SHORTER Marc Thiessen: "We need Obama to use the CheneyBush national security toolchest to put a hit out on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. It's the only responsible thing to do."

Marc Thiessen is furious, simply furious that the Obama adminstration hasn't put Julian Assange on the top of the "Most Wanted" list. In his WaPo op-ed, he calls for the full force of the federal government to stop Assange - a "clear and present danger to the national security of the United States" - before he kills again.

Assange claims to be in possession of 15,000 even more sensitive documents, which he is reportedly preparing to release. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told ABC News that Assange had a "moral culpability" for the harm he has caused. Well, the Obama administration has a moral responsibility to stop him from wreaking even more damage.

Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.
---------
Arresting Assange would be a major blow to his organization. But taking him off the streets is not enough; we must also recover the documents he unlawfully possesses and disable the system he has built to illegally disseminate classified information.

Chalk this up as another screeching editoral by the community of people who still believe that there was nothing wrong with how the CheneyBush administration ran the country's security infrastructure. Despite losing elections in 2006 and 2008, they still think that the only way to run the federal government is by unilaterally strong-arming other nations, evesdropping on US citizens, and rewriting the Constitution.

But as much as Thiessen reveals himself to be a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic, you have to wonder if there are any limits in place at the Washington Post for conservative pundits. Obviously there are not.

INSTAPUTZ: Revealing...

War Is A Crime: I'm not a lying sociopath, I merely eschew reality

culturekitchen: Remember when Arianna Huffington declared identity politics not ony evil, but dead?

Zandar Versus The Stupid:: Another milepost on the road to oblivion

Angry Bear: Forget jumping the shark. The Wapo is doing the tango with it

Runnin' Scared: Jailbreaking Dongle Freedom! IPone users, DVD copiers, oppressed no more!

Calitics: The connection between austerity and privilege

Politibits: Artur Davis and the perfect political science experiment

Mad Kane’s Political Madness: Kirk's "factual" quirks

Stephen M. Walt: How to defend the indefensible (and get away with it)

Max Blumenthal: IDF admits it doctored flotilla audio clip, WaPo's Kessler must retract

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Dumbass quote of the day

Infrastructurist: The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill, Shown in Graph

The Pump Handle: The general public has become slightly more aware of the fact that going to work – especially in the energy industry – can be dangerous, but how long will that awareness last?

TheZoo: The Blow-Out Preventer

Eunomia: Love of Liberty

FAIR Blog: WaPo or The Onion?

Brilliant at Breakfast: Classless Warfare

Amped Status: Not only did Goldman Sachs profit on betting against CDOs they designed to fail; more importantly, they insured them through AIG which led to a $182 billion taxpayer bailout.

Blue Heron Blast: Irreconcilable Differences

Mario Piperni: On Republicans, War, and Dung

Shakesville: We've had nests on the porch, in ferns, and small tress around our home for many years. Amazing!

AlterNet: Exposing the Christian right's new racial playbook

Gawker: WaPo cannot tell Obama from Malcolm X

The announcement of Christiane Amanpour's selection for host of ABC's This Week was certainly a little surprising. As someone who has watched the Sunday shows every week for the last four years for C&L, I was somewhat heartened by the hope of thoughtful discussions for once. And Amanpour, mindful of where her skills lie, has reportedly plans to make some pretty big changes to the show, moving it outside the Beltway to New York and not focusing on Washington politics exclusively.

Well, as you can imagine, a cerebral Iranian-British female reporter with a reputation for comprehensive work and a lack of interest in the cocktail class of DC and the endless pit matches between Republican and Democratic politicians that serve as Sunday show fodder has some people feeling a little tetchy. Longtime WaPo television reporter Tom Shales issued a prickly op-ed on Amanpour's hiring:

In a way, Amanpour, scheduled to leave CNN after 18 years of international coverage and take over the program in August, could be seen as the opposite of the perfect candidate. "This Week" deals mainly in domestic politics and inside-the-Beltway palaver, an area where Amanpour is widely considered to deficient. Consider: Whenever CNN has thrown one of its big election-night, convention, or presidential debate spectaculars, drafting nearly every living staff member to appear, Amanpour has had a conspicuously low profile.

And even though Amanpour has often been touted for her expertise on foreign affairs, she has vocal and passionate critics in that arena as well. Supporters of Israel have more than once charged Amanpour with bias against that country and its policies. A Web site devoted to criticism of Amanpour is titled, with less than a modicum of subtlety, "Christiane Amanpour's Outright Bias Against Israel Must Stop," available via Facebook.

Amanpour grew up in Great Britain and Iran. Her family fled Tehran in 1979 at the start of the Islamic revolution, when she was college age. She has steadfastly rejected claims about her objectivity, telling Leslie Stahl last year relative to her coverage of Iran: "I am not part of the current crop of opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact."

Get that? Amanpour can't be objective because she lived in Iran. (For the record, Amanpour left Iran to study in England in 1969. Her family left Iran at the start of the revolution. Amanpour came to the US for college, graduating in 1983, per Wikipedia). So obviously, being part Iranian, she's unable to cover Israel objectively, so her "expertise" in foreign affairs is entirely suspect. It's quite a leap of logic, as Glenn Greenwald points out:

Without having the courage to do so explicitly, Shales links (and even bolsters) charges of her "anti-Israel" bias to the fact that her father is Iranian and she grew up in Iran. He sandwiches that biographical information about Iran in between describing accusations against her of bias against Israel and her defensive insistence that she's capable of objectivity when reporting on the region.

So here we finally have a prominent journalist with a half-Persian background -- in an extremely homogenized media culture which steadfastly excludes from Middle Eastern coverage voices from that region -- and her national origin is immediately cited as a means of questioning her journalistic objectivity and even opposing her as a choice to host This Week (can someone from Iran with an Iranian father possibly be objective???). Could the double standard here be any more obvious or unpleasant?

Wolf Blitzer is Jewish, a former AIPAC official, and -- to use Shales' smear-campaign formulation -- has frequently "been accused" of pro-Israel bias; should CNN bar him from covering those issues? David Gregory is Jewish, "studies Jewish texts with a top Jewish educator in Washington," and has conducted extremely sycophantic interviews with Israel officials. Should his background be cited as evidence of his pro-Israel bias? The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg is routinely cited as one of America's most authoritative sources on the Middle East, notwithstanding numerous accusations of pro-Israel bias and, even more so, his choice to go enlist in the IDF and work in an Israeli prison where Palestinians are encaged; do those actions (far beyond his mere ethnicity) call into question his objectivity as a journalist such that The Atlantic should bar him from writing about that region? Jake Tapper -- who Shales suggests as an alternative to Amanpour and who I also previously praised as a choice -- is Jewish; does that raise questions about his objectivity where Israel is concerned?

Besides objectivity towards Israel--Shales' overriding standard apparently for a This Week host--what other traits do they share? Could it be that we're talking about a bunch of white guys? Could it be that Amanpour being a female is threatening for a medium that has consistently underrepresented minorities and women? Could it be that she's not as enthralled as they are about themselves? Even Krugman, a frequent guest on This Week, found the criticism odd:

Um, maybe the idea is to do a bit less “inside-the-Beltway palaver”? You know, we’ve got a global economic crisis, a budding confrontation with China, a major row with Israel; maybe someone who’s knowledgeable about the world rather than the DC party circuit might be just the right choice?

Facing South: Senators who voted against extending jobless benefits hail from states devastated by recession

Pharyngula: Repent Amarillo

Hypocrites Gone Wild: Here, here, and here

South Texas Chisme: Texas Republican ballot propositions read like a bad push poll

naked capitalism: No wonder the economy isn't improving

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: The best of Journalism (2009)...NYT veers neocon...Bad news for Fox, Rush...When Peggy met Sally...WaPo editorial team crashes and burns...The reality of tabloid media...Quote bubble journalism...Dog that wouldn't bark...Liberals beware...Replay...Decoding Racism...Perfectly consistent...Bright future for progressive media?...Lost Exile...

I'm sure you saw this piece in the Washington Post by Gerard Alexander titled, "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Jamison Foser busts the WaPo:

Well, this is interesting. Remember that "Why are liberals so condescending" piece by Gerard Alexander the Washington Post published last week? Turns out, the author didn't submit the piece the the Post -- the Post sought him out:

Bethesda, Md.: I thought that "Why are Liberals So Condescending" was the most intelligent article I've read in the Post in some time.

Do you think that this is the result of a decision by your editors to be more fair and balanced?

Also, I would appreciate your comments on the "All serious scientists agree that Global Warming is an enormous problem." school of thought. This matter has been positioned in exactly the same condescending manner.

Gerard Alexander: I can only tell you that the Post editor I dealt with searched me out, and were as encouraging as any editor could conceivably be.

I wonder when we'll find out that a Washington Post staffer is actively seeking out a similarly disparaging column about conservatives? After all, Howard Kurtz keeps telling us how liberal the Post's opinion operation is.

Meanwhile, Alexander spent the bulk of today's Washington Post online Q&A acknowledging that some conservatives are plenty condescending to liberals, but claiming that it just isn't very common. Or something. Alexander, for example, contends that "conservative magazines, elected officials, etc" don't accuse coastal liberals of being out of touch with heartland values -- and that if they did so, they'd be "run out of town."

What planet has Alexander been living on for the past thirty years? Conservatives are always so courteous. Why does the Post think we're so mean and nasty? I certainly don't remember conservatives calling us traitors, terrorist sympathizers, we hate our freedom, the troops and American values, do you?

Please email the Washington Post and tell them I sent you. Maybe they can answer your inquiry even if you are a condescending a-hole.

ombudsman@washpost.com

Or just use the phone and call here:

Phone 202.334.6000 | 800.627.1150

Here's their full contact page for more:

DOWNLOADS: (310)

PLAYS: (780)

Embed

This whole "White House Party Crasher" story is a look into the minds of the media elites that are promoting it. The Villagers certainly have their knickers in a bunch over this dastardly couple who got into the State dinner. Howard Kurtz did a segment on it today which looked like it was going to delve into the media's obsession of this story, but it quickly turned into a justification of their actions. Two WaPo reporters were on CNN today discussing how they broke the story, but even they didn't believe it would amount to more than a few days of news. The Villagers would have none of that.

Here's Roxanne Roberts and Amy Argetsinger telling us what's what.

KURTZ: And not just yours. As we saw, everybody was talking about it.

Look, in the first 48 hours, it seemed to me, there was a legitimate concern about security. The Secret Service apologized. People -- anyone said, gee, how could somebody who wasn't invited get so close to the president of the United States? But now, it seems to me, that's kind of a fig leaf for our interest in the more gossipy aspects of this story.

Howard Kurtz made a point about the seriousness of this idiocy. I'd say resentment should be part of his analysis too. How dare these bumpkins get into their very private elitist party. They must pay, and so does anyone from Obama's administration who dared let them in.

ARGETSINGER: But they are under investigation now by the state of Virginia, not just because of allegations about their charity, but because of allegations about their entire polo match that they've been throwing the past three years.

They're in some pretty serious trouble. And this is the thing, we don't really know. They seem to be enjoying themselves in front of the cameras, but they may be well aware of the fact that they're in very grave trouble right now.

KURTZ: But at the same time, they're sort of milking this. I mean, they go on "The Today Show" and they make themselves available for the cameras. I mean, if they skate by without any legal complications, they could be one of the most famous reality show couples.

ARGETSINGER: Well, this is the big question.

KURTZ: We're aiding and abetting this by talking about it now.

ARGETSINGER: This is a big question. I mean, does Bravo have a liability on their hands, or is Bravo sitting on a gold mine with this footage? They've had this couple on film for the past three months.

KURTZ: If it was just Tareq Salahi, and his blonde wife was not part of the picture, would we still be talking about this?

ROBERTS: It wouldn't be nearly as interesting. I mean, what makes this story, what takes this from sort of an interesting one-or- two-day story, is the fact that this couple is so over the top and so flamboyant.

There are so many stereotypes -- the thin, ambitious blonde, who was never, in fact, a Redskins cheerleader. All the tall tales that they've told, all those things, that's what makes it so fascinating.

KURTZ: Maybe that's why the media aren't letting this go. And, of course, this hasn't fully played out, so we'll get to talk about it maybe next week.

The Villagers need to keep going with the story because this couple is just too damn flamboyant. The media have taken it to the max and it doesn't look like they'll let it go any time soon. Their rage is focused on the White House social secretary named Desiree Rogers---so in essence it's actually directed at Michelle Obama. With all that is happening in America today, these nitwits are screaming on and on about this couple that they find odious. The security breach should be thoroughly checked out, but this couple appear on every damn news show like they have stolen national security secrets. And we're told that the reason they still are a big story is because they keep on lying and being weird.

Digby has been following this story and it reminds us of the time the media went ballistic against Hillary Clinton:

The fatuous gasbags were all atwitter yesterday that the White House is "stonewalling" to protect their "old Chicago pal" Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary. As I said the other day, this is rapidly turning into a "travelgate" type Village scandal and someone is going to have to go down, preferably one who falls under the auspices of Michelle Obama, who has clearly made some kind of social error.

Just as Travelgate was about Hillary Clinton failing to respect the social pecking order by installing old Arkansas friends in a job in which the press had a personal stake, (Ryan's comments about "overshadowing" notwithstanding) I'm pretty sure this is about Michele and "her pal" somehow not respecting the pecking order and failing to understand just how sacrosanct are the invitation lists to the White House. (You'll recall that Michelle had a press avail the day of the state dinner and mentioned that she regretted not being able to invite everyone, which I thought was rather odd at the time.)

The lesson has long been clear. You do not mess with the Village tabbies. They have far more power than you might think.

Steve Benen:

I checked the byline a couple of times this morning, to make sure the column that was ostensibly written by David Broder wasn't, in fact, written by Charles Krauthammer. Regrettably, the so-called Dean of the D.C. Media Establishment actually wrote this.

The more President Obama examines our options in Afghanistan, the less he likes the choices he sees. But, as the old saying goes, to govern is to choose -- and he has stretched the internal debate to the breaking point.

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right.

"Whether or not it is right." The Commander in Chief, in other words, should put expediency over merit. Speed is preferable to accuracy. It's only the longest military conflict in American history, with the future of U.S. foreign policy on the line -- the president should worry less about due diligence and thoughtful analysis, and worry more about picking a course, even if it's wrong. Other than the loss of American servicemen and women, untold billions of dollars, and undermining U.S. interests in a critical region, what's the worst that can happen?

This says so much to me. The "dean" of Beltway journalism and conventional thinking perfectly encapsulates the Republican zeitgeist:

1. Criticize anything that Obama does. If he acts decisively, complain that he's reckless. If he acts thoughtfully, complain that he's "dithering". If he points out that he's inherited a big fat clusterf&ck, complain that he's pointing fingers. If he tries to move forward in even a slightly progressive way, complain that he's not bipartisan enough and that he should listen to Republicans. In short, make sure that no matter what, Obama is wrong.
2. There are no consequences to telling Obama he's wrong. So what if 45,000 people die because they don't have healthcare? So what if sending more troops is basically sending them to their deaths? So what if there is no stable government in Afghanistan? So what if we're spending millions of dollars every month and deficit spending is the cause du jour for those suddenly fiscally responsible Republicans?

If Obama acts quickly, and it's the wrong choice, will the decision to act fall back on Broder and the Republicans for the pressure they've placed on Obama? 'Course not. But you can bet your sweet bippy they'll only be too glad to pounce on him if there are more American deaths.

Tell you what, Broder, if you're so eager to see some action in Afghanistan, let's see you do one of your patented "folksy" reports from a coffee shop in Kandahar or Kabul. Otherwise, STFU and let the people in charge actually make a reasoned and thoughtful decision, since it affects so much in American blood and treasure.

We've had eight years of quick rather than right decisions. It's time for the grownups to be in charge now.