The She-Pundit with long blonde hair digs herself into a deeper hole with her comments on the Donny Deutsch show last week about the need for Jews to be "perfected." Via Media Matters, she later appeared on a broadcast of Steve Malzberg's WOR (New York) radio show. You can listen here:

On Malzberg's show, Coulter defended her remarks by saying that she had "stated the ... doctrine of Christianity," and that the idea that Christians "want Jews to be perfected" "comes from that raging anti-Semite St. Paul." She added: "I don't think most Jews are as stupid as Donny Deutsch," and later asked, referring to Deutsch, "Is that guy even bar mitzvahed?"

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I saw the new George Clooney movie, Michael Clayton, yesterday. I'm not much of a movie reviewer, since I have a hard time writing without spoilers, but I will say: Yes, go see it. It's very suspenseful. Clooney is better than terrific as the law firm's "fixer" cleaning up the messes of its big clients. Sydney Pollack is great as the head of the law firm.

The movie opens with the present, then goes back to the past to explain which was both helpful and added to the suspense.

Some of the casting choices struck me as odd. Others were dislikeable (like the Westchester couple whose whiny scene went on too long. The point was made in the first two minutes.) I can think of many different actors I would have preferred to have seen in the supporting roles.

A few of the scenes were improbable to me. But, it's fiction. My favorite parts were the scenes with the real criminal fixers and the ones with the kid who plays Clooney's young son.

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Blogger and Law Prof Eric Muller (Is that Legal?) has a new book out, "American Inquisition: The Hunt for Japanese American Disloyalty in World War II." It's an account of the secret inner mechanisms of racism within the episode we call the Japanese American internment of World War II.

He'll be blogging about the book all week, including a discussion of "how the government went about gathering the information on which it would rely for its loyalty inquests."

Joe Klein on FISA circa February 2006:

People like me who favor this program don't yet know enough about it [Bush Domestic Surveillance program] yet," he says, "Those opposed to it know even less- and certainly less than I do." -Joe Klein

WaPo Editorial today:

There is one major area of disagreement between the administration and House Democrats where we think the administration has the better of the argument: the question of whether telecommunications companies that provided information to the government without court orders should be given retroactive immunity from being sued. House Democrats are understandably reluctant to grant that wholesale protection without understanding exactly what conduct they are shielding, and the administration has balked at providing such information. But the telecommunications providers seem to us to have been acting as patriotic corporate citizens in a difficult and uncharted environment.

Fred Hiatt seems to be saying he does not know much about the facts surrounding the telecoms' actions but he knows more about it than the Congress. Which begs the question, how come Fred Hiatt knows more about it than the Congress?

Update [2007-10-14 10:19:28 by Big Tent Democrat]: Glenn Greenwald provides a substantive non-snarky takedown.

The Associated Press has a very intimate and honest interview today with Hunter Thompson's wife, Anita. The occasion is the recent release of her new book, The Gonzo Way, which I wrote about here at 5280.

In her new book, "The Gonzo Way: A Celebration of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," Thompson says her husband built his career with a tireless dedication to the craft of reporting, a keen awareness of his own shortcomings and his personal blend of patriotism: loving his country while mistrusting authority.

And in a wide-ranging interview, she spoke about a rift between her and Hunter Thompson's son and the agonizing doubts that dogged her in the days after her husband's suicide.

Anita has become a good friend of mine since Hunter's death -- I hope you'll read the interview, and if you're a fan of Hunter's writing, get the book. If you missed my recap of spending a weekend in June at Owl Farm, you can read it here. My video of Owl Farm from 2006 is here.)

Also check out Anita's Owl Farm blog. Here's a photo I took of Anita and Hunter's son, Juan.

Since generally I don't think what the She-Pundit with long blonde hair says is of any import, I haven't written about the latest imbroglio over her comments about perfecting Jews. While I got that it was insulting, I didn't have any idea what it meant, having never heard the term before. Nor was I inclined to look it up.

Inadvertantly, I came across this LA Times commentary which explains it very well and has convinced me that it's a dangerous concept that needs to be exposed for its anti-semitism.

First, her comments on the Donny Deutsch show:

At one point, Deutsch asked her what an ideal country would be like, and she replied that it would be one in which everyone was "a Christian." Deutsch, who happens to be Jewish, protested that Coulter was advocating his people's elimination. She responded that she simply hoped to see Jews "perfected" through conversion to Christianity.

What it means:

So now we know why CNN got the Frost family story wrong. They were taking dictation frpm the GOP:

On Monday morning, Don Stewart sent an email with the following text to reporters:

Seen the latest blogswarm? Apparently, there’s more to the story on the kid (Graeme Frost) that did the Dems’ radio response on SCHIP. . . . Could the Dems really have done that bad of a job vetting this family?

CNN dutifully regurgitated this line:

A CNN political analyst then placed the blame squarely on the Democrats’ shoulders: “I think in this instance what happened was the Democrats didn’t do as much of a vetting as they could have done on this young man . . .

Maybe CNN should be worried about its own vetting thank you very much. It is clear that they counted on the GOP to do the vetting for them.

Glenn Greenwald takes apart Joe Klein on the FISA Amendment:

. . . [M]anifestly, Klein also has no idea what he is talking about when he claims the administration is engaged in "data mining." The excuse that the administration's violations of FISA were necessitated by "data mining" programs has even been expressly rejected by both Gen. Hayden . . . and Mike McConnell . . . If Klein really does know what the NSA is doing -- rather than throwing around the phrase "data mining" because it seems complicated and smart -- then he ought to write about it, since that would be a major scoop.

Of course he does not know what he is talking about Glenn, but, as he was in February 2006, he is SURE he knows more about it than you:

People like me who favor this program don't yet know enough about it [Bush Domestic Surveillance program] yet," he says, "Those opposed to it know even less- and certainly less than I do." -Joe Klein

Come on Glenn, you got to keep up . . .

Steve Benen catches CNN doing what it does best, getting a story wrong:

[T]here was CNN this morning, blaming Democrats for this fiasco.

CNN’s John Roberts reported: “Some of the accusations [against the Frosts] may be exaggerated or false. But did the Democrats make a tactical error in holding up Graeme as their poster child?” . . .

This was CNN’s first and only coverage of the right-wing smear — and it was breathtakingly stupid.

. . . [W]e know, and CNN should know, that the attacks on the Frost family are false. CNN reported that the accusations “may be exaggerated.” One wonders what more proof the network needs.

The Media really is terrible.

The New York Times has three good reads today:

• Their editorial blasting Bush over torture.
• Frank Rich on Clarence Thomas' "high tech lynching" which has earned him a Supreme Court justice position and surely must have him laughing all the way to bank to collect the royalties on his newly published book comparing the prejudice he's endured to that endured by other African-Americans at the hands of the Klu Klux Klan.

It's useful to watch Mr. Thomas at this moment, 16 years after his riveting confirmation circus. He is a barometer of what has and has not changed since then because he hasn't changed at all. He still preaches against black self-pity even as he hyperbolically tries to cast his Senate cross-examination by Joe Biden as tantamount to the Ku Klux Klan assassination of Medgar Evers. He still denies that he is the beneficiary of the very race-based preferences he deplores. He still has a dubious relationship with the whole truth and nothing but, and not merely in the matter of Anita Hill.

• Maureen Dean takes the acerbic route and writes a nasty article about Thomas, yet it too, has a ring of truth.

Paul Waldman writes a good piece about Rush Limbaugh saga. I especially like his connecting Rush's New McCarthyism techniques to the Republican Party New McCarthyism on Iraq:

Think about how much time and effort they expend on convincing Americans that progressives and Democrats are "anti-military," "hate the troops," and even "hate America." So any progressive veteran who criticizes Bush administration policies represents a profound threat to all the arguments they have made. It becomes particularly thorny when nearly the entire current leadership of the conservative movement -- not only media figures like Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, but also political figures including President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani, and many others -- were of draft age during the Vietnam war but managed to stay out of harm's way.

But Democrats and their allies like Move On do not win this battle by aping this strategy, as Move On wrongly did; this battle is won by Democrats standing up against these McCarthyite tactics and, more importantly, standing up to Bush on Iraq. That means not funding the Iraq debacle after a date certain. More.

Media Matters:

Summary: Discussing Rush Limbaugh's recent description of service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers," John Gibson asserted on his radio show: "Rush was specifically talking about a particular one, Jesse MacBeth, who had pled guilty in court to lying about even being in Iraq." To support this claim, Gibson aired a clip in which Limbaugh purported to air the "entire" segment in question. In fact, that segment did not include a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of the 1 minute and 50 second discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original "phony soldiers" comment and his subsequent reference to MacBeth.

As Rob Corddry said, "facts have a liberal bias," so they need to be adjusted by the likes of Limbaugh and Fox.

Update [2007-10-1 18:16:27 by Big Tent Democrat]: You gotta respect the chutzpah the Republicans have:

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