NYT Confused: Conservatives Want Impeachment? Bashes CNS News

This is an interesting article. By interesting, I mean convoluted and misleading. The header, in a rare inversion of typical news, is closer to the truth than the article itself is.

David Kirkpatrick misunderstands (or willfully mischaracterizes) Rush Limbaugh’s sarcastic remarks on his radio program regarding the UAE port / terminal deboggle:

“They (the Democrats) finally found the issue where they could convince the American people that they, too, see an enemy," Mr. Limbaugh said on his radio program.”

Strangely, Kirkpatrick seems to take Limbaugh’s underhanded slap of the Democrats’ soft record on national security issues as validation that the Democrats actually have an issue to run on when it comes to national security:

"...conservatives said they welcomed the debate over censure or impeachment. Some said they were especially pleased with the timing of Mr. Feingold's proposal because it came just after the Democrats had upstaged the Republicans on national security during the outcry over an Arab company's takeover of several port terminals in the United States."

Kirkpatrick, unwittingly or otherwise, thinks Rush made a concession here when it was clearly a jibe.

The Grey Lady doesn’t stop there.

“In playing up the impeachment threat, conservatives have forged an alliance of sorts with the most liberal wing of the Democratic Party, where the idea (impeachment) has bounced around since the invasion of Iraq failed to find the banned weapons that the administration had described before the war.”

They have? So we are to believe that conservatives and Republicans favor impeachment now? When did that happen? Is there any indication of the support this would receive by how the Democrats and Republicans reacted to a floor vote on Russ Feingold’s “censure” yesterday? If that was an indicator, then a total of 3-10 people may be on Feingold’s side. Yes – that is indeed a bellowing outcry from Republicans for impeachment on “the Iraq war” that Congress authorized.

What about John Conyers’ attempt to do the same thing last year, you may ask? How is that movement coming along?

“Last year, Representative John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee and a member of the panel when it weighed proceedings against President Richard M. Nixon in 1974, proposed an initial inquiry into a censure or impeachment of Mr. Bush over the war. So far, the Conyers proposal has attracted support from about two dozen of the chamber's 201 Democrats.”

Wow. About 10 percent of Democrats. Quite a groundswell of support for impeachment and/or censure huh?

Also included is the obligatory mischaracterization (by now an outright falsehood) of the NSA's international terrorist-monitoring program:

"In less than two days they are back to the N.S.A. scandal as though we don't have a national security problem," [Rush] said, referring to the domestic eavesdropping program run by the National Security Agency."

And as a matter of common course, the NYT makes sure to label all organizations that produce information that runs counter to its inforstream as “conservative:”

“Republicans have done what they can to amplify the liberals' talk. Three days after Mr. Weyrich warned that the possibility of impeachment was one of the few reasons for conservatives to go to the polls, the Cybercast News Service, a part of the conservative Media Research Center that provides material for talk radio hosts, reported that Mr. Dreyfuss had said in a speech at the National Press Club that impeaching Mr. Bush was a "cause worth fighting for."

I didn’t know that CNS’s mission statement was to “provide material for talk radio hosts.” Notice the use of the word “material” in place of “news.”

The coup de grace comes near the end of the piece:

“ImpeachPAC, a grass-roots group based in New York City that grew out of the last election, is agitating for the idea. In the last few months, local governments in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Arcata, Calif., and in several towns in Vermont have passed resolutions calling for impeachment. Harper's Magazine, the writer Garrison Keillor, the former Watergate figure John Dean, Barbra Streisand and the actor Richard Dreyfuss have expressed their support as well.”

That makes an impenetrable case for impeachment – a left wing mouthpiece magazine, small towns from one of the most Socialist states (and three of the most blue cities) in the country, a singer who can’t even spell, a has-been actor, a liberal writer/NPR host and a former Nixon aide who “paid the price.”

So there you have it - a wandering and meandering projection piece about the desire of certain grops and individuals to impeach the President, and blatant mischaracterizations of Rush Limbaugh's comments on an unrelated matter (the UAE deal).

A solid case, indeed.