The president's statement today:

"I am troubled by the initial news stories. I am mindful that there is a thorough investigation going on. If in fact laws were broken, there will be punishment. I know this. I have talked to General Pete Pace about the subject. He's a proud Marine. And nobody is more concerned about these allegations than the Marine Corps. The Marine Corps is full of men and women who are honorable people, who understand rules of war. And if in fact these allegations are true, the Marine Corps will work hard to make sure that that culture, that proud culture, will be reinforced, and that those who violated the law, if they did, will be punished."

Commandant of the USMC, Geneal Michael Hagee, issued this statement on May 25:

"On Marine Virtue"

By Gen. M. W. Hagee

Recent serious allegations concerning actions of Marines in combat have caused me concern. They should cause you to be concerned as well. To ensure we continue to live up to General Lejeune's description of a Marine as someone who demonstrates "all that is highest in military efficiency and soldierly virtue," I would like to review the importance of our core values.

As Marines, you are taught from your earliest days in the Corps about our core values of honor, courage and commitment. These values are part of and belong to all Marines, regardless of MOS, grade, or gender. They guide us in all that we do; whether in combat, in garrison, or on leave or liberty.

To a Marine, honor is more than just honesty; it means having uncompromising personal integrity and being accountable for all actions. To most Marines, the most difficult part of courage is not the raw physical courage that we have seen so often on today's battlefield. It is rather the moral courage to do the "right thing" in the face of danger or pressure from other Marines. Finally, commitment is that focus on caring for one another and upholding the great ideals of our Corps and Country.

The nature of this war with its ruthless enemies, and its complex and dangerous battlefield will continue to challenge us in the commitment to our core values. We must be strong and help one another to measure up. The war will also test our commitment to our belief in the rule of law.

We have all been educated in the Law of Armed Conflict. We continue to reinforce that training, even when deployed to combat zones. We do not employ force just for the sake of employing force. We use lethal force only when justified, proportional and, most importantly, lawful. We follow the laws and regulations, Geneva Convention and Rules of Engagement. This is the American way of war. We must regulate force and violence, we only damage property that must be damaged, and we protect the non-combatants we find on the battlefield.

When engaged in combat, particularly in the kind of counterinsurgency operations we're involved in now, we have to be doubly on guard. Many of our Marines have been involved in life or death combat or have witnessed the loss of their fellow Marines, and the effects of these events can be numbing. There is the risk of becoming indifferent to the loss of a human life, as well as bringing dishonor upon ourselves. Leaders of all grades need to reinforce continually that Marines care for one another and do what is right.

The large majority of Marines today perform magnificently on and off the battlefield. I am very proud of the bravery, dedication, honor, courage and commitment you clearly display every day. And America is proud as well. Americans, indeed most people around the world, recognize that Marines are men and women of the highest caliber - physically, mentally, and morally.

Each one of you contributes in your own unique way to our important mission; I am proud of your dedication and accomplishments. Even after 38 years, I still stand with pride every time I hear the Marines Hymn. The words of that Hymn mean something special to me. Especially, "Keep our Honor Clean". I know that means something to all of you as well. As Marines we have an obligation to past Marines, fellow Marines, future Marines and ourselves to do our very best to live up to these words.

As your Commandant, I charge all Marines to carry on our proud legacy by demonstrating our values in everything you do - on duty and off; in combat or in garrison. Semper Fidelis.

The media frenzy around the actions of a handful of Marines is now building and, as happened with the illegal acts at Abu Graib, will be used to advance agendas unrelated to the allegations, agendas which trade on the slander of the American military, and which use the very rare exceptions to paint broadly, even as the enemy will.

Mary Katharine earlier linked to Bruce Kesler's fine post on this subject, but for convenience, here are the key paragraphgs from Bruce's post:

I’ve heard smart people say ignorant things for the past few days about the incident in Haditha.

None actually knows much but are quite eager and willing to conjecture or pass judgments.

Mary Katharine Ham provides a concise chronology of the partial information available. It’s not much about the incident, but is much about the care of the investigation and the carelessness of the commentary.

Anyone who doesn’t wait or reserve judgment until the very careful military investigations are complete is jumping the gun as much as Murtha.

The only thing that seems pretty clear at this point is that it is definitely not, either by MSM imagination or reality, analogous to My Lai. There is no officer leadership of the Marines in the engagement, there is no command cover-up, there is no hint of purposeful rather than reactive action, the scale is far smaller.

Useful to remember in all this is that our Marines are the finest, and most disciplined, fighting force, made up of our finest men and women. Statistics during the Vietnam era showed Marine recruits actually subpar to the Army’s draftees in intelligence and physically, but the product of Marine training was superior. Today, the Marines retain the best of its volunteers, as this study by the Center for Naval Analysis affirms.

If anything untoward happened at Haditha, it was at worst a small exception. If anything untoward did not happen at Haditha, it is not an exception to the typical coverage provided by our major hysterical media. (UPDATE: Here's an untypical report by an embedded CNN reporter, who saw these Marines' restraint again and again.) In either case, tell it to the Marines who bravely and honorably serve that you don't have the guts and patience to hear the facts, and would rather allow premature ignorance to besmirch their reputation and morale.

UPDATE:

USMC Lance Cpl. Miguel Terrazas was killed on the day of the Haditha incident. His father reacts to the controversy.

MudvilleGazette has a primer on military justice.

And Smash pointed my listeners to this Milblogs forum, where folks who actually know what they are talking about gather to discuss this incident.

UPDATE 2:

Thomas Ricks reports. (Ricks is widely respected as a fair and accurate reporter, is the author of "Making the Corps," and has excellent sources throughout the military, including the USMC.

This race is a special election to fill the seat of imprisoned Duke Cunningham. The voting is next Tuesday, June 6, but absentees are already out and being returned.

The Republican nominee is former Congressman Brian Bilbray. His central issue is opposition to illegal immigration. You can contribute to his campaign here.

Bilbray's opponent is lefty Francine Busby, supported by the KosKids and other out-of-the-mainstream activists. Busby endorsed the Kennedy-McCain bill, even before it was amended.

The San Diego Union Tribune endorsed Bilbray on the strength of his approach to immigration, and contrasted it with Busby's:

Bilbray, who served in the House from 1994 to 2000, long has been a national leader on the issue, both inside and outside of government. He takes a very strong stand against illegal entry into the United States, and since his departure from Congress he has worked on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that wants to limit both legal and illegal immigration.

Accordingly, Bilbray opposes amnesty for undocumented aliens. He also advocates stiff penalties for employers who hire illegal workers and mandatory verification of worker eligibility through a national database that would eliminate forged documents. He also calls for the deployment of the military on the border to deter illegal crossers. In short, Bilbray is a hard-liner on illegal immigration, in keeping with the stringent enforcement measure passed by the House.

Busby, on the other hand, takes a much more liberal approach. She believes illegal immigrants should be given a path to citizenship, a formula that opponents decry as amnesty. Thus Busby endorses the Senate's McCain-Kennedy bill, which would legalize many of the 12 million illegal immigrants now believed to be in the United States. Bilbray charges that legalizing the 12 million would trigger a new wave of their relatives totaling 30 million immigrants.

We certainly do not support all of Bilbray's immigration proposals. But he embraces a much more sensible stance than Busby. On this vital issue alone, we believe Bilbray is the better candidate to serve the 50th Congressional District.

Yesterday John McCain cancelled an appearance with Bilbray, sending yet another McCain signal that it is always his way or the highway, a late hit on a crucial GOP candidate that won't be forgotten when the senator next talks up his willingness to work for all parts of the big tent.

The race is said to be within the margin of error, and both parties are sending in troops and money, but the fact is that the district is heavily impacted by illegal immigration, and Busby's position is correctly understood to be the soft line pushed by her party's leadership so she lost momentum as that debate revealed the deep desire for border security. The anti-illegal immigration activists know that if Bilbray loses, the national press will have to draw the conclusion that the actual support for tough policy on borders is far less than perceived if in fact a GOP candidate committed to enforcement cannot win within a quick drive's distance of that border.

I'll invite both candidates on to today's show. My guess is that Busby will duck-and-cover.

This race is a special election to fill the seat of imprisoned Duke Cunningham. The voting is next Tuesday, June 6, but absentees are already out and being returned.

The Republican nominee is former Congressman Brian Bilbray. His central issue is opposition to illegal immigration. You can contribute to his campaign here.

Bilbray's opponent is lefty Francine Busby, supported by the KosKids and other out-of-the-mainstream activists. Busby endorsed the Kennedy-McCain bill, even before it was amended.

The San Diego Union Tribune endorsed Bilbray on the strength of his approach to immigration, and contrasted it with Busby's:

Bilbray, who served in the House from 1994 to 2000, long has been a national leader on the issue, both inside and outside of government. He takes a very strong stand against illegal entry into the United States, and since his departure from Congress he has worked on behalf of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a conservative group that wants to limit both legal and illegal immigration.

Accordingly, Bilbray opposes amnesty for undocumented aliens. He also advocates stiff penalties for employers who hire illegal workers and mandatory verification of worker eligibility through a national database that would eliminate forged documents. He also calls for the deployment of the military on the border to deter illegal crossers. In short, Bilbray is a hard-liner on illegal immigration, in keeping with the stringent enforcement measure passed by the House.

Busby, on the other hand, takes a much more liberal approach. She believes illegal immigrants should be given a path to citizenship, a formula that opponents decry as amnesty. Thus Busby endorses the Senate's McCain-Kennedy bill, which would legalize many of the 12 million illegal immigrants now believed to be in the United States. Bilbray charges that legalizing the 12 million would trigger a new wave of their relatives totaling 30 million immigrants.

We certainly do not support all of Bilbray's immigration proposals. But he embraces a much more sensible stance than Busby. On this vital issue alone, we believe Bilbray is the better candidate to serve the 50th Congressional District.

Yesterday John McCain cancelled an appearnce with Bilbray, sending yet another McCain signal that it is always his way or the highway, a late hit on a crucial GOP candidate that won't be forgotten when the senator next talks up his willingness to work for all parts of the big tent.

The race is said to be within the margin of error, and both parties are sending in troops and money, but the fact is that the district is heavily impacted by illegal immigration, and Busby's position is correctly understood to be the soft line pushed by her party's leadership so she lost momentum as that debate revealed the deep desire for border security. The anti-illegal immigration activists know that if Bilbray loses, the national press will have to draw the conclusion that the actual support for tough policy on borders is far less than perceived if in fact a GOP candidate committed to enforcement cannot win within a quick drive's distance of that border.

I'll invite both candidates on to today's show. My guess is that Busby will duck-and-cover.

The Boston Globe's columnist endorses defeat of Republicans in the fall, which means the election of Democrats, which means he endorses....

Harvard law School's May Ann Glendon puts her finger on the sorest spot of all in the immigration debate:

Overshadowing all other concerns is alarm over the fact that there are 11 or 12 million immigrants in the United States who have entered or remained in the country illegally. To comprehend the depth of feeling attached to that issue, one has to keep in mind that there is no country on Earth where legal values play a more prominent role in the nation's conception of itself than the United States. That was one of the first things Tocqueville noticed in his travels here in the early 1830s, and, as the country has grown larger and more diverse, its reliance on legal values has become ever more salient. In the culture struggles of the late twentieth century, Americans had to rely more heavily than ever on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the rule of law to serve as unifying forces. Persons who come from societies bound together by shared history, stories, songs, and images can easily overlook or underrate the importance of this aspect of United States culture. Persons who come from societies where formal law is associated with colonialism may well find the United States' emphasis on legality rather strange. But no solution to the challenges of immigration is likely to succeed without taking it into account.

This is why the grant of social security benefits to regularized workers for their time as illegal workers jarred, and why even earned citizenship stings: Both provisions reward the initial lawlessness.

From the Guardian:

Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".

How do Russ feingold and John Kerry see and rasie that rhetoric?

The companion article has another choice quote:

"This could literally end civilisation." He smiles. "I know it sounds alarmist, as if this is hyperbole, like a man with a white beard holding a placard, saying the end of the world is near . . . but this really is a planetary emergency."

No, the guy with the white beard is succinct.

WaPo columnist Robert Samuelson takes a close look at the Senate's version of immigration reform and reports:

By rough projections, the Senate bill would double the legal immigration that would occur during the next two decades from about 20 million (under present law) to about 40 million.

Sameulson goes on to make the excellent point that the public really doesn't know what's in the Senate bill, and that MSM is failing its centralpurpose when it neglects to repeatedly point to the impact of such legislation.

Here's a radical idea: After the conference committee comes to a tentative compromise, but before that committee stops work, put the draft of the agreement out for public response. Sure it will be noisy and some on the extremes will denounce the compromise immediately, but try letting the public have a chance to speak before finding out that the public's reaction to a handful of provisions dooms the compromise in one house or the other. After a week of reactions, the conferees could regroup and assess whether or not the mark had been hit.

As the Tribune Compnay struggles to cut costs as its circulation and advertising numbers drop, its Los Angeles Times recommits to provocative, engaging and paper-selling tactics of debate and opinion collision by assigning online lefty manifesto by netrootians Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, "Crashing the Gate," to be reviewed by Lee Drutman, the former Communications Director at Citizen Works, a Naderite group.

Drutman's got his own manifesto out: "The People's Business: Controlling Corporations and Restoring Democracy," so not surprisingly, he's in favor of the latest manifesto. Yawn.

Oh, the book was available in, what, late February? The first online review is dated March 1 at Amazon.com. The Nation reviewed it on February 24.

This is pathetic. Why bother reviewing books if the review is sent to a like-minded tuba, and even then only appears months after publication? Where's the service to the reader, and where's the book editor, pushing the paper into people's awareness by provoking book buyers into noticing the books that are making the weather?

Most days it seems like the Times really doesn't mind if it dies off.

On Friday, Powerline posted a list of the best American novels, and opened a poll on the audience's choice for number 1. (Right margin --scroll down.)

Today Professor David Allen White of the United States Naval Academy and Hugh Cruise III opined on the list. His assessment will be up at Radioblogger.com later.

A few years back, on a visit to the Minnesota State Fair in discharge of my duties as the state's Commissioner of Hockey and Master of the Horse (appointed to both posts by Governor Pawlenty), I accepted an invitation from the Fraters gang to assemble a trivia team and meet in four-on-four competition (along with a dozen other teams) as is their regular habit on Tuesday evenings at Keegan's Pub.

So I enlisted Lileks, his friend Swede the Giant Uke, and Michael Medved to take on the home team, and sure enough, the fix was in, and we could only achieve a tie. Fraters announced then that there would be no rematch.

Now arrives this e-mail:

Hi Hugh-

Any chance of a trvia rematch when you're in town for the State Fair? Or some other sort of NARN event? A Scotch and cigar evening at Keegan's perhaps?

We're going to be broadcasting live from the Minnesota GOP convention this Thursday and Friday night. Would you like us to call in to your show with updates? If so, when?

Rest up.

Regards,

Peeps

As the president wouldn't say: Bring it on. This time we add Duane and drop the Lileks' posse. (Not that we don't like their taste in drink.)

Contrarian Views suggests that New Media, including my program and Rush's etc, have erected a sort of virtual wall against the sort of landslide that occured in 1994.

The first objection tohis proposition would be that the '94 political earthquake took out the Democrats who were protected by their own virtual wall in the MSM.

But the response to that would be that the resolute boosterism of the old media for the Democrats made the democrats lazy and over-confident, while the center-right's virtual wall has too many, not too few Paul Revere's.

Interesting theory, though.

Yes, I know, the magic hat and Christmas Eve in Cambodia is back courtesy of an absurd article in the New York Times attempting to rehab John Kerry's account of his 1968 Feliz Navidad up-river with Kurtz.

Hotline's Blogometer has a great summary of links, as well as the best summary, from The Unalienable Right:

You see, some records indicating that his boat went toward Cambodia at some point prove he was in Cambodia at Christmas-time in 1968.

One time, we drove from Los Angeles north towards Sacramento. This proves we were in Oregon in 1968.

With an Honorary Committee composed of Pete Carroll, Sam Cunningham, Ronnie Lott and Pat Haden, you'd think Lynn Swann's USC pals could fill the room at the Newport Beach Radisson on June 8th for lunch, even at $250 a head.

But I still got an invitation and noticed that many of the Host Committee aren't even SC alum, proving again that it isn't easy to separate a Trojan from his wallet. And only $250?

Perhaps some Texas and ND fans in the area will help fill the room, and wear approptriate attire. Getting Swann into the statehouse in the Keystone State is a key goal in '06, and clearly the SC folks are going to need some help from folks who indeed know how to play the game.

Big question: Can Sam Cunningham get his little brother, Randall Cunningham --longtime Eagles QB-- to bolt from Ed Rendell, a hard core Eagles fan who must ahve seen Randall in his glory days. Or does Randall stick with Rendell?

I'd also like to suggest that this is highly inappropriate neckware for the event.

Call 949--753-0860 for a ticket.

Nice. Very nice indeed.

Since my Sunday morning appearnce on CNN's Reliable Sourcs with Howard Kurtz, (Expose the Left has the video) I have been receiving the usual run of angry e-mail from lefties who don't ever want to have their beliefs challenged. In this case the cause of their ire is the following exchange, specifically my comments about Rush:

KURTZ: You were recently at a conference on the future of news and all the hand-wringing about how we do we find an audience and hold an audience and expand the audience. You said that the major problem in the news media today is the ideological imbalance in the work force.

Now if that's the case, is it because news organizations are biased against conservatives when they hire? Or is it because many conservatives don't apply for these jobs? They go into opinion journalism. They don't want to be a police reporter at the local paper?

HEWITT: A little bit of that, but the most important think in the elite media is its self-selection. You hire your friends. If you go to the Harvard and you comp (ph) on the Crimson and you come out of the Crimson and you want to go to "The New York Times", or one of the other similar elite media institutions, a place will be made for you. It is old boys and old girls network which has functioned for the last 100 years. It's got Columbia School of Journalism mixed into it. It's sometimes...

KURTZ: Are conservatives knocking on those doors?

HEWITT: No. That's not true. KURTZ: A lot of times I find they're applying to the "National Review" and the "Weekly Standard" and maybe FOX and other places. And therefore, then there's a complaint, well, newsrooms aren't well represented on the right.

HEWITT: Well, they should do some recruiting, if we believe in affirmative action for all sorts of characteristics. Big media that wants to correct that imbalance should go back out there.

KURTZ: To include people who have -- who have openly advertised conservative views for a job in which you're not supposed to tilt one way or the other?

HEWITT: But we all know that everyone tilts one way or the other. They just hide it better or less.

And my argument at this conference was that transparency means tell people what you believe so that they can correct for the lie of the green. And if you want trust back -- that was what our big thing was, how do you get trust? The most trusted journalist in America -- it might shock you -- is Rush Limbaugh. He has the highest sustained audience. And I made that argument to them. And people can't argue with his rebranding as America's anchorman.

KURTZ: But Rush Limbaugh would make no pretense of being an objective journalist. He's a commentator.

HEWITT: Though he also does information dissemination, which is what I do and what you do.

KURTZ: Don't you think there's a place for people who at least try, however flawed, however imperfect they may be, who try to tell both sides of the story, as opposed to a radio talk show host who's paid for his opinions?

HEWITT: No, I actually try and bring, for example, when I do constitutional law, Irwin Shimmer (ph), John Eastman, left and right together to clash. Because it's in confrontation we learn in the trial system.

KURTZ: You're an opinionated guy.

HEWITT: I am, but I make sure that people know what my beliefs are and that I let other people come onto my program, left, right or center, to debate with me.

I think what is most important in big media, Howard, is that we got to get people to tell people what they believe, who they are aligned with. Because I don't trust folks who won't tell me what everyone else in America will tell me.

KURTZ: All right. Hugh Hewitt, thanks very much for joining us.

The objections fall into three braod categories.

The first category is that Rush lies, distorts, reads talking points etc. Of course he has made mistakes as his show has been on for, what, 17 years, five days a week, three hours a day. But his work product is exceptionally accurate though of course his opinions are conservative and always openly expressed as opposed to smuggled into the story. He lays out facts, calls attention to stories and comments on them. He does a few interviews, but mostly he is an analyst, and as he has shrewdly rebranded himself, an anchorman, doing exactly what Brokaw, Jennings, Rather, Chancellor, and Cronkite did for all those years --selectiing the news he thinks you should hear, but doing so with much more transparency as to his view of it.

The second set of objections assert that Rush isn't a "journalist," but an entertainer. This is absurd. Was Murrow a journalist? If so, so is Rush. Both were deeply opinionated communicators, and savvy entertainers. Any serious definition of "journalist" will include Limbaugh, just as it will Matthews, Russert and the Powerline gents. People who communicate facts --with or without analysis, and whether or not that analysis is transparently or secretly impacted by their political beliefs-- are journalists.

Finally, some want to argue about the size of Rush's audience relative to other's audiences.

First, because of measurement difficulties, it is very difficult to accurately assert someone's audience, though The State of the News Media study of 2005 concludes 16% of Americans listen to talk radio. That's more than 40 million to start.

Various estimates of Rush's audience peg it at between 15 and 20 million, but I believe that this range understates his influence given who is listening to him and his impact on his listeners. Very, very few broadcasters have such an impact on the listener that he or she says "Did you hear what Rush said today...." When that impact occurs on a voter, it is much higher in terms of consequence than when it occurs on a non-voter. When it occurs with an "influencer," the impact is greater by far. (There are "political influencers" just are there are "tech influencers.")

Rush talks to voters --predominantly center-right voters, of course, but voters-- and the people who influence voters, and he built and sustained this tremendously influential audience over nearly two decades. This is what makes him a model to be studied by old media desperate to attract and retain voters and their influencers into their audience mix.

Right behind Rush are Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Dennis Prager, Michael Medved and, of course, me, as well as dozens of very influential smaller syndicated shows or powerfully influential local shows. Each on of these shows is builing an audience via the accumulation of trust and great product --crucial news delivered in an entertaining format.

Spend any time with television ratings or newspaper circulation numbers and you quickly conclude that radio dwarfs the other two for direct communication with voters on issues of politics. Executives in either television or print who want to add audience would be well-served to study, not mock, Limbaugh, and lefties upset with the tattered condition of their influence should note a few things about his delivery if they ever want to learn to communicate.

There's a chapter on the built-in advantage the center-right has over the left when it comes to communication skills in Painting the Map Read. The bad news is that it wouldn't be difficult for the left, old media, or both to improve their skills in this area.

The good news is that they will never read the book much less listen to Rush or any other successful center-right political journalist to learn how to do what they must do if the fromer were to regain majority or the latter their dominant audience position.