How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.

–Winston Churchill, The River War, 1899.

As the commentariat sharpens its pencils and waits for further information on the motives of the Army doctor responsible for the Fort Hood massacre to emerge, it seems safe to predict that the liberals will not identify Islam’s propensity to inculcate fanaticism, xenophobia, and murderous violence as the key factor.

Most likely, they will blame guns and, following several leading liberal social scientists, insufficient American domestication and statism. If Americans just bowed to Socialism and accepted the complete universal authority, supervision, and direction of the paternalist state along with Max Weber’s Gewaltmonopol des Staates, and gave up retarditaire habits of owning weapons and relying in extreme situations on self defense, then we would be civilized like Europeans.

Jill Lepore quotes some leading authorities in the New Yorker:

The United States has the highest homicide rate of any affluent democracy, nearly four times that of France and the United Kingdom, and six times that of Germany. Why? Historians haven’t often asked this question. Even historians who like to try to solve cold cases usually cede to sociologists and other social scientists the study of what makes murder rates rise and fall, or what might account for why one country is more murderous than another. Only in the nineteen-seventies did historians begin studying homicide in any systematic way. In the United States, that effort was led by Eric Monkkonen, who died in 2005, his promising work unfinished. Monkkonen’s research has been taken up by Randolph Roth, whose book “American Homicide” (Harvard; $45) offers a vast investigation of murder, in the aggregate, and over time. Roth’s argument is profoundly unsettling. There is and always has been, he claims, an American way of murder. It is the price of our politics. …

Pieter Spierenburg, a professor of historical criminology at Erasmus University, in Rotterdam, sifts through the evidence in “A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present” (Polity; $24.95). In Europe, homicide rates, conventionally represented as the number of murder victims per hundred thousand people in the population per year, have been falling for centuries. Spierenburg attributes this long decline to what the German sociologist Norbert Elias called the “civilizing process” (shorthand for a whole class of behaviors requiring physical restraint and self-control, right down to using a fork instead of eating with your hands or stabbing at your food with a knife), and to the growing power of the centralizing state to disarm civilians, control violence, enforce law and order, and, broadly, to hold a monopoly on the use of force. (Anthropologists sometimes talk about a related process, the replacement of a culture of honor with a culture of dignity.) In feuding medieval Europe, the murder rate hovered around thirty-five. Duels replaced feuds. Duels are more mannered; they also have a lower body count. By 1500, the murder rate in Western Europe had fallen to about twenty. Courts had replaced duels. By 1700, the murder rate had dropped to five. Today, that rate is generally well below two, where it has held steady, with minor fluctuations, for the past century.

The American homicide rate has been higher than Europe’s from the start, and higher at just about every stage since. It has also fluctuated, sometimes wildly. During the Colonial period, the homicide rate fell, but in the nineteenth century, while Europe’s kept sinking, the U.S. rate went up and up. In the twentieth century, the rate in the United States dropped to about five during the years following the Second World War, but then rose, reaching about eleven in 1991. It has since fallen once again, to just above five, a rate that is, nevertheless, twice that of any other affluent democracy.

What accounts for this remarkable difference? Guns leap to mind: in 2008, firearms were involved in two-thirds of all murders in the United States. Yet Roth, who supports gun control, insists that the prevalence of guns in America, and our lax gun laws, can’t account for the whole spread, and a few scholars have argued that laws allowing concealed weapons actually lower the murder rate, by deterring assaults. Some Europeans suspect that Americans haven’t undergone the same “civilizing process,” as if, unmoored from Europe, Colonial Americans went murderously adrift. Spierenburg speculates that democracy came too soon to the United States. By the time European states became democracies, the populace had accepted the authority of the state. But the American Revolution happened before Americans had got used to the idea of a state monopoly on force. Americans therefore preserved for themselves not only the right to bear arms—rather than yielding that right to a strong central government—but also medieval manners: impulsiveness, crudeness, and fidelity to a culture of honor. We’re backward, in other words, because we became free before we learned how to control ourselves.

Myself, I agree with Fred Boynton in Barcelona (1994):

0:25 into the 1:50 trailer

It’s not that Americans are more violent than Europeans. It’s just that we’re better shots.

It’s strange to see a presidential administration openly attacking a news organization for criticizing them and, in a country whose mainstream media is notorious for its liberal partisanship, White House characterizations of Fox News as being somehow unique in “having a perspective” produced gales of laughter in some circles.

Open fights between incumbent presidents and the press have not typically worked out favorably for the first. Remember Richard Nixon? So why was the sophisticated and professionally skilled Obama administration doing this?

The Politico explains, it’s all about containment. They are advancing a rationale the MSM can use to marginalize Fox News, so that the establishment liberal media can pretend to righteousness while sitting on stories Fox is covering which are disadvantageous to the Obama Administration and the left.

A White House attempt to delegitimize Fox News – which in past times would have drawn howls of censorship from the press corps – has instead been greeted by a collective shrug.

That’s true even though the motivations of the White House are clear: Fire up a liberal base disillusioned with Obama by attacking the hated Fox. Try to keep a critical news outlet off-balance. Raise doubts about future Fox stories.

But most of all, get other journalists to think twice before following the network’s stories in their own coverage.

“We’re doing what we think is important to make sure news is covered as fairly as possible,” a White House official told POLITICO, noting how the recent ACORN scandal story started because Fox covered it “breathlessly for weeks on end.”

“And then you had a couple days of breast-beating from The Washington Post and The New York Times about whether or not they were fast enough on the ACORN story,” the official said. “And it’s like: Wait a second, guys. Let’s make sure that we keep perspective on what are the most important stories, and what’s being driven by a network that has a perspective. Being able to make that point has been important.”

To some media observers, it’s almost the definition of a “chilling effect” – a governmental attempt to steer reporters away from negative coverage – but the White House press corps has barely uttered a word of complaint.

That could be because of the perception among some journalists that Fox blurs the line between reporting and commentary – making it seem like not the most sympathetic victim.

Fox denies its news coverage is slanted, and even White House aides say the network’s top correspondent there, Major Garrett, is a straight shooter. But in its non-news hours, Fox mixes in a steady diet of criticism of President Barack Obama by its prominent conservative commentators Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. It’s a formula that works for Fox, with the highest ratings in cable news. …

(F)ormer Fox News Washington Bureau chief Brit Hume seemed to be reveling in the attacks by Obama’s aides.

“This is an effort in effect to quarantine Fox News and to discourage other media outlets from picking up on stories that originate here,” Hume said on “The O’Reilly Factor.” “My guess is it won’t work….Look at Glenn Beck, he’s having a field day with this.”

Their intellectual dishonesty is breathtaking, but I don’t think this is really going to work. The MSM already thought Fox News was illegitimate, and was already happy to spike any inconvenient news stories it thought it could. The MSM will only pick up a story damaging to the left (examples: Monica Lewinsky, ACORN tax fraud advice) when it has already achieved a kind of critical mass which makes it impossible not to cover it. Only the New York Times has the arrogance to bury anything it doesn’t like anytime.

The New York Times reports that cooler temperatures are getting in the way of international agreements required to forstall climate change.

The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.

The plateau in temperatures has been seized upon by skeptics as evidence that the threat of global warming is overblown. And some climate experts worry that it could hamper treaty negotiations and slow the progress of legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.

The Times goes on (hilariously) to explain that recent cooler temperatures are just an irrelevant phenomenon that proves nothing, but that “scientists” (the plural proves to be one particular scientist) know better.

Current cooler weather, the Times gravely advises is just a “normal variation.” Long term global warming is still firmly underway. Of course, all this ignores the fact that the Global Warming hypothesis came into existence after the Impending Ice Age hypothesis collapsed due to several years of warming weather.

————————————————

A Missing Person Report

Statistician William M. Briggs takes us to a police precinct in Manhattan.

“Hey, Sarge. Got a lady here who wants to file a missing person report…Sarge?” Officer Hannigan stood in front of Sergeant Fitzgerald’s desk and rustled a sheaf of paper just loud enough so that it didn’t sound intentional, but with enough force to still be heard.

Sergeant Fitzgerald was dozing and he started at the noise, but long experience enabled him to remain mostly still. He did not want his junior to know he had been asleep, so he counted to three then slowly made the sign of the cross and said, “Amen.” He then let his watery eyes find Hannigan’s.

“Uh, sorry, Sarge.” Hannigan was new enough not to have seen this act before. “But I got this strange call and I didn’t know what to do.” Fitzgerald raised both eyebrows a millimeter. “This lady wants to report a missing person, only…”

Enough consciousness had seeped into Fitzgerald’s limbs that he was able to slap the table. “Now, young Hannigan. Nothing could be easier, sure. You have the right forms?” A nod. “You’ve asked the right questions?”

“I have.”

“Then there is no problem.” He shifted his weight and turned his attention inward.

“But Sarge, the answers made no sense!”

Fitzgerald sighed and knew that sleep was banished. “Well, then. Let’s have it. Who’s missing?”

“Global Warming.”

“And what’s that, then?” A shrug was his answer. He sighed. “How long has it been missing?”

“Lady said about eight years, maybe nine.”

Read the whole thing.

Michael Barone admires the liberal establishment’s recent efforts to marginalize dissent.

I would submit that the president’s call for an end to “bickering” and the charges of racism by some of his supporters are the natural reflex of people who are not used to hearing people disagree with them and who are determined to shut them up.

This comes naturally to liberals educated in our great colleges and universities, so many of which have speech codes whose primary aim is to prevent the expression of certain conservative ideas and which are commonly deployed for that purpose. (For examples, see the Website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which defends students of all political stripes.) Once the haven of free inquiry and expression, academia has become a swamp of stifling political correctness.

Similarly, the “mainstream media” — the old-line broadcast networks, The New York Times, etc. — present a politically correct picture of the world. The result is that liberals can live in a cocoon, an America in which seldom is heard a discouraging word. Conservatives, in contrast, find themselves constantly pummeled with liberal criticism, on campus, in news media, and in Hollywood TV and movies. They don’t like it, but they’ve gotten used to it. Liberals aren’t used to it and increasingly try to stamp it out.

Read the whole thing.

If we study the vocabulary of the American elite, we find that strange things have happened to the English language. Slavish conformity of thought, readiness to bow to conventional opinion, credulous acceptance of popular alarms, willingness to embrace crude simplifications, and firm refusal to question supposed authority and pretended expertise are continually cited as evidencing sound judgment and good education. Skepticism and questioning the authority of media culture is, on the other hand, extremist, polarizing, and ignorant. Our contemporary political culture basically turns language inside out. The most craven conformist mouthing empty platitudes (Albert Gore) is praised for wisdom and bravery, and anyone attempting to subject a received prescription to scrutiny or analysis (Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh) is intrinsically unintelligent.

Yesterday’s mass protest against federal spending was estimated by the comparatively neutral Daily Mail as made up of “up to two million.”* US Parks and Recreation estimated 1.5 million.

All this was not even front page news for the New York Times, for whom the numbers involved dwindled to mere “thousands.” The Washington Post more generously acknowledged “tens of thousands.”

The astonishing demonstration of massive popular opposition to socialism naturally proved a problem for the left’s commentariat. The preferred discounting technique was demonstrated by Think Progress: point to Confederate flags, identify expressions of opposition to Barack Obama as “racism,” describe open expressions of conservatism as “offensive” and “radical.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon dismisses all opposition to Obama as illegitimate, coming from people with heretical and unacceptible views, worthy only of contempt and dismissal.

What I find amusing is the leftist Greenwald’s claim to proprietorship of “the country’s core founding values.” Since when was the left in favor of the framer’s republic of federalism, individual rights, personal responsibility, and limited government?

Nothing that the GOP is doing to Obama should be the slightest bit surprising because this is the true face of the American Right — and that’s been true for a very long time now. It didn’t just become true in the last few months or in the last two years. Recent months is just the time period when the media began noticing and acknowledging what they are: a pack of crazed, primitive radicals who don’t really believe in the country’s core founding values and don’t merely disagree with, but contest the legitimacy of, any elected political officials who aren’t part of their movement. Before the last year or so, the media pretended that this was a serious, adult, substantive political movement, but it wasn’t any truer then than it is now. All one has to do is review their behavior during the Clinton presidency — to say nothing of the Bush years — to see that none of this is remotely new. Nothing they’re doing to Obama is a break from their past behavior; it’s just a natural and totally predictable continuation of it.

UPDATE 23 Feb 2010: The Daily Mail, at some point subsequent to this posting, revised the estimate in its article downward to “As many as one million people.” The original estimated figure was also cited here.

ABC News also denied having made a 1M to 1.5M estimate.

Michelle Malkin sheds more light on the numbers controversy.

The media is headlining collateral damage to Afghan civilians from coalition air strikes and US political leaders are covering themselves from criticism by reducing air strikes and implementing far stricter rules of engagement.

AFP:

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates acknowledged in an interview with Al Jazeera that civilian casualties have become “a real problem” for the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan.

Gates’ remarks, in an interview to be aired Monday by the Qatar-based Arabic satellite news channel, came amid a raging controversy over an air strike that killed scores of people Friday in northern Afghanistan.

“I think it’s a real problem, and General McChrystal thinks it’s a real problem, too,” Gates said, referring to Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

—————————————

New rules of engagement have had a real impact. Airstrikes on Afghan insurgents have been cut in half over the last few months.

Airstrikes by coalition forces in Afghanistan have dropped dramatically in the three months Gen. Stanley McChrystal has led the war effort there, reflecting his new emphasis on avoiding civilian casualties and protecting the population.

NATO fixed-wing aircraft dropped 1,211 bombs and other munitions during the past three months — the peak of the fighting season — compared with 2,366 during the same period last year, according to military statistics. The nearly 50% decline in airstrikes comes with an influx of more than 20,000 U.S. troops this year and an increase in insurgent attacks.

The shift is the result of McChrystal’s new directives, said Air Force Col. Mark Waite, an official at the air operations center in southwest Asia. Ground troops are less inclined to call for bombing or strafing runs, though they often have an aircraft conduct a “show of force,” a flyby to scare off insurgents, or use planes for surveillance, Waite said.

—————————————

There is a price for those opportunistic media headlines, and for the cowardice of our leaders. It is paid by our troops, as Herschel Smith angrily explains.

(Quoted news account from McClatchey:)

GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.

“We will do to you what we did to the Russians,” the insurgent’s leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.

U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.

“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today,” Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters.

Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander’s Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border. …

The Marines were cut down as they sought cover in a trench at the base of the village’s first layer cake-style stone house. Much of their ammunition was gone. One Marine was bending over a second, tending his wounds, when both were killed, said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who retrieved their bodies.

I said it would happen, and only recently “officials” have admitted that the new Afghanistan ROE have opened up new space for the insurgents. Now it has cost the lives of four more U.S. Marines. How many more Marines will have to die before this issue is addressed? The new ROE should have been dealt with as a classified memorandum of encouragement and understanding to consider holistic consequences of actions rather than a change to formal rules by which our Marines and Soldiers are prosecuted by courts. Yet the damage has been and continues to be done by poor decisions at the highest levels of leadership.

Damn the ROE.

Lt. George W. Bush in the cockpit of an F102 jet fighter at Ellington Field near Houston in 1968

Bernard Goldberg reveals a major detail disclosed by CBS’s investigation of Rathergate which the mainstream media for some mysterious reason has never considered worth reporting.

Dan Rather is suing the network that employed him for 44 years, asking for $70 million dollars in damages. Technically, the lawsuit is about a dry legal issue — breach of contract. But it is also about something much more personal to Rather: his legacy. It is a lawsuit, fundamentally, about saving Dan Rather’s reputation.

That reputation took a turn for the worse back in 2004. As has been widely reported, just 55 days before a very close presidential election, Dan Rather and his producer Mary Mapes put a story on the weekday edition of 60 Minutes that brought on the media equivalent of World War III. There were accusations that Rather, Mapes, and maybe the entire CBS News Division had set out to deliberately destroy George W. Bush and get John Kerry elected President of the United States – a charge everyone at CBS vehemently denies.

The story was about how the young George Bush got preferential treatment during the Vietnam War; how he wangled his way into the Texas Air National Guard back in the 1960s to avoid service in Vietnam; and how he was able to do it because his father was a big-shot, a United States Congressman from Houston. The story portrayed the Bush as a slacker. Others have said it portrayed him as a “cowardly draft dodger.”

And to bolster their story, Rather and Mapes got their hands on “never-before-seen” documents (as Rather put it in his story) that supposedly backed up their months (and in Mapes’ case, years) of reporting. But in no time flat the documents came under attack, mainly by conservatives on the web who examined the typeface of the memos and concluded they were fakes.

CBS News management aggressively defended the story in general and the documents in particular – until they didn’t. After about two weeks, CBS threw in the towel and said it could no longer stand by the story. Rather, who had been vigorously defending his story, reluctantly went on the air and admitted the documents could not be authenticated. Later he would say he was forced to do it.

In the aftermath of the fiasco, CBS established an outside panel to look into the matter. In January of 2005 the panel issued a report which concluded the news division failed to establish that the documents were legitimate and not bogus. Mapes was fired. A vice president and two producers were forced to resign. And Dan Rather was a dead man walking.

He had already lost his job as anchorman of the evening news but was allowed to stay on the weekday edition of 60 Minutes, which his story had sent on a glide path to oblivion. And when that show died an inglorious death Rather went over to the Sunday edition of 60 Minutes. But that wouldn’t last long, either. When his contract ran out CBS yanked him off the show, but made him an offer he decided to refuse: Rather would get an office and an assistant and he could report stories for any CBS News broadcast that called on him – if any CBS News broadcast ever chose to call on him. CBS offered Rather $250,000 a year, according to my sources, who say he wanted a million. When he didn’t get it, he quit. According to Rather, he was pushed out the door by the head of CBS, Leslie Moonves.

In 2007, Rather filed his $70 million lawsuit against his old company saying he wasn’t allowed to defend his story because the top management of CBS’ parent company, Viacom, wanted to appease the Bush Administration and protect its business interests.

Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says. I recently re-examined the panel’s report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to “Go to page 130.” When I did, here’s the startling piece of information I found:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.

Hat tip to Scott Drum.

————————————–

That particular piece of data certainly puts this Huffington Post editorial by Mary Mapes in an interesting light, doesn’t it?

Scott Wong, at PhxBeat, explains that the black guy with the gun outside the Obama Health Care Town Hall meeting in Phoenix was just affirming his Second Amendment rights.

Neatly dressed in a white shirt, black tie and gray slacks, the man, who only gave his first name as Chris, also had a pistol holstered at his side as he engaged in heated debates with those rallying in support of Obama’s heath-care reform plan.

A Phoenix police spokesman said plainclothes detectives were monitoring about a dozen protesters carrying guns, though no one broke any laws or was arrested.

Arizona is an “open-carry” state, which means anyone legally allowed to have a firearm can carry it in public as long as it’s visible. A permit is required if the weapon is carried concealed.

“Because I can do it,” Chris said when asked why he brought guns to the rally at 3rd and Washington streets. “In Arizona, I still have some freedoms left.”

—————————-

Newsbusters Kyle Drennen caught MSNBC red-handed engaged in some racially-charged and highly misleading reporting.

On Tuesday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fretted over health care reform protesters legally carrying guns: “A man at a pro-health care reform rally…wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip….there are questions about whether this has racial overtones….white people showing up with guns.” Brewer failed to mention the man she described was black.

Following Brewer’s report, which occurred on the Morning Meeting program, host Dylan Ratigan and MSNBC pop culture analyst Toure discussed the supposed racism involved in the protests. Toure argued: “…there is tremendous anger in this country about government, the way government seems to be taking over the country, anger about a black person being president….we see these hate groups rising up and this is definitely part of that.” Ratigan agreed: “…then they get the variable of a black president on top of all these other things and that’s the move – the cherry on top, if you will, to the accumulated frustration for folks.”

Not only did Brewer, Ratigan, and Toure fail to point out the fact that the gun-toting protester that sparked the discussion was black, but the video footage shown of that protester was so edited, that it was impossible to see that he was black.

1:34 video

The happy couple

The Telegraph reports all this deadpan, but I grew up near Knoebel’s Amusement Park, so I’m familiar with the local provincial Pennsylvania sense of humor. I think the young lady is pulling the media’s leg, and playfully mocking a certain politically correct cause.

Amy Wolfe, a US church organist who claims to have objectum sexuality, a condition that makes sufferers attracted to inanimate objects, plans to marry a magic carpet fairground ride.

This follows a “courtship”; of 3,000 rides over ten years with the 80ft gondola ride called 1001 Nachts.

Miss Wolfe, 33, from Pennsylvania, will change her surname to Weber after the manufacturer of the ride she travels 160 miles to visit 10 times per year, according to reports

“I love him as much as women love their husbands and know we’ll be together forever,” she said.

Miss Wolfe first fell for the ride when she was 13: “I was instantly attracted to him sexually and mentally.

“I wasn’t freaked out, as it just felt so natural, but I didn’t tell anyone about it because I knew it wasn’t ‘normal’ to have feelings for a fairground ride.”

Ten years later, she decided to go back to Knoebels Amusement Park to declare her love. She now sleeps with a picture of the ride on her ceiling and carries its spare nuts and bolts around to feel closer to it.

She claims to believe they share a fulfilling physical and spiritual relationship and does not get jealous when other people ride it.

Mess with the American left, its agenda, its candidate, or its appointees, and watch out! They will come after you. Well-funded organizations have the professional staff and all the resources needed to poke and pry into your life and background looking for ammunition, looking for anything negative that can be passed along to faithful and determined media allies to be used to discredit or destroy.

Sonia Sotomayor’s curt ruling in Ricci v. DeStefano (later overturned by the Supreme Court) is an obvious major vulnerability, so Norman Lear’s ultraliberal People for the American Way, as McClatchey reports, is painting a bright orange target on the middle of the back of the 35 year old fireman who brought the suit in the first place.

Supporters of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are quietly targeting the Connecticut firefighter who’s at the center of Sotomayor’s most controversial ruling.

On the eve of Sotomayor’s Senate confirmation hearing, her advocates have been urging journalists to scrutinize what one called the “troubled and litigious work history” of firefighter Frank Ricci.

This is opposition research: a constant shadow on Capitol Hill. …

On Friday, citing in an e-mail “Frank Ricci’s troubled and litigious work history,” the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way drew reporters’ attention to Ricci’s past. Other advocates for Sotomayor have discreetly urged journalists to pursue similar story lines.

Specifically, the advocates have zeroed in on an earlier 1995 lawsuit Ricci filed claiming the city of New Haven discriminated against him because he’s dyslexic. The advocates cite other Hartford Courant stories from the same era recounting how Ricci was fired by a fire department in Middletown, Conn., allegedly, Ricci said at the time, because of safety concerns he raised.

The Middletown-area fire department was subsequently fined for safety violations, but the Connecticut Department of Labor dismissed Ricci’s retaliation complaint.

No People for the American Way officials could be reached Friday to speak on the record about the press campaign.

Declining Newspaper Quarterly Ad Revenues From 2006

Another graph, this one is from Tech Crunch:

Total newspaper ad sales dropped by an unprecedented 28.28% in the first quarter of 2009, a deep plunge that represents a loss of more than $2.6 billion in ad revenue compared year-over-year. Compared to 3 years ago – 2006 was a pretty good year for American newspapers – we’re looking at a drop of more than $4.5 billion in ad sales in just three years if you only take into account the first quarter.

The sharp decline is caused by the lousy state of both digital and dead tree ad sales: the stats posted on the Newspaper Association of America website show that print sales fell by 29.7% in the first three months of this year (to $5.9 billion), while online sales dropped a record 13.4% (to $696.3 million).

Buggy whip sales figures probably looked a lot like this after Henry Ford’s Model T hit the market.

Of course, some of us think it isn’t only the Internet & Craig’s List producing this decline. The arrogance, insularity, partisanship, and dishonesty of establishment newspapers has to be having some negative impact.

Ever wonder how the same story with exactly the same spin manages to appear in so many columns and lead stories at exactly the same time?

Warner Todd Huston explains that it is not an accident.

The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has let the cat out of the bag in the Post’s April 27 issue about a regularly scheduled secret media dinner attended by some of the top left-wing journalists in the country. But it isn’t just the lefty scribblers that have attended these secret, off-the-record dinners for these gatherings have each featured a guest. Rahm Emanuel, Sec. of the Treasury Tim Geithner, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke have all recently had their chance to schmooze the press and guide them with the spin desired by the White House.

So, not only does Obama’s Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel have secret daily phone calls with which to program the media’s coverage of the White House, now it is revealed that Emanuel and other Obama staffers have been attending secret dinners to help the press “understand” what the White House wants reported? As Kurtz says, it all sounds “rather cozy,” doesn’t it?

The secret dinners for Obama staffers and his boosters in the Old Media have been going on for “more than a year” and are sponsored by David Bradley, the owner of the Atlantic. In attendance have been some of the most well known lefty journalists in Washington. Not surprisingly, not a single name mentioned in the Kurtz report is conservative.