Re: Today's syndicated column:

Jonah:

As one who spent 15 years as all kinds of reporter – general assignment, cop shop, trials, features and, mostly, political and legislative – I was pleased to read your column on the subject of journalists’ so-called privilege in refusing to assist law enforcement investigations.

Especially telling was your mention of the paradoxical nature of the whole Joe Wilson kerfuffle – the press demanded the investigation and now faces the unpleasant question: do we help or not?

The reason I cited my experience is so I could make this following point with some legitimacy: You point out that journalists love to compare what they do to what doctors and lawyers do. In other words, they seek to ‘professionalize’ their jobs. That, to me, is just so much crap. Before I became a reporter, I spent a number of years as a carpenter, and I would compare the job of a reporter more to that of a tradesman. You don’t need advanced education to be a reporter or columnist. You should, ideally, know how to spell and use correct grammar. The rest is up to the innate talent of the individual.

I know where all this First Amendment absolutism and professionalization comes from. We got it, big ladles of it, spooned over us every day in J-school back in the 70s. Bob Woodward and Don Bolles were Lancelot and Galahad in our eyes, because that was what the faculty told us.

It wasn’t until much later that I came to realize that the burning zeal for afflicting the comfortable I had inhaled in college was just so much parsley.

The MSM is coming undone because the literate public is tired of the poseurs, as you said, in their ermine robes dispensing THE WORD. During the past election cycle, the guy behind the curtain was exposed for the hustler that he is. Bloggers far better educated than the scribbling and chattering classes took apart the silly “blockbusters” like Rathergate in no time flat. I still don’t know why so many people were surprised by this.

As always, it is a treat to read your work. All the best,

I like the Powerline Blog and I think those guys do a great job and seem quite decent folks from TV etc. Which is why I think this post is such a shame. I don't think comparisons are particularly fruitful, but it's childish and stupid to say -- hesitatingly or otherwise -- that the Corner "sucks" as a blog or as anything else. Well, okay, as a nuclear power plant or airborne laser volcano lancer it ain't to hot. But in this context, I think this was just plain lame, particularly considering the prize:

So long as our closest competitor for best overall blog in the Wizbang Best Overall Blog category was my own favorite blog -- Little Green Footballs -- I refrained from soliciting your votes for Power Line.

Now, however, we are within a shade of being overtaken for first place by NRO's The Corner. The NRO site is outstanding, easily one of the best on the Web. Despite the fact that almost all of NR's fine editors contribute to the Corner, I do not hesitate to say that as a blog The Corner -- how to put this? --sucks, or that Power Line is a better blog.

If you agree with me, will you please exercise your Aylward-given right as a citizen of the World Wide Web to vote once every 24 four hours for your favorite site in the Wizbang Best Overall Blog category? Thank you for your consideration.
Posted by The Big Trunk at 02:50 PM

Update: Um, to the emailers who've said nice things about the Corner, thanks. To those who thinks the Corner sucks, fine. To those who misread this post to the extent that they think I'm weepy about what the guys at Powerline think, put down the pipe. But in case the miscommunication was on my part, I'll just be clear. I don't take it very seriously. What I was calling lame was precisely that sentiment on their part. The Powerline post came across, to me at least, like a guy talking trash about an opposing chess team.

From a reader:

Jonah,
The Labrador Retriever is not a Canadian dog. Despite it's name the dag is an English breed. First called St.John hounds they were used by English fishermen fishing on the Grand Banks of Canada. The dogs were used to retrieve floats and fish. The breed was latter used as retrievers in England to retrieve birds. So Cosmo would not be doing any whining at the U.N.

Regards,

A life long Lab owner.

The war on drugs or the war on Islamic extremism. Choose one. You can't fight both.

"The offence will not criminalise material that just stirs up ridicule, prejudice, dislike, contempt or anger or which simply causes offence."

As the minister well knows, the mere existence of this law will give a tool to religious bigots, particularly, I suspect, on the Islamic extreme, to threaten their critics with prosecution. Even if there actually are no prosecutions, the mere threat of litigation (plus the inevitable embarassment, legal expenses and so on) will have a chilling effect on free speech, and if there's one thing that is needed to combat the superstition and hatred of Muslism extremism., it's more free speech, not less.

This law should not be passed.

From a reader:

Dear Jonah: I have a Labrador Retriever, am I being un-american for having a "Canadian" Dog? What's your policy on " Axis of Weasel" breeds like the German Shephard or the French poodle? Maybe I should be asking Cosmo...

This is a difficult question if only for my serious bias against poodles, not entirely because they're French so much as that they're, well, poodles (sorry Peter). Though I have met poodles I've liked, a little. But in general, I don't believe that dogs buy into the nation-state paradigm at all. Canine loyalty is to the tribe, to the family, the pack. In that sense dogs are very American breeds in that they're loyalties do not attach at all to genetic kinship. If this reader we're right than Cosmo -- allegedly half-lab, half Australian cattle dog -- would be very confused indeed. On the one hand he'd want to fight by America's side no matter what the sacrifice and then he'd turn right around and whine about us to the UN.

John Laughland writes in the Guardian of the double standard our media employ: "Enormous rallies have been held in Kiev in support of the prime minister, Viktor Yanukovich, but they are not shown on our TV screen. ... Yanukovich supporters are denigrated as having been 'bussed in.' The demonstrators in favor of Yushchenko have laser lights, plasma screens, sophisticated sound systems, rock concerts, tents to camp in and huge quantities of orange clothing; yet we happily dupe ourselves that they are spontaneous."

Laughland is saying the Yushchenko demonstrations may be as phony as that U.S-Albanian war in the Dustin Hoffman-Robert DeNiro film Wag the Dog....

In yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, James Taranto had a short op-ed arguing that it would be good for Democrats, and bad for Republicans, if Roe were overturned. Maybe he’s right. But there are two weak points in his analysis. First, he suggests that the official position of the Republican party is to “ban all or most abortions,” and that “[o]pinion polls consistently show that only a small proportion of Americans favor” this “extreme” view. You can certainly find polls in which people say they don’t want to ban all or most abortions. But you can also find many polls in which a majority of people say that they want to ban abortion with exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother—which is to say, they want to ban almost all abortions. The polls don’t “consistently” show that only a small proportion of Americans favor a general prohibition. Second, Taranto assumes that pro-lifers would be dumber politically than pro-choicers in a post-Roe world. He assumes, that is, that pro-lifers would immediately push for a ban on abortion everywhere rather than, say, a ban on third-trimester abortions that would put Democrats in a corner. (I've written about this possibility before, when Stuart Taylor Jr. made the same argument as Taranto.)

Come to think of it, there's a third flaw in Taranto's argument. He says that the smartest thing congressional Republicans could do after Roe would be to leave the issue to state legislatures. If the rest of his analysis were correct, however, it would mean that serious political damage would then be done to Republican state legislators and governors. But if the rest of his analysis is unsound, as I think, then it would make a lot of sense to let states address the issue right after Roe went. (Incidentally, I think it's a very good thing that people, including people who favor legal abortion, are starting to think more about life after Roe.)

Picking up from yesterday's conversation, here are some nominations from readers to compete with the Oil-for-food scandal and Derb's suggestions:

I nominate reunification of Germany. Several months before that West German government "exchanged" East German's savings at 1:1 rate when the market exchange rate was actually 20:1. The government implicitly recognized that it was really a gift rather than exchange by putting relatively small caps on the amounts to be "exchanged". I estimate that Helmuth Kohl's government thus gave away at least $40 billion to induce East Germans to vote for him. It was effectively a Money-For-Votes scheme.

And...

Hello Jonah,

Maybe not inflation wise, but % of GDP.

Wasn't the pelop..... the war between ancient Sparta and Athens instigated
by an Athenian charlatan spending the common defense fund on public works
for his own aggrandizement ?

I think we have to restrict the definition of scandal to free societies.
How could the Ming dynasty be monetarily scandalous? All the money was
already theirs.

And...

Jonah One of my favorite scandals involved one of Alexander the Great's generals. I believe that it was Eumenes. Hanson can correct me if I am wrong. Alexander's conquests pretty well captured the entire Persian treasury. Now, remember that the Persian fiscal policy was "tax and horde". Thus, the treasury consisted of thousands of talents of gold bullion. Alex seized the tresuries at Babylon and Persepolis. I am away from my references (I am at work), but I believe that the latter was 10,000 talents. Since a talent is 60 lbs, or perhaps with gold, the equivalent value to 60 lbs of silver, that's a lot of gold. Alexander's fiscal policy was "seize and spend". To spend it, it had to be minted into coins. The lucky guy put in charge of this was allowed to become fabulously wealthy by keeping one out of every twenty gold coins he minted, or 5%. This was his legal cut. Eumenes is alleged to have kept for himself 10%. This is how he financed his own military escapades after the death of Alexander. Imagine graft on the order of a bonus of 3000 lbs of gold (or silver) in 320 BC.

And...

Jonah,

How about thirty pieces of silver for the life of the Son of God? By my calculations, if we correct for inflation and fluctuations in the price of silver, it would be about a bajillion dollars.

Does anyone out there know if Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, has any WiFi hotspots, internet cafes etc? My in-laws have rented the same place they got last year and we're going. But dial-up was unworkable last year.

I must sadly admit I have passed myself off as a Cannuck. I was in my mid-twenties, living in France/Germany. Any time I made a social blunder and someone would mutter something derogatory about Americans, I would say '…but I'm Canadian'.