As I travel through the blog universe I sample other blog's fare especially if they seem to be well-known and respected. Most political blogs are fiercely partisan. I do not have a problem with that. It is when they lie and totally misrepresent things do I get annoyed. There is one liberal blog where I pop in and point out what is being said is a total fabrication and wait for the bloggers defenders to crawl out of woodwork. Of course, I have plenty of proof that the blogger is lying and usually my post to his comment page on that particular subject is the last one or he removes his post altogether. That has happened 3 times so far.

Today I ran across another well-respected and oft-quoted blog that contained enough errors and lies to keep me busy for a week. The blog did not have a comments function so I had to email the owner of the blog. Here is part of one of his posts concerning Dr. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's National Security Advisor and former provost at Stanford University:

Of course, Condi doesn't appear to know jack-squat about the civil rights movement. One of her most famous lines about nation building from the 2000 campaign is "It is not the business of the 82nd Airborne Division to escort children to school in Kosovo." Here is a picture of the 101st Airborne escorting children to school in Little Rock, Arkansas. *shows picture of troops with children in Little Rock*

First, the situation in Little Rock was a domestic disturbance that required US troops to enforce US law because the State of Arkansas would not. In Kosovo, US troops were there as peace keepers to stand between two warring groups, not to enforce US law or to nation build. The Kosovo and Little Rock situations are entirely different. The statement that the blogger used was taken out of context and erroneously used to smear Dr. Rice. Second. This is my email to the blogger.

I always love it when someone tells a black person raised in Birmingham, Alabama during the 1950's and 1960's that they don't know jack-squat about the civil rights movement. One of Rice's school friends was killed in the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham and she does not know jack-squat about the civil rights movement? If a black person living in Alabama in the 1950s did not know what racism was, who in the hell does?

and this was his response:

If only the 82nd Airborne was there in Birmingham to protect the church. Oh wait, that's nation building. Seeing as how she forgot the role of the 101st Airborne in escorting children to school. I would say that yes, she doesn't know jack squat, or at least forgets the parts that conflict with her worldview. More to the point, I haven't heard anyone accuse the Iraqis of being incapable of democracy. In fact, the only place that particular phrase turns up is in the Texas declaration of independence, in reference to Mexicans.

I have a very hard problem understanding what point he is trying to make if he is making one. This is a typical empty-headed, cute response from a liberal when they caught with their pants down.

In the other part of his post he includes part of Dr Rice's speech to make a fuzzy point that she says that anyone who says Iraqis are incapable of instituting democracy is a racist. This is what he included:

"We've heard that argument before, and we, more than any, as a people, should be ready to reject it," Rice, who is black, told about 1,200 people at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. "The view was wrong in 1963 in Birmingham, and it is wrong in 2003 in Baghdad and in the rest of the Middle East," she said.

How he logically came to the point that Dr Rice was accusing someone of racism from what Dr. Rice said is beyond me. He conveniently leaves out the following paragraph from the news article about the speech which ties the two paragraphs he quoted together.

"We should not let our voice waver in speaking out on the side of people who are seeking freedom," Rice said. "And we must never, ever indulge in the condescending voices who allege that some people in Africa or in the Middle East are just not interested in freedom, they're culturally just not ready for freedom or they just aren't ready for freedom's responsibilities."

Dr Rice certainly wasn't calling anyone a racist. I cannot understand why Wyeth Ruthven would say she was.