ALTERMAN: SLACKER FRIDAY

Matt Yglesias has a fine “Think Again” column entitled "The Return of the 'Stab in the Back,'" which notes that a number of conservative pundits, including one employed to write a blog by MSNBC.com, are not all that attached to freedom of the press when it means freedom to disagree with a right-wing president.  (“Nice little First Amendment right you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it…”) 

Remember the archives are here and you can navigate the Center’s site from here.  If you want to read the Iraq plan cited by the Times editorial page as the way to begin to end this quagmire, start here.

Why Slate might want to invest in a few fact-checkers:  Christopher Hitchens:  “I first met Dr. Ahmad Chalabi in the spring of 1998, a year when George Bush was still the governor of Texas and when Bill Clinton and Al Gore were talking at a high volume about the inescapable necessity of removing Saddam Hussein from power because of his continuous connection to terrorism and his addiction to weapons of mass destruction.”

So it’s all their fault, huh?  Well, where is evidence?  Where did either Clinton or Gore ever say, “We must invade and occupy Iraq against the will of the international community and without UN sanction even though the inspectors are dong their job?”  Keep reading.  Hitchens is now shilling for the “deep background” sources who deliberately misled the nation into this ruinous war and seems rather proud of it.  Can the world stand two David Horowitzes?  Where it all ends, knows God.

It never ends.  I watched a tape of Stanley Hoffmann opining brilliantly for forty minutes on Charley Rose —exactly the kind of informed, intelligent analysis TV (this side of Bill Moyers) almost never provides-- and then fast-forwarded to my tape of Charlie with Tony Kushner.  Instead I got Tom Ridge for what looked like a whole hour.  The way these warnings have been going, if Ridge and Ashcroft tell me to worry, I feel safer.  (Think I exaggerate?  It’s almost impossible to exaggerate when it comes to this bunch.  Instead I got Tom Ridge for what looked like a whole hour, making stuff up as usual.  The way these warnings have been going, if Ashcroft tells me to worry, I feel safer.  (Think I exaggerate?  It’s almost impossible to exaggerate when it comes to this bunch.  Anyway don’t take my word for it, get a subscription to the Wall Street Journal and take theirs.) (Why does the Wall Street Journal hate America?)

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3449870/