Times Watch for October 1, 2003
Tony Blair, Slavering Lapdog
Tony Blair Fights to Regain Traction at Party Meeting
is Warren Hoges Tuesday dispatch from Britains Labor Party conference in the
coastal city of Bournemouth. Hoge sees bad tidings for Blair: Mr. Blair's close
alliance with an American president who is deeply unpopular in Britain has left
him appearing the way cartoonists see him-as the slavering lapdog of George W.
Bush. A Buckingham Palace announcement last week-that Mr. Bush will be making a
state visit to Britain in November-was greeted with groans from Labor
politicians about its untimeliness and predictions by antiwar activists of mass
street demonstrations.
Hoge doesnt even qualify
his description of Blair as slavering lapdog with a perfunctory, critics say
Hoge simply states matter-of-factly that Blair looks like Bushs slavering
lapdog.
Hoge continues: Most
importantly, the failure to find unconventional weapons in Iraq has undermined
the principal rationale Mr. Blair put forward to justify the war. That, coupled
with the suspicion that his government manipulated intelligence to make the case
for war, have seriously undermined his credibility.
But those suspicions of
intelligence manipulation (raised again by Hoge in a
Wednesday piece from Bournemouth) rest on a BBC report from reporter Andrew
Gilligan that the Times London-based correspondent
Sarah Lyall describes as the now-discredited report on the Today radio
program accusing the government of sexing up the dossier it gave to Parliament
as justification for an attack on Iraq. Hoge fails to mention that Gilligans
reporting was
publicly criticized as flawed by the BBC itself, and that Blairs government
was
subsequently cleared by Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee on
the charge of manipulating intelligence.
For the rest of Hoges story on Tony Blairs
political problems,
click here.
Picking
On Racially Insensitive Judge Pickering
After having him rejected by the Senate earlier
this year, the Bush administration has resubmitted the name of Charles Pickering
to fill a federal judgeship, displeasing the Times immensely. In a Wednesday
editorial, Judge Pickering, Again, the Times questions whether he would be
the kind of judge the Fifth Circuit-one of the most heavily minority circuits
in the country-needs. His record strongly suggests he would not. Judge
Pickering's actions in a cross-burning case alone should disqualify him. He took
up the cause of a man convicted of burning a cross on the lawn of an interracial
couple. He badgered prosecutors into dropping a key charge even after the man
was convicted and called a prosecutor to lobby him, an unusual and improper
move. That Judge Pickering, who has a record of being tough on criminals, was so
passionate in this case shows, at the least, racial insensitivity. How he
undertook the battle showed a lack of judicial ethics.
Byron York, White House
correspondent for National Review, unpacked the convoluted
cross-burning case when Pickerings nomination was before the Senate in
January. York found that the truth was a bit more complicated than the Times
sotto-voce accusation of racism implies: Pickering questioned whether it made
sense that the most-guilty defendant got off with a misdemeanor and no jail
time, while a less-guilty defendant would be sentenced to seven and a half years
in prison. The recommendation of the government in this instance is clearly the
most egregious instance of disproportionate sentencing recommended by the
government in any case pending before this court, Pickering wrote.
For the rest of the Times editorial on Charles
Pickering,
click here.
Is
Bush Nominee Too Extreme? Lets Ask Tom Lantos
Elaine Sciolinos Tuesday story on Laura Bushs
trip to Paris criticizes President Bushs choice for ambassador to the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which the
U.S. has rejoined after a 19-year boycott. The choice of [Louise] Oliver, a
staunch conservative, as ambassador may indicate the direction the Bush
administration wants Unesco to take. She is the former president of Gopac, the
Republican political advocacy organization, worked in the White House personnel
office in the Reagan administration, and was the first President Bush's
commissioner of the National Council on Children. Despite concerns among some
Democratic lawmakers that she may be too politically extreme for the post, she
is expected to win easy Senate confirmation.
Is Oliver really too
extreme? In the next sentence Sciolino seeks an answer to that question from
Rep. Tom Lantos, a fellow member of the visiting delegation and a liberal
Democrat: Asked about the wisdom of her appointment, [Rep. Tom] Lantos declined
public comment.
Notice how Sciolino
softens the Democratic slur of extremism into the more diplomatic expression
of concern. And what makes the liberal Rep. Tom Lantos (with a lifetime
American Conservative Union rating of 8 out of 100) an objective expert on
judging extremism in the first place?
For the rest of Elaine Sciolinos story on the U.S.
rejoining UNESCO,
click here.