IT WAS A BIG DAY for apologies from the liberal media. Brit Hume had the complete list including Air America, AP, NPR, the Washington Post, and my favorite from the rubes at the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
An editorial page editor at the Minneapolis Star Tribune (search) insisted earlier this week that his paper has never advocated a change to Senate filibuster rules. But after some media noted that when President Clinton's proposals were being filibustered, the paper called on politicians to "crusade for changes in Senate procedures," Editorial page deputy editor Jim Boyd now admits his paper has been "caught in a contradiction." He says he and his staff "missed" the old editorial.
MARK STEYN THINKS John Bolton is simply "too-hip" for the Democrats to understand. (Hat-tip Capcomm)
If the Senate poseurs and the media wanted to mount a trenchant critique of Bolton's geopolitical philosophy, that would be reasonable enough. But there's not even a pretense of any of that. Instead, his opponents have seized on one episode -- an intelligence analyst in a critical position with whom Bolton and others were dissatisfied -- and used it to advance the bizarre proposition that every junior official should be beyond reproach, and certainly beyond such aggressive ''body language'' as putting one's hands on hips. Or as Peter Beinart, editor of the New Republic, complained to the BBC the other night: Bolton was ''disloyal to his subordinates.''
VICTOR DAVID HANSON continues with the "hip" theme, and addresses the "smear mongers" that have hijacked his "confirmation process."
Sen. Barbara Boxer slams the nominee in the manner she hammered Condoleezza Rice. Yet she paid her own son a six-figure fee out of her publicly-raised campaign funds. In another scandal, Boxer circumvented channels to ram through special favorable legislation for the Miwok Tribe that wished a gaming franchise; later, the tribe hired her same peripatetic offspring as a consultant.
Sen. Chris Dodd now thinks out loud whether John Bolton's conduct is indictable. After the recent Enron meltdown that cost consumers billions of dollars, many wondered the same thing about him for sponsoring unusual legislation for his own mega-dollar campaign donors. Dodd's intervention relaxed auditing accountability and allowed suspect firms like Arthur Andersen to circumvent legal culpability with disastrous results.
Biden's past slips and slurs make Bolton look like a Boy Scout. Not long ago he threatened representatives from the airlines with, "I will screw you badly," and dubbed the United States at war in Afghanistan a "high-tech bully." Biden has fought accusations of intellectual misrepresentation going all the way back to law school — repeated charges about character that have aborted his previous presidential ambitions.
The point is not to find dirt on these smear mongers but to remember that the most savagely critical senators — who hold far more important public posts than U.N. ambassador — would themselves fall far short of the impossible standards of nicety that they are suddenly imposing on a good man whose politics they abhor.
THERE IS ALSO BREAKING NEWS on the organization that the smear mongers are trying so hard to protect from reform. French banking giant BNP Paribas may be involved in a massive money laundering scheme in the ever-deepening oil for food scandal. The New York Sun does the math to date.
At the United Nations itself, heads have already been rolling, as one scandal after another has bubbled up from the oil-for-food morass. Several high-ranking U.N. officials close to Secretary-General Annan have been forced to "step aside" - as U.N. lingo has it. Federal prosecutors are investigating allegations that Saddam sent millions in bribes to two as-yet-unnamed high-ranking U.N. officials to help shape the program in his favor. But all the investigating so far has barely begun to expose the full extent of the corruption and mismanagement involved in oil for food, under which Saddam grafted billions out of more than $110 billion in U.N.-approved oil sales and relief purchases meant to help the people of Iraq. "Follow the money," says Mr. Rohrabacher, who adds, "Sometimes it's easy to miss the fact that the bank is right in the middle of it."
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