Richard Cohen Morphs in Charles Johnson

I think maybe it's the bike-riding that makes these people lose their minds. Cohen draws some kind of weird analogy between Kent State and Tea Partiers. Angry words kill people, stuff like that. It's incoherent drivel as an art form.

Back in the Vietnam War era, the left also used ugly language and resorted to violence. But the right, as is its wont, stripped the antiwar movement of its citizenship. It turned dissent into treason, which, in a way, was the worst treason of all. It made dissidents into the storied "other" who had nothing in common with the rest of us. They were not opponents; they were the enemy: Fire!

On my bike, I recalled those days and wondered if they have not returned. Sticks and stones may break bones, but words -- that singsong rebuttal notwithstanding -- can kill. We lose presidents to words and civil rights leaders to words -- homosexuals and immigrants and abortion providers, too. Richard Nixon is named in the song because he was the president at the time and because his words were ugly. He was enthralled by toughness, violence.

I hear the song more clearly now than I ever did. It is a distant sound from our not-so-distant past, but a clear warning about our future. Four dead in Ohio. Not just a song. A lesson.

I guess the lesson is tea partiers are about to go on some killing rampage, taking out presidents, civil rights leaders, gays, immigrants and abortion doctors. Except of course back in those halcyon days (or in Cohens's case, likely a halcyon daze) of Kent State it was Palestinians and Communist dupes taking out presidents and aspiring presidents.

Memo to Cohen: You should wear a helmet when riding your tricycle. Falling on your head can be embarrassing. Especially when the next thing you hit is the keyboard.

Cohen: Hey, Maybe Cheney Is Right About Torture

Nothing like a reliable liberal have the audacity to agree with Dick Cheney. Of course Richard Cohen throws in all the necessary caveats about Cheney being a bad guy just to keep his street cred, but he trying to be honest and tell the truth. Not that it does him a lot of good with his core audience.

Cheney says he once had the memos in his files and has since asked that they be released. He's got a point. After all, this is not merely some political catfight conducted by bloggers, although it is a bit of that, too. Inescapably, it is about life and death -- not ideology, but people hurling themselves from the burning World Trade Center. If Cheney is right, then let the debate begin: What to do about enhanced interrogation methods? Should they be banned across the board, always and forever? Can we talk about what is and not just what ought to be?

In a similar vein, can we also find out what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it? If she did indeed know about waterboarding back in 2003, that would hardly make her a war criminal. But if she knew and insists otherwise, that would make her one of those people who will not acknowledge that the immediate post-Sept. 11 atmosphere allowed for methods that now seem abhorrent. Certain Democratic politicians remind me of what Oscar Levant supposedly said of Doris Day: "I knew [her] before she was a virgin." They have no memory of who they used to be.

Naturally, the forces of tolerance react kindly to Cohen with their typical class.

Richard Cohen Shocked to Discover Bush Is An Avid Reader

Discovering George W. Bush has read, by Karl Rove's account, 186 books over the past three years just doesn't fit the narrow template that Bush is a blithering idiot. It humbles all those intellectual titans on the left, such as Richard Cohen, that the president is more well-read than most anyone out there. Good for him.

What Cohen finds most irksome, however, other than having his notion of Bush as a dummy shattered, is the fact he isn't reading books critical of himself. As if he'd waste his time on cliched drivel about how Iraq was such a disaster.

Maybe Bush doesn't agree with the left's assessment, so why would he bother?

Still, the fact remains that Bush is a prodigious, industrial reader, and this does not conform at all to his critics' idea of who he is. They would prefer seeing him as a dolt, since that, as opposed to policy or ideological differences, is a briefer, more bloggish explanation of what went wrong. Still, in fairness to these critics (see Rove above), Bush himself has encouraged this approach. Aw shucks is an infuriating defense of a policy.

It is awfully late in the day for Rove -- and, presumably, Bush -- to assert the president's intellectual bona fides. Now feeling the hot breath of history, they are dropping the good ol' boy persona and picking up the ol' bifocals one. But the books themselves reveal -- actually, confirm -- something about Bush that maybe Rove did not intend. They are not the reading of a widely read man, but instead the books of a man who seeks -- and sees -- vindication in every page. Bush has always been the captive of fixed ideas. His books just support that.

The list Rove provides is long, but it is narrow. It lacks whole shelves of books on how and why the Iraq war was a mistake, one that metastasized into a debacle. Absent is Rajiv Chandrasekaran's "Imperial Life in the Emerald City," Tom Ricks's "Fiasco," George Packer's "The Assassins' Gate" or, on a related topic, Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" about "extraordinary rendition" and other riffs on the Constitution. Absent too is Barton Gellman's "Angler," about Dick Cheney, the waterboarder in chief.

I doubt Cheney will be reading that, either.

Instapundit links. Thanks!

Loony WaPo Hack: McCain Committed 'Personal Treason'

I've noticed the past couple of days that the left has decided their insane attacks on Sarah Palin have so badly backfired they've now returned to trashing John McCain. It's clearly a coordinated attack strategy by Obama's media handmaidens. But the idea of calling McCain treasonous in any regard is so far off the charts that it reduces the accuser to laughingstock status.

Of course, Richard Cohen has been a joke for years, but today he actually uses -- get this -- The View nutcase Joy Behar to make his point.

Is he for real?

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat and we will leap into a politician's lap.
...
At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times -- the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month only five civilians were killed by the American military, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

Speaking of idiots, New York Times affirmative action columnist Bob Herbert must have been on extended rest ever since he saw phallic symbols in a McCain ad goofing on Obama, but now he's back calling McCain a radical. Keep it up, Bob. You're only helping McCain with your stupidity.

Granted, while now focusing more on McCain, the Palin silliness still hasn't completely run its course. Now comes a shocking revelation she has a tanning bed. Will the horrors ever end? Meanwhile, the alleged Troopergate scandal has now pretty much petered out. I guess the angry left will have to make up something else now that their October surprise won't be happening.