In The Future, Things Will Be Different

The Associated Press reports this morning that the U.S. Government has licensed the first private manned rocket:

April 8, 2004  |  WASHINGTON (AP) –- — Burt Rutan wants affordable space travel for the public to be a reality within 10 years.
The government helped the aviation maverick take a big step toward that goal Wednesday by awarding his company the first license for a manned suborbital rocket.

Freedom of Speech, Except for You, You and You…

El Nino struck again yesterday, according to the Associated Press: Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia forced two journalists to destroy recordings of a speech he gave at a Mississippi high school:

HATTIESBURG, Miss. (AP) — Two reporters were ordered Wednesday to erase their tape recordings of a speech by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia at a Mississippi high school.
Last year, Scalia was criticized for refusing to allow television and radio coverage of an event in Ohio in which he received an award for supporting free speech.
“The Constitution of the United States is extraordinary and amazing. People just don’t revere it like they used to,” Scalia told a full auditorium of high school students, officials, religious leaders.

Rage Against The Machine

Another great catch from Jim in Pennsylvania:

The Sloganator
Evidently the back story is as follows: last month, the web site for the Bush-Cheney – the real one, paid for by MBNA America and Richard Scaife – featured a “create your own banner” tool, where you could enter your own slogan and print out your own poster, with the Bush-Cheney logo, and a note at the bottom “paid for by Bush-Cheney ’04, Inc.” Democrats, of course, couldn’t get enough of it. The original sloganator accepted everything, then it started censoring profanity and words like “Hitler,” “dictator,” and “evil.” Nevertheless, many clever folks exploited the sloganator to their own ends before its sad demise only a couple of weeks after its birth, and its mourners assembled some of the best for the slide show.

And the Jayson Blair Award Goes To…

The Associated Press reports tonight that:

The head of a conservative lobbying group accused Newsday columnist Jimmy Breslin of making up quotes attributed to him in Wednesday’s column….
The Rev. Louis Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said he has ‘‘never met Jimmy Breslin, never had the conversation described in his column today and never said those sentences to anyone in my life.”

There have been whispers in the journalism community before about Breslin’s columns; that they sometimes cross the line from truth to fable.
On the other hand, Shame.org has this to say about the fundamentalist minister:

Founder of “Traditional Values Coalition” said only heterosexual survivors of the Trade Center attack should receive benefits.
The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman and founder of Traditional Values Coalition, said yesterday that public and private relief agencies providing assistance to the survivors of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks should not give aid to surviving members of gay partnerships.
Groups such as the Red Cross “should be first giving priority to those widows who were at home with their babies and those widowers who lost their wives,” Sheldon said. Assistance “should be given on the basis and priority of one man and one woman in a marital relationship.”

This is at least as loopy as what Breslin attributes to Reverend Sheldon. But if we’re not going to give Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass a pass for fabricating news, and we shouldn’t, then we have to hold Breslin to the same standards, regardless of his status as a journalism institution.
It’s hard to know the truth, however. Sheldon allegedly made the remarks attributed to him in 1992: since then acceptance of gay and lesbian lifestyles has grown tremendously (1992 was before the wildly popular “Will & Grace” and “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”). Even a benighted fossil like Sheldon might recognize that his remarks now expose him to ridicule.

Breslin Will Get No Easter Basket This Year

The Roman Catholic church in our precincts is under Cardinal Edward Egan. He speaks in words that belong on a wedding cake and is useless at a time like this.
We send young men to fight a worldwide religion and we haven’t heard a word from Egan, not a thought about who the other people are and why they hate us. I would say that he probably doesn’t know the first thing about Islam.
Jimmy Breslin, Newsday, Wednesday, April 7, 2004.