These are the headlines from Google News the evening after Alberto Gonzales testified before the U. S. Senate to explain the firing of U. S. Attorneys:

GOP Senator Calls for Gonzales to Resign – Forbes, NY
GOP Senator Calls for Gonzales to Resign – FOX News
Gonzales losing GOP support – Dallas Morning News
On a very hot seat with little cover and less support – Int’l Herald Tribune
Gonzales Endures Harsh Session With Senate Panel – New York Times
Gop Senator Calls For Gonzales To Resign – Guardian Unlimited
Gonzales losing GOP support – Houston Chronicle
Gonzales Rejects Call For His Ouster – Guardian Unlimited
White House says attorney gen’l has Bush’s ‘full confidence’ – MarketWatch
Gonzales Struggles to Sway Skeptics – ABC News
Gonzales rejects call for his ouster – Boston Globe
Gonzales’s Candor, Judgment Questioned by Senators – Bloomberg
Gonzales can’t sway skeptical senators – San Diego Union Tribune

Which of these things is not like the other? And how long will it be before Bush tells Gonzales that he’s doing, “a heckuva job?”

While America is struggling with the disbelief and sympathy provoked by the Virginia Tech massacre, some in the media are trying to salve the wounds in a most peculiar way.

Brian Williams of NBC went on air yesterday peddling his view of President Bush as the empathetic vessel for the nation’s grief, saying that Bush…

“has been effective as a mourner-in-chief. He is quite good at it, quite soothing at it.”

I might have excused this delusional analysis had Williams himself been a grief-stricken victim of this crime. But as he is not, it is simply an insensitive misrepresentation of reality.

This is the same Bush that has not attended a single funeral for the 3,200 Americans killed in Iraq. In fact, he prohibits the rest of the country from mourning by forbidding news coverage of funerals or returning caskets even when the families prefer it. And that’s to say nothing of the tens (hundreds?) of thousands of Iraqis who lost their lives.

This is the same Bush that took six days to acknowledge the loss of over 1,800 Americans due to Hurricane Katrina. In fact, Bush was celebrating John McCain’s birthday as the levees breached, despite having been warned of the danger. In his first stumbling attempts at consolation, he praised his incompetent FEMA director and assured victims that they would be cared for and the region would be restored. That was almost two years ago.

This is the same Bush under whose direction the Attorney General mocked the Geneva Convention and justified torture.

This is the same Bush that set records for executions as governor of Texas.

This is the same Bush that ignored warnings from the CIA saying “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” In fact, the warning came while he vacationed at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, but he didn’t even consider it necessary to interrupt his recreation to perhaps prevent a massive terrorist attack.

This is the same Bush that smirks when hailing the “haves and haves more” that he refers to as his “base” and scowls while insisting that senior citizens should happily exchange the dependability of Social Security for the vagaries of the stock market; the same Bush that trusts pharmaceutical conglomerates to attend to the interests of patients instead of their bottom line; the same Bush that defiantly rejects the world’s climate experts’ proof of global warming.

He clearly doesn’t expect to be around to console the future victims of his destructive and short-sighted policies. And he has certainly not been there for the victims of the past. Even his signature issue, which he exploits endlessly, the terrorist attacks on 9/11, demonstrates a callousness that is revolting. When informed that the nation was under attack, he sat paralyzed before a group of school children, unable respond. When he eventually did respond, it was to stand atop a pile of rubble (that likely contained human remains) and issue empty threats to the perpetrators. He did not use that “megaphone moment” to bring comfort to a stunned nation. He used it to display a bravado that he knew he would not have to back up personally. And it should be noted that he did not even apprehend “the people who knocked down these buildings,” as he pompously promised.

Brian Williams’ depiction of Bush as “quite soothing” can only be described as a severe hallucination. Bush is the last person I would turn to for solace in a time of grief. And the only plausible context for designating him “mourner-in-chief,” would be because he is such a productive supplier of the world’s death and misery.

Update: Ann Compton of ABC News has also joined the chorus saying:

“When the nation mourns, the president kind of has to be the mourner in chief.”

David Bauder of the Associated Press attempts to unravel the knotted complexities of the Democratic Party’s objection to Fox News hosting their presidential primary debates.

Note to David Bauder: It’s not complicated, and you’ve still missed point.

Bauder begins his exercise by asserting that Democrats are engaged in this dispute in order to “target” Fox, just as they do President Bush. So right off the bat he has reduced the dispute to a partisan triviality and is dismissing the genuine concerns that the network is verifiably unfriendly territory for Democrats. Worse than that, however, he perpetuates the utterly false and shallow accusation that by ditching Fox, Democrats are afraid to face the psuedo-news network:

“The risk to this strategy is it could make the candidates look like, well, weenies.”

Note to David Bauder: On the contrary, it makes them look stronger.

There is nothing about standing up for yourself, refusing to let known enemies exploit you, and challenging liars and propagandists, that can reasonably be construed as weakness. Fox’ own Bill O’Reilly pulls this stunt all the time, calling those who decline to appear on his program cowards. The real reason people turn down O’Reilly, and Fox News debates, is that they don’t want to dirty themselves with the biased, low-brow, anti-intellectual, sensationalism that Fox dispenses by the truckload. What’s more, poking a finger in the eye of the biggest bully on the cable news block is not the act of a coward.

The ludicrous notion that assertively rejecting Fox suggests an inability to face hostile foreign leaders, as Bauder reports, fails on two grounds: As previously noted, it is strength, not weakness, that is displayed by the shunning of Fox; and Fox is not the equivalent of a sovereign state that might have an impact on U. S. national security and it’s just plain silly to elevate them to such status.

While there has been voluminous documentation that Fox operates as a virtual arm of the Republican PR machine, Bauder obliging illustrates the problem in his own article, so we don’t even have to turn the page for corroborating evidence of Fox bias:

“A feud against Fox might not be the best long-term plan, either. People there have been known to hold a grudge.”

This ironic, and apparently inadvertent, admission really tells the whole story. Fox is not an impartial observer. If you cross them, they will “hold a grudge.” And Bauder acknowledges that they “have been known” to do so in the past.

Note to David Bauder: A reputable news organization does not hold grudges. And Democrats who refuse to certify Fox as a legitimate journalistic enterprise deserve praise for their integrity and their courage.

The new owner of the Tribune Company, Sam Zell, has previously stated that his interest in purchasing the media conglomerate was purely financial. He is wasting no time in throwing out challenges to those he perceives as stepping on his profit opportunities:

“If all of the newspapers in America did not allow Google to steal their content for nothing, what would Google do? We have a situation today where effectively the content is being paid for by the newspapers and stolen by Google, etcetera. That can last for a short time, but it can’t last forever. I think Google and the boys understand that. We’re going to see new deals and new formulas in the media space that reflect the reality of cost benefit.”

That’s pretty tough talk for a guy who has never spent a single day working in media. Zell callously accuses Google, and thousands of other on- and off-line publishers, of theft for merely printing excerpts of stories and links to the source. His ignorance of fair-use threatens to criminalize methods of distributing information that are both legal and beneficial to a free society.

If Zell intends to raise revenue by reversing long-held precedents in journalism, he better expect some blowback. David Garrity, a research director with an investment bank, believes Zell will try to work out settlements with the Googles of the world, but may resort to litigation. It seems appropriate that the bank Garrity represents is Dinosaur Securities, because the world has long since evolved past the stage where news can be hoarded by corporate misers.

White house spokesman, Gordon Johndroe, has stumbled upon the same tranquil Baghdad that charmed John McCain. When asked his reaction to Muqtada al Sadr’s urging his followers to rise up against the U.S. forces in Iraq, he said this:

“Iraq, four years on, is now a place where people can freely gather and express their opinions.”

“And that was something they could not do under Saddam. And while we have much more progress ahead of us…this is a country that has come a long way from the tyranny of Saddam Hussein.”


You’ve come along way, Baghdad! And looking back on four years of progress, we feel nothing but excitement knowing that there is “much more progress ahead.”

We congratulate you on your newfound freedom to advocate the killing of American soldiers. How exhilarating it must be for you to experience this gift of democracy that was denied to you by the dictator Saddam. We are so proud, as Americans, to know the part we have played in your liberation to snipe at us from behind bombed out storefronts, or plant IEDs under our unarmored Humvees.

But remember, that along with democracy comes responsibility. Just because you are now able to hold massive rallies calling for the ouster of foreign occupiers, that doesn’t mean that the occupiers, or even your own government, has to listen to you. As you learn about democracy, you will notice that, even in America, leaders are not bound to pay the slightest bit of attention to the majority of our citizens who want their soldiers to return home from Iraq. This may seem confusing to you, but when you’ve had as much experience with the democratic process as we have, it will all become clear. You will eventually have your own experts, like Karl Rove, to explain it all to you.

In the meantime, enjoy your great good fortune at having partners like the United States to introduce you to a world of liberty. And rejoice in knowing that, although the past four years seem to have been roiled in mass murder and destruction, it was actually progress, and there is much more of that on the way. In fact, we expect that, by this time next year, there will have been so much progress that Iraq will be as peaceful as a deserted island whose tranquility is ne’er disturbed by living souls – and for the same reason.