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Novak chickens out
msnbc ^ | May 12, 2005 | Eric Alterman

Posted on 05/12/2005 2:57:15 PM PDT by MurryMom

I don’t issue statements often, in fact I don’t think I’ve eve done so before, but I’m making one now. It is in response to the announcement, by Aaron Ettenberg, Acting Provost of the College of Letters & Science, at the University of California, Santa Barbara, following an emergency meeting of the Program Committee, reading: "We regret to report that the Arthur N. Rupe Great Debate scheduled for May 25, 2005 has been canceled due to Robert Novak's unexpected withdrawal."

(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...


TOPICS: Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: altercation; novak
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Cluck, cluck.
1 posted on 05/12/2005 2:57:15 PM PDT by MurryMom
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To: MurryMom

Author = Eric Alterman = not credible

I bet the lefties turned a previously neutral event into a trap for Novak and he declined to be the meal.


2 posted on 05/12/2005 2:59:10 PM PDT by thoughtomator ("One cannot say that a law is right simply because it is a law.")
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To: MurryMom

Perhap Senor Novak had something better to do than hang out with a traitorous, girly-man punk.


3 posted on 05/12/2005 3:03:38 PM PDT by Dilbert56
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To: thoughtomator

Eric Alterman is one of the most snide and vicious twits the left has out there, so I doubt that Novack had any interest in appearing with an anus from The Nation in the first place. It was probably a set-up and Novack declined to be abused by such jerks. Anyone who can cite fanatical leftist I.F. Stone (KGB stooge, perhaps spy) as his "journalist mentor" as Alterman does has to have some loose screws anyway....


4 posted on 05/12/2005 3:05:25 PM PDT by Enchante (Kerry's mere nuisances: Marine Barracks '83, WTC '93, Khobar Towers, Embassy Bombs '98, USS Cole!!!)
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To: MurryMom
If Mr. Novak withdrew from this debate because he feared the consequences of being asked to defend his journalistic ethics in a public forum, then he made a wise decision.

************

Cluck, cluck? Brilliant analysis.

Thanks.

5 posted on 05/12/2005 3:05:37 PM PDT by trisham ("Live Free or Die," General John Stark, July 31, 1809)
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To: thoughtomator
Author = Eric Alterman = not credible

You missed one, Author=Eric Alterman + MurryMom = not credible

6 posted on 05/12/2005 3:25:46 PM PDT by cardinal4 (Newly Discovered breed of Cephalopod - Billius Fristus)
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To: cardinal4; MurryMom
You missed one, Author=Eric Alterman + MurryMom = not credible

Hehe...yeah, I'll second that!

7 posted on 05/12/2005 3:29:12 PM PDT by Osage Orange (Bill Clinton's heart is blacker than the devil's riding boots.....................................)
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To: Enchante

"If you live long enough, the venerability factor creeps in; you get accused of things you never did and praised for virtues you never had." - I.F. Stone

I liked Stone's defense of ancient Athenian democracy: http://www.chss.montclair.edu/english/furr/essays/ifstoneonsocrates.html


8 posted on 05/12/2005 3:45:11 PM PDT by stradivarius
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To: MurryMom

The liberal coward briefly emerges from her cave...


9 posted on 05/12/2005 3:45:24 PM PDT by Coop (In memory of a true hero - Pat Tillman)
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To: MurryMom

You have apparently entered FR's Kumbaya Zone - enjoy!

Speaking of birds, how about those Penguins? Will they ever play again?


10 posted on 05/12/2005 3:45:59 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: Coop; MurryMom

Oops!

I spoke too soon!


11 posted on 05/12/2005 3:47:13 PM PDT by headsonpikes (Spirit of '76 bttt!)
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To: MurryMom

It's entirely possible that Novak has been requested to not speak of the investigation by the prosecutor. You can bet that Novak has been fully investigated himself as well as any role he had or didn't have.

Oh, and it takes a cluck to know a cluck.....Murry Mom.


12 posted on 05/12/2005 3:47:51 PM PDT by prairiebreeze (Hillary's Chappaquiddick. Check it out at: www.Hillcap.org)
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To: MurryMom
What, do you expect us to leap to Novak's defense?

This is not what we've come to expect from FR's most accomplished troll.

13 posted on 05/12/2005 3:48:45 PM PDT by skeeter ("What's to talk about? It's illegal." S Bono)
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To: Osage Orange

what is Eric ranting about

Novak "destroying" two "patriotic" servants of the US

right first Plame recommends her husband for the job because she is part of the CIA cabal that doesn't favour going to war in Iraq or just doesn't like the Bush White House and knows he'll do a nice whitewash

I would give Plame however the benefit of the doubt that she as a patriotic servant, but Joe Wilson, please, his shameless use of the Niger controversy which was a non controversy as far as I am concerned to plug his book, the fact Bush was vindicated by both the UK's own probe into the Niger matter [the Bush administration should have never backed down - the reality is the British always had independent evidence of the Niger claim, independent
from the forged documents and guess what, Joe Wilson's own report to the CIA backed it up too, hee hee as the US Senate Intelligence Committee found that Mr. Wilson hadn't exactly told the whole truth and nothing about his little jaunt to Niger to sip tea with Niger officials whist he was flogging his book and accusing Karl Rove of nefarious doings.....ergo Wilson destroyed himself.....

the fact he and the wifey did a photo spread for Vanity Fair makes me wonder just how afraid they were for their safety, or flogging Wilson's book was just more important I imagine

Novak said a few days after the controversial column that the fact Plame was CIA agent was the worst kept secret in Washington, I recall some other Washington columnists backed Novak up....so maybe there was no crime committed at all because there was no intent to expose Plame because she and her husband had already let the secret leak!

I have wondered though why Novak isn't sitting facing contempt charges himself along with the NY Times reporters unless he revealed his source and co-operated....


14 posted on 05/12/2005 3:49:39 PM PDT by littlelilac
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To: stradivarius

Despite his seemingly 'independent' intellectual stance, I.F. Stone may have been revealed by the "Venona decrypts" to be a paid Soviet "agent of influence." This is still disputed by his followers, and I certainly haven't waded through all that stuff, but it has been discussed in various places, such as:

http://capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3010

"...Stone was a highly regarded "independent" journalist and his newsletter was always exposing things about Sen. Joseph McCarthy and others who warned against Communist spies and agents of influence. The problem was that I.F. Stone was a Soviet agent of influence, financed by the Kremlin."


15 posted on 05/12/2005 3:57:13 PM PDT by Enchante (Kerry's mere nuisances: Marine Barracks '83, WTC '93, Khobar Towers, Embassy Bombs '98, USS Cole!!!)
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To: MurryMom
Accepting Eric Alterman's explanation for why this debate will not take place is like accepting Vladimir Putin's explanation of the collapse of the USSR. The only thing in the whole discussion that is probably true is that the debate has fallen through. All the rest is probably a tissue of lies.

Congressman Billybob

Latest column: "Lies, D*mned Lies, and the Washington Post"

16 posted on 05/12/2005 3:59:42 PM PDT by Congressman Billybob (For copies of my speech, "Dealing with Outlaw Judges," please Freepmail me.)
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Comment #17 Removed by Moderator

To: Enchante

The author of that article didn't support that statement with a single fact, resting on the implication that publishing criticism of McCarthy was enough to mark a person as a "Soviet agent of influence" (and since he sold a newsletter that contained such criticism, therefore he was "paid" for doing the will of the Soviet government).

Granted, I have no idea what nasty secrets of the Cold War still lie buried and unearthed. Still, I doubt that Stone was a Soviet spy. Stone was opposed to McCarthy's and Cohn's bullying tactics - however that doesn't necessarily make a person a Communist.

Stone's reporting was reknowned for advocating for the little man, the powerless individual. He was vigorously opposed to government tyrrany, and strongly supported democracy and the Bill of Rights. I sincerely doubt he'd have supported Soviet totalitarianism.

The U.S. Senate eventually condemned Sen. McCarthy for "conduct contrary to Senatorial traditions".

The Chief Counsel of the U.S. Army said to Senator McCarthy: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?"

Muckracking reporters make enemies, and that unfounded allegation smells like the sort of tar people smear on their enemies.

The bitter irony is that posthumously it turns out that Sen. McCarthy was actually correct in some (but nowhere near close to all) of his accusations, especially concerning Communist infiltration in the Department of State. McCarthy was like a shotgun blast that managed to hit some of the correct targets, but with a LOT of collateral damage.


18 posted on 05/12/2005 7:26:37 PM PDT by stradivarius
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To: stradivarius

re: I.F. Stone and the Venona decrypts

As I said, I haven't waded through all the relevant material, but IF someone is referred to repeatedly in those decrypts as a paid Soviet agent that is not an "unfounded allegation" but evidence right from the horse's mouth of the head of the Soviet spy network in North America, communicating with their bosses in the Kremlin. The challenge is that such decrypts refer to agents by code names, so of course one has to figure out from context (or know from other sources) who agent 'ALES' is, etc. Because of the code names involved, apologists for various Soviet spies and agents of influence can hold out forever claiming there is uncertainty about who a certain code name referred to, but often there is a lot of evidence from the types of information referred to, etc.

As for McCarthy, he was right far more often than he was wrong, but I would say that he certainly could have been more careful. Still, it is McCarthy who has been smeared and slandered worse than just about anything he was ever accused of.....if you read the actual transcript of that Army hearing where the lawyer wailed "at long last, etc." you can see that the lawyer was grandstanding the way that idiotic liberals like to do.


19 posted on 05/13/2005 9:15:48 AM PDT by Enchante (Kerry's mere nuisances: Marine Barracks '83, WTC '93, Khobar Towers, Embassy Bombs '98, USS Cole!!!)
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To: MurryMom

Eric Alterman?


LOL You're pathetic.


20 posted on 05/13/2005 9:16:25 AM PDT by Petronski (Pope Benedict XVI: A German Shepherd on the Throne of Peter)
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