A REAL TERROR-FRIENDLY "WALL" THAT NO RIGHT-WINGER WILL EVER DENOUNCE
A few years ago, right-wingers became obsessed with the notion that a memo written by Clinton-era deputy attorney general Jamie Gorelick put in place a "wall" that prevented intelligence agencies and law enforcement from sharing information that might have prevented the 9/11 attacks. In fact, the 9/11 Commission report stated that the "wall" was "a series of restrictions between and within agencies constructed over 60 years," and its principles were reauthorized by John Ashcroft's Justice Department. What's more, the "wall" did not actually restrict the sharing of information between the FBI and the Defense Department.
None of this, of course, has stopped the right from continuing to howl. However, if what Newsweek's Mike Isikoff reported last night is true, there is a real "wall" that might have kept authorities from intervening to prevent the Fort Hood shooting -- but don't expect any star-spangled right-winger to demand its removal:
...since last December, the FBI monitored from 10 to 20 “communications” between suspected Fort Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan and an overseas terror suspect...
But ... counterterror officials were never told about one key piece of investigative information: that Hasan had purchased a high-powered semiautomatic pistol on Aug. 1, just weeks after he was transferred by the Army to Fort Hood. Such gun purchases automatically trigger a federally mandated background check.
Absent the federally collected data that Hasan was arming himself with a Belgian-made FN Herstal 5.7 pistol -- a weapon that gun-control groups have portrayed as a "cop killer" -- the bureau's counterterrorism officials found there was insufficient grounds to raise additional concerns about Hassan within the government.
"From an investigative standpoint, there’s all kind of information we'd like to know," said one senior U.S. government investigator when asked whether the federally collected gun data about Hasan’s weapons purchase might have influenced the bureau's handling of his case.
... investigators stressed that under existing federal law, there are tight restrictions imposed by Congress about sharing any such information even within the FBI.
... after the check is conducted, and an individual is cleared to buy his gun, the FBI cannot retain the data or share any information about the gun purchase -- even with other bureau officials charged with preventing terror attacks.
The FBI has chafed under these restrictions in the past....
Whether the Hasan case prompts another look at those restrictions -- by the Democratic controlled Congress or the Obama Justice Department -- is one question sure to be asked in the weeks ahead.
You're joking about that last part, aren't you, Michael? Do you actually believe anyone in power would dare to propose tightening a restriction on firearm ownership in this country? Even if a series of terrorist attacks took advantage of this restraint on information-sharing, nothing would be done. This is America; the gun is sacred. Nothing to see here -- move along.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query malik hasan. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query malik hasan. Sort by date Show all posts
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Thursday, November 05, 2009
MASS SHOOTING AT FORT HOOD
I'm speechless.
The cries of "JIHAD!" have already started on the right, of course, based on the name of now-dead shooter Major Malik Nadal Hasan.
And I wonder who'll be the first prominent right-winger to say nothing like this could have happened on Bush's watch, even though something, y'know, a couple hundred times more deadly actually did.
*****
LATER: There's a good chance you already know this, but AP is reporting that Hasan came under investigation by the military six months ago, for Web postings "that discussed suicide bombings and other threats," including this one, which seems to defend suicide bombing. England's Telegraph quotes a retired colonel, Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan and says he "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," claims Lee also made in this interview with Shepard Smith of Fox News (in which I have to say he sounds sincere and believable, though I'm not really qualified to judge):
I'm speechless.
The cries of "JIHAD!" have already started on the right, of course, based on the name of now-dead shooter Major Malik Nadal Hasan.
And I wonder who'll be the first prominent right-winger to say nothing like this could have happened on Bush's watch, even though something, y'know, a couple hundred times more deadly actually did.
*****
LATER: There's a good chance you already know this, but AP is reporting that Hasan came under investigation by the military six months ago, for Web postings "that discussed suicide bombings and other threats," including this one, which seems to defend suicide bombing. England's Telegraph quotes a retired colonel, Terry Lee, who worked with Hasan and says he "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," claims Lee also made in this interview with Shepard Smith of Fox News (in which I have to say he sounds sincere and believable, though I'm not really qualified to judge):
Monday, November 09, 2009
THIS IS GOING TO BE REALLY, REALLY TOXIC
Tunku Varadarajan of Forbes has just unleashed an extremely potent toxin on the atmosphere in this country, coining a repulsive phrase that's going to go viral very quickly:
'Going Muslim'
"Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues.
As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis....
Some words and phrases have real power. Joe the Plumber's use of the word "socialist" has really hurt Barack Obama and the Democrats. "Going Muslim" is just, well, a staggeringly vile group slander that's going to have similar power (I don't know of any lefty who's ever called an abortion-clinic bombing "Going Christian," or an opponent of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians who's called any of the country's tactics "Going Jewish." If those sound awfuly harsh, well, that's how "Going Muslim" sounds, too.)
This phrase has already been welcomed with delight at Instapundit and RedState. The article is Robert Stacy McCain's top headline right now. This phrase will cross over to talk radio and possibly Fox soon. It's entering the language. (It's certainly a lot more potent than the old favorite on the right, "sudden jihad syndrome.") Ready for non-Muslim shooters to be described as "going Muslim"? That ought to make this a nicer country, right?
Varadarajan is a fellow at Stanford's right-wing Hoover Institution. He's a business professor at NYU and a former Wall Street Journal editor and editorialist (where, to his credit, he accurately described Oriana Fallaci's late-life pronouncements about Muslims excessive). He doesn't quite seem like the kind of guy to coin a phrase so toxic Ann Coulter would kill for it. But he has, and he's done more harm to our civic discourse than he can imagine.
Tunku Varadarajan of Forbes has just unleashed an extremely potent toxin on the atmosphere in this country, coining a repulsive phrase that's going to go viral very quickly:
'Going Muslim'
"Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues.
As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis....
Some words and phrases have real power. Joe the Plumber's use of the word "socialist" has really hurt Barack Obama and the Democrats. "Going Muslim" is just, well, a staggeringly vile group slander that's going to have similar power (I don't know of any lefty who's ever called an abortion-clinic bombing "Going Christian," or an opponent of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians who's called any of the country's tactics "Going Jewish." If those sound awfuly harsh, well, that's how "Going Muslim" sounds, too.)
This phrase has already been welcomed with delight at Instapundit and RedState. The article is Robert Stacy McCain's top headline right now. This phrase will cross over to talk radio and possibly Fox soon. It's entering the language. (It's certainly a lot more potent than the old favorite on the right, "sudden jihad syndrome.") Ready for non-Muslim shooters to be described as "going Muslim"? That ought to make this a nicer country, right?
Varadarajan is a fellow at Stanford's right-wing Hoover Institution. He's a business professor at NYU and a former Wall Street Journal editor and editorialist (where, to his credit, he accurately described Oriana Fallaci's late-life pronouncements about Muslims excessive). He doesn't quite seem like the kind of guy to coin a phrase so toxic Ann Coulter would kill for it. But he has, and he's done more harm to our civic discourse than he can imagine.
RELIGIOUS BIGOTRY -- NOT
In response to the New York Times article "Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage," Donald Douglas of the righty blog American Power writes:
For the New York Times, there's an agenda -- an agenda of political correctness that bends over backwards not to alienate the Muslim community and the apologist for fanatical Islamism. Of course, if this had been an evangelical Christian opening fire at a conference of imams or murdering another abortion doctor, there'd be no talk of not "rushing to conclusions." Christians as a body would have been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, found "consumed be hatred" and "intolerant of diversity."
And, well, he's right -- there's no way an early story on a Christian-right murderer would have contained a sentence like this:
Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that they believed it was "the act of an isolated individual" but that they were also looking into "his history, his family, his associates."
No, wait, I'm sorry -- that was from New York Times coverage of a murder in which a Christian rightist has been charged -- a story about the assassination of Dr. George Tiller entitled "Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church," from May 31, 2009.
Number of times the word "Christian" appears in that story: zero.
Number of times the word "Christian" appears in "Seeking Clues on Suspect in Shooting of Doctor," published by The New York Times the following day: zero.
Hell, even though it's called "The Wages of Hate," the word "Christian" doesn't even appear in Judith Warner's Times blog post on the subject, from June 11.
And there was this in the June 7 Times:
Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller's clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. [Troy] Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, "This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine."
... "I have been racking my brain to see if there was something I could have done," Mr. Newman said of Mr. Roeder.
Dr. Tiller's clinic was the one -- the big one -- Mr. Newman had always hoped to close. Still, he said, if it closed now it would be no victory for Operation Rescue.
"Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason," he said. "Every kook in the world will get some notion."
And on June 26, the Times quoted Mark S. Gietzen, the chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life:
As he explained himself, Mr. Gietzen did something unexpected. He spoke admiringly of the man he reflexively referred to as "Abortionist Tiller." He said he was "very smart" and a "great businessman." He said that if he had been in town he would have attended Dr. Tiller's funeral to pay his respects.
"A worthy adversary," he said. "He was right back at us."
If that's how the Times indicates that it believes the anti-abortion movement is "consumed by hatred," I'm struggling to imagine how the stories would read if criticism were withheld.
*****
(By contrast, the article on the Fort Hood shooter that so offends Mr. Douglas contains forms of the word "Muslim" 8 times, of "Islam" 5 times, and "Arab" 3 times. Oh, and the first sentence is "It was still dark on Thursday when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan left his aging apartment complex to attend 6 a.m. prayers at the brick mosque near Fort Hood." That's Douglas's idea of a story avoiding the subject of Islam.)
In response to the New York Times article "Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage," Donald Douglas of the righty blog American Power writes:
For the New York Times, there's an agenda -- an agenda of political correctness that bends over backwards not to alienate the Muslim community and the apologist for fanatical Islamism. Of course, if this had been an evangelical Christian opening fire at a conference of imams or murdering another abortion doctor, there'd be no talk of not "rushing to conclusions." Christians as a body would have been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion, found "consumed be hatred" and "intolerant of diversity."
And, well, he's right -- there's no way an early story on a Christian-right murderer would have contained a sentence like this:
Officials offered little insight into the motive, saying that they believed it was "the act of an isolated individual" but that they were also looking into "his history, his family, his associates."
No, wait, I'm sorry -- that was from New York Times coverage of a murder in which a Christian rightist has been charged -- a story about the assassination of Dr. George Tiller entitled "Abortion Doctor Shot to Death in Kansas Church," from May 31, 2009.
Number of times the word "Christian" appears in that story: zero.
Number of times the word "Christian" appears in "Seeking Clues on Suspect in Shooting of Doctor," published by The New York Times the following day: zero.
Hell, even though it's called "The Wages of Hate," the word "Christian" doesn't even appear in Judith Warner's Times blog post on the subject, from June 11.
And there was this in the June 7 Times:
Although Operation Rescue worked for years to close down Dr. Tiller's clinic, his death was never the outcome Mr. [Troy] Newman wished for, he said. Of the man charged with killing Dr. Tiller, he tearfully said, "This idiot did more to damage the pro-life movement than you can imagine."
... "I have been racking my brain to see if there was something I could have done," Mr. Newman said of Mr. Roeder.
Dr. Tiller's clinic was the one -- the big one -- Mr. Newman had always hoped to close. Still, he said, if it closed now it would be no victory for Operation Rescue.
"Good God, do not close this abortion clinic for this reason," he said. "Every kook in the world will get some notion."
And on June 26, the Times quoted Mark S. Gietzen, the chairman of the Kansas Coalition for Life:
As he explained himself, Mr. Gietzen did something unexpected. He spoke admiringly of the man he reflexively referred to as "Abortionist Tiller." He said he was "very smart" and a "great businessman." He said that if he had been in town he would have attended Dr. Tiller's funeral to pay his respects.
"A worthy adversary," he said. "He was right back at us."
If that's how the Times indicates that it believes the anti-abortion movement is "consumed by hatred," I'm struggling to imagine how the stories would read if criticism were withheld.
*****
(By contrast, the article on the Fort Hood shooter that so offends Mr. Douglas contains forms of the word "Muslim" 8 times, of "Islam" 5 times, and "Arab" 3 times. Oh, and the first sentence is "It was still dark on Thursday when Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan left his aging apartment complex to attend 6 a.m. prayers at the brick mosque near Fort Hood." That's Douglas's idea of a story avoiding the subject of Islam.)
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
HOW MANY THINGS CAN A FOX ANALYST GET WRONG IN LESS THAN A MINUTE?
Via Mediaite, David at Crooks and Liars flags this:
Besides, as David points out at C&L,
Back to Napolitano:
Napolitano starts the quoted spiel at 39 seconds into the clip posted below. The end of what's quoted comes at about 1:32.
A lot of lies, stupidity, and misinformation in less than a minute.
Via Mediaite, David at Crooks and Liars flags this:
Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano is insisting that it was "not domestic terrorism" for a white supremacist to shoot seven people dead at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin....Forget the legal definition for a second. Let's think about this logically. Is Napolitano saying that if the 9/11 plotters had sent one plane rather than four, and flown it into the Pentagon, or into just one of the Twin Towers (or the Sears Tower or the Empire State Building or the Golden Gate Bridge), and killed hundreds or maybe a thousand people -- is he saying he would not consider that terrorism? Seriously? Because it wasn't two or more acts? Is he willing to go on Fox and say that?
"The legal definition of terrorism is two or more acts of violence intended to change the policy of the government, by scaring the population or by scaring the government," Napolitano told the hosts of Fox & Friends on Tuesday. "That does not appear to be what happened in this case."
Besides, as David points out at C&L,
The FBI defines terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof in furtherance of political or social objectives."Nothing about "two acts" at all.
Back to Napolitano:
"Page appears to be -- appears, he's dead -- appears to have been a disgruntled nut job who hated Muslims, didn't know the difference between Sikhs and Muslims and thought by killing the Sikhs he was somehow going to eliminate the Muslim population. It is an absurd, tortured way of thinking but it is not an act of domestic terrorism."At this point, do we have any evidence that Wade Page thought Sikhs were Muslims? The SOB hated everybody who wasn't of European descent. And whatever group he thought he was attacking, how is what he did not (to use Nspolitano's own words) "scaring the population" of that group? How is it not intimidation?
[Napolitano] continued: "On the other hand, the Ft. Hood shooter [Nidal Malik Hasan] who killed military in the place where they worked while damning and condemning the behavior of the government -- the employer of the people that he killed -- the government refuses to call that an act of domestic terrorism."Except that that's not true:
The shooting rampage at a U.S. Army base in November was "an act of terrorism," an Obama administration official said on Friday....That was a couple of months after the shooting -- but Napolitano uses the present tense. He says the administration "refuses" to use that designation. The administration does not refuse. (And, of course, it's apples and oranges, because the federal government hasn't officially designated the Wisconsin incident as terrorism.)
Napolitano starts the quoted spiel at 39 seconds into the clip posted below. The end of what's quoted comes at about 1:32.
A lot of lies, stupidity, and misinformation in less than a minute.
Friday, November 06, 2009
A CONSPIRACY SO VAST
Today:
A 40-year-old man who was reportedly fired two years ago from an engineering firm apparently returned to that office Friday and shot six people, killing one....
Police said Jason Rodriguez, 40, surrendered to police and was taken into custody at his mother's house outside of Orlando....
Rodriguez is a former employee of Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc....
Company chief financial officer Ken Jacobson said that Rodriguez was fired in June 2007 after working as a beginning engineer at the firm for 11 months. Jacobson said his "work product wasn't up to the necessary standards." ...
Yesterday:
A source tells NPR's Joseph Shapiro that [Major Nidal Malik] Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.
It's politically incorrect to say so, but it's clear that both of these killings were acts of reprimandist terrorism. In all likelihood, both were planned in reprimandist sleeper cells.
Bleeding-heart liberals force our society to suppress the truth -- that reprimanded workers form a fifth column in America, dedicated to violence against the gainfully employed. Reprimanded workers are unfit to live freely among us, but liberalism prevents us from locking up, deporting, or or executing them all.
If we were allowed to call this violent reprimandist ideology what it is, we could begin to turn the tide against this jihad. Alas, however, we will continue to be unsafe, so long as liberals insist that reprimanded workers have "rights."
Today:
A 40-year-old man who was reportedly fired two years ago from an engineering firm apparently returned to that office Friday and shot six people, killing one....
Police said Jason Rodriguez, 40, surrendered to police and was taken into custody at his mother's house outside of Orlando....
Rodriguez is a former employee of Reynolds, Smith and Hills Inc....
Company chief financial officer Ken Jacobson said that Rodriguez was fired in June 2007 after working as a beginning engineer at the firm for 11 months. Jacobson said his "work product wasn't up to the necessary standards." ...
Yesterday:
A source tells NPR's Joseph Shapiro that [Major Nidal Malik] Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.
It's politically incorrect to say so, but it's clear that both of these killings were acts of reprimandist terrorism. In all likelihood, both were planned in reprimandist sleeper cells.
Bleeding-heart liberals force our society to suppress the truth -- that reprimanded workers form a fifth column in America, dedicated to violence against the gainfully employed. Reprimanded workers are unfit to live freely among us, but liberalism prevents us from locking up, deporting, or or executing them all.
If we were allowed to call this violent reprimandist ideology what it is, we could begin to turn the tide against this jihad. Alas, however, we will continue to be unsafe, so long as liberals insist that reprimanded workers have "rights."
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
USING DEAD PEOPLE TO TROLL FOR E-MAIL ADDRESSES
I wandered over to this National Review page a few hours ago and saw two versions of this ad:
Note the fine print at the bottom: PAID FOR BY THE DAVID HOROWITZ FREEDOM CENTER. When I clicked, I was taken this petition page, copyrighted in the name of FrontPageMagazine.com:
On November 5, 2009, a radical Islamic terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan, massacred 13 American soldiers and wounded 29 more at Fort Hood. Instead of recognizing it as a terrorist attack, Barack Obama categorized it as "work place violence" effectively denying soldiers who lost their lives that day the military medals they are due for their heroic service -- specifically the Purple Heart.
The military has a long record of properly honoring those who are killed in the line of duty -- a record broken with the Fort Hood Massacre. The military awarded 78 medals after Pearl Harbor was attacked. After September 11, 2001, it created a new medal to recognize all of the heroes that died or were injured in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The men and women of Fort Hood deserve recognition for their sacrifice! Help right this wrong today.
Sign the Petition
I see petition ads all over the place, particularly at right-wing sites. They don't offend me much -- if you can't figure out that the advertisers are asking for your opinion in order to plant a few tracking cookies on your computer and obtain your e-mail address, well, you probably also think three-card monte is legit. Caveat emptor and all that.
But as techniques for obtaining user data go, this one seems particularly loathsome. I don't care about the specifics of the political posturing -- these people were brutally murdered and you look at their deaths as a marketing opportunity?
I didn't think I could find David Horowitz more reprehensible than I already did, but my opinion of him has hit an even lower low.
I wandered over to this National Review page a few hours ago and saw two versions of this ad:
Note the fine print at the bottom: PAID FOR BY THE DAVID HOROWITZ FREEDOM CENTER. When I clicked, I was taken this petition page, copyrighted in the name of FrontPageMagazine.com:
On November 5, 2009, a radical Islamic terrorist, Nidal Malik Hasan, massacred 13 American soldiers and wounded 29 more at Fort Hood. Instead of recognizing it as a terrorist attack, Barack Obama categorized it as "work place violence" effectively denying soldiers who lost their lives that day the military medals they are due for their heroic service -- specifically the Purple Heart.
The military has a long record of properly honoring those who are killed in the line of duty -- a record broken with the Fort Hood Massacre. The military awarded 78 medals after Pearl Harbor was attacked. After September 11, 2001, it created a new medal to recognize all of the heroes that died or were injured in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The men and women of Fort Hood deserve recognition for their sacrifice! Help right this wrong today.
Sign the Petition
I see petition ads all over the place, particularly at right-wing sites. They don't offend me much -- if you can't figure out that the advertisers are asking for your opinion in order to plant a few tracking cookies on your computer and obtain your e-mail address, well, you probably also think three-card monte is legit. Caveat emptor and all that.
But as techniques for obtaining user data go, this one seems particularly loathsome. I don't care about the specifics of the political posturing -- these people were brutally murdered and you look at their deaths as a marketing opportunity?
I didn't think I could find David Horowitz more reprehensible than I already did, but my opinion of him has hit an even lower low.
Friday, November 06, 2009
FUNNY THING ABOUT RIGHT WINGERS
So far, I haven't heard anyone on the right saying that the authorities shouldn't charge Malik Nidal Hassan with a hate crime because doing so would be a totalitarian, Orwellian criminalization of a thoughtcrime. But surely they'll want to make that point firmly and decisively in the days to come ... right?
****
And I'm confused. Right-wingers (NewsBusters in particular) have told us for years that the "liberal media" doesn't like to acknowledge certain demographic information about certain suspects in horrible crimes ... but right now CNN is prominently highlighting a convenience-store surveillance video showing Hasan in a traditional Middle Eastern robe and skullcap (the story is headlined "Fort Hood Suspect Seemed 'Cool, Calm, Religious'"), while the front pages of Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post prominently feature stories that claim Nidal shouted "Allahu akbar!" before shooting (a claim made by Fort Hood's commanding officer in an interview on the allegedly arch-liberal NBC). How can this be? Where's the liberal cover-up? And if there's no cover-up, gosh, why isn't NewsBusters heaping these news outlets with praise?
(The same right-wingers, of course, went to great pains to make the case that James von Brunn, the man charged with shooting up the Holocaust Museum, was a liberal. But our side, naturally, is the guilty side.)
So far, I haven't heard anyone on the right saying that the authorities shouldn't charge Malik Nidal Hassan with a hate crime because doing so would be a totalitarian, Orwellian criminalization of a thoughtcrime. But surely they'll want to make that point firmly and decisively in the days to come ... right?
****
And I'm confused. Right-wingers (NewsBusters in particular) have told us for years that the "liberal media" doesn't like to acknowledge certain demographic information about certain suspects in horrible crimes ... but right now CNN is prominently highlighting a convenience-store surveillance video showing Hasan in a traditional Middle Eastern robe and skullcap (the story is headlined "Fort Hood Suspect Seemed 'Cool, Calm, Religious'"), while the front pages of Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Post prominently feature stories that claim Nidal shouted "Allahu akbar!" before shooting (a claim made by Fort Hood's commanding officer in an interview on the allegedly arch-liberal NBC). How can this be? Where's the liberal cover-up? And if there's no cover-up, gosh, why isn't NewsBusters heaping these news outlets with praise?
(The same right-wingers, of course, went to great pains to make the case that James von Brunn, the man charged with shooting up the Holocaust Museum, was a liberal. But our side, naturally, is the guilty side.)
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