No Liberals For Gay Marriage? - August 4, 2003
Times Watch for August 4, 2003
No Liberals For Gay Marriage?
Elisabeth Bumillers
Saturday story, President Steps Into Toxic Campaign Debate on Gay Marriage, is
loaded with labels: Seven mentions of conservative without a single liberal,
in a story on the liberal issue of gay marriage.
Bumiller opens her story
by suggesting Bush should have kept his mouth shut: The amazing thing, gay
Republicans said, was that President Bush was not even asked about gay marriage
at a Rose Garden news conference on Wednesday. But he plowed ahead and offered
his opinion anyway-he's against it, like most of America-while he sowed
confusion when he addressed the actual question that was posed: What was his
view on homosexuality? Mr. Bush's ambiguous, religious response, that we're all
sinners, was taken by many gays to mean that the president considered them
sinful.
Though Bumiller notes the
issue is a Democratic dilemma as well, and that 50 percent of Democrats are also
opposed to gay marriage (along with over 70 percent of Republicans), she keeps
the focus on Bush: Mr. Bush's dilemma on the issue is that he must please his
conservative supporters without alienating the more moderate voters he needs to
win. But that political tap-dance has become increasingly difficult ever since
the Supreme Court sodomy ruling, which enraged conservatives said would lead to
gay marriage.Mr. Bush made sure to express tolerance for gays-he said it was
important for society to "respect each individual"- to try to soothe swing
voters who might see his denunciation of gay marriage as bigotry.
While Bumiller is happy to
label conservatives, the Democrats dont have liberals fighting for gay
marriage, only core voters. She writes: The Democrats' dilemma on the issue
is that their core primary voters are in favor of gay marriage but the moderates
within the party are not.
For the rest of Elisabeth Bumillers story on Bush
and gay marriage,
click here.
Elisabeth Bumiller
|
George W. Bush
|
Gay Rights
|
Labeling Bias
Not Ready for Prime Time On Crime
The Times editorial page has a hard time with crime. On Friday an
editorial on The Growing Inmate Population lamented Federal, state and
local governments have been putting more people behind bars even though crime,
including violent crime, is down sharply. That blinkered thinking is a
continuation of the Butterfield
effect-the sensation of being surprised that crime falls when more
criminals are in jail.
A Saturday editorial,
Capitol Hill Cross-Fire, extends the Times ignorance with an attack on
National Rifle Association propaganda and a fact-free defense of D.C.s
gun-ban. Senator Orrin Hatch, always happy to do the bidding of the gun lobby
as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has proposed the repeal of the handgun
ban that Washington, D.C., has had in place for a generation. Erroneously
proclaiming Washington the murder capital of the nation, Mr. Hatch, the Utah
Republican, would make it easier for residents to brandish handguns at home and
in the workplace.
Erroneously? The Times
says Hatch is wrong, but doesnt say which city won the dubious honor of being
murder capital of the U.S. By the accepted standard (murders per capita), D.C.
was indeed the 2002 winner. The
Washington Times notes the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, which tracks crime
trends across the nation, revealed that the District had a higher homicide rate
last year than any other city in the nation with more than 500,000 residents.
The city had 262 killings last year, a rate of 45.82 per 100,000 residents.
(Detroit was a close second.)
The editorial continues:
It is stunning that anyone who lives and labors in Washington sees the city's
gun problem as a Second Amendment campaign tableau rooted in the O.K. Corral.
Almost half the guns used in the District's crimes have been tracked to the
neighboring states of Virginia and Maryland, where the laws are far easier for
buyers to circumvent.
Besides trotting out the
tired Wild West motif, the Times doesnt explain why, if guns are so much easier
to obtain in Virginia and Maryland, the crime rates in those states are so much
lower than the crime rate in D.C., where guns are illegal. The Times continues:
Washington should be applauded for its greater attempt at law and order. The
Times makes no mention of the abject failure of such attempts, but in the
liberal worldview, good intentions are enough, even if they may run contrary to
the Constitution.
For the rest of the Times defense of D.C.
gun-control,
click here.
Constitution
|
Crime
|
Fox Butterfield
|
Editorial
|
Gun Control
|
Sen. Orrin Hatch |
NRA |
Second Amendment
No
Nukes!
Reporter Lydia Polgreen is sad that liberal
environmentalists have been unable to shut down a nuclear power plant near
Manhattan, and expects her readers to be as well. Her Sunday Metro section
story, Theres Indian Point, and Counterpoints, regrets the missed opportunity
that resulted from the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center: If there was
ever a moment when it seemed possible to force the closing of the Indian Point
nuclear power plant, it was after two planes flew into the World Trade Center.
The attack on New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, transformed a movement once
dominated by a small band of antinuclear activists and environmentalists into
the cause of suburban soccer moms and Little League dads.
The article makes a brief
statement of the rationale behind some in the movement: Alarmed that one of the
planes carrying the hijackers had flown near Indian Point, about 35 miles north
of Midtown Manhattan, and worried about how their families would get out of
their densely populated suburban communities should disaster strike, many
slapped Close Indian Point bumper stickers on their minivans and sport utility
vehicles. But liberal environmentalists are the main drivers behind the
movement, and they were in favor of shutting down the nuclear plant long before
9-11.
Polgreen continues: Yet
nearly two years after the terrorist attack, the decades-old struggle to close
Indian Point seems no nearer to its goal. The best evidence of this fact came
last week, when the Federal Emergency Management Agency slammed shut the only
window local communities had into the odd regulatory world that governs nuclear
plants, endorsing an emergency evacuation plan that local and state officials
said was seriously flawed.
Polgreen entirely bypasses
the economic argument that New York cant afford to lose such a
huge
source of electricity, an argument put forth in a July 20 New York Daily
News op-ed by Peter Huber of the Manhattan Institute and Mark Mills of Digital
Power Capital: Powering New York is already a challenge. The city could not
stay lit, much less grow or prosper, if we shut down our largest, safest,
cleanest and most efficient power plant. Not to mention the
excellent overall safety record of nuclear plants.
For the rest of Lydia Polgreens story on Indian
Point,
click here.
Energy
|
Environmentalism
|
Nuclear Power
|
Lydia Polgreen
|
Public Lives
A
Coal Mine of Bias
Is it just Times Watch, or have the papers
editorials become even more strident lately? Were normally content to
concentrate on the liberal slant of the Times news pages, but a Sunday
editorial, like
some previous ones, is sufficiently fact-challenged to merit mention.
It begins: Ever since
George Bush renounced the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on global warming two years ago,
the industrialized world has been waiting patiently for signs that Americans are
ready to focus on the pressing issue of climate change. Lately some American
politicians have begun to take the matter more seriously, even if Mr. Bush has
not. Last week Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman extracted a pledge from
their colleagues to hold a floor vote later this year on a promising and, by
Senate standards, adventurous proposal for mandatory controls on industrial
emissions of carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.
The Times brave new
forward-thinking energy plan? More coal: Mr. Bush's Energy Department, for
example, is engaged in an experimental effort to build a new generation of power
plants that will continue to run on coal-the world's cheapest, most abundant
fuel-but emit no global warming gases. The Times says nothing about nuclear
power, possibly the
cheapest and safest fuel around (even
France gets 78% of its electricity from nuclear power). This may be due to a
general liberal paranoia about nuclear power.
The editorial concludes:
McCain-Lieberman is not likely to pass, absent an unexpected conversion on the
issue by Mr. Bush and senior Republicans. But every senator will now be required
to take a stand one way or the other on an issue of great public concern, an
issue on which the world has spoken clearly but Congress has remained
irresponsibly silent for too long.
However,
Congress
has spoken on the issue, just not the way the Times would have wanted. In
1997, during the Clinton administration, the U.S. Senate voted 95-0 for a sense
of the Senate resolution affirming that the Kyoto Protocol would result in
serious harm to the economy of the United States.
For the rest of the Times editorial on global
warming,
click here.
Editorial
|
Environment
|
Global Warming
|
Kyoto Protocol
|
Nuclear Power
The
Times New Favorite Republican
A self-described Republican critical of Bushs tax
cuts, Michael Retzer was guaranteed to be popular with Times reporters. Sure
enough, heres Elisabeth Bumiller on Wednesday reporting from Wisconsin, where
she followed three of Bushs cabinet secretaries on a tax-cut promotion tour:
Michael Retzer, a Republican and a consultant to Ram Inc., a Harley-Davidson
supplier, said he did not see how the administration's tax cuts would stimulate
the economy when so many consumers would spend the extra money on goods
manufactured overseas. Mr. Snow answered by saying that the rate cuts were
pretty sizable tax relief, which did not satisfy Mr. Retzer. They danced
around it, he said, adding, Right now I am very disillusioned with the
Republicans' policies.
Mondays story by Bumiller,
Like a Cloud, Economic Woes Follow Bus Tour, also tries its best to put a
damper on Bushs tax-cut promotion-and also recycles the very same quote from
Retzer, the Times new favorite Republican.
Heres Bumiller reporting
Monday from the Bush ranch in Texas: Anyone on the [Wisconsin] tripcould see
that the cabinet members charged with promoting the president's tax cuts also
heard a lot of anger from workers about foreign competition and laid-off
relatives and friends. Right now I am very disillusioned with the Republicans'
policies, said Michael Retzer, a Republican and a consultant to a supplier for
Harley-Davidson. Mr. Retzer told Mr. Snow at a Harley plant near Milwaukee that
he did not see how the tax cuts would stimulate the economy when so many
consumers would spend the extra money on goods made overseas.
Retzer may well vote
Republican, but his main issue seems to be fair trade, judging by
this op-ed in which he calls for tariffs on imports and criticizes the U.S.
trade deficit.
If Bumiller has to recycle quotes from a single self-described Republican to
shore up her argument that Republicans dont like Bushs tax cuts, then Bushs
tax cuts must not be doing too badly.
For Bumillers Monday story on Bushs tax cuts (and
Retzers quote)
click here.
For Bumillers story from last Wednesday on Bushs
tax cuts (and Retzers quote)
click here.
Elisabeth Bumiller
|
Cabinet
|
Economy
|
Gaffes
|
Michael Retzer
|
Tax Cuts
