Presidential Crossdressing

Back in the days when girls were girls and men were men (except when they were kidding around at USO shows, in Bohemian Grove or in prison), Republicans were Republicans and Democrats were Democrats. But in the 2008 Presidential campaign it seems like all the nominees are a bunch of political crossdressers, and I'm not just talking about Rudy Giuliani.

"Is this the Republican primary or a John Edwards rally?" asked the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez, who has always preferred manly men and womanly women. She was referring to this Mike Huckabee comment at a rally in Michigan: "For those of us for whom summer is not a verb, for those of us who didn't go to fancy boarding schools on the east coast, for those of us who didn't grow up with a silver spoon, who were lucky to have a spoon — ask those folks and they'll tell you the economy is not doing well for them." Since when did Republicans care about working-class people?

Unfortunately, Ms. Lopez's schoolgirl crush on Mitt Romney (which, at least, is properly directed at a man and not at other schoolgirls) somehow blinded her to a statement by Romney in the very same article she linked to. "I want to bring Michigan back," said Romney. "I'm not willing to sit back and say, 'too bad for Michigan. Too bad for the car industry. Too bad for the people who've lost their jobs; they're gone forever. That's not the kind of pessimism I think that will make Michigan strong again.'" I'm not quite sure how she missed this quote, which was roundly attacked by other Republicans who asserted that not only would Romney not be able to bring their jobs back, he shouldn't try or even care. A real Republican should sound like Rep. Michele Bachman of Minnesota who said in a statement supporting the Middle Class Protection Act, which would protect the middle class by giving corporations a 25% tax cut that will eventually trickle down to the workers who still have jobs: "I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs."

Why are Huckabee and Romney showing sympathy for people who can't even find one job instead of saluting those who have two the way Rep. Bachman is? Yet some pundits even claimed that Romney's show of support for these lazy Michigan nonworkers was the reason for his victory and blamed McCain's very manly and straight straight talk, telling Michigan workers that their "jobs aren't coming back," for his loss there. Although McCain is walking the straight and narrow now, he has spent much of his political career as a political crossdresser, opposing conservative judges and torture, and supporting campaign finance reform and immigrants.

Michelle Malkin, who calls Mike Huckabee "an open borders drag queen" and despises John McCain, wants a real man to run for President. She wants someone who will not be afraid to deport all the illegal immigrants and kiss away the Latino vote for generations or to tell people who have lost their homes to "suck it up" and get used to living in the street, and has turned her blog into a personal ad for the man of her dreams. "I need a man," she writes. "A man who can say 'No.' A man who rejects Big Nanny government. A man who thinks being president doesn’t mean playing Santa Claus. A man who won’t panic in the face of economic pain. A man who won’t succumb to media-driven sob stories. A man who can look voters, the media, and the Chicken Littles in Congress in the eye and say the three words no one wants to hear in Washington: Suck. It. Up." But so far it looks like Malkin's desire for a real man has gone unquenched and she will have to make do with her husband.

Giuliani, of course, is not only a real crossdresser but the leading political crossdresser in the race. He has supported gun control, abortion, gay civil unions, immigrants and Democrats. In fact, he was a Democrat until 1975 and his flirtation with the party was no youthful indiscretion. In 1994 he endorsed Mario Cuomo, the Democrat governor over the Republican candidate George Pataki. Giuliani only sounds like a Republican when he is bashing terrorists with his handbag.

Republicans are not the only political crossdressers in this contest. Sometimes if you close your eyes and listen to what the Democrat candidates are saying, they sound just like Republicans. During the debate in Nevada the moderator Tim Russert gave all the candidates a chance to talk about gun control and they all sounded like members of the NRA. The candidates all support the death penalty with the exception of Dennis Kucinich. Only Kucinich supports gay marriage. Suddenly, they all seem to want to get tough on immigration and they don't seem so eager to talk about Iraq anymore. And while it's been years since Mike Huckabee said that a woman should be subservient to her husband and Ron Paul called African-Americans "animals," over the last couple weeks Hillary Clinton has been accused of insulting Martin Luther King and John Edwards has been charged with speculating whether a woman is too weak to be President in a swipe at Hillary. Who knew that Democrats would be split over issues of race and gender?

But while no pictures of Barack Obama in women's clothes have surfaced (though no doubt the Clinton campaign and their good friend Robert Johnson are looking for them), Obama wins the Hasty Pudding award as the most crossdressingest candidate after Giuliani with his sudden transformation into a Reagan Democrat. "I think Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not," said Obama. "He put us on a fundamentally different path because the country was ready for it. I think they felt like with all the excesses of the 1960s and 1970s and government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating. I think people, he just tapped into what people were already feeling, which was we want clarity we want optimism, we want a return to that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship that had been missing." It is unclear what voters Obama is trying to win over with his salute to Ronald Reagan since most Reagan Democrats are now Republicans and they already think Obama is dangerous. Most Democrats nowadays would probably prefer a candidate who would call Reagan "an evil son of a bitch" as Glenn Beck recently called Franklin Roosevelt but Obama is too nice to do that. Although Obama's remarks apparently started off as a way of insulting Bill Clinton by comparing him unfavorably with Reagan, it appears that his dislike for Clinton has begun to eat away at his brain as it has many in the media. When he tells us that Calvin Coolidge is his favorite President, we will know that he has finally lost it completely.

Voting is confusing enough without candidates trying to mix us up even more by trying to appeal across the aisle so much that their contortions make them resemble Rose Mary Woods. What happened to giving voters a clear choice? Isn't that the purpose of the two-party system? Perhaps this is why some people are trying to draft New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, a man who feels strongly about nothing except his crusade to outlaw smoking (which Mike Huckabee can't even keep a consistent position on). Although his candidacy could get a bump if Obama gets the nomination and someone snaps a photo of him sneaking a cigarette after he claimed that he had given up smoking, it's difficult to see who Bloomberg's constituency would be other than other billionaires. Faced with a choice between a Republican who sounds like a Democrat, a Democrat who sounds like a Republican and someone who doesn't have a party and doesn't seem to have any opinions at all, this election may make us all as confused as those Florida senior citizens who accidentally voted for Pat Buchanan in 2000.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, 2008 Election, Republicans, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Mike Huckabee, Barack Obama, Giuliani, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Ron Paul, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, Michael Bloomberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Michele Bachman, Politics

Swift Reactions 8

Drinking Liberally in New Milford and Mike the Mad Biologist have reminded me that this February 3 is the first anniversary of one of the darkest days in the blogosphere, Blogroll Amnesty Day, the day that Atrios of Eschaton intitiated his bloody blogroll massacre, cutting a number of fine smaller blogs from his blogroll, including my good friend skippy, and a number of other big bloggers followed his lead. But a funny thing happened on the way to the bloodletting. A number of smaller bloggers decided they were tired of being pushed around by the A-Listers and decided to fight back by banding together and making their own blogrolls more inclusive instead of more exclusive. So I hope you will all join me, skippy, Barefoot Bum and anyone else who wants to get on board in remembering this great and terrible day and turn the weekend of February 1-3 into a celebration of the power of all the little blogs out there who deserve our support.

I am always eager to help smaller blogs so when I was asked by Pamela Leavey at The Democratic Daily to run an ad whose purpose was to generate some traffic to smaller liberal blogs, I agreed whole-heartedly, despite these bloggers' very misguided politics. (You can see the ad on my sidebar this month. Be sure to click on the links to some of the blogs listed there. And while you're at it, take a look at some of my other sponsors, who have the good taste to advertise here.) Originally, the ad had no picture and I knew that an ad with a picture would attract more attention and get more people to click on it, especially if the picture was eye-catching and even a little provocative, so I added a picture of one of the adorable LOLcats I created for my piece on Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. Ms. Leavey liked the picture and asked for my permission to incorporate it into all of the ads that were running, which I happily granted.

Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos, to his great credit, generously agreed to run the ad as well. I can't tell you how proud I was to see my depiction of a liberal fascist cat in full Nazi regalia captioned with the words "I is a librul" running on the world's biggest liberal blog. I was sure it would be very popular with the readers of the Daily Kos, who are renowned for their great senses of humor and their remarkable ability to laugh at themselves. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.

Almost as soon as the ad began running a Kossack named CMFoster began a campaign to have the ad removed entirely. "All I am asking is that for once we get rid of the offensive material and make the advertiser realize they need to be more responsible for the content they place on this or any other site. To make a cat look like Hitler just make Liberals look worse than we are sometimes already portrayed to be," wrote CMFoster. He was soon joined by a Kossack named Man is 5, who wrote, " Ummm -- what the hell is that "Support Liberal Blogs" ad on the front page? Did you just not notice that the cat looks like Hitler? Am I missing something here? Seems to me Hitler was a fairly conservative individual. And I'm not so sure that promoting liberal blogs with his image, even in adorable kitty form, is such a good idea. What concepts did the client reject?" You might think that they would be in favor of supporting small liberal blogs or that they might have had better causes to put their energy into but instead they decided to hound poor Ms. Leavey, who put a lot of very hard work into this campaign, until she decided that she had no other recourse than to remove the offending graphic. Eventually, she replaced it with another, less provocative picture, my "Librul Treehugger" LOLcat and the Kossacks turned their attention to more pressing matters like whether the New Hampshire primary was rigged by Hillary Clinton and Diebold.

I had heard that Markos was angry about the controversy and so I wrote him to explain the point behind the ad and ask him to express some appreciation for Ms. Leavey's efforts, but it turned out those rumors were false. "Did someone say I was angry? I'm not," he wrote to me in an email. "I'm too swamped with election-related work to feel very strongly one way or another about this." I understand he also wrote a very nice note to Ms. Leavey. Perhaps not all the terrible things they say about Markos are true after all.

But Daily Kos readers are fairly laid back compared with "Ron Paul" supporters, who were not very happy when I wrote that I had never heard of "Ron Paul" and doubted that he even existed since the media never mentioned him. Although someone named Davecore (who may not be a real person either) insisted that "Ron Paul" exists, many of my commenters were skeptical. "I think if Ron Paul was a real person, we would have heard about him by now," said Autumnal Harvest. Yojimbo thought it was suspicious that anyone would have two first names. But new day, who is one of my more informed commenters, said that "Ron Paul" did in fact exist and had a "plan to have the whole country move towards a Wyoming style of government. That is, the law stays out of the way and people settle things by running over one another with their pick-up trucks." Dave Latchaw also believes that "Ron Paul" exists, claiming quite improbably that while "Ron Paul" does not have a website, he does have a blimp, but I'm not quite so gullible as to believe something as ridiculous as that.

I soon attracted the attention of a "Ron Paul" message board and not only did they insult me, calling me an "idiot," they attacked my readers as well. "Read the comments, they are clueless!" wrote Dave Wood. But others took my post and the comments more seriously, believing that they were cause for concern. "Damn... that is not good... What part of the internet we are missing?" wondered frasu haplessly. Pinkmandy, who perhaps was giving us a little too much information when she recounted that she "converted" her gynecologist to "Ron Paul" during a pap smear, answered, "We are missing A LOT of people. We need to organize online and start patrolling the net where "others" are because they obviously aren't finding us. We must find them!" I am not sure what tactics they might come up with to to "find" us "others," but my advice is that if you get a mysterious package in the mail containing a strange pod, whatever you do, don't fall asleep next to it.

Unfortunately, because of the holidays and all of the work I did on my end-of-the-year piece of what bloggers thought were their best posts of 2007, I did not get a chance to write about the response to my Jamie Leigh Jones post, which produced some of the most heated discussion this blog has ever seen. I urge you to take a look at the discussion in its entirety, but I will highlight one interesting exchange. Autumn Harvest (not to be confused with "Autumnal Harvest" mentioned above) had mixed feelings about my post, beginning his comment with an "Ugh," which is never a good sign. "It's a little too much making light of a gang rape," he wrote. "I know this criticism can be leveled at half your posts---making light of torture, making light of the Kafkaesque legal black hole at Guantanamo, etc. . . So I'm not sure I have a good rationale for my dislike, but this post really just doesn't sit with me right somehow." I must say that I am not sure what Mr. Harvest meant by the phrase "making light." Did he mean making something heavy easier to pick up or illuminating something dark?

Mr. Harvest's comment elicited a long response from someone named kulkinator, who wrote, "How DARE we question a rape-accuser???? A FEMALE New York City prosecutor stated that 40% of rape accusations are PROVEN false. A study by Purdue University showed that 40% of rape accusations are later recanted. Now, with those two statistics in mind, depending on what the overlap is between proven-false accusations, and recanted accusations, the false accusation rate for rape is somewhere between 40% and 80%." Ferd applauded kulkinator's skill with arithmetic, writing, "The additive function of your numbers (40% of A + 40% of B = 80% of AB) demonstrates skills that bode well for your ability to carefully analyse the data, evidence and proof in this case" though he took issue with the accuracy of his statistics. L-girl from We Move to Canada was even more pointed in her criticism: "This is a lie," wrote L-girl, who is not one to mince words. "I've worked with Linda Fairstein, the female prosecutor to whom this refers. 40% of the rape charges in her office had to be downgraded to things like 'aggravated sexual assault' and 'sexual misconduct with assault and battery' in order to ensure conviction…. The charges in these 40% of cases were NOT proven false." But my most frequent commenter, Anonymous, offered another statistic based on his very scientific "gut feeling": "The probability of this being a well-planned hoax is over 98%."

I must say that while I appreciate the attempt to bring scientifically rigorous statistical analysis to the subject, all this mathematics makes my head spin and I believe that is true for many of my commenters as well. In fact, I would estimate conservatively that 50% of liberal commenters are bad at mathematics and 50% of my conservative commenters are bad at mathematics, which means that the percentage of commenters here that are bad at mathematics is potentially 100%. So it is possible that none of us is capable of understanding what kulkinator or Anonymous are talking about, including themselves.

Kulkinator was not able to provide an exact statistic for his next claim. "I've lost count of the number of times I've heard a woman say, "I'll scream rape" as a threat to opposing her," he wrote. Though kamakula was able to imagine some scenarios where kulkinator might have heard those words, other commenters found this statement puzzling. "What kind of life you would have to have led to have heard it so many times you have 'lost count' is beyond my imagination," wrote Splendid One, a 60-year-old Vietnam Vet. "There's probably a reason that commenter has heard it over and over again," speculated Carl of Simply Left Behind.

But the attacks leveled at kulkinator were mild compared with some of the criticism directed toward this modest blogger, which often included characterizations of my mental health. "You describe yourself as reasonable. This post, however, proves you're insane," said Anonymous. "You are an ass, and a perfect example of what is wrong with this country. You make me sick," said Patrick. Someone calling himself "You are a brainwashed schill" wrote, "Do you realize how insane you sound?" Proud Vet said, "You got to be the biggest ass I've ever heard. You make me sick thinking you and I are of the same gender."

If commenters are not attacking me for new posts, they are delving deep into my archives to add new attacks to my old ones. Jellsbury recently left a new comment on my post "50 More Conservative Rock Songs" that was not at all complimentary: "Is this a joke?" he wrote. "'Imagine no religion...' quoth John Lennon. As for Randy Newman, "Lord, if you won't take care of us, won't you please just let us be?" His song "Political Science" is SATIRE. And "Born in the USA" is an anti-Vietnam song. Listen to the songs carefully next time before you make a fool of yourself."

Finally, while it is indeed hurtful to receive such criticism from strangers, you cannot imagine the pain I feel when one of my friends launches an unprovoked and scurrilous attack on me. The only explanation I can come up with is that he resorted to such a tactic out of desperation for traffic. Perhaps if I link to his post, and give him the attention he clearly craves, it will shame him into not engaging in such blatant blogwhoring again. But I will forgive him because ultimately, I just want to give peace a chance in the blogosphere, to quote that famous conservative musician John Lennon.

Carnivals: Carnival of the Insanities, Bringing More Traffic to Your Blog Carnival

The Crying of Maureen Dowd

When New York Times reporters walked into their offices last night, people were clustering around one office to watch what they thought they would never see: Maureen Dowd with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes. A woman gazing through the door was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys could not stop watching her, drawn to the "humanized" Dowd. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. "We are at war," he said. "Is this how she'll interview Kim Jong-il?" Another reporter joked: "That crying really seemed genuine. I'll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand." He added dryly: "Crying doesn't usually work in journalism. Only in relationships."

For years Dowd has been known for her cold, icy, cynical demeanor. Though some friends claim she is actually warm and witty in person, most of her colleagues don't see her as very likable and use another word to describe her that rhymes with "witch." But Hillary Clinton's stunning victory in the New Hampshire primary finally caused Dowd's calculatedly controlled demeanor to crack. While some believed her waterworks were genuine, others speculated that Dowd must have hired an actress to teach her how to cry. Is it unprofessional for journalists to show emotion or could Dowd cry herself to another Pulitzer Prize?

She won the Pulitzer Prize after being embarrassed by a man. She was seen as so controlling that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did while writing about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which made her soft enough to attract the attention of Pulitzer Prize judges. Bill Clinton's betrayal seemed to have affected her personally, as if she were the wronged woman. Pulitzer judges felt so sorry for her that they gave her the prize. Few believed it had anything to do with her intelligence or talent.

For years Dowd has wanted to show that she is more than just a Clinton hater. She tried her hand at being a Bush hater, reducing everything the Bushes did to the same kind of pat psychological paradigms she used to describe the Clintons. But though she wrote an entire book and innumerable columns describing everything Bush fils did as evidence of an Oedipal struggle with Bush père, her heart just didn't seem to be in it. And the prospect of Hillary getting the nomination reduced her to panic that she would never be anything more than a Clinton hater. A second Pulitzer Prize was beginning to look more and more distant.

But then the prospect that Hillary might lose the nomination gave her cause for hope. An Obama victory meant that she could recycle clichés about race just as she had long recycled clichés about feminism. Pulitzer Prize judges love rehashed ideas about race. There was something liberating in being an Obama Girl, until Obama, too, betrayed her and then she could turn on him along with the rest of the media and ride the Obama backlash to a second Pulitzer. Lately, she had begun to dress differently around the office, showing more cleavage, but not so much to endanger her status as a serious journalist.

So there was a poignancy about seeing Dowd crack with exhaustion from decades of hating the Clintons so much. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. "I just don't want to see us fall backwards into the Clinton era," she said tremulously. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us.

A cynical person might say that it was not really Dowd's concern about the fate of our country that brought on her tears, that she was weeping at the prospect of falling back into the Clinton era herself, of having to write the same cynical columns over and over again, as if she believed elections are really about her. But Dowd was not just crying for herself. She was crying for all of the pundits and journalists and bloggers who worry that another Clinton Administration will turn us into Clinton-hating hacks. She was crying for all of us who remember how the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era led directly into the war and economic downturn of the Bush years, something we don't want to happen again. She feels our pain. Try as we might to put a cynical spin on everything Hillary does, despite all of our attempts to pronounce Hillary's candidacy dead on arrival, despite all the polls we quote that show Hillary can't win, it is possible that voters have another idea.

So cry, Dowd, cry. Cry for Chris Matthews who can only weakly protest that he is not obsessed with Hillary. Cry for Dick Morris who faces the prospect of years and years of predictions that never come true. Cry for David Broder who will be nervously counting the silverware at the thought of the Clintons coming back to trash his place again. Cry for Ann Althouse who will soon run out of Freudian food metaphors to bash Hillary with. Cry for all of the pundits, pollsters and prognosticators who have been proven wrong once again, though not so wrong that they will lose their jobs. Cry for all of us, Maureen Dowd. Bury that rag deep in your face. Now is the time for your tears.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, New Hampshire Primary, New Hampshire, 2008 Election, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Maureen Dowd, Politics
Carnivals: Carnival of the Vanities, Media Literacy Carnival

Jamie Leigh Jones Undermines the War Effort

Rusty Shackleford at The Jawa Report, Curt at Flopping Aces and former humor blogger Ace of Spades (who recently won the Weblog Award for Best Conservative blogger) are three of the most respected conservative bloggers in the blogosphere. They will stop at nothing to protect America from terrorists. If they gave medals for bravery in a war you are not actually fighting in, these guys would win hands down.

A recent story sorely tested their dedication to the war effort, but all three stepped up to the plate and showed just how far they are willing to go to defend America. Jamie Leigh Jones, a contractor for Halliburton/KBR, says she was gang raped by her co-workers, locked in a shipping container and threatened by her bosses. She was finally rescued by the State Department after she got word to her father who contacted Republican congressmen Ted Poe. If true, the story makes Halliburton/KBR look really bad and the fact that a Republican congressman and the State Department got involved lends some credence to her story. But Shackleford, Curt and Ace did not let that stop them from reflexively defending the military contractor and accusing this woman of being a liar in order to support the war effort. They saw that there was something fishy about the story, besides the fact that it is bad PR for Halliburton/KBR.

Although Shackleford, Curt and Ace don't know anything about the case other than what they have seen on the Internet, they apparently do read mystery stories. Anyone who has read detective novels knows that when all the evidence seems to be pointing one way, you can be sure that what the evidence is telling you is the exact opposite of the truth. Usually, the detective reveals this twist at the end, but Shackleford, Curt and Ace decided to skip right to the last chapter instead of waiting to see what other evidence comes out before drawing any conclusions. Ace, quoting his doppelganger the Church Lady, says Jones' story is "too convenient." Curt, who supports actor Fred Thompson for President, says it sounds "too movie like." Shackleford, no doubt wrinkling his brow and rubbing his beard thoughtfully as the wheels spin in his brain, if he has one (a beard, that is), writes, "It's perfect. Too perfect."

Indeed, if the terrorists wanted to undermine the war effort and destroy Western Civilization as we know it, this would be the perfect way to do it. Find an intelligent, attractive young woman to claim she was gang raped by contractors who work at the Vice President's company, and then get a Republican congressman and the State Department to back up part of her story. It's brilliantly evil and almost foolproof! There was just one thing these clever terrorists didn't count on: bloggers like Shackleford, Curt and Ace who would see right through their fiendish plan.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of credulous people out there even on the right. Chris Jones at Red State says he believes her story and is outraged. He doesn't mind if Halliburton/KBR employees rape and murder Iraqis, but he absolutely puts his foot down when it comes to raping Americans. That is going too far. Ben Domenech says he knows several women, including his own sister, who have told him about the "disturbing" treatment of American women working in Iraq and so he tends to believe her as well. Clearly, Domenech's objectivity has been tainted by actually talking to people who have been to Iraq, instead of just talking to himself like Shackleford, Curt and Ace do.

Because Congress wrote a law exempting the alleged perpetrators from prosecution Jones is suing the company for damages. Halliburton/KBR has offered a fair compromise. The company wants to settle the case in arbitration, where records would be sealed, and spare Jones all the bad publicity that would ensue when they attack her reputation in a public trial.

The more you learn about her story the more difficult it is to believe. Although there was a rape kit that confirmed she was sexually assaulted, it was lost and found again and the doctor who performed it doesn't remember doing it. "I have no idea which rape victim you are," the doctor told Jones, "because so many young contractor girls were raped after drinking with the guys…. I performed so many rape kits in the six months that I was stationed there that there would be no way to recall whom yours was." It seems to me the testimony of the doctor alone casts doubt on her allegations and exculpates Halliburton/KBT. Case closed.

Even if her story is true, you have to wonder why Jones doesn't just keep her mouth shut like all the other women the doctor says have been raped in Iraq. Doesn't she realize that such an incendiary charge just gives aid and comfort to the enemy? How can we convince Iraqi women like the young women of Basra -- where 40 of them have been murdered for dressing contrary to Islamic law -- that replacing Saddam Hussein's secular government with an Islamic government actually makes them more free, if American women are not willing to make a few sacrifices to get this message across?

It's not like we are asking only this woman to make a sacrifice for the war effort. Milbloggers like Shackleford are making sacrifices, too. Shackleford really doesn't like attacking an alleged rape victim and trashing her before all the facts have come out. He would prefer we not return to "the not so distant past when some argued that the victim somehow brought the crime on themselves." He thought that we had moved on from that time. "Questioning a rape victim is akin to a second rape," Shackleford writes. "Or so I was always taught." But if protecting America from terrorists means subjecting a woman to something akin to a second rape, then Shackleford, like Curt at Flopping Aces and Ace of Spades, is prepared, however reluctantly, to do his sad duty. Sacrifices must be made. Things are different now. 9/11 changed everything.

Update: Bob Owens, a.k.a. Confederate Yankee, the blogosphere's Miss Marple, is on the case. If anyone can find a link between Jones and the terrorists, he can.

Update 2: Michelle Malkin and Ted Frank at Overlawyered join the fray.

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Technorati Tags: Jon Swift, Jamie Leigh Jones, Halliburton/KBR, Jawa Report, Flopping Aces, Ace of Spades, Iraq
Carnivals: Carnival of the Decline of Democracy, Feminist Carnival, Carnival of Political Punditry, This Is Not My Country