La La Land: Or, How Not to Make Message

Excuse Me, But This is Not How You Play Tit For Tat

Congress's top Republican leaders yesterday demanded an immediate joint House and Senate investigation into the disclosure of classified information to The Washington Post that detailed a web of secret prisons being used to house and interrogate terrorism suspects.
The Post's article, published on Nov. 2, has led to new questions about the treatment of detainees and the CIA's use of "black sites" in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. The issue dogged President Bush on his recent trip to Latin America and has created consternation in Eastern Europe.

"If accurate, such an egregious disclosure could have long-term and far-reaching damaging and dangerous consequences, and will imperil our efforts to protect the American people and our homeland from terrorist attacks," Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) wrote in a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

Hastert is obviously Speaker because he just does what he is told. I can't believe he is this stupid. Where is the outrage and demand for investigations of the allegations themselves? If all the GOP can do is get ginned up about the leak and think this is some moral equivalent to the Plame case, they clearly miss the point of both cases.

Frist Worried About Leak, Not Prisons
JONATHAN M. KATZ (AP) Thursday, November 10, 2005; 12:59 PM
WASHINGTON -- Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.
Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is "not concerned about what goes on" behind the prison walls.

Lions and Republicans Eat Their Young

LOS ANGELES - The across-the-board collapse of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot propositions came down to this: They were ideas with narrow appeal, further damaged by a flat-footed campaign and an unpopular messenger, the governor himself.

And that's just what his fellow Republicans said.

Kansas Education Board First to Back 'Intelligent Design'
Schools to Teach Doubts About Evolutionary Theory
Peter Slevin Washington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, November 9, 2005; Page A01

TOPEKA, Kan., Nov. 8 -- The Kansas Board of Education voted Tuesday that students will be expected to study doubts about modern Darwinian theory, a move that defied the nation's scientific establishment even as it gave voice to religious conservatives and others who question the theory of evolution.

By a 6 to 4 vote that supporters cheered as a victory for free speech and opponents denounced as shabby politics and worse science, the board said high school students should be told that aspects of widely accepted evolutionary theory are controversial. Among other points, the standards allege a "lack of adequate natural explanations for the genetic code."

I think this story speaks for itself. Or it should.