Public Nuisances
jr., r. emmett tyrrell
"Public Nuisances" Taliban Find Refuge Inside the Beltway -WASHINGTON s things continue to go awry for Afghanistan's reforming Taliban, its leaders now are seeking sanctuary in their caves or with governments...
...Well, one of the 2001 winners of the Bancroft Prize for history has, it turns out, fabricated his research.The 2001 winner of a Pulitzer Prize for history fabricated his war and civil rights records.A successful college football coach recently appointed to be head coach at Notre Dame is an equally gifted bio-fabulist...
...Safire called Senator Pat's demands an "outrageous intrusion...
...and all notes and records of Board discussions...
...To these demands I practiced a resistance beyond passive resistance...
...Paul McHale, then a member of Congress, had become the first Democrat to call for Clinton's resignation...
...As all the world now knows, the Montgomery County Council recently passed one of the most Draconian (Talibanian...
...He deduced that the dead Americans had been killed hundreds of miles from the spot at Tora Bora where Rivera was blubbering...
...In the same vein of authenticity, Rivera-originally an ACLU lawyer named Jerry Rivers-is now in Afghanistan passing himself off as a war correspondent, after a dubious career whose trajectory began with a seedy television shout show and crested with his sedulously defending the probity of the Great Pardoner, Bill Clinton, on Rivera's own cable talk show Through it all Rivera has been involved in an amusing series of ethical scandals...
...Frankly Senator Pat strikes me as simply a short-term exploiter of the Constitution, playing politics as usual and rendering suspect the cause of civil liberties...
...They suffer anxiety, insecurity, depression, irrational fears when, say in Kabul, a young bov flies a kite or in Montgomery County, Maryland...
...The indefatigable Folkenflik investigated further...
...I practiced amused resistance and laughed...
...Laura Murphy of the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington office said, "The ACLU does not think that a newspaper or a magazine should be compelled by Congress to turn over anything about their editorial process...
...There are dog walkers and pet keepers in general...
...By modern standards, he is what may be called a self-made journalist.What do I mean by modern standards...
...Senator Pat does have a puckish wit...
...Is this the same Senator Pat who was writing me last spring...
...The bullying this time is being perpetrated upon a Baltimore Stun reporter, David Folkenflik, who, according to Rivera, "is going to regret this story the rest of his career...
...There are people who wear fragrances, particularly in the subway...
...Would Senator Pate be opposing military tribunals if a Democrat were in the White House...
...Apparently he thought that is how so-called journalists get ahead in Washington...
...Backwards people throughout the world display it, when conditions do not meet their dull expectations...
...According to other Democrats on his Senate Judiciary Conunittee, he is apprehensive that the administration's pursuit of terrorists is becoming a threat to "civil liberties...
...The Americans were indeed killed elsewhere, but some Afghan soldiers were killed at the Tora Bora site...
...Come back to the Con stitution, Pat," Safire wrote...
...The Pentagon agreed that Rivera was correct about the Afghans, but added that the deaths occurred three days after Rivera's melodramatic report...
...According to this law, when tobacco smoke "crossed property lines," an offended neighbor could call in the cops...
...During that memorable interlude, his devious reporter told me one thing that might actually have been true...
...One reporter lied to me personally about his intent, and he lied so boldly to one of my colleagues in an attempt to turn him against me that the colleague responded with a lawsuit...
...The anti-fragrance forces are particularly vocal, but so are the anti-church bell neurotics...
...In the prosecutorial business, defense lawyers call that a "fishing expedition...
...Because of such rapacious demands, those targeted by the likes of Senator Pat are left with large legal bills if we choose to defend ourselves and the First Amendment...
...In December he claimed to be reporting from the scene in Afghanistan where three Americans died in a friendly fire accident...
...One never knows when an irresponsible politician might come along and misuse government power against a private citizen for political advantage, right Senator Pat...
...He is skeptical of the use of military tribunals against terrorists, because he believes that until a declaration of war is brought against them they are protected by the Bill of Rights...
...Yet today's watchdog of the rights of suspected terrorists persisted...
...In those days he was demanding that I send him all manner of private papers from The American Spectator's board meetings...
...The measure had the clean-air zealots kicking up their heels in glee (assuming they still allow kicking up one's heals...
...So why is Senator Pat extending solicitude to them that he did not extend to peaceful American writers...
...When I say "as all the world knows," I have in mind the fervent forces of atmospheric purity and the embattled forces of personal freedom...
...Neurosis can be defined as the overreaction to stimuli...
...If they were a bit more cosmopolitan, they might seek asylum in Montgomery County, Maryland...
...Apparently Rivera had not deceived the public only then, but later too, and he is still at it...
...The "vacuum cleaner" reference adverted to the letter Senator Pat wrote me demanding "copies of the internal audit, board books and minutes...
...Thankfully there are some long-term friends of civil liberties watching out for American constitutional process, for instance, Congressman Bob Barr...
...Squabblers are a powerful element in his reformist constituency...
...Specifically, the President wants to haul non-citizens suspected of terrorism before military tribunals...
...The measure had the forces of freedom laughing...
...Then he proceeded to serve as the willing vessel for more White House "leaks...
...It all smells like political partisanship to me...
...anti-smoking laws in the country...
...He was also a war hero...
...Say It Ain't So, Senator Pat -WASHINGTON hat has gotten into my old pen pal Senator Patrick Leahy...
...Having worked with Rivera for years, through all his prior scandals and run-ins with the truth, the reporter told me that he warned Rivera if he were caught in one more scandal it would finish him...
...The original bill opposed, according to the 1f'ashittgtott Post, "such irritants as mold, excessive dust, pesticides, paint and carpet glue odors, or gases such as carbon monoxide...
...Would he have opposed President Franklin Delano Roosevelt when he resorted to military tribunals during World War II...
...As our wartime president, George W Bush, asks for more stringent powers to deal with today's unprecedented threat to American security, Senator Pat has become a strict civil libertarian...
...They squabble against other odors wafting from their neighbors' homes...
...Rivera has been bullying Folkenflik, threatening that the reporter will "regret this story" unto the end of his "career...
...And so you see why it is not so much of a reach for me to suggest that Montgomery County, Maryland, might be a plausible asylum for the Taliban...
...They not only squabble about their neighbors' smoke...
...JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 • THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 97...
...Oh, Rivera responded to this correction, he was merely "confused...
...There are all sorts of "irritants" that offend the proponents of bills such as this one...
...Duncan and his allies on the County Council had better watch what they say about "squabbling neighbors...
...Taliban Find Refuge Inside the Beltway -WASHINGTON s things continue to go awry for Afghanistan's reforming Taliban, its leaders now are seeking sanctuary in their caves or with governments sympathetic to their brand of moral rigorism...
...He reported seeing "bits of uniform and tattered clothing everywhere...
...Rivera, the socalled journalist who had not bothered to verify this White House leak, slapped together a weasel-worded apology...
...Mark Twain would approve...
...Senator Pat warned me that "should that request be declined, the [Judiciary] committee as a whole should take appropriate action to obtain the information...
...Once settled there the Taliban might also find Americans who share their phobia against kite flying and the public playing of music...
...Rivera is to journalism what a freak show is to entertainment...
...Mr...
...Though, perhaps, it is only a matter of time before the Montgomery County Council decides that laughter that "crosses property lines" and offends neighbors should be punishable by a $750 fine...
...B Y R. E M M E T 96 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 UISANCES T Y R R E L L, J R. McHale, a true war hero and exceptionally upright man, easily exposed the White House smear as baseless and, not incidentally, utterly irrelevant as to whether Clinton was fit to remain in office...
...the fellow next door lights up a Marlboro...
...Back then William Safire, The New York Tirnes's stalwart libertarian columnist, charged the Senator with "trampling on the First Amendment...
...Okay, let's see...
...All these things have roused the wrath of the kind of American who goes so far as to ban smoking at home...
...Senator Pat wanted to scotch the nomination of the Spectator's lawyer and former board member Theodore B. Olson as solicitor general...
...Michael L. Subin, a County Council member who opposed the tobacco measure...
...The neurotic in Kabul sees a dagger stabbing the heavens...
...Of all Rivera's run-ins with the truth, my favorite occurred during his nights as a cable show host defending President Bill Clinton against the slings and arrows of journalists and prosecutors...
...The neurotic in Maryland sees dangerous gases heading toward his unprotected nostrils and into his very soul...
...We've become the laughingstock of the world," asseverated Mr...
...Unfortunately I suspect the Sun's reporter Folkenflik did too...
...Jerry Rivers Strikes Again WASHINGTON G Rivera is up to his old tricks again, namely, reporting falsehoods and bullying those who oppose him.The falsehood this time is that he is to the Afghan war what Ernie Pyle was to World War II, a blood and guts journalist wriggling under enemy fire with the GIs...
...From Rivera we have seen it all before...
...There are churches that ring church bells...
...There, moral rigorism reigns...
...Now he is caught again...
...Apparently even many Americans indifferent to the antismoking jihad were laughing...
...Senator Pat is shaken...
...Today's terrorists are not so civil...
...Both created an uproar after the Montgomery County Council passed its environmental safety measure...
...I counsel calm.The cad made similar threats against me when he was intent on proving that my revelations about his hero in the White House were somehow inaccurate...
...He claimed "I said the Lord's Prayer and really choked up...
...It would put a fine of $750 on the head of any smoker whose exhausts `were sniffed by a neurotic neighbor...
...Across the bottom of his letter he scrawled to me "all the best...
...He interviewed sources at the Pentagon...
...During that time they misrepresented the facts repeatedly...
...The offending story exposed Rivera, once again, as a fraud...
...It was August of 1998...
...He urged the Senator to lay off a little magazine of opinion and not to persist in "waving a vacuum cleaner at an editorial office...
...Well, it is very reassuring to hear that laughing remains a vital tool of debate in the public discourse...
...For weeks he sent reporters and camera crews to intimidate me...
...So he would have the President declare war-that is how the Roosevelt Administration did it...
...Rivera reported that his decorations were fraudulent.Yes, this great war correspondent now travelling with our troops reported back in 1998 that an "always reliable source" in Clinton's [!]White House had informed him that McHale had lied about his military decorations...
...That the White House had lied to him and shamelessly used him made no impression...
...Laughter seems to have been at the heart of what has been termed a "public opinion backlash" County Executive Douglas M. Duncan vetoed the provision criminalizing smoking at home, noting that "upon further consideration...
...it has become clear that the tobacco smoke provision will be nothing more than a tool to be used in squabbles between neighbors...
Vol. 35 • January 2002 • No. 1
