Let’s give Mr. Alter some props. He answered my email. Granted, it took awhile but he did respond. Here’s his response. It’s not bad until the end. You’ll see what I mean.

Hi, Mary:
Yes, I would tell you and Brian Terry’s family that Operation Fast and Furious was not a scandal. It was bad public policy that went horribly awry, with tragic consequences. It was a big blunder, a fiasco and maybe some other adjectives you and I could agree on, but not a “scandal” as conventionally defined. If you believe it’s a scandal, which to my mind connotes intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal (sometimes sexual gain), than you must include other huge policy mistakes under your definition.

So I assume you are willing to agree that the Bush Administration’s failure to recognize in advance that Saddam Hussein didn’t possess WMD was a scandal (removing Saddam’s WMD was the explicitly-stated purpose of the war). That intelligence failure led to an unnecessary war and the death of thousands. Many veterans of the Bush Administration have agreed that the war, like Operation Fast and Furious, was a case of good intentions gone horribly wrong.”Stuff happens,” as Donald Rumsfeld put it.

But those unfortunate, even tragic, things are not the stuff of scandal, unless they involved stealing by contractors and the like. As it happens, I was a supporter of the war initially, then criticized its conduct. But knowing that President Bush genuinely believed WMD to be present (In the same way Eric Holder genuinely believed the U. S. government could track guns through that straw purchase program, which had begun under Bush), I never called the Iraq War a scandal. Did you?  I didn’t think so.

If you are motivated by anything beyond sheer malice toward the President of the United States you will agree with the logic of this post. In any event, please feel free to share it with your readers.

Warm regards, Jonathan Alter

I thought it was an okay response until the last part and he shot himself in the foot. If my supposed “sheer malice” for President Obama is blinding me then couldn’t I say Mr. Alter’s total devotion to President Obama is blinding him?

To Mr. Alter a scandal is intentional wrongdoing for financial or personal gain. The Department of Justice didn’t tell the Mexican government about Operation Fast & Furious. Could someone please explain to me how that doesn’t count as intentional wrongdoing? How does anyone think it’s right or a good thing to arm already dangerous drug cartels? How were they going to track the guns without anyone knowing on the other side or tracking devices in the guns?! No attempt was made at the border to confiscate the guns. The DOJ purposely did not tell the Mexican government. They didn’t inform the Mexican government because they wanted this operation fail. Operation Fast & Furious was doomed from the beginning. Eric Holder never believed they could track guns through the straw purchase program. If he did there would be tracking devices in the guns and the Mexican government would be involved. If you think about it the only way for the guns to be tracked would be to find them at crime scenes.

Another reason why Operation Fast & Furious is a scandal under Mr. Alter’s definition: the push for gun control laws. Let’s just say everything Mr. Alter and Mr. Holder has said is 100% true. It’s still a scandal because now the DOJ and some in Congress are using Operation Fast & Furious as a way to push for more gun control. They’re using this situation for personal and political gains. The New York Times concentrated on that one part of Mr. Holder’s testimony!

(more…)

Protection from the activist old media when scandal hits is a great deal when you can get it.

Political figures know that a Republican who sneezes sideways gets blasted non-stop, and a Democrat can stand on top of the local Clock Tower picking off the public with a high-powered rifle and the people will be blamed for getting in the way of the bullets.

This is the way the game is played, and everybody in the media and in politics knows it. Fortunately, the public is becoming more aware of this all the time.

You think I’m being extreme? Take the case of former New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine.

Corzine ran MF Global. That company just filed for bankruptcy, meaning investors have lost as much as $700 million dollars. Corzine is a Democrat–a big Democrat. It’s hard to find that fact in the stories being done on the collapse of MF Global, if Corzine’s name is even mentioned at all. Democrat Corzine may have also transferred investors’ funds days before the collapse to avoid detection by authorities. If this were a Republican, Joe Biden would call this a big ‘effin deal.

Good Morning America ran the story this week on the collapse of MF Global. It was all of 14 seconds long and Corzine’s name was left out. Whoops–didn’t have time to fit that in. Forget mentioning he was a big, lib Democrat, he got the luxury of his name being totally ignored. Hey, it’s a great deal when you can get it. (more…)

From the Media Research Center:

Over a period of just three and a half days, NBC, CBS and ABC have developed an insatiable hunger for the Herman Cain sexual harassment story, devoting an incredible 50 stories to the allegations since Monday morning. In contrast, over a similar period these networks mostly ignored far more substantial and serious scandals relating to Bill Clinton.

This pattern continued on Wednesday night and into Thursday as the evening newscasts and morning shows highlighted the story 19 times. On Good Morning America, Brian Ross offered innuendo and slung gossip, recounting, “But behind the scenes, several of the campaigns are still urging reporters to continue to dig, George, saying, there’s more to be found in the private life of Herman Cain.” [MP3 audio here.]

Without offering facts, Ross described Cain’s time as head of the National Restaurant Association: “It fits with the kind of culture we were told that existed there, with young women who had been, sort of, lobbyists for the restaurant association, working with various states. They were the new ones, the young ones. And they say that’s where Cain often socialized.” (more…)

Media Matters is a propaganda outfit. Their 501(c)(3) status is a scam. They’re paid operatives whose donors really hate Fox News — so much so that Media Matters violates their own “standards” when deciding what is or isn’t worthy of attention.

You’ve probably heard about Project Gunrunner / Project Fast and Furious. If you haven’t, here’s a quick synopsis by editor emeritus, Michael Walsh (via NYP):

…Operation Fast and Furious, which seems about to explode right in the face of Attorney General Eric Holder – and maybe other administration officials, too.

Also known as Project Gunrunner, the Arizona-based operation was supposed to be a sting, under which the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which is part of the Justice Department, allowed “straw purchasers” to transfer weapons from gun shops in Arizona to Mexican drug cartels to trace and halt crossborder arms-trafficking.

That’s the official version, anyway — but it’s crumbling, fast.

This is a scandal. An official US operation has gone terribly wrong. A Federal Agent and who knows how many Mexican civilians have been killed with these guns. Now we’re finding out that Justice Department officials might have been trying to cover up the botched operation (via ABC News):

According to sources close to the investigation, Melson had previously wanted to testify before the oversight committees but Justice Department officials sought to delay his testimony.

Melson is the acting head of the ATF. More:

Melson testified that he and top management at ATF moved to reassign supervisors working on Fast and Furious and that officials at DOJ allegedly tried to prevent ATF from notifying the oversight committees about the full nature of the management moves. The letter sent to Holder notes, “If his account is accurate, then ATF leadership appears to have been effectively muzzled while the DOJ sent over false denials and buried its head in the sand. That approach distorted the truth and obstructed our investigation. The Department’s inability or unwillingness to be more forthcoming served to conceal critical information that we are now learning about the involvement of other agencies, including the DEA and the FBI.”

You’re getting the picture. There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark. So how does the propaganda outfit known as Media Matters cover the coverage (specifically the Fox News coverage) of this obvious scandal? Easy. They characterize it as nothing more than a “controversial” government operation that Fox News is using to push a “conspiracy theory.” No curiosity regarding who authorized it. No. The problem with the story isn’t the story itself, it’s the commentators who are asking questions and speculating about whether there was some political angle to it. (Oh, and of course there’s a little race-card playing in the mix … for spice.)

Apparently, it’s not okay to speculate about the potential political motivations behind allowing guns to flow into Mexico where no one would be able to keep tabs on them. According to Media Matters, there no chance someone might want to legitimize the claims made by some that 80% of the guns used by drug traffickers in Mexico come from the US. It is impossible to think someone might have thought they could control this situation and it went horribly wrong. Nah! It’s just those crazy right-wingers being all skeptical of government again. Totally unfounded. Stick to the facts, they say.

Alright, let’s stick to the facts regarding another scandal which for some reason, Media Matters and their goons on Twitter can’t stop talking about: The News of the World phone hacking scandal. Project Gunrunner, meh. News of the World, oh yeah!

(more…)

This entire story will come as no surprise, but must be mentioned as the media blasts Andrew Breitbart for breaking the #Weinergate story.

According to one of the women, MSNBC had first shot at it.

Lisa Weiss, a Las Vegas blackjack dealer, says she first approached MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to see if she would do the story about Anthony Weiner.

“Anthony was a regular guest on Rachel’s show and I love her, so much, and her views, so I reached out to her,” the blackjack dealer told RadarOnline.com.

“But I never heard back.”

(more…)

The Cry Wolf Project is a politically motivated and financed scheme to recruit university students and faculty to “give substance and scholarly integrity” to a predetermined partisan narrative – namely that in the “battle with conservative ideas,” “conservative politicians and right-wing pundits” use “falsity and exaggeration” to “thwart progressive reform.”

Simply put, Cry Wolf wants scholarly proof that conservatives are liars and is willing to pay to get the results it wants.

In addition to the potential legal — and certain ethical — violations, there are two fundamental problems with the Cry Wolf Project’s approach: (more…)

Will 2004 Democrat VP nominee and two-time presidential candidate John Edwards soon be indicted by the feds for campaign-finance violations?  The National Enquirer says Edwards will be indicted — and in the John Edwards Scandal, where the Enquirer leads the Mainstream Media follow.

What a difference a few years make.

When Edwards was one of the leading Democrat presidential candidates, the Enquirer broke story after story while the MSM refused to ask, refused to report and refused to inform its readers of the events.  This continued for months, while Edwards was considered for both an Obama running mate and attorney general slot.

Even after the Enquirer caught Edwards visiting Hunter and their daughter in a late night rendezvous at the Beverly Hilton in July 2008, there was no coverage in the traditional press for weeks.  After initially labeling the Enquirer’s report as “tabloid trash,“ Edwards finally confessed on ABC’s Nightline on August 8, 2008. (more…)

The stage is being set for another round of media examinations of “military culture” thanks to the ever weirder and more sordid saga of former Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY).   For the uninitiated or those awakening from a deep coma, Massa is the recently resigned congressman who is coming under microscopic media scrutiny for alleged acts of inappropriate behavior, some of it allegedly constituting sexual harassment. In recent days, the media have been drilling down into his 24-year career as a naval officer and in the process, some pretty disturbing tales have been percolating to the surface.

During Lawrence O’Donnell’s March 10 guest hosting gig on MSNBC’s Countdown show, he wondered aloud, “Who has done more damage to the image of the Navy, Congressman Massa or the Village People?” a reference to the disco group and its 1979 hit In the Navy.

The blog at The Economist goes even farther, stating that Massa’s tales of high jinks on the high seas  is entirely plausible:

Eric Massa, who is resigning from Congress over the possibility of a male staffer raising allegations of sexual harassment, has been explaining a series of jokes and misunderstandings over the years involving gay sex. Mr. Massa, who served in the Navy, says he’s a “salty old sailor.” I find this explanation entirely convincing. (more…)

I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or oddly flattered when Bob Beckel called me a “ho” Monday night on Sean Hannity’s show. He was discussing James O’Keefe’s current situation and for some reason brought me up. But not the real me: not the 20-year old committed Christian, brown-belt Jiu-Jitsu girl and aspiring journalist, who embarked on a secret summer adventure that caused a major political and media disruption in the fall of ‘09.

Nope, evidently the characters I played in the ACORN videos, Kenya and Eden, had Beckel a little confused.  After he called me a ho, the panel informed him I wasn’t a real hooker, only pretending to be one for the sake of the story. He defends himself by saying I was a very “convincing hooker.”

All I can say is, Beckel would know. (more…)