DAS Blog

First, the NY Times barely provides any coverage of the changes to FISA provided by Bush & CO.

Then the NY Times prints an article titled "Democrats Scrambling to Expand Eavesdropping", making it seem that whatever stupid things come out of the changes to FISA, it's the Democrats who thought of them.

Then, once the bill is passed, the NY Times (already having copped to consistently mis-spelling Gonzales' name ... I hope I've spelt it right ;) ) writes editorials, etc., saying how spineless were the Democrats for passing this bill?

I can't believe this is all just coincidence ... the NY Times can't be this bad of a newspaper by accident can they?

True ... the Democrats who supported the bill for reasons of political calculation were being craven (and counter-productive to their own political future). But from their POV, what was their situation? "even the liberal NPR is saying that the Democrats need to fix FISA", etc. If the NY Times really wanted the Democrats to not have passed the bill, they need only have done their job and reported, without burying the lede and without visible partisanship about it, that the bill was not what the President was claiming it was. That would have provided the Dems. political cover to unite against the bill (btw ... why didn't the Dems, um, write their own #@&!ing bill! ... they could have made the exact fix everyone said was necessary ... and when Bush & CO misrepresented their bill and accused the Dems. of playing politics by wasting time writing their own bill, they could simply have pointed out how Bush & CO didn't give 'em a "clean bill" -- wave Bush & CO's rhetoric back in their face! that's how it's done, ain't it?).

Instead, as it was, there was every indication that, had Reid and Pelosi destroyed the bill, they would have been raked over the coals, even in the NY Times, for failing to provide a much needed fix for the FISA bill. Note that the NY Times headline made it seem like the Dems. were the ones who wanted to do the eavesdropping in the first place! Of course, the Dems. should realize by now that the media is not their friend, and they should not try to do what'll play well in the media as it never will.

But the media meanwhile does, after the fact of course, all it can to make itself seem "liberal" (which convinces many Dems. that, like Charlie Brown hoping to kick the football, next time they might get favorable coverage from the media if they play their cards right) and biased ("see the liberal media can't even bother to spell the AG's name right!"). So whenever they may go against the GOP, it'll be dismissed as biased. Why is the media playing this game? It can't be an accident, can it? We've seen it happen just one too many times ...

Update: it turns out there was a cleaner bill, but the Democratic leadership killed it. I don't fully understand what exactly they did (and I was on University Senate for a few years ... long enough to have experience and understood some very bizarre parliamentary procedures wherein ostensibly voting for something meant in the end you were killing it and ostensibly voting against something meant you were giving it new life), but for some reason the Democratic leadership killed their own bill! What numbskulls! No wonder people don't trust Democrats to govern ... they can't do it! And it isn't as if these are Republicans who claim that government can't work anyway. If you claim government can work, you better be able to make it work!

Update #2: It turns out that Rove, like a comic book villain, revealed his plans previously. The Dems. can't even deal with villainy of a comic book level of obviousness? How pathetic!