There's a new Sheriff in Town

Hugh Hewitt reported late last night that Eason Jordan resigned. The opinion storm had battered CNN's credibility to a point where there was simply no alternative for the cable news network and its honchos.

Michelle Malkin has the best recap of the Jordan affair, describing each milestone in exquisite, concise fashion. She concludes her terse recital with:

The shock waves that have overwhelmed CNN started with a single blogger and reverberated worldwide. I agree with Rony Abovitz that there should be no joy in watching Eason Jordan's downfall. But there is certainly great, unadulterated satisfaction in seeing the collective efforts of the blogosphere--citizens and professional journalists among them--produce the one thing the MSM has for too long escaped in its walled-off world: accountability.

I'll go one step further. As the MSM provably drifted left, its agenda frequently obfuscated rather than amplified the truth. Over the years, how many Rathergates and Easongates have taken place without our realizing it?

If nothing else, the pointy-haired media bosses on the coasts are beginning to come to grips with the new reality: there's a new sheriff in town, and it's us.

Update: Savor this New Sisyphus recap:

Message to MSM: you no longer control the news nor the agenda. You no longer dictate what is news and what is not. You no longer have the power to jam your liberal agenda down our throats. Deal with it. A good way to start may be by hiring a replacement for Eason who doesn't think that U.S. troops operate death squads targeting journalists or who doesn't think it's a good idea to gain cheap popularity with European elites by irresponsibly dragging our country's honor through the mud.

Michelle Malkin: EasonGate: a Retrospective

Mr. Jordan's Frying Pan

The dike hastily constructed by the mainstream media to contain the Eason Jordan affair has all but collapsed. US Senators are involved, actively calling for full disclosure. Talk shows around the country are buzzing with discussion of Jordangate. And Jordan himself has gone to ground, hoping the storm will blow over (news flash: it won't).

The MSM coverage now spans the spectrum of left to right:

Atlanta Journal Constitution: CNN news chief clarifies comments on Iraq New York Times: CNN Exec Clarifies Comment on Military Al-Reuters: CNN Executive in Hot Seat Over Iraq Claim CMAQ (Canada): CNN Executive says GI's in Iraq Target Journalists National Ledger (Arizona): Christopher Dodd to Eason Jordan: Release the Tape Washington Times: Stonewalling at CNN New Hampshire Union Leader: CNN continues to slime and smear US troops

It's gone down exactly the way Hugh Hewitt predicted:

CNN has hunkered down, hoping that the [State of the Union address] will cover the Jordan story. I don't think this will work, and the network is producing a second act to Rathergate.

What is truly amazing about this story is not the fact that the blogosphere bit into the story and wouldn't let go. It's the control over the MSM that the blogosphere now exerts! A serious story, vetted by observers, analysts and pundits (amateur though many may be), is pushed into every corner of the Internet until it can't help but escape into MSM, no matter how much stonewalling the bigs attempt.

If indeed the "the blogs are percolating into mass media," then the jomokes at CNN and NYT better buy some copies of Blog, and quick. Because they certainly don't seem to understand the opportunities represented by the blogosphere, nor the dire threats to their staid, sluggish, and stained institutions.

* * *
The sole firsthand comments from Jordan himself (at least, that I've seen), regarding his pet -gate, were released by filmmaker Danny Schechter, in the form of an email:

...Eason, seemingly shaken by all the heat coming down on him for discussing something that many journalists and press freedom groups like the International Federation of Journalists has been discussing, began to withdraw from the controversy he stirred. He wrote... I was not as clear as I should have been during the Davos panel discussion. I was trying to make a distinction between journalists killed being the victims of collateral damage and journalists being killed under different circumstances. No doubt most of the 63 journalist deaths in Iraq fall outside the collateral damage category. I have never felt and never intended to suggest, however, that anyone in the U.S. military meant to kill anyone known to be a journalist. As you will see in the Howard Kurtz Washington Post today, my comments were controversial. While I am pleased the spotlight is on the issue of journalist safety in Iraq, I intend to let others do the talking for a while after I gave several interviews and statements on the subject. I will let my colleagues know of Danny's availability as an on-air guest. I thank you and wish you well.- Eason.

Uhmm, yes, Mr. Jordan, it's getting hot. Real hot. Feel like jumping out of that frying pan yet, sir?

The Implications of Google Maps

I have been playing with the new, improved version of Google Maps and I couldn't have been more startled than if I saw Flava Flav and Brigitte Nielsen tongue-kissing. Oh, wait, I did see that last night on TV.

Anyhow, Google Maps has implemented a shockingly good user-interface -- without any use of Java applets, Macromedia Flash, ActiveX or any other thickish plugins. Using only Javascript, DHTML and "RPC's" marshalled on-the-fly via XMLHTTP, the maps are simply an order of magnitude better than the competition.

I certainly wouldn't advocate surrender on anyone's part, but if you're a Mapquest executive, you may want to call up your favorite headhunter and ask about any interesting opportunities.

Aside from the standard sorts of things you might expect in a mapping tool, Google Maps also provides:

Drag-and-drop user interface - explore without waiting for annoying page refreshes, simply move in any direction you want

Integrated, local searching - search for "Atlanta Wifi" or "Duluth Pizza" and get 3D-style indicators pointing to matching landmarks

I got to explore my neighborhood by panning and zooming... and literally found new sidestreets and routes that I otherwise would never have noticed. It is simply that groundbreaking of a user-experience.

Google has, once again, redefined the limits of web applications when it comes to taking advantage of "pure web" technologies: Javascript and DHTML.

As BenjaminM points out:

...this functionality was originally provided through the Microsoft XMLHTTP object from MSXML but Mozilla and Safari have copied it with an XMLHttpRequest object - who said that IE wasn't innovative?

Microsoft has to be both proud and frightened with this turn of events. Google has taken their technologies and used it to mount a formidable threat to the conventional operating system.

The implications for other applications is also, literally, shocking: why can't conventional database applications provide drag-and-drop scrolling through scrolling lists of line-items without having to refresh pages? Why can't new searches be integrated onto a results page with repaints?

Google is transplanting the thick-client, desktop application user experience into the world of web browsers.

A whole host of applications are ready and waiting to be migrated to this "leaps and bounds" better user experience. And Microsoft better start hustling, ASAP, to likewise improve the Windows' user experience in sea-change fashion. Otherwise, the risk exists that the browser will truly supplant the conventional notion of operating system. In which case, very few people will actually need Windows.

A long way off, perhaps, but I'm sure the folks at Redmond are concerned.

Senator Franken

In the immortal words of Animal House's Flounder, "Oh Boy, this is Great!".

Al Franken is expected to run for the Senate seat to be vacated by brave, brave Sir Dayton (you may remember him, he's the courageous Senator (D-MN) who closed his office and scrammed from Washington, saying he'd read an intelligence report that made him fear for the safety of his staff. Dayton isn't running for re-election and Franken intends to fill that void.

PoliPundit says this is great news: "Franken would be almost as weak a candidate as Dayton would have been. Meanwhile, the GOP will have a strong candidate in Congressman Mark Kennedy..."

That sly Karl Rove... what will he think of next?

Dean, Boxer, Kennedy, Kerry... and Franken... the ostensible thought-leaders of the Democratic party. Does it get any better than this if you're a Republican?

Update: David Letterman and Conan O'Brien are P.O.'ed - Franken dropped out of the race. Bummer. There's goes the basis for a thousand punchlines.

Franken to throw his hat in the ring

"The blogs are percolating into mass media..."

The Eason Jordan affair, just as Hugh Hewitt predicted, is gushing into mainstream media like water through cracks in a busted dike. The fractures keep flexing and there's not enough patching compound in the world to keep the blackout intact.



Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) reappeared on the Imus program this morning. He stated, in no uncertain terms, that Jordan needed to call for the release of the tape from the Davos people . Interestingly, the Jordan discussion was the first meaty item on the plate, even coming before discussion of John Kerry's bizarre assertions on Meet the Press and, later, on the Imus program.



Glen Garvin of the Miami Herald is the latest to discuss Jordangate and, while adding little additional information, has some wonderful nuggets (hat tip: Powerline):

...more than 400 other blogs have taken up the cry. They located the first corroborating witnesses, pressed the World Economic Forum to release its videotape of the panel (Forum officials initially agreed, but changed their minds earlier this week and said the panel's ground rules prohibited any direct quotations) and taunted mainstream news organizations into covering the story. That finally happened this week with stories in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe and other papers, as well as on CNN's rival cable news networks... This marks the second time in a few months that blogs have surfaced a major controversy over television news. Blogs were the first to accuse CBS' 60 Minutes of using forged documents in a story last year on President Bush's Vietnam-era National Guard service. Their claims eventually forced CBS to retract the story and launch an internal investigation that cost Dan Rather his anchor job and resulted in the dismissal of five other CBS staffers. Abovitz, for one, is impressed. He plans to start writing his own regular blog. ''The blog swarm is now percolating into mass media,'' he said. "This is a new era where you can't just make statements anymore. There are too many eyes. The blogs are like a million little cameras and tape recorders.'

Miami Herald: Jordangate and the Blogs

Orson Scott Card on Saudi Subversion

A few days ago, Freedom House reported that Saudi hate material had been scattered liberally in mosques throughout the United States. The Saudi-based material espouses an ideology of hatred ("it is a religious obligation for Muslims to hate Christians and Jews"), denunciations of democracy ("democracy [is] un-Islamic") and an appeal to treat their residence in countries as "a mission behind enemy lines".



I am sure that the vast majority of Muslims in the U.S. are neither aware of this material nor sympathetic to its endorsements.



Orson Scott Card has ruminated on this topic for a few days:

...The only difference between the Saudi government and Al Qaeda is that Al Qaeda rejects cooperation with the West, while the Saudis think the more effective path is to cooperate with the West on the surface while proselytizing for Wahhabism, preaching hate for and murder of all opponents of Wahhabist ideology... ...It's that [media's] laziness [in translating Arabic material] that Yasser Arafat always counted on, when he said one thing in English and the opposite in Arabic, and expected not to be caught by the western media. He was rarely disappointed. ...Saudi Arabia is actively supporting murder, espionage, and sabotage in America. Remember that these publications weren't intercepted at the border. They were found in American mosques, where they were being distributed or at least made available, presumably to young Muslim men who are the ones most likely to embrace the romance of a holy war. In short, [the Saudis] are recruiting terrorists in America. ...I suspect most American Muslims regard these publications with contempt or embarrassment. But the point is, they are there. They are available. ...[Ironically, claims are made that the] subversive, anti-American activities [are] under the protection of the First Amendment. But as Abraham Lincoln pointed out during the Civil War: The Constitution is not a suicide pact. When our nation is under dire threat, and our enemies are using our very freedoms as a protection for their subversive activities, then we have to make temporary exceptions to those freedoms. ...a foreign government does not have a right to distribute subversive literature in America that is designed to recruit people for anti-American activities in time of war... Saudi Arabia is a foreign country. It does not have any freedom of the press within its own borders, and, not being a citizen of the United States, it does not have the right to distribute subversive, seditious, and criminal instructions to potential agents in our country. ...It's time for anyone -- a church or a group or an individual -- receiving funding from the Saudi government or from Wahhabist sources to be registered as agents of a foreign nation ... and publically listed... After all, American Christians wishing to operate as missionaries in other countries outside the West are invariably registered and must have the permission of the government to operate inside their borders. And those American missionaries are not advocating murder of apostates and subversion of the local government! ...It should be required that any publication imported into the United States in Arabic should have an accurate side-by-side English translation in the same publication. Publications in Arabic alone should be turned back at the border. ...Requiring openness will make it easier for moderate Muslims to act in large numbers to oppose these subversive publications. If they are not just individuals, but the large mass of American Muslims acting together, they can far more easily show that they have embraced the American Constitution and all its liberties by rejecting all such anti-American and criminal propaganda and ceasing to tolerate it within their mosques. ...There is nothing in the Constitution that should require us to allow foreign nations to recruit young American Muslims to "behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines" without at least demanding that they be open about what they're doing. ...Shouldn't we at least make it potentially embarrassing for our enemies to recruit Americans to join in their war against freedom?

Orson Scott Card: Saudi Subversion

Steyn: Straightening out Europe

The Genius -- oops, I meant Mark Steyn -- rips another fastball out of the park. He points to Robert Fisk's continued muddled thinking regarding America's actions in the global war on terror:

Fisk's recent column title: "They are Waiting for the Rivers of Blood"

Fisk's coverage of the Afghan war ("Bush is Walking into a Trap")

Fisk's assertion that the Americans really weren't in the Baghdad Airport... they'd instead found an RAF airfield abandoned in the Fifties

...and similar, wishful thinking on the part of the BBC, CNN, the Guardian and friends. Consistently wrong and continually braying anti-American screeds, the Euros are now chanting a new mantra: America will be consigned to the dustbin of history by China. Steyn points out that influential Europeans have been peddling this tripe since at least 1768 (e.g., dePauw and Kant).



Steyn asserts that America doesn't want to turn cities like Basra into Vegas, but wish to provide succor to those who would reject Islamofascism in favor of greater personal liberties. And, as the vote has shown, the dead-enders are definitely not in the majority.

...the emergence of a moderate pluralist Shia-led federation in Iraq will be as devastating to the Teheran regime's long-term prospects as any Israeli-American strike on their nuke facilities. As the Arab networks' election-day coverage instinctively grasped, the American angle to this story will be increasingly peripheral. ...Anyone can hold an election: Mugabe did; so did Charles Taylor, the recently retired Psycho-for-Life of Liberia. The world's thugocracies have got rather skilled at being just democratic enough to pass muster with Jimmy Carter and the international observers: they kill a ton of people, put it on hold for six weeks and then, when the UN monitors have moved on, pick up their machetes and resume business as usual. I prefer to speak of "liberty" or, as Bush says, "freedom", or, as neither of us is quite bold enough to put it, capitalism - free market, property rights, law of contract, etc. ...the "war on terror" is more accurately a race against time - to unwreck the Middle East before its toxins wreck South Asia, West Africa, and eventually Europe. The doom-mongers can mock Bush all they want. But they're spending so much time doing so, they've left themselves woefully uninformed on some of the fascinating subtleties of Iraqi and Afghan politics that his Administration turns out to have been rather canny about...

I hate to rain on Europe's parade, but …