Krauthammer: The 100 Year Lie

RealClearPolitics

Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON -- Asked at a New Hampshire campaign stop about possibly staying in Iraq 50 years, John McCain interrupted -- "Make it a hundred" -- then offered a precise analogy to what he envisioned: "We've been in Japan for 60 years. We've been in South Korea for 50 years or so." Lest anyone think he was talking about prolonged war-fighting rather than maintaining a presence in postwar Iraq, he explained: "That would be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed."

And lest anyone persist in thinking he was talking about war-fighting, he told his questioner: "It's fine with me and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintained a presence in a very volatile part of the world."

There is another analogy to the kind of benign and strategically advantageous "presence" McCain was suggesting for postwar Iraq: Kuwait. The U.S. (with allies) occupied Kuwait in 1991 and has remained there with a major military presence for 17 years. We debate dozens of foreign policy issues in this country. I've yet to hear any serious person of either party call for a pullout from Kuwait.

Why? Because our presence projects power and provides stability for the entire Gulf and for vulnerable U.S. allies that line its shores.

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a nonprofit and nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, says: "It's a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage 'endless war' based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea."

The desirability of a similar presence in Iraq was obvious as long as five years ago to retired Gen. Merrill McPeak, one of Barack Obama's leading military advisers and his campaign co-chairman. During the first week of the Iraq War, McPeak (a war critic) suggested in an interview that "we'll be there a century, hopefully. If it works right." (Meaning, if we win.)

Why is that a hopeful outcome? Because maintaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq would provide regional stability, as well as cement a long-term allied relationship with the most important Arab country in the region.

As McPeak himself said about our long stay in Europe, Japan and Korea, "This is the way great powers operate." One can argue that such a presence in Iraq might not be worth the financial expense. A legitimate point -- it might require working out the kind of relations we have with Japan, which picks up about 75 percent of the cost of U.S. forces stationed there.

Alternatively, one might advocate simply bolstering our presence in Kuwait, a choice that would minimize risk, albeit at the sacrifice of some power projection. Such a debate would be fruitful and help inform our current negotiations with Baghdad over the future status of American forces.

But a serious argument is not what Democrats are seeking. They want the killer sound bite, the silver bullet to take down McCain. According to Politico, they have found it: "Dems to hammer McCain for '100 years.'"

The device? Charge that McCain is calling for a hundred years of war. Hence:

-- "He (McCain) says that he is willing to send our troops into another 100 years of war in Iraq" (Barack Obama, Feb. 19).

-- "We are bogged down in a war that John McCain now suggests might go on for another 100 years" (Obama, Feb. 26).

-- "He's (McCain) willing to keep this war going for 100 years" (Hillary Clinton, March 17).

-- "What date between now and the election in November will he (McCain) drop this promise of a 100-year war in Iraq?" (Chris Matthews, March 4).

Why, even a CNN anchor (Rick Sanchez) buys it: "John McCain is telling us ... that we need to win even if it takes 100 years" (March 16).

As Lenin is said to have said: "A lie told often enough becomes truth." And as this lie passes into truth, the Democrats are ready to deploy it "as the linchpin of an effort to turn McCain's national security credentials against him," reports David Paul Kuhn of Politico.

Hence: A Howard Dean fundraising letter charging McCain with seeking "an endless war in Iraq." And a Democratic National Committee press release in which Dean asserts: "McCain's strategy is a war without end. ... Elect John McCain and get 100 years in Iraq."

The Annenberg Political Fact Check, a nonprofit and nonpartisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, says: "It's a rank falsehood for the DNC to accuse McCain of wanting to wage 'endless war' based on his support for a presence in Iraq something like the U.S. role in South Korea."

The Democrats are undeterred. "It's seldom you get such a clean shot," a senior Obama adviser told Politico. It's seldom that you see such a dirty lie.

Bumper-Sticker Peaceniks

Patriot Post

In his essay “The Contest In America,” 19th-century libertarian philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill wrote, “[W]ar... is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.”

Mill added, “A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”

Some 150 years later, there is no shortage of “miserable creatures” flaunting their “decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling,” with bumper-sticker slogans: “Peace... Coexist... War is not the answer... Imagine... I’m already against the next war... Wage Peace... Christianity is bombing in the Middle East... Quagmire Accomplished... Bush lied troops died,” et cetera, ad nauseam, infinitum.

These are not the descendants of the Early American peace movement, which can rightfully trace its origins to non-interventionists and pacifists. These are instead the effluent of the “Pop Peace Cult,” which coalesced as a socio-political force in the 1960s, unifying as a radical outgrowth of the Civil Rights movement.

It is these pusillanimous pantywaists, “daring” to conform to the pop-peace code of non-conformity—who constitute “the ugliest of things.”

Today’s peaceniks are fashionably fronted by “Useful Idiots,” ‘60s Leftovers, Hollywood glitterati, pop-music stars and the Leftist political elite.

This sect of les miserables, and their traitorous protagonists both in Congress and out campaigning for the White House, insist that they are “against war but support our troops.”

That’s a BIG lie, a more bald-faced fib, fabrication and falsehood than was ever uttered by the infamous Prevaricator in Chief, Bill Clinton.

Fact is, the underlying supposition of today’s pop-peace envoys was framed by “entertainers” like 60s folk singer Arlo Guthrie, who, in his song “Alice’s Restaurant,” mimics an Army recruit: “I wanna kill! Kill! Eat dead burnt bodies!” to which the recruiting Sergeant replied, “You’re our boy.”

This contention—that those in uniform were “baby killers” —was cemented in the 70s by Leftists such as John Kerry and “Hanoi Jane” Fonda.

Kerry and company are on the frontlines of today’s so-called “peace movement,” and they enjoy unlimited promotion of their propaganda by Leftmedia outlets like Newsweek magazine.
What their mindless minions miss, however, is that the heart of a warrior, a real warrior, desires peace, a real peace. For insight into the hearts of real Patriot warriors, read about Vietnam Vets Roger Ingvalson (USAF) and Roger Helle.

America’s uniformed Patriots don’t put “Peace” bumper stickers on their cars. They put their lives on the line to ensure the constitutional rights of adolescent peaceniks to sport bumper stickers. They are not “stuck in Iraq,” as Kerry claims, because they are ignorant dupes “going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing women and children...”

It is Kerry and his arrogant, tailor-suited colleagues, who terrorize families by refusing to honor their oaths to “Support and Defend” our Constitution.

Peacenik slogans and privileged politicos not withstanding, American Patriotism is alive and well outside the Beltway. Just ask pop artiste Natalie Maines, lead singer for that Texas trio known as the Dixie Chicks. Her condescending comment, ten days before the opening salvo of Operation Iraqi Freedom, is a case study in how not to insult your country, and country-music fans.

At a concert in Europe, Maines told her peacenik fans on that continent, “Just so you know, we’re on the good side with y’all and we’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.” She was applauded there, but her remark unleashed a firestorm of protest back home.

Maines feigned regret a week later: “I apologize to President Bush because my remark was disrespectful. I feel that whoever holds that office should be treated with the utmost respect.”

Nobody bought it. The Chicks were chucked off the charts. Their nomination for the Academy of Country Music’s Entertainer of the Year award two months later was lustily booed, and the award went to Toby Keith, an outspoken critic of such anti-American sentiments as theirs.

Bravo Zulu, Toby!

At the time, President Bush offered this dignified retort: “The Dixie Chicks are free to speak their mind. They can say what they want to say. If some singers or Hollywood stars feel like speaking out, that’s fine. That’s the great thing about America... in stark contrast to Iraq [under Saddam].”

The Dixie Chicks have never recovered their standing with “salt of the earth” fans of country music, and so were forced to carve out a new niche in a less-patriotic genre—rock music. Maines lamented, “I don’t understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? I don’t see why people care about patriotism.”

Neither do today’s peaceniks, but the Dixie Chicks’ lesson isn’t lost on contemporary pop-peace performers, who are now resorting to lyrics from dead guys like ex-Beatle John Lennon.
Amnesty International is the beneficiary of proceeds from a new music CD, “Instant Karma,” featuring Lennon songs performed by various noisemakers. Ah yes, “imagine” John Lennon, that humble soul who proclaimed at the height of Beatles’ fame in the 60s, “Christianity will go. We’re more popular than Jesus now.”

Fortunately for our nation, wiser heads have prevailed for most of our history. Our Founding Fathers understood the relationship between peace and strength, and this timeless lesson has been passed on from one generation to the next.

“To be prepared for war, is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace,” said George Washington. “Whatever enables us to go to war, secures our peace,” said Thomas Jefferson. “A universal peace, it is to be feared, is in the catalogue of events, which will never exist but in the imaginations of visionary philosophers, or in the breasts of benevolent enthusiasts,” said James Madison. Or, in ancient Latin, Si vis pacem para bellum.
Ronald Reagan certainly understood this principle of “peace through strength” —which is why there no longer exists a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Unfortunately, Bill Clinton did not.

The Clinton administration eviscerated the military in the years after his predecessor’s remarkably successful Operation Desert Storm. It emboldened the nascent jihadi movement by treating terrorism as a “criminal matter” rather than surrogate warfare—warfare that would visit our shores on the morning of 11 September 2001.

Bill Clinton never understood the fundamental relationship between peace and strength.

Neither does Hillary.

Bum Rush

NY Post

Jonah Goldberg

In the parable of the million monkeys banging on typewriters for a million years, the reward is supposed to be the complete works of Shakespeare. But have you heard the parable of the million interns? Here, the prize is Rush Limbaugh's head, and Bill O'Reilly's, and Brit Hume's, and pretty much any other prominent conservative or non-leftist who doesn't kowtow to the Democratic Party and its “netroots" army of Lilliputian cannibals. This, in a nutshell, is the vision behind a group most people have never heard of, at least not until this week, Media Matters for America.

Nearly every day, I get e-mail spam from this alleged “media watchdog" group. It's slightly less formal than the usual son of a Nigerian oil minister with erectile dysfunction and a great stock tip giving me a head's-up about a problem with my eBay account. This spam comes from some earnest p.r. flack letting me know that I might be interested in the latest Very Serious Finding by Media Matters for America. When you actually check out the item, it's usually very stupid or silly or, sometimes, slanderous.

For example, on Sept. 25, Media Matters sent out a note announcing “Fox News panelist Mort Kondracke recently made several racist comments regarding the Jena 6.

Here are some examples of racism on Fox News." What were the racist comments? Simply this: Kondracke said in reference to the racial turmoil then brewing in Louisiana, “It looks as though the people of Jena can solve this on their own." It's a wonder Kondracke even bothered to take his Klan hood off while on camera.

You don't hear about most of this stuff because journalists on the receiving end of Media Matter's junk mail have this rare skill, highly prized in the profession: They can read. And so, most of what Media Matters does is ignored except by the echo chamber of the left-wing blogs and sympathetic pundits. But occasionally, either through luck or distortion, Media Matters hits paydirt.

They were the ones who made the initial stink about Don Imus' “nappy-headed hos" gaffe. Imus may have had that coming, but they also recently tried to paint Bill O'Reilly as a racist dunderhead by slanderously distorting his comments about having dinner in Harlem. O'Reilly's point was that the real middle-class black America is decent and normal, unlike the images found in gangsta rap and the like. Media Matters quoted him as saying he was shocked that none of the black people at a Harlem restaurant talked or acted like F-word-abusing thugs.

But what is Media Matters? Well, first of all, it's the brainchild of David Brock. You may recall that Brock was once a right-wing hatchet man, penning a book, “The Real Anita Hill," and some articles in the American Spectator on the Clintons that for a time earned him considerable notoriety on the right and hatred on the left. After the success of the Anita Hill book, Brock was given a contract to write a similar exposé on Hillary Clinton, “The Seduction of Hillary Rodham."

The book was a dud. But it had explosive effects on Brock. In the course of working on it, he came out of the closet and gained a crush on Mrs. Clinton at the same time. Some claimed that he became “pro-Hillary" as an excuse to hide his failure at cracking the cone of silence around Clinton. Others believe that his transformation was less mercenary and more principled. Whatever; wading deep into Brock's psyche requires taller hip boots than are currently available on the market.

For the rest of the 1990s, Brock launched something of a fire sale on his own credibility. In articles and interviews, Brock outed himself as a liar. He confessed to lying in the Anita Hill book, even though the lies he admitted to were peripheral to his exoneration of Justice Clarence Thomas but devastating in what they said about Brock himself; he admitted he'd been a hatchet man and borderline extortionist. In a piece for Esquire - in which he was depicted bound to a tree, nipple exposed - Brock apologized to Bill Clinton and expressed regret over his “Troopergate" stories for the American Spectator. He said they were all true, mind you, but that he shouldn't have written them.

But the problem was already obvious. As Jill Abramson told the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, “the problem with Brock's credibility" is that “once you admit you've knowingly written false things, how do you know when to believe what he writes?" Yet by the end of the Clinton years and the beginning of the Bush administration, Brock had become a darling of the pro-Clinton media establishment as a supposed truth-teller.

And in 2004, Brock decided to start Media Matters for America ostensibly to keep an eye on the sort of “conservative misinformation" he used to peddle.

But, the truth is that Media Matters is a cog in the larger Vast LeftWing Conspiracy chronicled in the aptly titled book “The Vast LeftWing Conspiracy" by my National Review colleague Byron York. In the 1990s, long before Hillary Clinton railed against a shadowy, vast right-wing conspiracy, the Clintonites were obsessed with conservative success at getting their message out.

In 1995, Mark Fabiani, one of the Clintonites tasked with beating down Clinton scandals in the media, even penned a 331-page taxpayer-funded report ominously titled “The Communication Stream of Conspiracy Commerce," which worked from the presumption that negative stories about the president were illegitimate and foisted on the unwitting public by evildoers of the right.

Such paranoia has gone from being one of the more obscure jokes of the Clinton years to mainstream thought in Democratic circles. Driven mad by the Swift Boat Vets, Fox News, not to mention the humiliating failure of Air America and the continuing success of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, liberals have convinced themselves they need a conspiracy machinery all of their own to do deliberately what they imagine conservatives have been doing all along.

And that's where Media Matters for America comes in. At a recent YearlyKos convention for left-wing bloggers, Hillary Clinton bragged about how she'd helped Brock create Media Matters - an inconvenient testimonial for a group that swears, unconvincingly, that it's not beholden to Clinton (nearly half the e-mails I get from them read like they were churned out by Clinton's rapid-response team).

Part of the complex of liberal activist groups linked to George Soros and dedicated to the success of Democratic candidates, Media Matters churns out polemic and spin gussied-up as media criticism. The strategy is an upgrade of the Clinton communication attack plan of the 1990s. First: Demonize critics as crazy people, ax-grinders, bigots and shills.

This was the tactic used by Clinton and Co. in the 1990s to try to marginalize critics like Limbaugh and whistleblowers like Travel Office director Billy Dale. Recall how Bill Clinton suggested Limbaugh incited the Oklahoma City bombing or how his cronies immediately claimed Dale was a criminal and Monica Lewinsky a stalker?

Second, use any weapon on hand. And that's where the figurative million interns come in. Like CIA drones listening to shortwave broadcasts in Irkusk, Media Matters monitors everything the right puts out, listening to hundreds of hours of programming and reading lord knows how many words every week.

And, then, working from the assumption that all's fair in war, they score whatever points they can and then browbeat mainstream journalists with their findings.

Because these journalists are overwhelmingly liberal themselves, they sometimes find receptive ears. But nowhere near as receptive as among Democrats themselves. Because Media Matters is more like the opposition- research team of left-wing activists than a media watchdog, Democrats score all sorts of points by taking up its cause.

The press didn't care much about the Limbaugh “phony soldiers" story in which Limbaugh was referring to one anti-war activist who pretended to be a military veteran. Journalists for the most part saw it for what it was: a phony story.

But the Democrats have been interested in demonizing and defanging right-wing critics for years. It's a doctrine of preemption the Democrats can finally endorse. And so Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid doesn't care that Limbaugh - a wildly generous supporter of the military - never criticized American soldiers. What they care about is taking Limbaugh down a peg or two and throwing a bone to their increasingly demoralized anti-war base.

It's shameless, but they think they're justified to do or say anything if it takes down the enemy. Which is why Brock is the perfect man for the job.

Unpardonable Hypocrisy

NY Post

White House press secretary Tony Snow didn't mince words last week:

"I don't know what Arkansan is for 'chutzpah,' but this is a gigantic case of it," he said of criticism by both Bill and Hillary Clinton of President Bush's decision to commute I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence.

And that's putting it mildly.

The Clintons aren't the only Democrats who've attacked the president for the Libby commutation. But they're surely the most hypocritical.

"This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice," wailed Hillary.

Hmm. Back in 2001, when her husband left office by extending outright pardons and/or clemency to 176 people, all she had to say about it was: "It's a presidential decision."

Apparently, Bill Clinton's pardon of his own brother (a cocaine-trafficking conviction), as well as of folks who'd paid Hillary's brother tens of thousands of dollars for presidential clemency, had nothing to do with "cronyism."

Oh, but there's a difference, claims Hillary. "This was clearly an effort to protect the White House," she said. As opposed to, say, Clinton's pardon of Susan McDougal, his one-time Whitewater business partner, who sat in prison for 18 months rather than testify against the Clintons?

As for the former president, he charged that the commutation "is consistent with [the Bush administration's] philosophy; they believe that they should be able to do what they want, and that the law is a minor obstacle."

Now, that's an especially interesting observation - given what Clinton himself had to say back when his own pardons, made in the closing hours of his presidency, caused bipartisan outrage.

In an op-ed piece in The New York Times, Clinton wrote that under the Constitution, a president has "broad and unreviewable power" to grant pardons "without limit" - including, he noted, out of "a belief that a sentence was excessive or unjust."

This right, the ex-president wrote, "is inherently controversial," but was made "to assure that the president would have the freedom to do what he deemed to be right, regardless of how unpopular a decision might be."

And in a direct precedent for the Libby case, Clinton noted that he granted some pardons "because I felt the individuals had been unfairly treated and punished" by a special prosecutor - just what Bush and many others came to believe about prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

"I want every American to know that, while you may disagree with this decision, I made it on the merits as I saw them, and I take full responsibility for it," wrote Clinton of his pardon for politically connected rogue financier Marc Rich.

Which is about what George W. Bush is saying about his commutation of Scooter Libby's prison sentence.

Case closed.

Taranto: Murphy's Law?

James Taranto at www.opinionjournal.com

Left-wing blogs have been abuzz for a couple of days over a post by Mark Graber, a professor of law and government at the University of Maryland. Graber prints a story he received from Walter F. Murphy, a professor emeritus of jurisprudence at Princeton who now lives in New Mexico, about a bad experience Murphy had last month with airport security in Albuquerque. Murphy alleges that the treatment he received was politically motivated.

How credible is this claim? As luck would have it, Kip Hawley, administrator of the Transportation Security Administration visited The Wall Street Journal's office this morning, so we showed him a copy of Graber's post. Here is Murphy's story, as reprinted by Graber, with Hawley's explanation of what happened:

On 1 March 07, I was scheduled to fly on American Airlines to Newark, NJ, to attend an academic conference at Princeton University, designed to focus on my latest scholarly book, Constitutional Democracy, published by Johns Hopkins University Press this past Thanksgiving.

When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years.

According to Hawley, the only list a passenger might be on that would prevent him from boarding a plane is the "no fly" list. Since Murphy did ultimately get on the plane, he self-evidently was not on that list. Hawley says it is possible that someone with the same name was on the list; such an error befell Ted Kennedy in 2004.

More likely, though, Murphy was a "selectee"--chosen for heightened security by a process that is part random, part based on a variety of factors, most of which are not publicly disclosed, but which are known to include holding a one-way ticket and purchasing a ticket in cash.

This has happened to us on numerous occasions. If you have ever had a row of S's appear on your boarding pass, and been taken out of the main line at the security checkpoint to have your bags searched, it has happened to you as well. Selectees, Hawley explained to us, are not allowed to check in at curbside but must go to the ticket counter, as in Murphy's case.

Murphy's tale continues:

I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said.

There are two problems with this. First, federal terrorist watch lists are compiled not by political appointees but by career professionals at the FBI's Terrorist Screening Center, who, according to Hawley, would balk at any effort to list people for political reasons. Second, airline clerks have no way of knowing why a passenger is a selectee or on the no-fly list; they know only that he is. If the clerk actually said what Murphy claims he did, he was either joking or expressing his own (ill-informed) political opinion.

As we said, Murphy was allowed on the plane:

After carefully examining my credentials, the clerk asked if he could take them to TSA officials. I agreed. He returned about ten minutes later and said I could have a boarding pass, but added: "I must warn you, they=re [sic] going to ransack your luggage." On my return flight, I had no problem with obtaining a boarding pass, but my luggage was "lost." Airlines do lose a lot of luggage and this "loss" could have been a mere coincidence. In light of previous events, however, I'm a tad skeptical.

It is true, Hawley said, that TSA agents open the luggage of all selectees (the word "ransack" seems another case of the clerk editorializing). As for Murphy's suspicion that his lost bag on the otherwise trouble-free return flight was taken as some sort of political retaliation, Hawley says: "Give me a break."

Hawley added that if Murphy wishes to file a complaint about the treatment he received, he can do so online through the Homeland Security Department's Traveler Redress Inquiry Program.

But if Murphy's account of the facts is accurate, what happened here was out of the ordinary only inasmuch as the airline clerk--not a government employee--made a sensational and untrue claim, a claim that Murphy himself was eager to believe:

I confess to having been furious that any American citizen would be singled out for governmental harassment because he or she criticized any elected official, Democrat or Republican. That harassment is, in and of itself, a flagrant violation not only of the First Amendment but also of our entire scheme of constitutional government. This effort to punish a critic states my lecture's argument far more eloquently and forcefully than I ever could.

Murphy isn't the only one who was eager to believe it. Here are some other comments:

• Andrew Sullivan: "Just a heads up about what these people [the Bush administration] are up to."
  
  
• Josh Marshall: "Given who Professor Murphy is, I have no doubt this is an accurate account of his particular experience. And it would seem that the people who actually work with the list on a daily basis treat it as a given that the most innocuous and obviously protected forms of criticism of the Bush administration routinely get you on the watch list. That pretty much confirms the truth of what most of us would probably have thought was a harebrained conspiracy theory. Doesn't this deserve more scrutiny?"
  
  
• Matt Stoller: "This Murphy chap sounds like a smart fellow, but he also sounds like someone who profoundly lacks empathy for the situation of others. And those that are shocked by his situation, and at this point there shouldn't be very many of us reading this blog that are, should open our eyes and begin to wake up to what other cavalier violations of civil rights go on around us every day."
  
  
• Rod Dreher: "If this account is true, and if it's true that just going to a peace march puts you at risk for being on the terrorism 'no-fly' list, I'd say Congress had damn well better hold hearings about this at once, and find out just exactly what powers the federal government are exercising against law-abiding citizens who happen to oppose administration policy. We could be deep into Nixon territory."

Now, stop and think about this: We are expected to believe that Murphy was "singled out" for his political views. But this credulous chorus of concurrence proves there is nothing singular about those views. Andrew Sullivan, Josh Marshall, Matt Stoller and Rod Dreher are among many thousands upon thousands of people who have given speeches, written articles or otherwise publicly declaimed against President Bush.

If the Bush administration were trying to stifle dissent, Murphy's experience would be typical, and Bush's harshest critics would be offering their own stories of airport-security woe--or they would be silenced. Instead, they rush to affirm Murphy's interpretation of his own experience. It is what they want to believe, even though it runs counter to their own experience.

Some people are so blinded by hatred, they're gullible enough to believe anything.