SocraticGadfly: 9/26/04 - 10/3/04

October 02, 2004

The hack-jobbing, crock-peddling Dallas Morning News strikes again

In its editorial the morning after the first Bush-Kerry debate, Oct. 1, the News claimed in a subhead: "Bush won debate." This despite their own news stories reporting CNN’s snap poll showing a clear winner.


But, this doesn’t surprise me. It came after three increasingly partisan Sunday endorsement editorials the News has run. The one on domestic policy issues didn’t even talk about environmentalism.


When the current editorial page editor, Keven Ann Willey, was hired away from Phoenix a couple of years ago, I had hopes the News would speed up its move beyond near-Neanderthal conservativism to something more open-minded, i.e., a "progressive conservativism." I based this hope in part on Willey’s own comments in taking over the editorial helm at the News.


Alas, the News moved about one-quarter of the way there, then dug in its heels. Now, it’s clearly spewing knee-jerk idiocy.


Or, to put it another way, the News’ editorial board is displaying cranial-rectal syndrome by proxy. That’s when you have your head buried up someone else’s posterior.

September 30, 2004

Does the Fifth Amendment guard against racial profiling?

As reported in the Harvard Crimson, Justice Antonin Scalia doesn’t believe that the Fourth Amendment offers protection against racial profiling.


So what about the Fifth Amendment?


A search is, to be true, not in and of itself incriminating. But given the fear that the search process can induce, and how police in America can still subtly, or unsubtly, steer, guide or coerce investigations and interrogations, it certainly approaches putting a person in an incriminating position.


And, short of Michael Jackson medical procedures, minorities cannot change the color of their skin, so that is in and of itself testifying against one’s self.


Have any attorneys tried this?

September 29, 2004

Clinton had his eyes on Iraqi oil too

From Paul Roberts’ “The End of Oil,” page 304:

“The White House Energy Task Force was studying maps of Iraqi oil fields and pipelines as early as March 2000.”
So, let’s not blame all geopolitical oil greed on the current administration.
How much did Clinton speak against the invasion of Iraq before it was launched?
C’mon, be honest.