Eat this cooperation, Bashir

Franklin Graham has a pretty skewed sense of the word “cooperate,” when it comes to Omar al-Bashir of Sudan.

For all his faults, Mr. Bashir has demonstrated that he is able to cooperate. On several occasions he has complied with my requests. When a hospital we operated in eastern Sudan was seized by government forces, Mr. Bashir granted us limited access. Mr. Bashir also made television time available for us to broadcast a Christian program at Christmas and Easter.

He gave you limited access to your own hospital that he seized with his government forces? And I’m really sure that all the Darfuris that he was busy directing his proxies to kill and displace really appreciated those Christian broadcasts.

Bashir showed off his cooperative instinct today when he told the ICC the “eat” the warrant for his arrest that it will be presenting tomorrow.

UPDATE: I somehow missed the part in the op-ed where Graham suggests that we don’t need the ICC because we have God.

The “Fairness” spectre that won’t die

Oh, the Fairness Doctrine...

Conservatives are still spouting nonsensical paranoia about liberal plots to re-institute the “Fairness Doctrine” and shut down the rabid echo chamber effectiveness of conservative talk radio.  Usually, these freedom-loving, fear-mongering conservative radio-lovers stake their claims on shadowy suggestions that “liberals” are secretly cavorting to sideswipe the nation with such legislation.  But Brian Anderson actually names names…of Democrats who may sort of be inclined to think about maybe supporting a Fairness Doctrine sometime in the abstract future.

Although the Obama administration has said it is not inclined to support a new Fairness Doctrine, other top Democrats who have endorsed, or at least seemed sympathetic to, the idea include congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as well as Sens. Tom Harkin and John Kerry (who blamed his loss in 2004 on the regulation’s absence). [emphasis mine]

The reason that Anderson has to rely on his own perceptions of which Democratic legislators “seem[] sympathetic” to the Fairness Doctrine is because no one is actually interested in re-instituting the Fairness Doctrine.  If Rush Limbaugh’s portentous hyperventilating is what Anderson considers one of Republicans’ “most energetic, and effective, critics” of liberalism, then I don’t see any reason whatsoever why Democrats would want put a cap on voices that are doing better than they ever could at ensuring the GOP’s irrelevance.

(image from flickr user roberthuffstutter under a Creative Commons license)