There you go again, Mr. Wehner, expecting that what is sauce for the goose (Republicans) should be sauce for the gander (Democrats) in the pages of the Washington Post.

You doubt that the Post would show similar restraint in characterizing the, uh, *contradictions* were they spoken by a Republican president, I take it?

Pshaw, you say.

And yet, you still write in respectful tones about the institution's reporting. Explain that to us, please. How is it that the Post is worthy of your respect, despite its undeniable misconduct, its failure to report the issues of the day fairly and completely insofar as humanly possible?

The Post and the herd of which it is a part regularly skews the debates on every one of our major political issues because it is, not, in the end, truly committed to reporting fairly and completely. On the contrary, it sees itself as a "force for good" in our politics and regularly places its finger on the scales of truth, out of its rank partisanship.

Such an institution is not worthy of your respect; it is worthy of your contempt.

No one is asking you to bomb the Post building or to libel innocents. But there are no innocents on the editorial staff of the Post.

A little unvarnished disdain in your commentary would not be out of line.

Those torpedoes were in Mobile Bay, and the admiral was David Glasgow Farragut, USN. But otherwise, you're good!

And what happens when the Marines' civilian masters are negligent and their bosses -- that would be the people -- don't hold them accountable? What then? What about Mogadishu: Remember the armor Les Aspin pulled out, to reaffirm the message we were leaving Somalia? Then came Blackhawk Down. Was Clinton held accountable?
And Benghazi? Have the voters held Obama accountable for his negligence? Four men in service to this country died there, we still have no satisfactory answer why, and their survivors feel they've been lied to -- and who's to gainsay them?
There is one standard of responsibility for our military, and quite enough for our spineless, feckless civilian leaders -- and our "wise" electorate seems to be just fine with that. I wonder how our military feel these days about fighting for a citizenry who are unworthy of their dedication, courage, and prowess in arms.

Let's be honest here and state that "the public" very often knows little about the issues on which it is asked by pollsters to opine. One wonders what this same public will say if worse comes to worst in Syria in particular and the Middle East in general and the U.S. suffers adverse consequences. Leadership matters most when it's incumbent on leaders to do the things that will protect the interests of the led, even though the led may oppose it. Put another way, where would we be if Abraham Lincoln had been willing to take the 1861 Democrats' way out and let the Confederacy go its own way? And I'm not equating involvement in another nation's affairs with preserving our Union.

You want Obamacare to die? You want the truth about Benghazi? You want national elections to be free of the taint of Democratic Party fraud? You want us to become something other than a 50/50 nation? You want New York to be safe? Then defeat the media narrative that is responsible for these conditions.

People mistrust the mainstream media, but the majority of people still buy their narrative when considering where they stand on the issues of the day. The MSM narrative is the frame for all of our political issues. The media, as epitomized by the opinion writers and some reporters at the NYT, are this bizarre mix of low dishonesty and gullibility -- the gullibility of contemporary Liberalism, which represents the triumph of secular faith over thousands of years of human experience. The Times' stance on stop-and-frisk has been utterly demolished by, among others, Heather MacDonald at the City Journal, but no matter -- the Times still has the clout to make it an issue and to persuade jurists who agree with its editorial stances to invalidate procedures that most people think make sense.

Until the mainstream media are permanently and utterly discredited, and with it their narrative, the lunacy in our politics, as exemplified by this issue, will continue.

It is a burden to play the adult in the room, especially when the partisanship of the children of the Democratic Party, the erstwhile "anti-war movement" (a sham from the get-go; suddenly nowhere to be seen 10 years later with a Democratic president) and their craven media enablers has been so egregious for so long. It's very tempting to take the opportunity to stick their partisanship up their asses. But that's the thing about being an adult: One is one or one is not one; one behaves as one or does not. And it has nothing to do with case for the use of force being compelling as a means of effecting a desirable outcome; it's not. In the jungle that is our world, sending the message that we are a weak horse will come back to bite us and our allies in ways that we can't imagine. (A second 9/11, anyone?) And if we suffer retaliation as a result of warring on Syria, then we take the opportunity to hit again even harder, using methods and time frames of our choosing, whether against state or non-state actors (and even if the case against non-state actors can't be proven in court). As for Iran, it's long past time when we should have ended our forbearance and treated with the mullahs and the IRG in the harshest of manners.

What do you not understand about their not being wrong then, now, or in the future? Theyre beyond reproach, because whatever they've done, it's always been with the best of intentions.

Since "the Age of Roosevelt" they have absolutely succeeded in waging politics, including the politics on this issue, on their terms. Even with the alternative media, the blogosphere, call it what you will; even with the traditional media business model imploding, it is still the narrative of the Left that rules. It's won over the culture, and it dominates our politics. This ridiculous periodical that has been so wrong on so many things, including Communism, the Cold War, you name it, is accorded respect because it, more than any single periodical of the Left, has been the keeper of the flame.

The Nation ignores the facts that refute its narrative because it can; because the debate doesn't enter the popular realm. The argument you think you've won with facts is, to a disinterested and increasingly ignorant public, merely the province of intellectuals arguing over arcane details.

The Nation doesn't have to be honest about the past because it can get away with not being honest. You're asking people who have no intellectual integrity to demonstrate it. Good luck with that.

In other news, some in the conservative blogosphere recently have noted that a book-length polemic written by a former Nation reporter, Howard Zinn, is being used as U.S. History text in more than a few jurisdictions around the country. Gosh, how did that come about?

Personally, I'd like to see him proceed with his campaign -- to see just how many New Yorkers are depraved enough to vote for this cretin. That would be a very useful piece of information. Really, let's find out how deeply into the sewer how many of our fellow citizens are willing to go to get the kind of government they want.

Gosh, how could this be? After all, he had the very best of mentors, one Charles "[Up]Chuck" Schumer, the distinguished reptile and senior senator from the Empire State. I guess we rubes in Flyover Country lack the sophistication New York's Ninth Congressional District voters showed in electing Mr. Weiner to Congress.
All together now: In a democracy, the people get the kind of leadership they deserve.
What, then, does it say about the voters who elected this scum-of-the-earth as their representative?
I guess we must be content with Mr. Lincoln's wisdom -- that "the people" don't like to be told the error of their ways (see: Second Inaugural Address), but that we must trust them anyway. For me, after 2008 and 2012, the latter has become a mantra that does not roll easily off the tongue.

And as surely as night follows day, had it been a Republican in the straits Clinton was in his a55 would have been out of office within a heartbeat of the event, with the tut-tutters at the NYT leading the way. There would have been none of that sophistry about the perjury being "just about sex."

There may be another actor in the history of journalism as hypocritical and loathsome as the Times, but none comes immediately to mind.