texas ranch -- including one 18-year-old who merely looks young. Sounds to me like Texas officials know they've got a credibility problem in this case.

PREVIOUSLY:
4/19: 'Underage sex cult'

4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?
4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?
4/14: Polygamy cult custody case
4/11: Texas teen sex cult update
4/10: Cult's sick sex temple
4/9: Not in the Constitution
4/9: 'Spiritually married'?

'Underage sex cult'

Once again, the British press demonstrates its superiority at tabloid headline writing:

Polygamist 'underage sex cult' children to be DNA-tested to 'determine relationships'

Brilliant: Put "sex" and "children" within a couple of words of each other in a headline, and you'll be getting Google-search traffic for years.

Where the Fleet Street boys go for blatant sensationalism and exploitation, the American press sticks with bland incompetence:

A judge ruled Friday evening that 416 children seized by authorities during a raid on a polygamous sect's compound are at risk of sexual abuse if they stay with the group and must remain in state care.
Texas District Judge Barbara L. Walther's ruling came after a chaotic two-day hearing that featured several hundred lawyers and two buildings filled with witnesses, reporters and members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a sect that broke away from the Mormon Church in the 1930s. Its members believe in divinely inspired, polygamous marriage involving underage girls.
Walther ordered sect members to provide DNA samples for maternity and paternity tests. State witnesses testified that more than 20 of the children involved appeared to have been born to underage mothers. And authorities have said that it has been difficult to sort out family ties because the children have given vague answers since being taken into custody.

In other words, according to Texas officials, the FLDS parents are guilty until proven innocent and if their children -- more than 100 of whom are under age 4 -- give "vague answers," that will be construed as further evidence of guilt.

Why is nobody questioning this judge's order for DNA testing? It's going to take weeks for a lab to process and compare the DNA for 416 children and their parents. If officials have reason to suspect that any minors at the FLDS compound have given birth, routine OB-GYN examinations can determine that pretty easily. Stretch marks? Lactation? For crying out loud, if there are any 15-year-old mothers in the FLDS and a physician can't tell from a pelvic exam whether they've given birth, the doctor's license should be revoked.

The characteristic incompetence of the MSM is apparent not only in the complete lack of common-sense skepticism toward the actions of the judge and the Texas child-protection workers, but also in their apparent indifference to the hoax-call angle.

A Colorado woman has been arrested for making fake calls about the Texas FLDS cult -- whether she was the alleged 16-year-old abuse victim "Sarah" has not yet been revealed -- but that's not even mentioned until the 10th paragraph of the story!

Isn't that kind of important? A search warrant possibly based on a hoax call results in 416 children being ripped from their parents' arms, and the potential hoax is relegated to the 10th paragraph, after the reporter has already found space to tell us that the FLDS women appeared in court "dressed in full-length dresses and sporting tightly plaited hair." What? Are these women being charged with violating the Texas Fashion Code?

It's easy to sneer at the nudge-nudge innuendo of the British tabloids, but the American press has no right to claim superiority.

UPDATE: This was probably inevitable:

National polygamy rights leader, Mark Henkel, who is the Founder of the (non-Mormon) TruthBearer.org organization, offered clarity and balance to all media reporting on the raid of the Mormon-based sect in Eldorado Texas, the FLDS. Said Henkel, "As we have always made clear, the national polygamy rights movement for consenting adults has always opposed the FLDS, its leader Warren Jeffs, and any underage marriage. Although the government tactics of the raid itself raise very alarming and troubling questions, that does not change our view of the FLDS itself. The FLDS do not represent polygamy, polygamists, or the polygamy rights movement whatsoever."

Is "polygamy rights" the next frontier of the sexual revolution? And if so, will the Texas cult case result in some sort of landmark Supreme Court ruling?

PREVIOUSLY:

4/18: Obama delegate in cult hoax?

4/18: Texas cult case: Where's Sarah?

4/14: Polygamy cult custody case

4/11: Texas teen sex cult update

4/10: Cult's sick sex temple

4/9: Not in the Constitution

4/9: 'Spiritually married'?

The 'Republican talking points' meme

A good measure of how leftward the Democratic Party has drifted in the age of Howard Dean, DailyKos, MoveOn.org and Media Matters is the "Republican talking points" meme that spread like a virus in online news media and in liberal blogs after Wednesday's debate.

The virus appeared to originate with The Nation, spread from there, and so quickly buried itself into the Left's consciousness that by Friday, when Eli Pariser of MoveOn.org wanted to fire back at Hillary for dissing the Democrats' "activist base," he said:

MoveOn is 3.2 million reliable voters and volunteers who are an important part of any winning Democratic coalition in November. They deserve better than to be dismissed using Republican talking points.

Keep an eye out for this meme. What the Left is trying to do is to intimidate the MSM, so that if the media report any negative information about the Democrats, the media will be slammed for using "Republican talking points."

This intimidation is aimed at erecting a sort of media force-field around the eventual Democratic nominee. Given the rabid vitriol directed at ABC News in wake of the Philadelphia debate, other news outlets that report negatively on the Democrats can expect similar fusilades this year.

The MoveOn.org crowd, having captured the DNC by such tactics, now wants to bring the MSM to heel . . .

UPDATE: NYT's Bob Herbert offers a variation on the theme:

The big issues of our time are being left behind as pettiness and mean-spirited partisanship carry the day. . . .
That raucous laughter you hear in the background is coming from the likes of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, President Bush and Senator McCain. They can’t believe their good fortune.

(Via Memeorandum.) One of the pet conceits of liberals is that, if only the benighted American electorate could be compelled to focus on the real issues -- "the big issues of our time," in Herbert's phrase -- then progressive Democrats would triumph and finally inaugurate a full-blown Scandinavian-style socialist regime in America. Instead, the Right Wing Noise Machine distracts the voters with silly distractions about how the Democratic candidates are corrupt, dishonest or hypocritical, and the "big issues of our time" (i.e., how to Swedenize the U.S. health-care system) are neglected.

The Bob Herberts of the world often claim to want to see the issues debated among Democrats, but what they really want is for them all to sing from the progressive hymnal in perfect unison: Diversity through homogenization.

UPDATE II: Ed Morrisey spots another variation on the theme: "What Will Karl Do?"

Huffington Post writer Tom Edsall reveals that a union has developed an extensive and detailed attack on Barack Obama’s connection with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, the former Weather Underground terrorists, while at the same time deriding it as “McCarthyism.” . . .
Not only can they indulge in what they call McCarthyism, they can blame their bete noir Karl Rove for it before he even utters a word.

Simple rule for Democrats: When in doubt, blame a Republican.

Woman on top

Hillary Clinton regains political dominance:

Gallup Poll Daily tracking shows that Hillary Clinton now receives 46% of the support of Democrats nationally, compared to 45% for Barack Obama, marking the first time
Obama has not led in Gallup's daily tracking since March 18-20.
These results are based on interviewing conducted April 16-18, including two days of interviewing after the contentious Wednesday night debate in Philadelphia and the media focus that followed. . . .
There has been no change in the general election trial heats, with Obama's margin over Republican John McCain at 45% to 44% among registered voters nationally, and Clinton's margin at 46% to 44%.

Predictions:

• Hillary will win Tuesday's Pennsylvania primary with at least 54 percent of the vote and a double-digit margin over Obama.
• The MSM will pronounce themselves shocked -- shocked! -- at the size of the margin.
  Hillary's Amazing Comeback(TM) will dominate the media narrative all next week.
• Obama's supporters will detect subliminal racism in the MSM coverage, and repeatedly claim that Karl Rove has something to do with this.
• And you know what's weird? Hillary was leading by double digits in Pennsylvania up until a month ago, so there is really nothing shocking about her winning the primary. This isn't really a comeback.

If it weren't for the MSM going gaga -- and I predict that Tuesday night they'll be searching their thesaruses to find synonyms for "incredible" and "landslide" -- there wouldn't be any "bounce" in Pennsylvania for Hillary. She's played expectations game perfectly.

Blue-collar TV news?

Minnesota liberal Democrat (but I repeat myself) Peter Smith:

A lot of inside the beltway talking heads and journalists have claimed a special understanding of working class Pennsylvania voters lately.
They say they understand working class Pennsylvanians because they come from Pennsylvania themselves. Or because their fathers belonged to a union. Or worked in a factory. Or drank beer. Or owned a gun. Or bowled.
I would submit that if, as a journalist, you have to explain your working class bona fides, then you probably don't have working class bona fides. That if you're commenting on working class voters in the national media, your perspective may be somewhat distorted by all those tax brackets between you and your subject.

(Via Memeorandum.) Smith makes a good point about faux-proletarian media types, but his conflation of "talking heads and journalists" bothers me. He is perpetuating the myth that journalists make big money.

TV talking heads make big money; journalists don't.

People who aren't in the news business read about the multimillion-dollar contracts of top on-air TV talent -- Katie Couric, George Stephanopoulos, Brian Williams -- and leap to the erroneous conclusion that journalism is a high-paying industry. It's not.

The people you see on TV news make big money not because they're journalists, but because they're on TV.

A TV news anchor is a TV star, so he's paid like a TV star. The rest of us poor slobs -- especially the miserable wretches in the rapidly collapsing newspaper business -- are paid less than post-office workers. Or truck drivers.

There are exceptions to the rule, of course. Columnists for the New York Times reportedly make $300,000 a year, but none of those guys are actually journalists -- i.e., they never worked as reporters covering fires, floods, county commission meetings, etc. Say what you will about ex-theater-critic Frank Rich, he actually worked at a newspaper before before becoming a columnist, which is more than can be said of Paul Krugman or Bill Kristol.

The popular misconception of journalism as a high-paying career has been propagated in part by how Hollywood portrays the news business. In my lifetime, at least, there has never been a Hollywood portrayal of a newsroom that wasn't so laughably wrong as to become an instant joke among actual newspaper people. An example is the classic TV/movie depiction of the "investigative reporter" as a sort of detective or spy, sleuthing around in dark alleys. It's just not like that.

So when Peter Smith (who is, in point of fact, an advertising executive) writes about "all those tax brackets between" journalists and the working class, he's propagating a dangerous myth.

Why is this myth of journalism as a high-paying career dangerous? Because some otherwise bright and promising young person might go into the news business thinking it pays handsomely, and thereby consign himself to a life of poverty. A tragic fate . . .

Slow week at CNN?

This is why they get the big bucks:

CNN personality Richard Quest was busted in Central Park early yesterday with some drugs in his pocket, a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot, law-enforcement sources said.
Quest, 46, was arrested at around 3:40 a.m. after a cop spotted him and another man inside the park near 64th Street, a police source said. . . .
Quest was initially busted for loitering, the source said. Aside from the oddly configured rope, the search also turned up a sex toy inside of his boot, and a small bag of methamphetamine in his left jacket pocket. . . .
Quest's lawyer, Alan Abramson, had a much more innocuous version of events.
"Mr. Quest didn't realize that the park had a curfew," Abramson said. He was simply "returning to his hotel with friends."

Returning to his hotel with friends . . . and a dildo and some meth and a rope around his scrotum.

According to his CNN bio, Quest is from England, has a law degree from Leeds University and once worked for the BBC:

Quest is firmly established as an expert on business travel issues and currently works as a CNN anchor and correspondent. His regular programs include ‘CNN Business Traveller’, as well as his own hour-long feature program, ‘Quest’. . . . Quest attends the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, every year, and in this, as with every case, he lends an incredible wealth of modern business knowledge to the coverage, coupled with his inimitable reporting style.

So, Quest is "an expert on business travel issues," but doesn't know that Central Park has a curfew?

There's more. The New York Post reports:

He was reportedly once offered a position for the English-language version of the controversial Al Jazeera network, but said he turned it down because being gay and Jewish, he didn't think it would be a good fit.

And his CNN bio reports:

He anchored CNN’s coverage of the funeral of Pope John Paul II, live from Rome.

So CNN chose a gay Jewish man to anchor the Pope's funeral? Does that make any sense at all? You would think somebody at CNN's headquarters would say, "Hey, wait a minute, don't we have . . . oh, I don't know, maybe a Catholic who could anchor this broadcast?"

Seriously, I'm not being bigoted here. It just seems to me that, given who John Paul II was and as a basic programming consideration, you'd want somebody anchoring the Pope's funeral broadcast who was knowledgeable and respectful about the religion whose faithful followers would be tuned in by the millions.

Aren't such considerations involved in why CNN uses Iran-born Christiane Amanpour for all its major coverage of Islam and the Middle East?

Assigning Richard Quest to anchor the Pope's funeral is like assigning Ann Coulter to cover Yasser Arafat's funeral -- and I don't think there's any danger of Ann being arrested in Central Park at 3 a.m. with a dildo in her boot.

(Via Memeorandum.)

Obama delegate in cult hoax?

UPDATE 4/20: Welcome Jawa readers. Check out the "Oprah" factor in this case.

* * * * *

If this pans out, it's going to be huge:

Texas Rangers participated in the arrest of a Colorado woman who allegedly pretended to be a girl locked in a basement. The Rangers were in the state as part of their investigation into the Texas polygamy custody battle, local police told ABC News.
It was unclear if the arrest was related to the phone call from a woman who claimed to be a 16-year-old girl, a phone call that sparked what has become one of the largest child custody cases in U.S. history.
Officials in Texas raided a polygamist compound and took 416 children into custody after an abuse hotline received a series of phone calls from the purported teen who said she was being held at the compound. The girl, who called herself Sarah, said she was being physically and sexually abused by her adult husband, court documents say. . . .
ABC News has learned that Texas Rangers flew to Colorado Springs, Colo., and participated in the arrest of a 33-year-old woman who was charged with filing a false report.
The FBI also told ABC News it is assisting local police in the investigation. Colorado Springs police said in a statement that "The Texas Rangers were in Colorado Springs Wednesday as part of their investigation involving the compound in Texas." . . .
Colorado Springs police said they arrested Rozita Swinton last night on local charges of pretending to be a girl locked in a basement, claiming abuse and calling authorities for help.

So if this Swinton woman does indeed turn out to have faked the "Sarah" call, it's national news because (a) this Texas polygamy cult story has been all over cable TV news, and (b) well . . . Rusty Shackleford:

Rozita Swinton, the woman arrested today for falsely tipping off the police that she was an abused child bride at the FLDS polygamy cult in Texas is a PLEDGED BARACK OBAMA STATE DELEGATE!!

Rusty links to Patterico, who discovered the Obama angle. Rusty's finely tuned B.S. detector led him to suspect something fishy about this teen-bride story from the get-go. If it is indeed true that Swinton faked the raped-and-abused-virgin-cult-teen call -- man!

A freaking Obama delegate! Does it get any weirder than that? I'm just wondering what her motive could have been.

UPDATE: Houston Chronicle:

It sounded so genuine: a terrified voice of a young girl expressing fear that if rescued from a religious cult, blacks might harm her.
The calls to the Child Protection Project, run by a former member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were recorded at the request of the Texas Rangers. . . .
The calls to the former sect member, meanwhile, led the Rangers to Colorado Springs, Colo., where police Wednesday arrested Rozita Swinton, a 33-year-old black woman. . . .
Child Protection Project founder Linda Walker and the Phoenix-based group's executive director, Flora Jessop, said Friday they were stunned when they learned the woman's identity.
"In her little baby voice, she said, 'If you rescue me, and I get out of here, do you think the black people will hurt me?' "
Walker said. "She had done her homework. She knew it was a racist cult. We know that these kids are very frightened of black people.
"The Texas Rangers told us she was obsessed with the FLDS. They confiscated tons of material on the FLDS (in the search of Swinton's home). She even gave real addresses and real names of FLDS people."
Walker and Jessop hesitated to say that Swinton was the person who called the Texas hot line to describe sexual and physical abuse by a 50-year-old husband at the ranch outside Eldorado, but they endorsed the resulting actions of Texas authorities.
"Regardless of who made these calls, the system worked exactly as it was supposed to work," said Jessop, a former FLDS member whose cousin, Merrill Jessop, runs the ranch.

Oh, man! How totally off-the-wall can a news story get? So even though it appears that a hoax call led to the raid, this lady says "the system worked exactly as it was supposed to work"?

Note the bizarre circularity of this thing:

• Critics of FLDS publish material detailing bizarre cult practices and beliefs, including racism.
• Black woman becomes obsessed with FLDS, collects material from critics.
• Officials get call from black woman, pretending to be cult victim, expressing racist fears.
• Based on hoax call, officials raid compound, seize 416 children.
• Call is exposed as hoax, black woman arrested.

And she's an Obama delegate! I'm sure the Clinton campaign brain trust is huddled up trying to figure out some way to exploit this for the Pennsylvania primary. Maybe George Stephanopoulos can ask a question about it on "This Week" . . .

UPDATE II: Linked by Dad29, who says, "One is reminded of the phone call which engendered the Lawrence case." Indeed -- also a Texas case.

It's good to be the kleptocrat!

Russian gossips are whispering about Vladimir Putin and a 24-year-old gymnast:

This sudden frenzied interest in a woman who, until yesterday, was frankly a rather obscure Russian athlete, comes after a Moscow newspaper reported that Mr Putin recently split with Ludmilla and is preparing to marry the young and very pretty Miss Kabaeva.
Mr Putin today appeared to relish being linked to a beautiful gymnast less than half his age as he gave a press conference alongside Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi -- himself no stranger to allegations of womanising.
Denying the claims of a divorce and marriage plans, 55-year-old Mr Putin seemed to enjoy playing up the image of a ladies' man.
"In other publications of the same type, the names of other successful, beautiful young women from Russia are mentioned," he said. "I think it won't be unexpected if I say that I like them all -- just as I like all Russian women."

All in all, I'd rather have a president who was rumored to have an affair with the impressively agile Alina Kabaeva than to have a president who was rumored to have an affair with a telecom lobbyist.

BTW, the Daily Mail's headline writer misuses the word "nubile," a word specific to young women, meaning "of marriageable age," and derived from the same Latin root as "nuptial." To call Miss Kabaeva a "nubile 24-year-old" is redundant. All unmarried 24-year-old women are "nubile."

"Nubile" is one of those words whose meaning gets corrupted by writers who read it in a book and, from the context, think they know what it means, then use it in that (mistaken) sense. The misusage then gets picked up by another half-ignorant writer, and thus transmitted to other readers. Bad usage spreads like an etymological virus.

So, to clear up the misconception, I will state clearly that "nubile" is not a synonym for "sexy" or "hot" or "hard body" -- all terms that could be applied to Putin's putative paramour with some justice.

I've gotten used to corrupt politicians, but corrupt language still bothers me.

Deport the Pope?

I think that's what Michelle Malkin's saying:

Open borders benefit Catholic churches looking to fill their pews and collection baskets. The Vatican and American bishops, led by radical L.A. Cardinal Roger Mahony, have long promoted immigration anarchy and lawlesness. Their campaign continues . . .

And then this AP story:

"Americans have always been a people of hope," he said. "Your ancestors came to this country with the experience of finding new freedom and opportunity.
"To be sure, this promise was not experienced by all the inhabitants of this land; one thinks of the injustices endured by the native American peoples and by those brought here forcibly from Africa as slaves." . . .
Following a White House visit, a joint statement from the U.S. and the Vatican hinted that Benedict raised concerns with President Bush about punitive immigration laws. It said the leaders discussed "the need for a coordinated policy regarding immigration, especially the humane treatment of immigrants and the well-being of their families."

You want to talk about "injustices," Herr Ratzinger? No, I don't think you want to go there.

Instead, let's talk about that little American history lesson you recited. I don't know about other people's ancestors, but my ancestors came over in wooden sailing ships, at a time when the trans-Atlantic crossing was a dangerous journey. My ancestors risked their lives to reach an America that was then a roadless wilderness of dark forests, wild beasts, deadly diseases and (potentially) hostile savages.

My ancestors didn't just hop a bus to Laredo or book a flight to LAX. My ancestors didn't overstay a tourist visa. My ancestors didn't come to a fully developed industrial nation of 300 million people, a representative democracy c0mplete with air conditioning, cable TV, interstate highways, public schools, and a generous welfare state.

My ancestors fought and bled for America. Dad took a nice hunk of shrapnel while fighting the Nazis in France. So, please, Herr Ratzinger, don't talk to me about my ancestors as if their experience somehow legitimizes your open-borders ideology.

That kind of moral-equivalence crap doesn't fool me. America is our country, and if somebody else wants to come here, they have to ask our permission and follow our laws.

Auf Wiedersehen.

Dean's thumb on the scales

Obama bombs in a debate, and suddenly somebody is not willing to wait until the primary voters have their say:

An increasingly firm Howard Dean told CNN again Thursday that he needs superdelegates to say who they’re for – and “I need them to say who they’re for starting now.”
“We cannot give up two or three months of active campaigning and healing time,” the Democratic National Committee Chairman told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “We’ve got to know who our nominee is.”

Dean's hostility toward the Clinton machine is well known so his push for an early commitment is intended to help Obama. The superdelegates aren't helping Hillary:

[I]nterviews on Thursday with a cross-section of these superdelegates — members of Congress, elected officials and party leaders — showed that none had been persuaded much by her attacks on Mr. Obama’s strength as a potential Democratic nominee, his recent gaffes and his relationships with his former pastor and with a onetime member of the Weather Underground.
In fact, the Obama campaign announced endorsements from two more superdelegates on Thursday, after rolling out three on Wednesday and two others since late last week in what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated show of strength before Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary.

Obama's orchestra of endorsements continues:

If the Democratic presidential race were a poker game, by now you'd have to suspect that Barack Obama's campaign is dealing from the bottom of the deck: Rarely a day goes by when it doesn't slap another ace down on the table. The aces in this (possibly strained) metaphor are endorsements, and it often seems as if the Obama operation has an inexhaustible supply at its disposal. In the past week alone, it has announced the support of congressmen from North Carolina and Indiana; the Utah state party chair; the Oklahoma state party's chief fundraiser; 25 South Dakota state legislators; the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers; and, not least, The Boss. Some of these endorsers are super-delegates, and thus of no small consequence to the outcome of the race. Others are simply window-dressing, deployed to create a sense of ineluctable momentum in Obama's direction. But none have the particular resonance of the endorsement that's coming -- unbeknownst to the campaign -- a little later today.
The endorsement in question is that of Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Labor and a friend of both the former president and his wife for four decades. Around 1:00pm EST, Reich informs me, he intends formally to declare his support for Obama on his blog.

Robert Reich, the Red Dwarf. A small endorsment, as it were. Despite all this strategic pressure from Dean and the Obama campaign, Hillary still sees hope:

With Sen. Hillary Clinton widely expected to win Pennsylvania's Democratic primary on Tuesday, most of the focus is on the margin. Anything less than a double-digit victory could solidify the perception that Illinois Sen. Barack Obama is the inevitable Democratic nominee, sparking a flow of superdelegates to his side.
But even if Sen. Clinton wins strongly, she still will remain behind in delegates, so her goal must be to change the dynamic of the race, raising doubts about Sen. Obama's ability to carry states like Pennsylvania and lifting her chances of replicating the win in Indiana on May 6.
Most important, a strong Clinton victory would send a message to the superdelegates -- whose support she needs to win the nomination -- or might at least persuade them to stay neutral longer to see if a similar pattern plays out through May.

When I saw Hillary in Greensburg, Pa., last month, I was impressed with her apparent determination to stick it out all the way to the convention. She may lose, but she won't quit. That's an important distinction, and she'd rather be a loser than a quitter.

(Links via Memeorandum.) Pro-Hillary blogger Taylor Marsh also sees Dean's move as a "freaked out" reaction to the debate.

UPDATE: Further evidence of the debate freakout motive from MoveOn.org, which declares that the ABC News moderators "hurt the country" by asking Obama tough questions. Michelle Malkin:

The Soros water-carriers say they will run an ad against ABC -- Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulous photoshopped as Hitler and Eva Braun? Nah, too subtle -- if they gather 100,000 signatures.

Ah, now we see the puppet strings. Remember in 2004 when MoveOn.org declared their ownership of the Democratic Party and installed Howard Dean as DNC chief? That alliance is now trying to push Hillary out of the race, so the Deaniacs can avenge his 2004 primary defeat. It's like George McGovern's nomination '72 vindicating the Gene McCarthy '68 campaign. If the analogy holds true, that means John McCain is . . . Richard Nixon?

Meanwhile, Ed Morrisey gives a hearty "yeeargh!":

Dean can only stop this runaway train if he can convince one candidate or the other to withdraw. If Hillary wins Pennsylvania by anything more than three points, he won’t have a prayer of succeeding.

Bill Ayers: Online terrorist

Garance Franke-Ruta notes that Bill Ayers is now part of the blogosphere:

It turns out that Ayers -- known in Chicago as Bill -- is not much of a fan of how he has been characterized in the press recently, either. And so he's taken to his blog, billayers.wordpress.com, to write about it. On April 6, Ayers responded to his increasingly prominent role in the Democratic presidential nominating contest and what he described as "some fantastic assertions about what I did, what I said, and what I believe," including accusations that he is "an unrepentant terrorist" . . .
In fact, Ayers says, those who tied to stop the "illegal, murderous, imperial war against Viet Nam ... recognize that our efforts were inadequate: the war dragged on for a decade, thousands were slaughtered every week, and we couldn't stop it. In the end the U.S. military was defeated and the war ended, but we surely didn't do enough."
Nor does Ayers believe his actions with the Weather Underground were terrorism. "I've never advocated terrorism, never participated in it, never defended it. The U.S. government, by contrast, does it routinely and defends the use of it in its own cause consistently," he wrote.

Ayers was the leader of a Marxist terror cult that planted bombs and called for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government. He can spin it any way he wants, he can try to define his crimes out of existence, but the facts are the facts. Does Ayers really expect us to believe that the infamous 1969 "Days of Rage" in Chicago were not terrorism?

Ayers tries to fool people into believing Weather Underground was strictly an anti-Vietnam protest group. In fact, Ayers and his Underground colleagues continued to advocate revolution long after U.S. troops were withdrawn from Vietnam, and their terrorism did not end with the bombings of the 1970s.

Ever hear of the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery? That was perpetrated by some of Ayers' radical comrades, including one of his former disciples, Kathy Boudin. So if the Weather Underground was all about ending the "imperial war against Viet Nam," why were Ayers' disciples still engaged in terrorist crimes more than five years after the fall of Saigon?

The '60s Left still seems to believe its own propaganda, but there's no reason that the rest of us have to buy into their lies.

McCain's 'unorthodox strategy'

• Step One: Win Republican nomination.
• Step Two: Lose in November.

Pretty simple, but Jonathan Martin tries to make is seem . . . nuanced:

For reasons of financial necessity, personal preference and plain politics, John McCain is gearing up to run one of the least traditional presidential campaigns in recent history.
The problem is that even prominent strategists within McCain’s own party wonder if his unorthodox strategy will work.
Facing the prospect of competing against a Democrat who is on track to shatter every fundraising record — and confronted by his own inability to rake in large bundles of cash — McCain and his keyadvisers have largely been forced into devising a three-pronged strategy that they hope can turn their general election weaknesses into strengths.
McCain will lean heavily on the well-funded Republican National Committee. He will merge key functions of his campaign hierarchy with the RNC while also relying on an unconventional structure of 10 regional campaign mangers.
And finally — and perhaps most importantly — McCain will rely on free media to an unprecedented degree to get out his message in a fashion that aims to not only minimize his financial disadvantage but also drive a triangulated contrast among himself, the Democratic nominee and President Bush.

"Free media" = MSM. Yeah, we all know how the MSM love to lavish positive coverage on Republicans. This plan is genius -- genius, I tell you!

Also note that the McCain campaign is planning to raid the RNC treasury big-time. So anybody who gives a dime to the RNC will effectively be giving money directly to McCain '08. News of that scheme ought to dry up the RNC's small-dollar donations overnight.

Am I the only one who sees the omens of a colossal Republican disaster in November?