Category: News

I haven’t offered much commentary on the Scott Thomas Beauchamp Baghdad Diarist thing going on at The New Republic because I haven’t found it that interesting, but apparently the editor of the magazine offers a long-winded reasoning for why they thought the fabulous, though disputed, claims were not untrue (Fog of War, link seen on Instapundit).

What strikes me most about the piece, though, isn’t the tone or the high-handedness, but rather the sad indicators of what passes for shoe-leather journalism and fact checking by senior staff at a national magazine.

We’ve got Instant Messages rife with obscenity, written in the gibberish that passes for the communication by most people in that medium:

TNR: where did you see the crypt keeper?

Beauchamp: are you there?

TNR: yes

Beauchamp: the last thing i got was “where did you see the crypt keeper”

TNR: yes

Beauchamp: the dfac on falcon or chow hall, as it IS commonly called

TNR: what about kuwait?

Beauchamp: brb [be right back]

Nine minutes of silence

TNR: you there?

Ten minutes of silence

Beauchamp: ok just did a sworn statement

TNR: about?

Beauchamp: saying that i wrote the articles

TNR: ok

Beauchamp: theyre taking away my laptop

TNR: fuck is this it for communication?

Beauchamp: yeah and im fucked

TNR: they said that?

Beauchamp: because you’re right the crypt keep WAS in Kuwait

FUCK FUCK FUCK

this is bad isnt it

TNR: yes

where in kuwait?

Beauchamp: it did happen in kuwait

Camp Beuhring

tnr: why didn’t you tell us that?

Beauchamp: i thought it was on falcon

till somebody here convinced me that it wasnt i just talked to [Soldier A] and he convinced me that it was in kuwait when i thought it was on falcon fuck

TNR: if what you’re saying is true it’s not the end of the world

Beauchamp: ok

TNR: as long as we can confirm it

Beauchamp: good

i have to go like NOW though im so sorry

TNR: are you gonna be able to talk again?

Beauchamp: i hope so but i dont know

thank you again for everything

TNR: i didn’t do anything

what did you sign?

I mean, I know I am one of the six people in the world who use complete sentences and punctuation in IM conversations, but do we have to see how simpleton national media players can be?

Then, there’s this bit:

We’d left messages on his MySpace page for him to call.

Oh, goody. Postings on MySpace. Just like Woodward and Bernstein, except without the effort or the result.

Maybe I’m holding them to too high of a standard for effort or for actual journalism as I would expect it in a national magazine of purportedly lofty reporting and commentary; that is, I didn’t expect it to read like how two teenage girls discuss the latest pop idol.

But it probably is just me. After all, Foer says that the goal of the fact-checking was not to find out if the thing was true, but rather, if it was plausible:

Facing the difficulties of verifying the piece, but wanting to ensure its plausibility before publication, we sent the piece to a correspondent for a major newspaper who had spent many tours embedded in Iraq. He had heard accounts of soldiers killing dogs with Bradleys. These accounts stuck with him because they represented a symbolic shift in the war. Iraqis regard dogs as annoying pests. At the beginning of the conflict, Americans made great efforts to befriend these mistreated mutts. It seemed telling that Americans now treated dogs with as little regard as Iraqis did. He considered Beauchamp’s dog- hunting anecdote plausible.

And:

Among others, we had called a forensic anthropologist and a spokesman for the manufacturer of Bradley Fighting Vehicles. Nothing in our conversations with them had dissuaded us of the plausibility of Beauchamp’s pieces.

Not implausible and based on the finest Internet gleanings available, they ran with the story.

Pardon me if I further assume that anything that appears in a national publication is only as reliable as a blog account or Wikipedia entry. Or if I don’t bother to read national publications.

In Sudan, give a teddy bear a name, go to jail and fret as thousands demand your execution. This is widely condemned in the blogosphere.

In America, call a person a name on the Internet, and you will soon go to jail. This is widely applauded in the blogosphere.

Responding to a tragic incident with knee-jerk legislation will lead to unintended consequences. Don’t we know this by now, or don’t we care? And at what point do the consequences stop being merely “unintended” and start being “willfully negligent”?

A highly-paid master of metaphor at work. Marvel!

“If I’m going to get punched in the stomach, I’m going to take a knife out and get you right back,” said John Lapp of the consulting firm McMahon, Squier, Lapp and Associates.

Lapp considers himself one of a new breed of Democratic ad-makers who don’t hesitate to hit hard in the ad war.

“I’m going to use every single weapon I have in my quiver.”

The gentleman has a way with words. A bad way.

Spot the contrast:

St. Louis County Councilwoman Colleen Wasinger, R-Town and Country, plans to scrutinize next year’s county budget to find ways to save enough money to avoid a tax increase.

St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley has proposed a county budget of $505.4 million for next year. It includes a property tax increase of 2 cents for each $100 assessed valuation. Dooley estimates that will raise slightly more than $4 million.

Where’s Dooley’s D?

Problem: Neighbor downhill from you has a metal roof reflecting its light into your sensitive eyes.

Missouri solution: Sue the fellow, the metal roofing company, the neighborhood association, the township, and Hephaestus, probably followed by fines and potential condemnation by the local government.

The California solution: Put some glass insect sculptures on the roof to make it pretty colors.

Everyone note that the California solution, if applied in Missouri, would meet with the same response; namely, art on your property is cause for lawsuits and legal action.

Headline: Police officer tasers woman, 82. However, if you’re doing anything but scanning the headlines, you get a slightly different story:

Chicago’s Police Department is investigating an officer’s use of a Taser last month on an 82-year-old woman who was swinging a hammer when police arrived.

You’re forgiven if you thought cops were tasering another 82 year old woman.

A senior Congressman sees fit to inject his office into oversight of televangelism:

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the financial dealings of six TV evangelists, including Joyce Meyer, the popular preacher who has built a $124-million-a-year empire headquartered in Fenton.

On Monday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Meyer to provide his staff with documents detailing the finances of the Joyce Meyer Ministries, including the religious group’s compensation to Meyer, her husband and other family members, as well as an accounting of their housing allowances, gifts and credit card statements for the last several years.

Congress shall make no law doesn’t say a thing about fishing expeditions into religious organizations, does it?

Update: James Joyner links to another article that describes other targets of the investigation and applies the adjective mundane.

So KMOV TV runs this commercial barking about its INVESTIGATION! into the fact that our government is woeful on its obligation to maintain highways and bridges so that they don’t, I don’t know, actually collapse into the Mississippi River.

However, it’s good to see some homeowners have their priorities in order:

Nearly 100 signatures have been gathered from residents whose homes sit along Interstate 270 in Kirkwood, calling for a study to see if a sound wall should be constructed to shield residents from traffic noise.

Whenever you see stories about people who bought homes along the interstate suddenly confronted with noise and who now clamor for government-funded remediation, remember that every last study conducted to see if it’s necessary and every last dollar spent on making their backyard decks more enjoyable is less steel and concrete to make sure the highways safe for everyone.

I don’t want to hear breakdowns of city/state/government funding or dedicated resources to these sorts of things because that same city/state/government funding could and should be dedicated to the basic repair of the roads.

I speak as someone who bought a house on an interstate. I got a better price because of the noise; I’m not going to expect you to make my cheap property more valuable nor to improve my lifestyle. Period. Especially not at the expense of vital infrastructure maintenance.

No, not the death threats; the spouse:

Ms Whitney, a CIBC analyst who is married to the former World Wrestling Entertainment champion Death Mask, prompted a near 7 per cent drop in Citigroup’s shares on Thursday, after suggesting that the bank needed to raise more than $30 billion to restore its capital cushion.

They sure know how to recruit male students, don’t they?

She is a freshman at Lindenwood, as are six Miss Missouri Teen USA finalists. Also among the student body are Amber Seyer, Miss Missouri Teen USA 2007; and LaTasha Lawrie, Miss Kansas Teen USA 2005. In total, the school says it has about 30 winners or top finishers in beauty pageants.

Lindenwood was sort of in the running for my collegiate dollar, somewhere between SLU and Washington University; however, because my first choice accepted me, it was irrelevant.

A program like this, however, might have altered the equation.

Enormous steel sculpture lifted 12 stories:

A massive steel sculpture installed Sunday on the side of a South of Market building tells a story of humanity’s past and its uncertain future, says the Seattle artist who spent two years on the project.

The five pieces of stainless steel, obliquely titled “Artifacts from a Coal Mine” and weighing well over 10,000 pounds, were affixed as public art to the outside of a contemporary brick and concrete condominium building at 177 Townsend at Third Street.

“They evoke a lost world and the uncertainty of climate change,” said artist Mark Stevens, pacing Townsend Street as one giant sculpture after another was hoisted 12 stories up by a 200-foot-high crane.

If you have to say what your tangle of metal is supposed to represent, it’s not actually evoking anything, ainna?

Girl falls off bike while riding in the road, parents sue road builders:

The mother of a girl severely injured in a bicycle crash in 2005 is suing the people who designed and built the road where she was injured, saying her medical expenses are likely to exceed $25 million.

Only fitting because:

a combination of a road that was too steep, and dangerous wooden posts

Combined with, I don’t know, an accident.

The face that an attorney has found a large number of defendants (6) for the maximum number of out of court settlements is now matter of course. It’s not even sad on its own any more, just one more pixel in a sad portrait of personal irresponsibility in modern America.

Bad:

SWAT officers expected to find a victim shot to death, drugs and a belligerent armed suspect when they surrounded the home of an unsuspecting couple, but found they were only a part of a false emergency call caused by a teenager who hacked into the county’s emergency response system, authorities said.

As officers swarmed the home with assault rifles, dogs and a helicopter, a Lake Forest couple and their two toddlers inside their home slept unsuspectingly.

On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the county’s 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.

Couple that with the fact that in the next twenty years we’ll have SWAT teams with robots on them:

The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.

Jeez, who’s going to need Terminators when you’re going to have defective software and pinheaded hackers playing potentially deadly pranks?

In this case, one suspect lacked motive, so we could eliminate them from the whodunit:

Authorities had no motive for the shooting.

Well, we’ll have to look elsewhere for our perpetrator, then, Hercule.

Sunset Hills project wants tax break:

The Sansone Group has proposed constructing an office-retail complex to replace the 35-year-old Holiday Inn motel-Viking banquet center on the northwest corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road in Sunset Hills.

The developer is seeking $12 million in government assistance for the $48.2 million project. The aid would be via tax increment financing and transportation development and community improvement districts. Each district would levy one-cent sales taxes.

This is already not newsworthy, ainna? As the contracts are written in English, so they come with hands extended for money from the citizens of the “growing” or “revitalizing” area.

Story: Alorton police chief grazed in shooting.

Hedge:

Police chief Robert Cummings was grazed in his arm by a bullet apparently fired by another man during a drug stop, Illinois state police said today.

The Post-Dispatch does not completely eliminate the possibility of a self-inflicted wound.

In this blog’s very first post, I warned about the provisions in rescue group contracts that you signed to take a pet from them:

When my wife and I wanted to adopt a rescue dog, we had a hound visit our house, mainly to see if it wanted to eat our cats. The rescue volunteer provided a packet of information about dogs and a contract we would have to sign to take possession of the pooch. The contract included house inspections at will of the rescue group. It could also take the dog back at any time if it found our conditions “unsuitable, which includes but not limited to…” a non-exclusive litany. If we lost the dog; we’d pay the rescue group a thousand dollars, even if we “lost” the dog ten years hence when it died and we did not notify the rescue group in 1 (one) week.

Obviously, Ellen DeGeneres is not an avid MfBJNer:

Ellen DeGeneres is in the doghouse with a pet rescue agency after giving a pooch away to her hairdresser because it didn’t get along with her cats.

The talk show hostess and her partner Portia de Rossi adopted Iggy, a Brussels Griffon mix, on Sept. 20. But when things didn’t work out, DeGeneres gave the dog to her hairdresser.

In doing so, DeGeneres violated an agreement with the Mutts and Moms dog rescue agency by not informing them of the handoff.

When the agency called DeGeneres to ask about Iggy, she said she found another home for the dog. The agency sent a representative to the hairdresser’s home Sunday and took the dog away.

The entertainment industry takes note:

DeGeneres went public about the situation Monday while taping an episode of her show to air Tuesday. She admitted she didn’t read all the paperwork involving the adoption.

Ellen DeGeneres does not read her contracts.

Stunning finding reported in Reader’s Digest:

A February report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that taking antioxidant vitamins actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

. . . .

But in 47 randomized trials involving almost 181,000 adults, researchers found that taking vitamins A, beta carotene and E, alone or in combination, actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

Personally, I find my odds daunting, but at least they’re not 116% chance of dying.