A federal judge told Fox News today not to let the courthouse door hit them on their corporate ass when they slink out of the building. Their suit against Al Franken's use of "fair and balanced" in the title of his new book is "without merit, both factually and legally."
Actually, that sort of describes the whole network, doesn't it?
Oh, and just one more thing. This whole escapade was apparently the brainchild — and I use both the word and the word "child" advisedly — of Fox whiner-in-chief Bill O'Reilly, who was unhappy at Franken's verbal assault on him at the Los Angeles BookExpo, televised on C-SPAN last May. Result: O'Reilly looks like a petulant adolescent and Franken probably earns an extra million bucks or so in book sales. Who knew C-SPAN had such power?
UPDATE: Franken, reached by telephone immediately after the ruling, called the ruling a victory for the First Amendment and satirists everywhere -- "even bad satirists."
They notice that the U.S. forces in Iraq have become a new magnet for regional terrorist activity. They assume this demonstrates the foolishness of President Bush's decision to invade. It more likely demonstrates the opposite. By the very act of proving this lower ground, he drains terrorist resources from other swamps.
Does the US government have a strategy to put a bullseye on the backs of American GIs, and use our soldiers as bait for terrorists? This sucks! If the flypaper theory is correct: the U.S. has found itself stuck in Iraq, and our soldiers are the flies.
Dan Drezner takes on the flypaper theory". When President Bush said "Bring 'em on," was it really part of a devious plan to attract hordes of terrorists to Iraq so they'd all be in one convenient place where we could smash them to bits?
Dan isn't buying. Frankly, though, I think he's too nice about it: this "theory" is so cockamamie that it belongs with the tin foil hat brigade. I have no love for neocon foreign policy, but even I don't think they're so cynical and amoral as to concoct a strategy deliberately designed to radically destabilize a country and get lots of U.S. troops killed — a strategy, I might add, that even a cursory glance at birthrates tells you would never work anyway. They can grow 'em faster than we can kill 'em.
Calpundit says It's time for everyone to grow up. The UN bombing in Baghdad doesn't necessarily mean that Iraq is on the verge of a meltdown, but it sure isn't good news either. The Bush administration better have a better plan for handling it than what they've shown so far.
I think the flypaper theory is an attempt to come up with a rationale for a war that didn't have a very good one to begin with. I don't think it's necessarily a tinfoil hat thing, it's just some attempt to come up with a reason for it if you don't buy WMD, human rights ("Saddam was a bad guy!"), it's all about oil, etc.
