Matt Ortega

Today, the New York Times and the Washington Post are reporting that President Bush authorized domestic spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on American citizens without a warrant in 2002. Lawmakers involved with the program exposed it, under the condition of anonymity, because of the possible illegality.

“Nearly a dozen current and former officials, who were granted anonymity because of the classified nature of the program, discussed it with reporters for The New York Times because of their concerns about the operation’s legality and oversight. According to those officials and others, reservations about aspects of the program have also been expressed by Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the West Virginia Democrat who is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a judge presiding over a secret court that oversees intelligence matters. Some of the questions about the agency’s new powers led the administration to temporarily suspend the operation last year and impose more restrictions, the officials said.”

In addition to the startling discovery of domestic spying by the NSA, the article notes that the White House “asked the New York Times not to publish” the article “arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny.” The article continues that “the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting.”

In recent days, four more tax cuts for over $100 billion have been passed despite two wars, one of which is costing American taxpayers $1 billion a week, and a quarter of a trillion dollar reconstruction effort in the Gulf States region. This, all in addition to a mounting budget deficit in the hundreds of billions of dollars and a skyrocketing national debt.

So instead of rolling back the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, which President Bush wants Congress to make permanent, how are we going to pay for all this?

Congress is cutting aid to “education, health research, medical and job training programs” - you know, all the things we have no use for.

This is the worst part of the article:

“Republicans said they had produced the best bill they could in lean budget times…”

(Hat tip: John Aravosis, AMERICAblog)

It has been over two weeks since David Neiwert dismantled Michelle Malkin’s book, Unhinged: Exposing Liberals Gone Wild, and still not one word from Malkin herself. He made this observation sixteen days ago, and other bloggers are picking up on the silence.Here’s a quick fact sheet on her:

Author of In Defense of Internment in which she “defends both the evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese from the West Coast (the so-called “Japanese American internment”)… during World War II” and subsequently supports racial profiling back then and now, including the use of internment camps for Arab-Americans in the same fashion

–Eric Muller
“So Let Me Get This Straight: Michelle Malkin Claims to Have
Rewritten the History of Japanese Internment in Just 16 Months?”
History News Network (George Mason University)
September 9, 2004

More reading on her book: “Muller and Robinson on Malkin”

Publicly supports Steve Sailer’s racist “IQ and the Wealth of Nations,” in which light-skinned nations are slated to have higher IQs than that of darker nations, such as Africa

–Liberal Avenger
“Michelle Malkin Defends White Supremacist”
Liberal Avenger
September 26, 2004

Alleges that a “radical alliance” of “Japanese-American civil libertarians teaming up with Arab-Americans to betray America”

–John Gorenfeld
“Michelle Malkin says the Japanese and the
Arabs are conspiring to destroy America!”
The Gadflyer
October 4, 2004

Margaret Cho discusses the “revelation and revolution” that is Michelle Malkin

–Margaret Cho
“In Defense of Michelle Malkin”
Margaret Cho’s Blog
September 27, 2004

Michelle is her own worst enemy in an expose of her own contradictory words

–Greg
“Michelle vs. Michelle”
The Talent Show
August 15, 2005

From “fellow columnist” Bronwyn Lance Chester:

“I think [Malkin] habitually mistakes shrill for thought provoking and substitutes screaming for discussion… She’s the worst of what’s wrong with punditry today. She adds absolutely nothing to genuine political discourse.” [Wikipedia: Michelle Malkin]

For more background information, here’s a bit of personal history on Malkin here. Media Matters for America has plenty on her. It is important to note that many speculate that her husband Jesse Malkin ghostwrites her blog - which is possibly why she contradicts herself so much.

From Malkin’s book as highlighted by Neiwert:

“And while conservatives zealously police their own ranks to exclude extremists and conspiracy theories, extremism and conspiracy theories have become the driving force of the Democrat Party.” [p. 169]

This coming from the woman who supports Bill O’Reilly’s asinine belief that there is a “secular progressive movement” that has “a secret plan … a very secret plan” to rid the U.S. of Christianity and that there is a “radical alliance” between Japanese and Arab Americans to “destroy America.”

Bill O’Reilly made an appearance on Your World with Cavuto on November 30 and he credit his “reporting and that of others” to the lowering gas prices, and claimed that people are “offended” that Christmas is a federal holiday. That is classic O’Reilly, and FOX News for that matter, to create phony straw men to fit their arguments.

NEIL CAVUTO: You don’t buy the take that they’re trying to be inclusive or the companies that have that position are?

BILL O’REILLY: This is insulting to Christian America. It’s insulting. This is driven by secular progressives –

NEIL CAVUTO: The Jews and Muslims say it’s insulting to keep the “Christmas.”

BILL O’REILLY: I say that Muslims are less than 1 percent of the population, and Jews are less than 3 percent of the population. They’re entitled to their opinion, they’re entitled to their opinion and they are entitled not to shop in places that say “Merry Christmas,” just as I’m entitled not to shop in places that don’t. That’s what I say. But the bottom line on this is this: Secular progressives which are driving this movement, OK, don’t want Christmas. They don’t want it as a federal holiday, they don’t want any message of spirituality or Judeo-Christian tradition because that stands in the way of gay marriage, legalized drugs, euthanasia, all of the greatest hits on the secular progressive play card…”

Media Matters has extensively documented O’Reilly theory of the “secular progressive movement” and broke it down into three elements.

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