May 2005

There were 55 posts published in May 2005 (this is page 5 of 10).

Ooops

In the newsprint business, there are mistakes and there are mistakes. There’s your typical typos, misspellings, and misidentified photos . . . and then there’s this:

Newsweek magazine said on Sunday it erred in a May 9 report that U.S. interrogators desecrated the Koran at Guantanamo Bay, and apologized to the victims of deadly Muslim protests sparked by the article.
Editor Mark Whitaker said the magazine inaccurately reported that U.S. military investigators had confirmed that personnel at the detention facility in Cuba had flushed the Muslim holy book down the toilet.
The report sparked angry and violent protests across the Muslim world from Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, to Pakistan to Indonesia to Gaza.
. . .
On Sunday, Afghan Muslim clerics threatened to call for a holy war against the United States.
“We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its midst,” Whitaker wrote in the magazine’s latest issue, due to appear on U.S. newsstands on Monday.

Yeah. Sorry about all those dead people. Next time we’ll try to make sure our sources are credible.
UPDATE: Upon further review, it’s unclear who’s telling the truth here. Looks like this one is best read in government-skepticism mode.

Fair And Balanced

Fox News style.
In fairness to FNC, when the chaos of a breaking news story hits, a news organization goes into FIFR (first in, first reported) mode–similar to what they do when school/business closings start rolling in. Since the dedicated RNC fax line is probably the one closest to the on-air studio (for convenience), that news would naturally get out immediately after reports from the White House and Congress.

Only In Rightist America

. . . is elementary school recess made out to be a form of religious persecution.
In claiming that students should apparently be allowed to do whatever they please during recess time, a guy says:

“I think we understand that the school does not have a monopoly over children. They’re not robots,” he said.

Does the school treat students as “robots” by having them sit at desks? Or by imposing a class schedule? What about that whole classroom standards thing? Sounds pretty robotic to me.
An elementary school isn’t out of bounds in developing a program which encourages physical activity. Especially given the child obesity problem we have today.

Minutemen May Patrol Texas Border

The Houston Chronicle reports that Minutemen may patrol Texas border in October. Some contend that the Minutemen cause more problems than they solve, and that they simply divert the flow of illegals to other areas. Moreover, many parts of the Texas border aren’t as well suited for this type of operation as the open spaces of Arizona are.
Without getting into the merits of the Minutemen effort, I’ve had a question about their people: isn’t it a sign that something is missing in your life if you volunteer to spend hours in a desert, just sitting there watching for someone to show up? Doesn’t seem like that glamorous of a pastime to me.