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Fox talk-show hosts need lesson in field reporting

Talking heads, by definition, are personalities who, well, talk.

They opine on matters, regardless of their expertise — or lack thereof — on the subject.

Such appears to be the case when “Fox and Friends” co-hosts decided to criticize a New York Times reporter who was on the ground in Benghazi, Libya, when terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate on Sept. 11, 2012 and ignited a fire fight that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/01/02/war-reporters-fox-criticism-of-times-benghazi-r/197394

The Times published a lengthy report that dissected the events of that terrible day and reported that an anti-Islam video that had been posted on YouTube played a part in triggering the siege. Fox pundits have been claiming for more than a year that the video had nothing to do with the event and have declared that the Obama administration has been covering up the facts of the case.

Now comes the Fox and Friends clowns who say that reporters in the field should have alerted U.S. authorities that Americans might have been in danger.

How would they have done that? Steve Doocy, one of the Fox hosts, said the reporter “probably” had access to a satellite phone he could have used to call for help. Probably?

Therein lies the difficulty in trying to offer opinions and analysis on things of which you have no knowledge.

A reporter’s job is to report events in real time. “When you’re in the middle of a riot or an attack like that, first of all, it is not a reporter’s job to call the authorities and he would have to assume the authorities know about it. It seems so bizarre,” said Josh Meyer, director of education and outreach for the Medill National Security Journalism Initiative and a former Los Angeles Times national security reporter with experience in Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The Fox talking heads should stick to things with which they are comfortable, which is criticizing Obama administration policy. They should steer clear of discussing reporter’s responsibilities covering hostile action in a war zone.

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Winter chill vs. climate change

Here come the deniers, the folks who take every opportunity to deny what science has declared to be fact, that Earth’s climate is changing.

Much of the nation is locked in a deep freeze. Hey, it’s winter. It happens every year at the time. Correct?

Dear Donald Trump: Winter Does Not Disprove Global Warming

The Texas Panhandle is no different in that regard. Some of our locals like to brag about how cold it gets every winter. The wind howls and we joke about having to string another length of barbed wire to keep the wind from blowing in from the Arctic.

Of course, this time of year brings out those who keep insisting the planet’s climate isn’t changing. Well, it is.

The debate, as I’ve tried to note all along, isn’t whether the climate is changing. The debate ought to center on its cause. Manmade or natural?

I’m not smart enough to make that determination myself. I try to leave it to scientists who’ve spent many lifetimes studying these things. Many of them say human beings have caused the climate to change by (a) emitting carbon dioxide into the air and (b) laying waste to hundreds of millions of acres of forestland populated by trees that replace the CO2 with oxygen. Others say the climate change is part of the epochal cycle the planet experiences every few million years — and that we’re entering the next cycle.

I tend to believe the human factor is the cause.

I’ll repeat something my dear late mother used to say about those who cannot see the big picture, that they’re “so narrow-minded they can look through a keyhole with both eyes.”

Look at the big picture, folks.

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Liz Cheney ends her Senate campaign

Liz Cheney isn’t as obsessed with political power as some of us thought, apparently.

The Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate from Wyoming ended her campaign early today, citing undisclosed family health issues. I wish her and her family well, of course.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/liz-cheney-wyoming-senate-race-101767.html?hp=f1

Another part of me, though, is glad she’s bowing out, if only to restore some sanity to the political process in one of our 50 states.

Cheney is the outspoken daughter of the outspoken former vice president, Dick Cheney. She challenged long-time Wyoming Republican Sen. Mike Enzi for reasons that continue to escape me. She claimed, I guess, that Enzi — one of the Senate’s most conservative members — isn’t conservative enough.

Her candidacy drew immediate fire from the state’s GOP establishment. GOP powerhouses lined up in Enzi’s corner.

Then things turned bad.

Cheney was accused of being a carpetbagger, given that she moved to Wyoming in 2010 after growing up in Washington, D.C. I don’t hold that against her. Two of my favorite carpetbaggers have been Robert F. Kennedy and Hillary Rodham Clinton, both of whom represented New York quite nicely in the Senate. In this age of intense media scrutiny, though, Cheney’s opportunism was drawing unusual attention.

Of course, then we had Cheney getting into that public tiff with her openly gay sister, Mary, over the issue of same-sex marriage. Mary is married and is a mother. Liz opposes gay marriage. The sisters got into a spat that only served to embarrass the entire family.

As Politico.com notes, Cheney’s campaign never got “traction.” Enzi continued to poll far ahead of his upstart challenger.

What this means for the health of the national Republican Party, though, remains to be determined. Liz Cheney is just one challenger to establishment GOP incumbents to drop out. Other insurgents are out there, including a few throughout West Texas, who are mounting challenges to long-time Republican incumbents.

Liz Cheney, though, is out of the game. Good. Her voice, though, won’t be silenced. She’s got her Fox News Channel job waiting for her.

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Harris-Perry issues real apology

There are non-apology apologies. You know them when you hear them.

They’re the statements where the individual seeking to atone for a mistake says this:

“If I offended anyone, then I am sorry for those remarks.”

The implication, of course, is that the individual isn’t apologizing to those he or she did not offend.

The reverse of that are the real apologies, those heart-felt mea culpas that come from deep within, from the heart, or the gut. That’s what I heard Saturday from Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC talk show host who took part in a discussion that got way out of hand.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/01/04/nr-msnbc-host-apology.cnn.html

The discussion was a year-end review of political events of 2013. Harris-Perry flashed a picture of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, with their grandchildren. One of the kids is an African-American infant adopted by one of the Romneys’ five sons and his wife. The panel went to great lengths over the next few moments to poke fun at the Romneys and singled out little Kieran Romney for ridicule. They were trying to make some ridiculous statement about Republicans’ outreach to the minority citizens.

The response from many circles, not just from conservatives, was ferocious. Harris-Perry was called down correctly by many pundits across the nation for the tastelessness of the segment.

She acknowledged it — all of it — Saturday morning while issuing an apology that turned tearful. And yes, the emotion sure looked real to me.

Harris-Perry did the honorable thing by going on the air to apologize. It’s been said, of course, that the more honorable thing would have been to refrain from saying those disgraceful things in the first place.

Well, we’re all human. We’re all fallible. She made a mistake. She apologized for it in its entirety without qualification.

As for Gov. Romney, he has accepted her apology and wants to move on, as he said this morning on Fox News Sunday. If it’s good enough for Mitt Romney, it’s good enough for me.

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Dick Metcalf: gun control poster boy

Dick Metcalf has become a poster boy on two distinct levels.

His dismissal as a columnist for Guns & Ammo magazine tells the nation about the power of hysterical opposition to any form of debate over gun control and about how a respected journalist can be shot in the back — so to speak — by his editors.

Metcalf has dedicated his life to the support of the Constitution’s Second Amendment, which guarantees the right to “keep and bear arms.” He’s written for Guns & Ammo for many years, becoming arguably the nation’s pre-eminent columnist on gun ownership.

Well, recently he wrote a column in the magazine that suggests that none of the Bill of Rights should be above some form of regulation. That includes the Second Amendment, Metcalf wrote.

“The fact is,” wrote Metcalf, “all constitutional rights are regulated, always have been, and need to be.”

Did he suggest a watering down of gun owner rights? No. Did he suggest a disarming of Americans? No.
He merely said the Second Amendment should not be placed on another level apart from the other Bill of Rights amendments to the Constitution.

The reaction was ferocious, according to the New York Times. Gun manufacturers threatened to pull advertising; subscriptions were cancelled; editors were harassed, harangued and hassled over the publication of a column — which the editors themselves approved prior to its publication. More on that in a moment.

The power of a gun lobby has been seen in the halls of government power, from statehouses, county courthouses, city halls and to Capitol Hill. Don’t mess with anything that even smacks of regulation, no matter how reasonable or minor it might be, the lobbyists warn. Lawmakers listen to them and back down immediately.

By my reckoning, though, perhaps the greater sin was committed by Metcalf’s editors at Guns & Ammo.

They read his column. I must presume, given that they’re professional journalists who work for a prestigious publication, that they discussed the meaning of the column and its possible impact. If they did, then perhaps they agreed to take the heat they knew would be turned up.

So, they published the writer’s work. Then the crap hit the fan. The editors’ response? It was to turn tail and run.

They dismissed the columnist because of their own journalistic cowardice.

Metcalf became their scapegoat.

I guess I could have predicted that anything smacking of reasonable discourse relating to gun regulation would fall on deaf ears among that segment of the population that adheres to the no-compromise notion of gun ownership.

What one could not predict would be that a respected columnist’s editors would commit an act of journalistic betrayal.

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Obama takes necessary step on weapons checks

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President Obama knows that Congress will tie itself up in knots arguing over taking an action supported by most Americans.

So he’s taking executive action to do the right thing by tightening background check requirements on individuals seeking to purchase a firearm.

Wait for it. The shills on the right are going to start yammering any day now that the president is seeking to “disarm law-abiding Americans” by denying them their “constitutional right to keep and bear arms.”

What utter horse dookey.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/03/obama-executive-action-guns_n_4537752.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037

One change clarifies the definition of someone who has been “involuntary” committed to outpatient or inpatient treatment for mental disease. Another change allows the submission of information about individuals seeking to purchase a firearm, but doesn’t prohibit someone from buying a firearm if he or she has undergone treatment.

None of this is ham-handed. Nor does it do a single thing to prohibit any reasonable individual from buying a firearm. It seeks to clarify some confusing language in existing federal law.

However, these kinds of actions usually produce a firestorm of criticism from those who believe any reasonable restriction or effort to keep guns out of the hands of individuals who shouldn’t own them as an infringement on everyone’s rights.

Those folks are in the minority in this country. Most Americans support stricter background checks that would not inhibit their rights under the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

If our elected representatives won’t do the right thing, then it falls on our elected head of state and government — the president of the United States — to step up.

Go for it, Mr. President.

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You got change for a Bitcoin?

Bitcoins have become a form of currency that some of us — myself included — need to understand.

As of this moment, I don’t quite get it.

That makes the decision by Republican U.S. senatorial candidate Steve Stockman to accept campaign contributions in this manner all the more bizarre — as if Stockman himself isn’t bizarre enough.

http://www.texastribune.org/2014/01/03/stockman-enters-legal-grey-area-bitcoin-donations/

It’s called “virtual currency,” kind of like virtual video games. You pay it by swiping some computer image across a scanner that records the amount and logs it into a data base. The Texas Tribune reports that Stockman told Business Insider that he would accept contributions in this form and then confirmed it on Twitter and Facebook.

Stockman’s candidacy against incumbent U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is a long shot to begin with. He’s challenging the senior senator in the Republican primary this March. His chances of winning are slim and none, but it’s the slim part that worries many of us, given Stockman’s proclivity for goofy statements oddball policy stances.

The Tribune notes correctly that Stockman has flouted campaign finance laws already. He fired staffers and has faced questions about how money moves around his campaign coffers.

The Bitcoin makes it easier for contributors to give anonymously, so one might be unable to judge the motives behind the contribution.

Stockman calls the digital currency issue a matter of “freedom.” I prefer to think that accountability ought to matter as well.

If you give to a candidate, put your name on it, own up to it … for the record. Then let others determine whose interests are being served.

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Let’s await the outcome of pot legalization

Now that marijuana is a legal substance in Colorado, I’ll await along with the rest of the nation — if not the world — to see how this all plays out.

I’m not yet ready to climb aboard fully on the Legalize Pot Bandwagon, but I’m ready to give this notion a chance to see what transpires in at least one of our 50 states.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2014/01/03/the_perils_of_legalized_marijuana.html

We’re getting some intelligent debate now about pot legalization. Some people argue that it’s going to produce a large influx of young users and that it will inhibit their thinking capacities. Others say that it will generate income for cash-strapped state governments that they can use to combat drug abuse. Some advocates say it’s time we decriminalize an activity that has become as common as cigarette use and alcohol consumption. Others suggest the federal sentencing guidelines are OK, while still others point to the overwhelming racial disparity in our jails and prisons of people incarcerated for drug use.

My sense is that the tide of history is turning toward eventual legalization of this substance.

I’ve spent my life opposing it. I’m not so sure any longer. The older I get the more open-minded I become. I guess that’s a good thing.

Am I going to light up? Never. Not going to happen. As the columnist David Brooks wrote, “Been there, done that.” I’m finished with it.

I think we’ll know the results fairly quickly, perhaps by the end of this year, about the result of marijuana legalization. I’m no longer convinced it’s going to wreck society as we know it.

I might be wrong about that … but I doubt it.

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N. Korean leader redefines ‘hideous’

There is hideous conduct.

And then there is the kind of act being reported out of North Korea involving the late uncle of dictator Kim Jong Un.

If it’s true, then we have seen a new standard for barbarism.

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/01/03/22156917-kim-jong-uns-executed-uncle-was-eaten-alive-by-120-hungry-dogs-report?lite

The report says the despot’s uncle was stripped naked and thrown into a cage where he was eaten by 120 starving dogs. That’s how the kid executed the husband of his aunt, reportedly for crimes against the state.

Jang Song Thaek had been taken into custody reportedly for plotting against Kim Jong Un. He was killed apparently days after his arrest. Reports didn’t confirm a trial of any consequence, merely a death sentence carried out with extreme dispatch.

U.S. officials haven’t confirmed the reports through any independent sources. However, NBC.com says the reports are coming from sources with close ties to China’s ruling communist party, which apparently is about the only friendly government left on the planet for North Korea.

To think we actually want to start talking to this animal.

I don’t want to jump to any conclusions until the world knows the facts — if they can be ascertained in that super-secret society.

This, however, falls into that category of despicable act that somehow shouldn’t totally surprise anyone.

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Edwin Edwards making a comeback?

Awesome news is trickling out way over yonder in Louisiana.

It’s that former Gov. Edwin Edwards is thinking of making a political comeback. The formerly disgraced Democratic governor, who’s now 86 years of age, might run for a congressional seat that will be vacated when the incumbent runs this year against U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu.

http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/house-races/194323-report-former-gov-edwin-edwards-considers-run-for-congress

The incumbent is a Republican, Bill Cassidy. He’ll run against Landrieu, meaning that his seat automatically becomes vacant, as he can’t run for two offices at the same time.

Edwards would create quite a stir were he to win the House seat. He has been convicted of money laundering and racketeering. Edwards has led quite a flamboyant life for as long as anyone can remember.

I had the pleasure of covering a bit of one of Edwards’s re-election campaigns while I was working in Beaumont, just about 25 miles from the Louisiana border. His GOP foe in 1991 was none other than Klansman David Duke. I’d say “former” except that Duke kept talking like an active KKK member as he campaigned around the state. Edwards won easily — thank goodness.

He’s a character of the first order.

I’ve been fond of repeating a quote that’s been attributed to Edwards. I cannot vouch for its accuracy but if he didn’t actually say it, he should have.

It’s that Louisianans don’t “expect their politicians to be corrupt. They demand it of them.”

Were he to win — and given Congress’s abysmal approval rating among Americans, it seems ol’ Cajun Edwin will fit right in.

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