Bush supporters' aftermath thread

The British papers had a field day . Here's is the Independent.

First Amendment No Big Deal, Students Say
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 1, 2005 Filed at 3:12 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The way many high school students see it, government censorship of newspapers may not be a bad thing, and flag burning is hardly protected free speech.

It turns out the First Amendment is a second-rate issue to many of those nearing their own adult independence, according to a study of high school attitudes released Monday.

The original amendment to the Constitution is the cornerstone of the way of life in the United States, promising citizens the freedoms of religion, speech, press and assembly.

Yet, when told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes ``too far'' in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories.

``These results are not only disturbing; they are dangerous,'' said Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, which sponsored the $1 million study. ``Ignorance about the basics of this free society is a danger to our nation's future.''

The students are even more restrictive in their views than their elders, the study says.

When asked whether people should be allowed to express unpopular views, 97 percent of teachers and 99 percent of school principals said yes. Only 83 percent of students did.

The results reflected indifference, with almost three in four students saying they took the First Amendment for granted or didn't know how they felt about it. It was also clear that many students do not understand what is protected by the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

Three in four students said flag burning is illegal. It's not. About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet. It can't.

``Schools don't do enough to teach the First Amendment. Students often don't know the rights it protects,'' Linda Puntney, executive director of the Journalism Education Association, said in the report. ``This all comes at a time when there is decreasing passion for much of anything. And, you have to be passionate about the First Amendment.''

The partners in the project, including organizations of newspaper editors and radio and television news directors, share a clear advocacy for First Amendment issues.

Federal and state officials, meanwhile, have bemoaned a lack of knowledge of U.S. civics and history among young people. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., has even pushed through a mandate that schools must teach about the Constitution on Sept. 17, the date it was signed in 1787.

The survey, conducted by researchers at the University of Connecticut, is billed as the largest of its kind. More than 100,000 students, nearly 8,000 teachers and more than 500 administrators at 544 public and private high schools took part in early 2004.

The study suggests that students embrace First Amendment freedoms if they are taught about them and given a chance to practice them, but schools don't make the matter a priority.

Students who take part in school media activities, such as a student newspapers or TV production, are much more likely to support expression of unpopular views, for example.

About nine in 10 principals said it is important for all students to learn some journalism skills, but most administrators say a lack of money limits their media offerings.

More than one in five schools offer no student media opportunities; of the high schools that do not offer student newspapers, 40 percent have eliminated them in the last five years.

``The last 15 years have not been a golden era for student media,'' said Warren Watson, director of the J-Ideas project at Ball State University in Indiana. ``Programs are under siege or dying from neglect. Many students do not get the opportunity to practice our basic freedoms.''

Rather than being totally horrified that young people have so little understanding of First Amendment rights, the media, both European and U.S., might want to look at what they are doing that instigates so little faith in them.

It was widely reported (and debated on our local news/talk radio station) that a high precentage of highschoolers now think that the government ought to have more control and oversight of what the media publishes. Rather than being totally horrified that young people have so little understanding of First Amendment rights, the media, both European and U.S., might want to look at what they are doing that instigates so little faith in them.

Another conclusion might be that those youth really want that.
We had such here in Germany in the mid-30's of last century.

For that matter so do I. I don't want government to have any say over what the media may or may not report except in the most extreme immediate and temporary cases of national or military security, I would very much like for our government to strictly enforce existing libel and slander laws. All that it would take for the media to regain lost respect is to be accountable and responsible in what it reports.

The very best part, the part that really moved me, was when the Iraqi woman with purple fingers and the mother of the blown-apart soldier hugged.

I loved it because of the compassion - the compassion demonstrated in PR people scouring about in bombed out Iraq for a photogenic Iraqi woman then packing her onto an airplane and putting her up at the DC Waldorf for a couple of nights with her own makeup team...and the same PR team cross-indexing "dead soldiers" and "Republican family" and isolating a few possible choices then settling on the one family that didn't toss them out of the house and then putting them up for a night or two at the Waldorf with their own makeup team (or maybe one makeup team shared, a prudent budget conscious consideration)...and then leading them into the hall and seating them in precise relationship to Camera Three and Person Representing The President's Wife for afternoon rehearsal...

I loved the compassion in that.

AND THE DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE

Did you catch the Democratic response to the State of the Union address? This one was a complete bust...a real snoozer. It's hard to believe...but it's true: the Democrats have selected a worse communicator than Tom Daschle to represent them in the Senate. Watching Harry Reid is about as exciting as reading an apartment lease.

Anyway, it was Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, sitting there looking like they should be selling jewelry or sex aids on the shopping channel. Reid went first, and his goal was to bash the president and detail the obstructionist Democratic agenda. In a display of blatant hypocrisy, the Democratic leader took a swipe at the president for the large budget deficits. Fair enough. Spending has increased exponentially since Bush took office. But then Reid went on to propose more and more spending.....spending that would cost billions. So which is it? Is it that the president is spending too much money, or is it the deficit? The answer is neither.

The Democrats would gleefully raise your taxes to cover the shortfall in the deficit and in the process snuff out the economic recovery. They have no intention to cut spending at all whatsoever. Then he talked about Social Security. More on that in a minute.

Then it was time to hand it over to Ms. Extreme Makeover herself, Nancy Pelosi. The radical 60's leftist aging hippie from Haight - Ashbury who wants to somehow convince us that she's actually some sort of moderate started to talk about foreign policy. This is where the whole thing turned into an outrageous disaster.

After Bush stood up there and said he didn't want to give a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq because he didn't want the Islamic terrorists to wait us out, Pelosi demanded one. Then she went on to demand that the president do everything the president is already doing.

The Democratic party continues its long walk off a short plank, and the disastrous leadership on the left in the Congress is leading the charge.

January 14, 2005, 8:07 a.m.
"Save Social Security First"?Back in 1998, Democrats realized it was politically safe to rally around Clinton's statements about a Social Security crisis because they knew he did not really intend to take any action that matched his rhetoric. They also knew that Clinton's words were correct; Social Security was then, as it is now, facing a "looming fiscal crisis." He just didn't plan to do much about it.

Now, things are different. George W. Bush, by all accounts, intends to take substantial action. And as he prepares the way for that action, he has decided to use elements of the old Clinton campaign to make his case. Last week, under questioning by reporters, White House spokesman Scott McClellan read an extended passage from Clinton's February 1998 "looming fiscal crisis" statement without first revealing the source of the quote. That wasn't President Bush, McClellan then explained. "That was February 9, 1998, in remarks given by President Clinton. This has been a problem that has been looming for quite some time."

Iraq the vote
Ann Coulter

February 3, 2005

In one of the grandest events in the history of the world, millions of Iraqis risked death on Sunday to vote in a free, democratic election. There were more than 100 attacks on polling stations by the "insurgents" (or "Islamic fascists," as authentic Americans call them). But the Iraqis voted - Shia, Sunnis, women and an estimated 2,000 dead felons in Washington state.

Democrats haven't been this depressed since we captured Saddam Hussein.

On "Meet the Press," the Democrats' erstwhile presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry, questioned the legitimacy of the election, saying, "t's hard to say that something is legitimate when a whole portion of the country can't vote and doesn't vote."

Kerry warned Americans not to "overhype this election" - and if there's one guy who's good at calming down excited voters, it's John Kerry. Apparently, word didn't get out to the Iraqis, who were dancing and singing in the streets. (Isn't it great to see Muslims celebrating something other than the slaughter of Americans?)

Kerry's main advice to Bush was to reach out to the French. Curiously, this is also the Democrats' plan for fixing Social Security, dealing with North Korea and controlling the budget deficit: Reach out to the French!

Most amusingly, Kerry repeatedly quoted himself, as if he had called this one ball, shot and pocket: "You may recall that back in - well, there's no reason you would --but back in Fulton, Mo., during the campaign, I laid out four steps ..." (at that point the cameraman nodded off and NBC abruptly cut to color bars).

I remember what Kerry said during the campaign! What he and his fellow Democratic towel-biters said was that this election wasn't going to happen.

Kerry specifically addressed the scheduled Iraqi elections in his closing statement at the first presidential debate, saying: "They can't have an election right now. The president's not getting the job done." (Kerry's a genius! He won the debate!)

A few weeks later, his campaign manager, Mary Beth Cahill, said: "It's not safe enough to have elections, which are scheduled in January. There is no way that people could go to the polls in that country right now."

In order to have free elections, apparently we would have to ... reach out to the French! "The Kerry plan," Cahill said, "would be to have an international consensus, not to go it alone, to get other countries into Iraq with us, so that we could carry out elections and we could move Iraq to be a free nation."

And yet we somehow managed to have a free election in Iraq without the French.

In September, former president and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Jimmy Carter said on NBC's "Today": "I personally do not believe they're going to be ready for the election in January ... because there's no security there."

Democrat moneyman George Soros said in a speech to the National Press Club last fall: "All my experience ... has taught me that democracy cannot be imposed by military means." (But see: Germany, Japan, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and El Salvador.) Of course Soros' "experience" consists mostly of liberating billions of dollars from the captivity of other people's bank accounts. He's a regular Douglas MacArthur, that Soros guy.

Expressing his faith in the Iraqi people, Soros continued: "Iraq would be the last place I would choose for an experiment in introducing democracy." All those blue-inked fingers were the Iraqi people giving Soros the finger.

Also taking his cue on world politics from Janeane Garofalo, last September U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said he doubted there would be elections in January, saying, "You cannot have credible elections if the security conditions continue as they are now" - although he may have been referring here to a possible vote of the U.N. Security Council.

Robert Fisk of the Independent (U.K.) told an audience in October 2004: "The chances of [January] elections are fading faster than water running into the desert." He said it was a "lie" that the allies were creating "an oasis of democracy with its center in Iraq." Remind me not to ask Fisk who he likes in the Super Bowl.

The Economist magazine said that until security in Iraq improves, "reconstruction will stall - and the hopes of Messrs. Allawi and Bush for a decent election, enabling a strong and legitimate government to take over, will continue to look uncertain to be fulfilled."

In October, Nicholas Lemann was a whirlwind of bad news about Iraq, writing in the New Yorker: "The U.S. military in Iraq has started trying to take back areas of the country now controlled by insurgents, and it may not be safe enough there for the scheduled elections to be held in January." Somehow he failed to add, "Also, by mid-March live rhesus monkeys may be flying out of my butt."

Amid his litany of bad news, Lemann said: "It is difficult to find anybody in Washington, in either party, who will seriously defend Bush's management of Iraq." Fortunately, last Sunday, President Bush found 8 million people - outside of Washington - to seriously defend his management of Iraq.

Of course I wasn't all caught up in analyzing it from a marketing/PR perspective. I have the luxury of not having to do that with everything. Yet ... I manage to get through the day....