p>
Nuclear Waste
(posted 4/18/03 12:01 a.m.)
br>
The Enemy of the Week will return next Friday. But you might want
to keep CNN in your thoughts. A week after it confessed to helping
prop up Saddam Hussein's torturers, its future is nonexistent. A
great many august media types refuse to address the implications of
what is now known. But this story won't go away. At some level
everyone knows it. CNN has become radioactive, and its half-life is
behind it. We saw a symptom of its breakdown yesterday when it
posted six premature obituaries on its website, ranging from Dick
Cheney to Bob Hope to Ronald Reagan. The question immediately came
up: Why hadn't it posted its own? Surely it's written and rarin' to
go.
/p>
p>
Excommunicado
br>
Just in time for the darkest day on the Catholic and Christian
calendar, the
Weekly Standard
's J. Bottum, the most
influential South Dakotan this side of Tom Daschle,
reports
that said Daschle is in deep trouble with his home
diocese of Sioux Falls. There's hope, in other words, that liberal
Democrats who are Catholic might still be expected to respect the
teachings of the church to which they claim to belong. In the
Senate alone, that would mean no more pro-abortion Catholicism from
"Biden, Collins, Daschle, Dodd, Harkin, Kennedy, Kerry, Landrieu,
Leahy, Mikulski, Murray, Reed, and more," as Bottum puts it.
/p>
Already in 1997, Daschle was scolded by his bishop for his
permissive position on partial-birth abortion. Note how Tom
responded. Bottum writes: "Daschle...rose on the floor of the
Senate in Washington to denounce his own bishop back in South
Dakota for speaking in a way 'more identified with the radical
right than with thoughtful religious leadership.'" How lucky for
the bishop he wasn't subject to Senate confirmation. At least not
yet.