If you are a news organization and in your coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign, you continuously profess that you’re “Keeping Them Honest™”, shouldn’t you disclose the backgrounds of the “ordinary people” you trot out to ask questions of the candidates at a televised debate? Apparently not at CNN.

I watched the latter part of the Democratic debate held in Las Vegas (watching it on my HDTV was a mistake, but that’s another posting) and I heard the questions being asked by the audience members. Sounded like died-in-the-wool Democrats asking favorable questions of the candidates. In other words, what you would expect at a single-party event. No surprise.

Well the fact that the people being presented as ordinary citizens, just like you and me, are not. They appear to be activists. Nor do their questions appear to be their own.

Khalid Khan, the Muslim man who asked the question, well asked is a stretch - he was making his opinion known and wanted the candidates to play along, Khalid Khan is the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada. Eric Scheie writes:

OK, I have no way of knowing the extent to which Mr. Khan has been subjected to profiling. But he is not an ordinary citizen. For years he has been a prominent Muslim leader — the president of the Islamic Society of Nevada, who has hosted conferences like this one (which included the controversial Muzzamil Siddiqi), and the first sentence in a piece in the LA Times described him as “a stalwart among Las Vegas Muslims.”

Eric also includes a transcript from a CNN special that featured Mr. Khan. (What I wouldn’t give to see Wolf Blitzer do the Shatner impression from Star Trek II.)

I digress. The first “ordinary citizen” to ask a question of the candidates was one Catherine Jackson, who in the guise of asking a question, fanned the flames of fear in how the evil George Bushitler was beating the bloody drums of war with Iran… Got carried away there, sorry. She wanted to know what they Democrats were going to do in order to protect her son, who served in Iraq three times. She fears he’s going to be sent to Iran.

She’s an ordinary mom with her son standing silently behind her. (And my mind runs amok with images of overly-protective mothers not letting their boys grow up to be men…) You can hear the national anthem and smell the apple pie. Dan Riehl finds that she’s a Nevada activist, too.

Now when have I heard that before? How about in May. Thank you Harry Reid.

“My son was in Iraq three times,” said Catherine Jackson of Las Vegas. “I thank God he’s home now. Enough is enough. We need to bring our troops home.” Reid spokesman Jon Summers said Move America Forward was mischaracterizing Reid’s position. “It’s their right to make their feelings known, but most Nevadans agree with Senator Reid that it’s time to change course in Iraq,” he said.

CNN is doing a great impression of the Black Knight from the Holy Grail. Add in questions about CNN’s “independent” analysts, James Carville and David Gergen, both former employees of the Clintons, and it’s more than a flesh wound. CNN’s Democratic debate at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas was a circus act second only to CNN’s horrific YouTube debate. Where was the snowman, man? Even UNLV’s Rebel Yell, the student paper, saw through the shiny lights and scripted spontaneity.

Keeping them Honest, eh?

Peggy Noonan looks at the past few weeks of Senator Clinton’s campaign and the awakening that appears to be taking place in the electorate. Noonan does so under the light of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s true greatness; something Senator Clinton can never reach.

Margaret Thatcher would no more have identified herself as a woman, or claimed special pleading that she was a mere frail girl, or asked you to sympathize with her because of her sex, than she would have called up the Kremlin and asked how quickly she could surrender.

Thatcher achieved what Senator Clinton thinks she can achieve: the status of a being a true leader, while also happening to be a woman. Leader first, woman second. That can’t be done by playing the gender card, making statements that play on traditional roles of a woman, and by repeatedly displaying through actions, an inability to deal seriously with matters of importance and otherwise.

Can we get a Thatcher here in the States?

Senate Democrats seem to have realized that by allowing the confirmation of the nominee for Attorney General to go through, they would take away a talking point for Democratic candidates. Where they thought him kosher during his hearings, they now think him the next most-evil thing to Satan’s right-hand. Now they want him to declare waterboarding a form of torture and therefore illegal. The man is not holding office and they want his statement on paper so they can wave it around and use it in the upcoming campaign season. Mukasey’s denouncement of torture would provide ample ammunition for MoveOn ads for the next year. Won’t those be just peachy?

How did Senate Democrats get to this holier-than-thou position on Mukasey where they are horrified and disgusted with waterboarding? By not being so repelled with waterboarding in the past, that’s how. In 2004, Chuck Schumer had this to say about waterboarding:

I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. . . . It is easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used, but when you are in the foxhole it is a very different deal. And I respect, I think we all respect the fact that the President is in the foxhole every day.

Senator and Presidential candidate Obama, in the September 26th debate, appeared to want to have his cake and eat it, too: (the mp3 of this statement is here.)

Barack Obama responded by declaring that we cannot “have the president of the United States state as a matter of policy that there is a loophole or an exception where we would sanction torture.” He then shifted, in the very same breath, to state that “there are going to be all sorts of hypotheticals, an emergency situation, and I will make that judgment at that time.” In other words, he wants to preserve the very same loophole for which he lambastes President Bush.

According to the linked Wall Street Journal story above, Congress had two chances in the past to outlaw waterboarding and failed to do so each time:

Congress has twice had the chance to ban or criminalize waterboarding, but it declined to do so in both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. And not for lack of trying: In debating the Military Commissions Act, Ted Kennedy offered a detailed amendment that specifically prohibited waterboarding, as well as other coercive interrogation methods; it lost on the Senate floor, 46-53.

Why the outcry to make Mukasey issue a de facto ruling when it is unable to do so through the proper legislative method? If Congress is unable to pass legislation in the open, public method allowed by the Constitution, then it should not try to bypass itself through a condition of one man’s confirmation.

Ed Morrissey has an informative post on this topic that raises the possibiliy that waterboarding could be torture, if not performed under the carefully monitored conditions where it is used in SERE (Search, Evade, Resistance, Escape) training. Which raises the obvious question, what couldn’t be considered torture if not performed properly?

Captain Ed brings us news that Fox News may have tweaked Sunday night’s Republican Presidential debate for game 7 of the American League Championship. Morrissey writes that Romney advisor Ben Ginsburg told him that Fox “cooked the first part of the show to highlight the four frontrunners.”

According to Ginsberg, Fox — which aired Game 7 of the American League Championship Series on its regular broadcast affiliates — set up the questions to maximize the airtime of the top-tier candidates. Knowing that the first pitch would come roughly 20 minutes into the debate, Ginsberg alleged that the FNC panel focused on questions that would generate sniping between the candidates, and deliberately shut out the second-tier candidates until after the game had started.

The transcript of the debate correlates with Ginsburg’s claim, as Romney, Thompson, McCain and Giuliani were the only ones asked questions during the first 20 minutes or so. After that, Ron Paul got the first question of the second round.

Morrissey thinks this, if true, may cause some Republicans grief with Fox News. I’m not so sure. We know there are tiers of candidates. Internet poll-stuffing aside, does anyone think Ron Paul has a chance of being the nominee? Tom Tancredo? The same holds true for Democrats. Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich may make interesting pundit-talk, but they’re not going to make a dent come primary season.

Fox News made a call and maximized the medium, capturing the largest audience possible before everyone flipped over to the ballgame. Do I like that it happened? Yeah, I have no beef with it. Hold “real” debate, and I’ll feel differently.

Up, that is? Screw up?

Outside of the Camp David Accords, which I’ll leave in the “good” column, what has that man done right?

• Failed to deal with the Iranian radicals in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Bad
• The Energy Crisis. Bad
• That oh-so successful deal with North Korea “agreeing” to shut down their quest for a nuke. Bad
• Ratifying Hugo Chaves’ election. Bad
• Nobel Peace Prize. Was there anyone other than Yasir Arafat more deserving? Bad
• His anti-Israel revisionist book, “Peace, not Apartheid.” Bad
• In the buildup to the Gulf War, Carter wrote letters of opposition to UN Security Council members. Bad
• Praise for dictators and strong-men of every flavor: Chavez, Castro, Tito, Assad, Cedras, Mengistu, Ceausescu, Arafat, Hussein, Sung, Ortega. Carter never met a dictator he didn’t like. Bad

Pretty bad list, there Jimmuh. Add one more to it. Carter appears to have been key in starting the land-grab in Zimbabwe that Mugabe’s used to completely wreck the nation.

The “best former President” has been busy, eh?

There is word that most of the Republican candidates for President have yet to confirm their participation in the September 17 CNN/YouTube Debate. For them to not take part would be a political disaster. It would also be yet another in Public Relations/Marketing/Communication blunders made by the GOP.

Which political party is best at using:

1. The World Wide Web
2. Blogs
3. Online fundraising

The answer is “Not the Republican Party.” This must change. Yes, there are widely-read conservative bloggers and websites. This is being done despite the lack of effort on the part of the GOP. The GOP, and the candidates out there need to recognize the importance of dissemination of information on the Web. Embrace Web video, blogs, wikis, forums, RSS, comments on postings, Trackbacks, Pingbacks, etc. Use these technologies often and well.

There is an image of the “old, white man” that the GOP has to shake. Remember the kerfuffle over President Bush and the checkout scanner? That’s happening again with the Web and the GOP. The GOP is not “hip” to the Web. Yes, President G.W. Bush has an iPod. Big whoop. Name a candidate that blogs. Name the GOP-friendly equivalent of MoveOn.org.

I know what these yet-to-confirm candidates are thinking about the YouTube Debates: The Democratic one was a circus. It was pretty ridiculous half the time with ridiculous questions vetted by CNN. GOP candidates are thinking, “Why would I subject myself to this joke of an event?”

They better. Confirm they’re going to take part. Be ready for stupid questions. Nut-up to them and let us know you think they’re ridiculous and irrelevant compared to the things that need to be done. Respond to the questions as being fit for the “Do-Nothing” Democratic Congress, but not for the American people and you, the candidates who are ready to get things done when elected. Take this head-on. Acknowledge the questions that are thoughtful and pertinent. Scold the questions that are not appropriate and a waste of voters’ time.

Not taking part reinforces an image you don’t need of the party of rich, old white men out of touch with youth and everyday realities of American people. Seen the approval ratings polls for government institutions lately? Evoke the spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and The Great Communicator and face this debate head-on.

Visit Patrick Ruffini’s “Save the Debate” petition site and sign your name asking the candidates to participate.

That headline ought to set off the nutroots, moonbats, and DUers. President Bush will undergo a colonoscopy tomorrow. During that procedure, Vice President Cheney will assume presidential powers, as the President will be under anesthesia. Over/under on the rantings of the rabid left as to how this is part of a nefarious plan on the part of Halliburton/Cheney?

Pajamas Media has a piece written by Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. One of the worries I, and many others, have about Giuliani is his stance on the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (RKBA), which is one of the most cherished of our rights guaranteed under the United States Constitution. It’s also the one that’s most attacked and threatened by those in power or those seeking power. In the past, Giuliani Giuliani favored restrictions on the 2nd Amendment including the so-called “assault weapons ban” during the Clinton administration.

“It was very important to have a visible Republican to make the case that this wasn’t some liberal Democratic agenda,” said Paul Helmke, a former Republican mayor of Fort Wayne, Ind., and the president of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “I was at the signing ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House when Bill Clinton signed the crime bill with the assault weapons ban, and Giuliani had the most prominent seat in the front row.”

The March New York Times article linked in the last paragraph indicates that Giuliani may be changing his tone. A recent Boston Globe article reports that in South Carolina, Giuliani had this to say about the 2nd Amendment:

“It doesn’t matter if I believe in it or not — and I do — it is the Second Amendment,” Giuliani said. “I’m a strict constructionist. The Second Amendment says you have an individual right to bear arms.”

That’s a big shift from the Giuliani who was the Democrats’ favorite Republican in the 1990’s. What I want to hear are details of how Giuliani would act as President when the call from the Left comes up for restricting legal gun ownership. Giuliani is taking the Federalist view and stating that each state has a right to pass gun ownership laws as they seem fit. This is completely different from what he championed 10 years ago. From the Times article:

In his brief run for the Senate in 2000, he picked up an old theme, saying there should be uniform national standards for all gun owners. He also endorsed a bill in Albany that gave New York the toughest gun laws in the nation, including requiring that all new guns be test-fired so the police would have ballistic records and background checks even at gun shows and flea markets, which were not covered by federal law.

The same piece has Anthony Carbonetti, Giuliani’s senior adviser, declining to say whether Giuliani still believed the laws of other states (other than New York) are adequate. Carbonetti did say that Giuliani’s comments from a decade ago do not mean that he feels that Washington should mandate what states’ gun laws are.

My reservations on Giuliani are found right there. While I applaud his stance on states’ rights, something too many Republicans of late have forgotten about, I worry that his track record will prevail over his too-vague statements about the 2nd Amendment. The 2nd Amendment is a right applied to all citizens, not state-by-state. Yes, there are restrictions on it - convicted felons not being able to buy a weapon, etc. - but that is not the same as talking about it at a state level versus national, which is what Giuliani appears to be doing.

I want to hear more of the Giuliani as depicted by the Boston Globe article and less of the Giuliani as depicted by the New York Times.

What is it with our neighbors to the north, eh? First Senator Clinton outsources her campaign song to Celien Dion. Now Speaker Pelosi’s website shows (at least it did earlier today) a photo of a Canadian solder with a story on how she wants to improve healthcare for US troops.

If you want to profess your support for us, you should at least know what we look like. Here is some basic uniform recognition training (I’m not doing combat, flight, or utility uniforms. I don’t want to confuse the Speaker’s staff.)

Some US Army uniforms:

Navy white uniform:

US Air Force:

Marines:

It’s not that hard, really, I promise.

Michelle Malkin has more on this.

Hillary Clinton’s campaign theme song is “You and I” by Canadian singer Celine Dion.

How ironic is it that one of the leading Democratic contenders for President is outsourcing her campaign song to a French-Canadian? Singing the songs Americans won’t sing, eh? Could she have not found a hard-working American singer-songwriter to pen a piece? She could have picked one of thousands of artists right here in Austin to write a piece for her.

Anyone want to put odds on her getting a pass in the press for this?

MSNBC has run a story that looks at campaign contributions from a bunch of media types: producers, reporters, etc. The story lists who gave to which party and candidate and then a list of replies from these media members. That’s where the real fun begins. You can hear, in many of their replies, a sense of surprise and possibly even embarrassment at the airing of these contributions.

While the tendency might be to cry foul that these media types are displaying partisan tendencies, I think that’s the wrong response. It’s perfectly fine that these people contributed to the candidate or political party of their choosing. I would too. It’s our right as citizens, to participate in the electoral process. I simply think the process should be transparent, especially for anyone who is in the business of reporting on, and influencing, the process.

Favor one party or another, just tell us that up front so we know where you stand. Bill Dedman, the MSNBC reporter who wrote the story, writes in a companion piece,

MSNBC.com identified 144 journalists who made political contributions from 2004 through the start of the 2008 campaign, according to the public records of the Federal Election Commission. Most of the newsroom checkbooks leaned to the left: 125 journalists gave to Democrats and liberal causes. Only 17 gave to Republicans. Two gave to both parties.

I’m not at all surprised the contributions favor the Democrats. This looks to confirm the axiom that journalists tend to swing to the left side of the political spectrum. I’m pretty OK with that, too. Just tell us how you feel, instead of trying to maintain an artificial sense of “fairness.” I think that’s leading to more problems than we know, especially as more and more people bypass the information gatekeepers.

I wonder how many of these media personnel favor McCain-Feingold, a law that favors the mainstream media’s political clout over that of ordinary citizens’ contributory power. There’s more at the Poynteronline and from Bluto at The Jawa Report.