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.

Since the recent murder of abortionist George Tiller there has been a lot of buzz on the internet about supposed inconsistency among the "pro-life" movement. I put "pro-life" in quotes since most of this buzz is centered on the term Pro-Life.

I'd like to give the benefit of the doubt to the rabid abortion advocates but I'm at a sort of impasse. Do I presume they do not know how language works, especially in the context of a politically charged issue? Or do I presume they are willfully ignorant, and possibly just not intellectually honest?

The contention seems to be over the fact that "pro-life" is not an entirely accurate term. But there is almost no criticism of the term "pro-choice" which is equally inaccurate. Neither of these terms are absolute, and they're not meant to be. They are monikers, political labels.

Abortion supporters tend to argue that to be truly "pro-life" one should be anti-war and anti-capital punishment. If the term were meant to be absolute this assessment would be legitimate. However, it is equally legitimate to argue that to be truly "pro-choice" one must support school vouchers and be an anarchist.

What is the meaning of "pro-choice"? If the term is absolute it should mean favoring one's right to make one's own decisions, in ANY AND ALL CIRCUMSTANCES. That is the standard to which pro-abortion radicals are holding the term "pro-life". Laws and regulations, by their very nature, limit people's freedom to make their own choices. So if it is hypocritical for a pro-lifer to acknowledge war is sometimes necessary then it is equally hypocritical of a pro-choicer to support the existence government. If it is inconsistent for a pro-lifer to support capital punishment it is equally inconsistent of a pro-choicer to oppose school choice. After all, it is strange to support a woman's right to choose to kill her unborn child, but to oppose letting that same woman choose which school to send that child should she choose to let it live.

Instead of acknowledging both of these political terms are labels, intended to be used only on the context of the abortion issue, so many extremist abortion supports take offense at only the term "pro-life". Their selective hostile attention to that label and the refusal to recognize the reality of how both terms are used is intellectually dishonest, at best.

Claiming to be "pro-abortion" doesn't sound as good as claiming to be "pro-choice". This is a marketing tactic, which is manipulative, but apparently has been ingrained in the abortion lexicon. The anti-abortion reaction to this marketing ploy was to use the same trick, hence the term "pro-life" was coined. But the pro-abortion horde won't allow their opponents to employ their same tricks. That's why we frequently see the term "anti-choice" used by the pro-abortion mob. Can you imagine if the pro-life movement started using the term "baby killers" as synonymous with "pro-choice"? That semantics trick would generate phenomenal outrage among abortion supporters. And so the term "anti-choice" should do the same for abortion opponents.

If the baby killer movement can use semantic games with no scrutiny of its own rhetoric it should allow everyone else the same courtesy.

The book Notice A Pattern? explains the problem of abortion without using cheap rhetoric, as is ostensibly one of the favorite tools of the pro-abortion movement. This book is an essay addressing the reality of the situation, in historical context and with recommendations as to what can be done about it. No where in the pro-life movement do we find advocates of violence or murder. There are isolated cases, such as with Dr. Tiller's murder, that we find someone outside the mainstream of the pro-life movement who acts alone in committing crimes. But then, we don't see much effort among abortion supports to distinguish between these isolated cases and the pro-life movement. It's not as if we were trying to distinguish between Islam and a bunch of radicals who hijacked that religion.

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.

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.