The Bad News Bearers

After a long Christmas break, a 'real news' backlog seems to be emanating from the DC-NY corridor. Here are links to 4 items of genuine import:

1) A Times story that is splashing all over the leftosphere, making prominent appearances on Buzzflash, Raw Story and HuffPo. See It Now. In essence this piece of solid journalism demonstrates that Administration claims of restraint w/r/t their spying on you were, oh, what's the right word...lies.

The whole article is (in your best Boston accent,) 'wicked important' (N.B. the star-spangled byline: L. Bergman, E. Lichtblau and D. Van Natta,) but here's an appetizer, in the form of a surprisingly WaPo-like lede. (Italics ours.)

"In the anxious months after the Sept. 11 attacks, the National Security Agency began sending a steady stream of telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and names to the F.B.I. in search of terrorists. The stream soon became a flood, requiring hundreds of agents to check out thousands of tips a month.

But virtually all of them, current and former officials say, led to dead ends or innocent Americans."

2) WaPo's Pincus stopping just inches short of admitting that Iraq's low-grade civil war is becoming less 'low-grade civil', more 'war': See It Now.

The moral of this one seems to be, "folks who can't manage a baseball team or get oil out of the west Texas ground shouldn't get involved in thousand-year-old blood feuds they know nothing about." (Use of the word 'folks' should be a clue as to whom we refer.)

3) Jon Alter on a constitutional crisis that nobody seems to care about: See It Now. Standing Eight, despite our Impeach Bush banner, agrees with Alter's anti-impeachment point. (And no, that's not a flip-flop.)

4) While it's true one poll can be wrong, it's less true when twelve polls look exactly the same. See It Now.

If the top three items don't give you fits, then you probably ended up at The Eight by mistake. That's okay. We're still glad you stopped by, and please don't hesitate to call again. If they do give you fits, consider the fourth item dessert.

(Full disclosure/A peek behind the Standing Eight curtain: without Buzz, Raw, and Huff, The Eight would be nothing but a few mediocre poems and barrelfuls of snark. The worst part of being a media critic is that you have to pay so much attention to the media.)