Liberals are always play-acting that they are under some monstrous attack from the right wing as they insouciantly place all Americans in danger. Their default position is umbrage, bordering on high dudgeon.
We've had to listen to them whine for 50 years about the brute Joe McCarthy, whose name liberals blackened while sheltering Soviet spies.
In 1985, Times columnist Anthony Lewis accused the Reagan administration of trying to "intimidate the press." Channeling Anthony Lewis this week, Frank Rich claims the Bush administration has "manufactured and milked this controversy to reboot its intimidation of the press, hoping journalists will pull punches in an election year."
Rich's evidence of the brutal crackdown on the press was the statement of San Francisco radio host Melanie Morgan -- who, by the way, is part of the press -- proposing the gas chamber for the editor of the Times if he were found guilty of treason, which happens to be the punishment prescribed by law. (Once again Frank Rich finds himself in over his head when not writing about gay cowboy movies.)
I prefer a firing squad, but I'm open to a debate on the method of execution. A conviction for treason would be assured under any sensible legal system.
But however many Americans agree with Reagan on prosecuting treason, we can't even get President Bush to stop building up the liberal media by appearing on their low-rated TV shows -- in the process, dissing TV hosts who support him and command much larger TV audiences. American consumers keep driving CNN's ratings down, and then Bush drives them back up again. So I wouldn't count on any treason charges emanating from this administration.
This is how Bush "intimidates" the press? The level of intimidation I had in mind is more along the lines of how President Dwight D. Eisenhower "intimidated" Julius and Ethel Rosenberg at 8 in the morning, June 19, 1953.
COPYRIGHT 2006 ANN COULTER
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