Where is the media's outrage and defense of the New York Times?

Now everyone knows that Karl Rove is out of his cage and on the loose.
There is NO question that he is the mastermind behind this unprecedented attack on the New York Times for last week’s publication of a story which “revealed” the existence of a clandestine/secret/undisclosed program to track the bank accounts of Americans and transactions from “suspect” foreign bank accounts – all in this continuing assault of citizens’ rights that the Bush Administration feels compelled to do in the name of “battlin’ terr-rah.”
Rove’s paw prints are all over this because, oops, two OTHER papers, the Los Angeles Times AND Wall Street Journal, also published the same information on the same day as the New York Times. However, only the New Yorkers, the “perceived” liberal, anti-conservative, anti-Bush Easterners, are under merciless attack from out-of-control Congressmen seeking charges of treason and espionage (GOP Peter King), from any right-wing talking head that can be found NOT subject to Viagra-induced probation and every governmental official that draws a paycheck from George W. Bush.
Never mind that this same President stood in front of the Treasury Department in 2003, with cameras rolling, and told the world of just such a policy being instituted. That doesn’t come into play.
What is completely a shock is the total lack of compadre support from other major newspapers! This COULD be any paper or media outlet! Or do you they (Times executive editor) Bill Keller should be tried as a spy for disclosing the truth (the story isn’t being denied; just its publication)?
This seems to go to the heart of the media member’s jobs. Is there any doubt remaining about the Bush White House’s attitude toward the press and its complete overwhelming preoccupation with keeping even the slight bit of information secret for that very reason … because they claim they can.
We continue to lose our rights as Americans on a daily basis so long as Bush and his cronies occupy the White House and Congress and the courts.
Until one day, there will be no more rights for any of us. Just our “security” as defined by a sacred few.
God HELP America!

A Father’s Day message in the living years

Before health issues kicked my career to the ditch, I was involved in Texas community journalism for 30 years. In that time period, I wrote more than 1,500 columns, on all topics imaginable – from sports to politics, religion to child-rearing, from farce to fantasy.
When asked (and it was often) when I would bring forth the next great American novel, I always told people that wasn’t my thing; I was a columnist. I liked the style, I liked the impact and I liked the length. As the John Belushi character accurately stated in the movie “Continental Divide,” “It’s just the right size for me.”
However, I have toyed and tinkered with a concept of re-packaging my very best columns into a compilation effort, reworking them as letters to my late father, in which I pretend that they are long, lost never-penned offerings that I probably should have taken the time – at some point – to write.
In truth, I am one of those “greeting card” kind of people who Hallmarks (yes, for this blog, it IS a verb) often – not just for Christmas or Valentine’s Day. I correspond on birthdays, anniversaries, St, Patrick’s Day and Chanukah. I do it if you’re sick, or happy, or if I miss you when you’re far away.
But it’s tough to “Hallmark” to someone who isn’t here anymore. Like one’s father. It’s even harder to put those thoughts in collective form and expect other people to buy them, read them and want to laugh, cry or think about the content. Some will just see it as an “issues” thing and they might be correct.
Enough paper has been shredded already on drafts and rewrites to restock the Sam Houston National Forest in East Texas. It hasn’t exactly come together like a well-made quiche, but when the inspiration strikes, I give it the old college try.
Except I’m not in college anymore and I am getting old.
Still, Father’s Day is approaching, and for many of us, there is no “father” to honor anymore … yet SO much still to say to him.
At each newspaper which employed me, I published the same Father’s Day tribute at least once following my Dad’s death in 1993. It contained the lyrics to a Grammy-nominated song by Mike and the Mechanics, “The Living Years.” The words speak of estrangement, regret and a man’s future without his rudder and the chorus ended with this line, “I wish I could have known him/In the living years.”
Instead of a greeting card, or two dozen chapters of reworked prose, I think I’d find an old postcard from a vacation trip – to California or Oregon or upstate New York or Mackinac Island, Mich. or the desert of Arizona – and write the following brief message:

Dear Dad,
Wishing you were here. Kids are growing. I’m surviving. Given all that has happened, good or bad, I’m happy.
And I wish I could have known you better in your living years.
Love, your son
Chuck

I’m not sure there’s enough postage to get that delivered.
My hope for this Father’s Day is for any of you with fathers still in their living years to jot down words of meaning; words of love; words of the heart – on a greeting card, postcard or, heck, a playing card. Put it in his hand and let him know YOU sent it and wrote it.
Tell him how you feel and try to get to know him. Again.
In the living years that are left.

Ann Coulter is a media whore

There are a few people in the political pundit world that are truly abhorrent, worthless and lower than a snake’s belly, to borrow a quaint West Texas phrase.
In my mind, the worst of the worst is Ann Coulter and her new “book,” “Godless: The Church of Liberalism,” is a prime example. She is what she is – a media whore, willing to say and write anything simply to sell herself.
To be frank, the only reason she gets the kind of publicity and attention is men’s willingness to want to fuck her. She’s blonde with a good body (slight horse face, though) and looks like she’d be a good roll in the sack. But she also gives the aura of being a woman who’d fuck and run, without one iota of any kind of feeling or soul.
But most men think, and daydream, with their dicks, so she goes to the top of most people’s list.
No better example of Coulter’s whore-like action than her appearance on the June 6 broadcast of NBC’s "Today," interviewed by host Matt Lauer. In a span of a few minutes, she smears the names of Jews, widows of 9/11, liberals and Christians (the real ones, not the Bush followers that only see God as just another political figure). Why “Today” would have her appear, the third time in a year, after the witty ditty about former co-host Katie Couric, whom Coulter called “the affable Eva Braun of morning TV,” is puzzling, at best.
The following is the transcript of her appearance, courtesy of NBC News and Media Matters for America. Read for yourselves.

LAUER: Let me give you some quotes from your book, all right?
COULTER: Yes.
LAUER: These are random. “Environmentalists’ energy plan is the repudiation of America and Christian destiny, which is Jet Skis, steak on the electric grill, hot showers, and night skiing.” “(L)iberalism is a religion.” “(A) comprehensive belief system denying the Christian belief in man’s immortal soul.” And you go on to say, “Liberalism is the opposition party to God.” How do you think Democrats who believe in God are going to feel about that statement?
COULTER: They probably won’t like it. They don’t like a lot of things I say.
LAUER: Is it a fair statement, do you think?
COULTER: Yes.
LAUER: How about this one?
COULTER: Yes. That’s why I wrote a book about it.
LAUER: Referring to liberals again: “To a liberal, 2,200 military deaths in the entire course of the war in Iraq is unconscionable, but 1.3 million aborted babies in America every year is something to celebrate.”
COULTER: Yes.
LAUER: Do you think people celebrate --
COULTER: Yes. They manifestly do. There are huge rallies for it. That is the one issue that is more important to the Democratic Party than any other.
LAUER: Do you think that people celebrate the right to choose or the actual abortion?
COULTER: The last candidate the Democrats got into the White House was Bill Clinton. I take that as a fair assessment of whom the Democrats will choose as their representative. Bill Clinton sold out every single special interest group, the criminal rights group, the welfare bureaucrats. The one group he would not stand up to were the abortion ladies, vetoing bans on partial-birth abortion, a gruesome procedure, passed by overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate -- twice Clinton vetoed that. That tells you what the Democratic Party thinks about abortion.
LAUER: Do you believe everything in the book, or do you put some things in there just to cater to your base?
COULTER: No, of course, I believe everything.
LAUER. All right. On the 9-11 widows, and in particular a group that has been outspoken and critical of the administration: “These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks only happened to them.” “(T)hey believe the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently, denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process.”
And this part is the part I really need to talk to you about: “These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, revelling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much.”
COULTER: Yes.
LAUER: Because they dare to speak out?
COULTER: To speak out using the fact that they’re widows. This is the Left’s doctrine of infallibility. If they have a point to make about the 9-11 Commission, about how to fight the war on terrorism, how about sending in somebody we’re allowed to respond to? No, no, no, we always have to respond to someone who just had a family member die.
LAUER: But aren’t they the people in the middle of the story?
COULTER: Because then when we respond, “Oh, you’re questioning their authenticity.”
LAUER: So grieve, but grieve quietly?
COULTER: No, the story is an attack on the nation --
LAUER: And by the way --
COULTER: -- that requires a foreign policy response.
LAUER: And by the way --
COULTER: That does not entail the expertise --
LAUER: They also criticized the Clinton administration.
COULTER: No, not the ones I’m talking about.
LAUER: Yeah they have.
COULTER: Oh no, no, no.
LAUER: They have.
COULTER: No, no, no.
LAUER: But is your message to them: “Just grieve in --”
COULTER: No, no, no. They were cutting commercials for Kerry. They were using their grief in order to make a political point while preventing anyone from responding.
LAUER: So, if you lose a husband, you no longer have the right to have a political point of view?
COULTER: No, but don’t use the fact that you lost a husband as the basis for your being able to talk about it while preventing people from responding. Let Matt Lauer make the point. Let Bill Clinton make the point. Don’t put up someone I’m not allowed to respond to without questioning the authenticity of the grief.
LAUER: Well apparently you are allowed to respond to them.
COULTER: Well, yeah, I did.
LAUER: So, in other words --
COULTER: But that is the point of liberal infallibility, of putting up Cindy Sheehan, of putting out these widows, of putting up Joe Wilson: “No, no, no. You can’t respond.” It’s their doctrine of infallibility.
LAUER: But what I’m saying is --
COULTER: Have somebody else make the argument (inaudible).
LAUER: But what I’m saying is: I don’t think they’ve ever told you you can’t respond. So why can’t they --
COULTER: Look, you’re getting testy with me.
LAUER: No, I just -- I think it’s a -- I think it’s a dramatic statement. “These broads,” you know, “are millionaires ... stalked by grief-arazzi --”
COULTER: Yeah, you think I shouldn’t be able to respond to them.
LAUER: “I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ death so much?”
COULTER: Yes, they’re all over the news.
LAUER: The book is called Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Ann Coulter, always fun to have you.
COULTER: Hey, where’s Katie? Did she leave or something?
LAUER: She did.

A whore does anything to sell herself for money. It just isn’t only sex.
Ann Coulter is a media whore.