Category: World

I often join in the common complaint about the negativity of media news. It strikes me that this negativity could be the result of liberalism, which assumes that people and the world are basically good. Thus bad things happening are abberations, and worthy of note.

Since I reject the idea that people and the world are basically good on theological and empirical grounds, I think we should have a news service that assumes that tragedy, cruelty and chaos are the normal state of affairs, and that acts of compassion and goodness are exceptions to be celebrated.

In that spirit, go read Chrenkoff‘s latest good news from Iraq.

The latest breaking story relates to the long-refuted George Bush AWOL story. CBS ran a story on 60 minutes introducing new documents showing that Bush pulled strings to get out of service in the National Guard.

The only problem with this story is that the documents, which are available on the CBS website, are clearly forgeries. To wit:

• They are written in a proportionally-spaced typeface. There were very few typewriters or word-processing systems available in the early 70’s that used such typefaces; most documents then were typed in the fixed-space Courier typeface.
• They contain printers’ right quote marks, as opposed to typewriter straight quotes.
• They contain superscript “th” after ordinal numbers, again, not a feature found in typewriters or word-processing equipment in the 70’s.

Charles Johnson opened up Microsoft Word, using its default settings, and exactly duplicated the so-called document.

Power Line has the roundup.

Update: A caller to Hugh Hewitt suggests we call the affair “Rathergate”. Heh. Rathergate. Rathergate. Rathergate. Rathergate.

Power Line points out the first in a series of articles in the Washington Times documenting the French contribution to Saddam Hussein’s arsenal.

Some highlights from the beginning of the week of the Republican covention:

A couple of essays regarding the incompetence and bias of the media, as well as their reliance on pre-determined storylines.

Transcripts of Rudy Giuliani‘s and John McCain‘s speeches. Notice how they’re focusing on the current war, not the one from 30 years ago. McCain: “Our choice wasn’t between a benign status quo and the bloodshed of war. It was between war and a graver threat.”