Ann Coulter has never apologized. George Bush has never apologized.

* kagro x on norad:

"David Swanson made a really interesting comment to me after the Charlottesville, VA impeachment teach-in. It was essentially this: all the key stories surrounding 9/11, the NSA spying, torture in Guantanamo, everything, have "broken" in the papers of record only at the last second before books revealing the same information hit the shelves. And it's not necessarily a situation wherein reporters get advance copies and then reveal what they read. Rather, just as often, it's the reporters themselves who have written the books, after having their stories buried for months or even years by their editors. The only way to get a blockbuster published in the papers these days is for the reporters to threaten to rob their papers of the prestige of breaking it elsewhere."

* ok - so i finished the VF norad thing. scary. i was in tears for half of it. this was my favorite line:

"Two more problems emerge: the controllers can't find the White House on their dated equipment"

* scott:

"Normally I’d think it was nice to have a president with no credibility, but it really doesn’t seem to be holding them back much."

* larisa:

"Incidentally, despite Gibson's historical revisionism, the (Passion) was embraced far and wide by the American right who now deny, as the morally dishonest people that they are, ever having supported the Passion of Christ as a true story, despite its historical inaccuracies and anti-Jewish slant.
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Honestly, the nation's overreaction to the Passion of Mel's drinking is only equal to the zeal it showed for him as though he were a prophet of God. But he did not then nor does he now deserve this kind of hysteria.
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Gibson is now being covered to such an extent and in such a way as to make him seem a monster, a rare creature of hate in a sea of tolerance. But the reality is far more disturbing and Gibson is hardly the monstrosity or the face of evil and hatred when one considers his chosen profession, an actor and his statements on Judaism, which are rare and far between. In fact, he appears to be far more inclined to conceal his views until he has consumed large amounts of liquor.

Compare that with a "crusade" ushered in by the Bush administration against Muslims, the rampant racism against African Americans and the inexcusable and criminal - in my opinion - failure of the federal government to show any concern for New Orleans and the poor, elderly, and ill who were unable to leave.
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Americans in general are seen by the world as are self-absorbed to the point where a comment by a drunk actor overshadows the fact that late last week the United Nations Human Rights Committee sharply criticized our domestic human rights record and issued a moral indictment of our failure to live up to international treaties.

An international body reprimanded our nation for such things as racism, while we ignored them in order to focus on one man, drunk, on one night, making one racial slur? Shame, apparently, or humility, are virtues corporate America apparently does not sell and the consumer therefore cannot buy.
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I take seriously Mel Gibson's reaching out to the Jewish community and requesting help to understand why he feels the way he does. I accept his apology as well. Ann Coulter has never apologized. George Bush has never apologized. Yet when someone is brave enough to apologize and ask for help in understanding what drives their anger, we shun them and dissect them in a public execution.

read the rest.