NPR's Richard Knox evidently forgot to keep up with the happenings of the H1N1 flu vaccine before delivering his report Marketing Flu Vaccine: A Tough Sell For Many. Here is some impartiality for us:

The nation is in the midst of the largest mass vaccination campaign against flu in history, but about half the population is saying they are not interested.

Many have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production, compromising safety. Some are convinced that it contains harmful chemicals.

Neither is right, federal officials say. But they are clearly worried about vaccine naysayers and skeptics.

Did you catch the "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" line, as if this were simply a matter of fear mongering? Knox must not have read that the CDC approved emergency use of the vaccine in late October: FDA approves emergency use of new intravenous flu drug, peramivir. In case you don't know what "emergency use" means to the CDC, they define it on their website: Interim Questions and Answers About Emergency Use Authorization. Here is the first paragraph:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) may be issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow either the use of an unapproved medical product or an unapproved use of an approved medical product during certain types of emergencies with specified agents.

It normally takes years for the CDC to approve any drug for use in the United States. The new swine flu (H1N1) pandemic occurred just this year, 2009. So there is good reason to "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" because that is precisely what happened. But acknowledging this fact apparently makes us "naysayers and skeptics," which is another unbiased portrayal of the situation, of course.

I've not heard much concern about unsafe chemicals in the H1N1 vaccine so I question this news report about that aspect of the issue. But the general concerns over the vaccine's safety are being voiced for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that the drug was indeed rushed through the CDC's approval process via the Emergency Use Authorization.

Who are these federal officials Knox references for this report? They either don't know about the recent EUA or they do know and are lying about it. Why all the deception and this manipulative news story?

Please don't misunderstand, I don't oppose the use of vaccinations, but neither to I rabidly promote it. Richard Knox is clearly supporting the use of the H1N1 vaccine with this report, which seems consistent with the general massive media effort to promote health care "reform" legislation. It should be no surprise that even this rather uninteresting issue is being propagandized to further left wing efforts to achieve government run health care.

It seems there are really only two qualifications required to be a Supreme Court justice for the current Democrat administration: a left-leaning agenda and being sufficiently minority. That's the impression given by some recent news stories on the SCOTUS nomination of Sonia Sotomayor.

• Historic nomination: Hispanic Sotomayor as justice
• How -- and why -- Barack Obama picked Sonia Sotomayor for Supreme Court

President Obama has made a big deal out of Sotomayor's genuinely inspiring life story. Granted, he has the difficult challenge of getting a Supreme Court nominee confirmed by a sympathetic Congress with the distant microscope of a sympathetic press, both of which are quite taken with the gender and race aspects of this particular nomination. Okay, so that's not such a challenge after all. But getting this nomination approved by Congress before anything seriously inconvenient is divulged will be a challenge.

There's nothing wrong with the president nominating an idealogue who supports his own bias and world view, that's what any president does. However, Sotomayor is being treated not as an ideologue, but rather as an idealist. And there's the rub; an entirely different treatment by both Congress and the news media (the very people who decry partisanship, and laud bi-partisanship) from other recent federal court nominees. You may not remember how President Bush's judicial nominees were treated by Congressional and journalistic Democrats, so here's a brief reminder:

• Flashback: Nets Were Quick to Tag Alito and Roberts as 'Ultra' and 'Hardline' 'Conservatives'
• In 2003, Miguel Estrada Was Dismissed As Bush 'Affirmative Action Candidate'
• The Democratic Party: Reject Samuel Alito
• A Spectre is Haunting the Constitution: Alito
• The Supreme Court's Wrong Turn -- And How to Fix It
• Alito the Extremist, Ginsburg the Moderate?
• Lauer Gives Extremist Tag to Alito: "He Is an Ultra-Conservative"
• Alito seen as extremist threat to mainstream rights

John Roberts and Samuel Alito in particular were ridiculed and excoriated by Congressional Democrats and main stream journalists, with plenty of slander and misrepresentation to boot. And what sort of criticisms do journalists have for Sotomayor? Charlie Savage makes a fair effort to explain potential problems one could have with her in his NYT piece A Judge’s View of Judging Is on the Record. In this piece several statements of Sotomayor are presented. Since conservatives are commonly subjected to an "I know bigotry when I see it" decoder-ring attitude from leftists it seems only fair to acknowledge, as Savage does here, that Sotomayor's statements seem to satisfy Barack Obama's imperative of a judge's "empathy" for ruling from the bench.

• Obama’s “Empathy” Standard
• Obama Supreme Court Candidate Sonia Sotomayor—Part 2

But it appears there is a concerted effort, at least in the general news media and left leaning political circles, to avoid taking a closer look at Sotomayor's record. For example, the May 27, 2009 AP story Push to confirm first Hispanic to Supreme Court makes no effort to detail any potential difficulty with the nomination other than a token quote of unspecified "serious problems" from a Republican Senator. Likewise, NPR's Nita Totenberg spends the vast majority of two news stories on the magnificence of the entire situation, with numerous statements from Sotomayor supporters. There is only one statement included in each story of any possible criticism. (As a side note, suddenly the fact that no one has read all of Sotomayor's legal decisions is presented as pertinent, where as this same lack of preparedness was widely treated as irrelevant regarding the largest spending bill in American history earlier this year). Totenberg tries to portray Sotomayor as a moderate while informing us Republicans will try to portray her as extremist or activist, with the suggestion it is only a few fringe right wingers who would ever think such a thing.

• Obama Picks Sotomayor For High Court
• Obama Picks Hispanic Woman For Supreme Court

Totenberg and President Obama do actually address one specific legal decision of Sotomayor. Others have recently addressed that case in other places as, so far, the only specific instance of her vast and riveting experience the American people seem to be aware of:

• Looking Back At Sotomayor's 1995 Baseball Ruling
• On a Supreme Court Prospect’s Résumé: ‘Baseball Savior’

The lack of any substantial information about this nominee should be concerning. No where in the left wing media, and certainly no where in Congress, are we getting real information other than the heart warming story of Sotomayor's difficult life and her inspiring ascendence to a high federal court.

The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen did some work of truly investigating concerns over Sotomayor. On May 4, 2009 Rosen's The Case Against Sotomayor (a title Rosen regrets) brings us some valid points about temperament and such, though from a sympathetic point of view. There are legitimate questions as to her ability to work well with others and her intellectual competence for the job on the SCOTUS.

Regarding the ostensible unwillingness to challenge President Obama's nomination Alan Dershowitz explains quite well that Congress is the body of representation, and that "diversity" (liberal code for "you are a bigot if you disagree with me") should not be a deciding factor when nominating someone for a seat on the nation's highest court: Diversity on the High Court. Randall Kennedy reminds us a compelling personal story was irrelevant to leftists when Clarance Thomas or Sarah Palin were the political hot topics of the day: Sotomayor’s Biography Should Be Irrelevant.

President Obama and the Democratic Party seem to be operating on the idea that Sotomayor's race, gender, and years of judicial experience are the only relevant factors here. There is no apparent interest in the quality of that experience, or worse - a  left leaning agenda allegedly behind that experience is treated as validation. The fact that the Supreme Court has had to overturn as much as 60% of Sotomayor's decisions which reached them is entirely ignored. The biggest concern conservatives have about Sotomayor is her seeming willingness to disregard the Constitution altogether if she feels it interferes with her sentiments. Evidently alternative news media will have to bring this information to light.

Two such cases can be found already. Before Obama made his SCOTUS pick there were a few contenders. Ilya Shapiro wrote about that May first, for the Cato Institute. In Who Will Replace Justice Souter? Shaprio brings up "Ricci v. DeStefano ... an appeal of a bizarre opinion Sotomayor joined that denied the claims of firefighters who had been passed over for promotion because of their race." Richard Epstein with Forbes.com wrote on May 26 in The Sotomayor Nomination about the infamous Kelo v. New London case. Epstein says this:

Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.

In the mean time, let's see if Sotomayor is treated like this during her confirmation hearings.

McClatchy Newspapers published a story May 21, 2009 by Jonathan S. Landay and Warren P. Strobel titled Cheney's speech ignored some inconvenient truths. The best part about the story is that Landay and Strobel also ignored some inconvenient truths.

These reporters begin with Mr. Cheney's statements about enhanced interrogation techniques and how they "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people." But letting this statement go unchallenged would make the Bush administration look good, and we can't have that. The former vice president was referencing Adm. Dennis Blair, who did in fact state the information gained by such techniques "was valuable in some instance." But, for some reason, "in some instance" doesn't get any credit from Landay and Strobel, who try to portray that value as irrelevant.

We are reminded with a further statement from Adm. Blair that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means." This is true for Cheney, but apparently not for Landay and Strobel. Somehow they know Mr. Cheney's statement was an exaggeration and they want you to know it, too. However, even cursory attention to current events shows us Landay and Strobel's assessment can also be described as containing omissions and exaggerations.

Take, for instance, these two recent news stories on suicide attacks: 3 US soldiers, dozens of Iraqis killed by bombings, 3 U.S. Troops, 23 Iraqis Killed in Bomb Attacks. From these stories we see almost 100 people were killed in just two attacks. Notice, also, these attacks are both from Iraq. Let me repeat that: in just two attacks, in one country almost 100 people were killed by terrorists. Or how about this story: April brings highest Iraq death toll in seven months, which reports 355 people were killed just in Iraq, and just in the month of April, 2009. Three recent news stories indicating well over 400 people killed by terrorists. When you consider the innumerable news stories telling us about Iraqi civilian deaths it's not hard to imagine stopping only one such attack could easily save dozens of lives, and stopping dozens of attacks could quite easily save thousands of lives. Iraqbodycount.org shows possibly as many as 100,000 Iraqi civilians may have been killed since the 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq (remember during the 2004 election season John Kerry relentlessly and falsely claiming the U.S. unilaterally invaded Iraq? Do you remember any main stream news stories catching him in that lie?).

Now imagine the two stories above from May showing nearly 100 people killed were never written. Imagine those attacks were prevented because of harsh interrogations of captured terrorists. That is almost 100 lives that would have been saved. How in the world would anyone be able to prove how many lives were saved by stopping these two attacks? Had those attacks been thwarted and Dick Cheney publicly claimed dozens of lives were saved by stopping those attacks he would predictably be accused of exaggerating the victory and making misstatements. Rather than acknowledge the good that resulted from "enhanced interrogation techniques" we would be reminded instead that "there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means." However, the flip side of this fact is that there could have been no relevant information what so ever acquired through other means. "There is no way of knowing" means "there is no way of knowing." But Landay and Strobel portray this fact as though Dick Cheney's assessment is somehow less reliable than theirs, as if they actually knew that.

Landay and Strobel include one more statement from Adm. Blair: "The bottom line is that these techniques hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security." It's sad that when approximately 100,000 civilians have been killed by terrorist acts (or government abuse, as was the case with Saddam Hussein) in just one country, and while the U.S. and its allies tried putting an end to all this, the admiral and some reporters think the bottom line is that people around the world don't like the methods used to stop those terrorists. An even worse realization of this situation is that the typical leftist and anti-war activist would has us believe those 100,000 deaths were primarily the result of poorly planned and executed military action in Iraq, because America's troops are incompitent, or just plain evil. Representative John Murtha (D-PA) maintains he was right to call our Marines cold blooded murderers. Accidental civilian deaths are one of the worst aspects of war, and such tragedies do happen. But how does one justify accusing American troops of being just as bad as the terrorists or Saddam Husein because of what is callously called "collateral damage"? Even if a few troops did murder Iraqi civilians, does that justify suggesting all of our military are scum? Where are all the news stories condemning this egregious slander?

Landay and Strobel continue with reminding us Osama bin Laden is still at large. A serious problem, no doubt. But how do they justify suggesting military resources being spent on Iraq before capturing bin Laden was somehow inappropriate? I'm sure President Bush would have liked for the world to be simplistic enough so that he had to deal with only one tough issue at a time, but it just isn't that way. Besides, why are there so few reporters who know about these links between Hussein and terrorists?

• Saddam link to Bin Laden
• Connect the Dots . . .
• Al-Qaeda linked to operations from Iran (and Iraq)
• Al-Qaeda faces rebellion from the ranks
• Al-Qaeda leaders admit: 'We are in crisis. There is panic and fear'
• Iraq Officials: Al Qaeda Insurgent Leader Still in Custody (update on Abu Omar al-Baghdadi)
• ABC News: Iraqi intelligence chief met with bin Laden in December 1998

Next we see a rehash of anti-Bush propaganda regarding the Abu Graib scandal. With their left-leaning brand of impartiality Landay and Strobel try to cast doubt on Cheney's credibility on his denial that the abuses at Abu Graib were secretly condoned by the Bush administration. And we're supposed to treat a report by a supposedly bipartisan (meaning only 75% left-leaning) committee as the authoritative source on this investigation. Only evidence supporting the anti-Bush opinions of these two journalists about the war are included in this story.

Landay and Strobel then rehash the pre-Iraq invasion intelligence curfuffle. While bringing up several points Cheney didn't mention in his 36 minute speech these reporters also neglect to mention certain inconveinent truths about that intelligence. As with the ABC News story and others linked above, there are numerous statements from numerous Democrats prior to the Iraq war (many times years before) providing the same reasons President Bush gave the world for going to war in Iraq:

• Words of Mass Destruction
• Gore criticizes Bush for ignoring Iraq's ties to terrorism
• Bill Clinton: Clear Evidence of Iraqi WMD Program
• Gore To Bush: You Ignored Saddam's Terrorist Ties!
• Democrats before Iraq War started....

Landay and Strobel are sure to remind us "U.S. intelligence officials and numerous official inquiries have rebutted repeatedly" the links between Saddam Hussein and terrorist groups. But they fail to tell how such an assessment jives with the blatant claims by numerous Democrats to the contrary through out the Clinton era (even during the 1992 election season, as in the Al Gore videos above). In trying to refute Bush administration claims about ties between Iraq and terrorist organizations Landay and Strobel neglect to mention such claims were common place during the 1990s, accepted by almost everyone. Did no one bother to investigate the claims about such links during the Clinton administration? Or have we now decided all of that intelligence does count?

This McClatchy news story ends referencing a recent Pentagon study of over 600,000 Iraqi documents. Of course, Landay and Strobel don't mention "there is no way of knowing" how many documents were destroyed by Saddam Hussein's orders before he was removed from power.

This looks like another example of Bush Derrangement Syndrome: everything bad is to be blamed on the Bush administration, but anything good is someone else's fault.

Cheney, Master of Pain May 16, 2009 by MAUREEN DOWD

Maureen Dowd has done many obtuse things. But bloviating over torture in defense of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is just the most recent. Her latest opinion piece defending Pelosi isn't really about her.

Dowd can't help but blame Bush and Cheney for Pelosi's moment in the hot seat over what she new about supposed torture, when she knew it, and why she did nothing in protest long ago in the early years of the Bush administration. But this is the most obvious symptom of what is called Bush Derangement Syndrome: blame the Bush administration for everything that can be construed as bad and refuse credit for anything good.

Take, for example, the issue of water boarding. The Democrat narrative pounds on the notion that water boarding is torture, without question, and that this is a settled fact not open for debate. Never mind that there is still disagreement among national security professionals about the issue. But Dowd is curiously concerned about torture, especially when considering her opinion on another moral issue in the middle of a semantics battle: killing unborn children. Dowd fully embraces the notion that unborn children are not people, and so killing them is perfectly alright. If Dowd has such a low threshold for what qualifies as torture I must ask why is her semantic threshold for murder so high?

Another example of Bush Derangement Syndrome is shown in what Dowd calls the administration's "dark arts in broad daylight". I assume she is talking about the misdeeds (I can call it that, if abortion proponents can call abortion "reproductive rights" or "women's rights") of a few guards at the Abu Graib prison. In Dowd's mind those abuses of terrorist prisoners are automatically chalked up as standard Bush policy (but don't tell her those abuses were condemned even by the Bush administration and those responsible were prosecuted for their crimes). Perhaps she is referring to Newsweek's bogus story about Guantanamo Bay prison guards trying to flush a Koran down a toilet, a story Newsweek had to retract (not to mention it caused riots around the world which were responsible for some deaths). Or maybe Dowd is referring to some news media concocted lies about the Bush administration claiming Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, journalistic lies which Orson Scott Card had the courage to expose. Or perhaps she means the absence of WMDs in Iraq, of course with no mention that what George Bush said about Iraq's WMDs after 9/11 is precisely what we were told numerous times by numerous Democrats for years before 9/11/2001. Even this little piece of history escapes notice by Dowd:

Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology, which is a threat to countries in the region, and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.

-- Nancy Pelosi, December 16, 1998

But this mental disorder of Dowd's doesn't stop with past anti-Bush propaganda; it continues on today. After rehashing past news media abuses and manipulations about the Bush era Dowd continues with the torture issue referring to Ali Soufan, "the ex-F.B.I. agent who flatly calls torture 'ineffective....'" Of course, mentioning Peter Baker's April 21st NYT story indicating torture has been shown to be quite effective doesn't fit with the Bush-is-Hitler agenda. Instead, it makes sense to Dowd to continue harping on the myth that the Bush administration claimed Saddam Hussein had something to do with the 9/11 attacks by quoting other leftist reporters and bloggers who have also bought into that revised history provided and apparently still promoted by the main stream news media.

If Maureen Dowd would actually do the job a journalist is supposed to do she would be just as cynical about Nancy Pelosi as she is about Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush and any Republican. But, alas, Bush Derangement Syndrome has claimed yet another leftist victim. But I don't hope her kidneys fail, I hope Dowd gets the psychiatric help she clearly needs.