Stop Me Before I Vote Again

“It’s obvious that [the late David Halberstam] was probably the greatest journalist of his generation. He had a core integrity that gave him credibility and power, whether he was writing about basketball or Vietnam it carried an enormous amount of weight,” said Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist J. Anthony Lewis.... "I just didn’t know anybody who is a better representation of journalism.”

I happened to hear Halberstam being eulogized on NPR this morning. They had fished Ted Koppel out of his bottle of formaldehyde, rather like Bentham's taxidermied remains at the University of London, and hooked up a hot-air pump to him. He droned on for what seemed like an eternity in a creepy, hollow, sepulchral voice, to very little effect, except that he seemed to be making the rather startling claim that there was no anti-war movement until Halberstam's reporting caused it to spring into existence. Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος!

So now you know. It really does matter who's President and which party controls Congress. A Democratic-controlled Congress would never have passed the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, which banned intact dilation and extraction abortions and, in flagrant violation of Roe v. Wade, lacked an exception to preserve the health of the woman. A Democratic President would never have signed such a bill...