Geoff Metcalf, a contributor to right-wing news site Newsmax.com, agrees with Mark Steyn that the treasonous media is giving a major tactical advantage to America's enemies.

"When it comes to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory there is no more successful collaborator than the media. As desperate terrorist insurgents in Iraq pour gasoline on embers to attract journalists like moths to a flame it should be noted that the bad guys are 'using' the media as a tactical resource.

"They know there is no way/no how they can defeat the American coalition forces militarily. However they also know that IF they can manipulate the media to bludgeon the American homeland with images and stories of outrageous atrocities, there is a distinct possibility the American people will compel the administration to leave."

Claiming that strategy has worked for America's enemies before, Metcalf takes the opportunity to tar Sen. John Kerry with the U.S. defeat in Vietnam in 1975 -- because everything had been going fine there, he insists, until Kerry spoke out:

"Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap, the North Vietnamese general who finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975, credited John Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War with helping him achieve victory. He could/should have added the American media. In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. Despite all that may have been wrong about Vietnam, the U.S. was winning until the media and the Fonda/Kerry cabal conspired against national interest."

The true scourge of the 9/11 hearings
He dismisses Richard Clarke as a money-grubbing hack and defends "black conservative" Condoleezza Rice from "liberal racist" attacks, but Bob Parks, a former Republican congressional candidate from Southern California, saves his real venom for the 9/11 families. Writing on Mens News Daily.com, a news site devoted to "the relentless pursuit of the truth" with a "unique focus on family issues and politics," Parks says the 9/11 spouses are simply out to get President Bush.

"We've seen untouchable victims' spouses launch into well-coordinated and political attacks on the present administration. Of course, these are victims' spouses so they get the kid glove treatment. Their allegations are unchallenged and if anything, they get a comforting pat on the hand."

But Parks has no qualms about taking the gloves off.

"When they wheel these spouses, some who we'll probably see more of in Boston this summer at the DNC Convention, it's obvious they prefer to blame a Republican president and not the Muslim fanatics who carried out the attacks. One thing these women should remember is that when President Bush launched the War on Terror, it was to protect them too.

"The people who wish us to convert to Islam or die have little regard for women and definitely have a place for women who dare speak out against men. Without a War on Terror, these spouses could and probably would be subject to beatings, rape, and stoning (or burning) to death for daring to criticize a male politician. They could be brutally murdered in plain view in the middle of the street and it would be totally legal. Think about that ..."

No tax breaks for homosexuals
As millions of Americans file their tax returns by the end of the day tomorrow, gays better not try to pull a fast one, warns the nonprofit group Public Advocate of the United States. On its "welcome" page, the group states that it is a "leader in the fight for family values and against the radicals in the homosexual lobby who wish to tear down the American family." It also states that its executive director, Eugene Delgaudio, has filed numerous briefs to the Supreme Court "in support of a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, opposition to special rights for homosexuals (so-called gay rights laws), the repeal of the Marriage Tax and the Defense of the Boy Scouts Act."

In a press release yesterday, the group said it hand-delivered a letter to the IRS calling on it to take action against any "gay marriage tax filers."

"The letter asks the IRS to investigate same-sex couples who file any tax form as 'married -- filing jointly' as part of a fraudulent same-sex marriage, such as those that have been performed by the thousands in San Francisco, California between homosexual couples."

Meanwhile, Log Cabin Republicans, the nation's largest organization of gay Republicans, is gathering for its annual meeting in Florida this week to mobilize for the election-season battle against a Federal Marriage Amendment. In a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine on Sunday, the group's executive director, Patrick Guerriero, expressed disbelief about President Bush's support of such a constitutional amendment:

"Until a month before [Bush announced his support of it], I thought this was just theater. I was naive; I didn't think it would get to this stage. But the far right is so determined. They are constantly talking about gay people. They are more obsessed about gay people than we are."

According to the Times Magazine, almost nobody believes such a constitutional amendment, which would need a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress and would have to be ratified by three-quarters of the states, could really pass. Bush's political gamble is clear: risk alienating the 1 million gay men and women voters who backed Bush in 2000, in favor of pleasing the hard-line conservative base. But David Catania, a Republican city councilman in Washington who is gay, warns about what that might really cost Bush:

"This town could not function without the gays and lesbians who by and large don't have responsibilities for children, who can work 80 hours and who sacrifice everything on behalf of their careers.

"This is a grave transgression. It's hateful and it's wrong ... I [no longer] support [Bush] and I don't have any intentions of voting for him, or working on his behalf. I have every intention of doing just the opposite."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Read more of "Right Hook," Salon's weekly roundup of conservative commentary and analysis here.

Recent Stories