Folks, some meanies in the Bush administration are picking on journalists like Claude Salhani. Well, Claude is ready to fight back:

When monarchs, princes and potentates in days of old received news to their disliking they would kill the messenger. Human emotions have undergone little change over the centuries, and today, many are those who would, current legislation not withstanding, gladly continue that practice.

Read that again. Claude is implying that members of the administration would "gladly" kill journalists that write unflattering stories. Really? I mean, I'm sure they'd all like to punch Ted Rall in the face, but isn't it taking it just a bit far to claim they'd want to kill him (where undoubtably he'd turn crispy brown in hell).

But Claude isn't finished:

Anyone offering an ounce of criticism of the war in Iraq, the way the war on terrorism is being conducted, the economy, the USA Patriot Act, extending tours of duty for the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, stem cell research, the separation of church and state, or any other hot topic of the day, is immediately labeled "unpatriotic."

First of all, when and where is anyone disagreeing with government policy "immediately" called unpatriotic? That's a liberal fantasy. Second, who is calling them unpatriotic? Is the government saying that, or are ordinary citizens expressing their own 1st Amendment rights to criticize the media? Finally, when someone says, for example, "I'm sorry, but the majority of Americans supported this war once it began and, sadly, that majority must now sacrifice their children until enough blood has been let that maybe -- just maybe -- God and the Iraqi people will forgive us in the end.", is it really a stretch, really inaccurate to call them unpatriotic? I don't think so.

Claude condemns Cheney for "lashing out" about the NY Times headline proclaiming that the 9/11 Commission "finds no Qaida-Iraq Tie." But, that's all he says. If a reader didn't know any better they wouldn't know that Cheney was upset because the 9/11 Commission didn't find that and, indeed, the NY Times had in their hands at this time documents proving even more ties between al-Qaida and Iraq. In other words, Cheney wasn't upset because the media was criticizing the administration, he was upset because they weren't telling the truth.

Claude, not surprisingly, still doesn't get it:

Blaming the media for news we don't agree with has become an all too common practice. And there have been no lack of topics for the citizens of this good country to disagree with. Take your pick: the presidential election campaign, or whether the war in Iraq has diverted attention from the real danger -- the war on terrorism. Now even the CIA has jumped into the fray.

Don't you like how Claude slips in a huge bit of bias here as if it's fact. "whether the war in Iraq has diverted attention from the real danger -- the war on terrorism"? Claude accuses critics of wanting to "shoot the messenger" rather than "analyze the message". But the media is guilty of the exact same thing. In their rush to shoot down the Bush presidency, they're refusing to analyze facts that don't mesh with their agenda. Like how Claude himself refuses to actually, you know, analyze the 9/11 Commission report and numerous other documents and opinions from this administration as well as the Clinton adminstration supporting the assertation that Iraq has been in bed with terrorists for years.

I'm sick of journalists like Claude and politicians like Al Gore trying to demonize any criticism of the press. They whine night and day about being labeled "unpatriotic" while at the same time they label their critics as fascists bent on crushing their noble dissent. This is just a bunch of tripe and I refuse to swallow it.