Just in time for Fourth of July fireworks, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. - the ‘heir dysfunctional’ of the Sulzberger family who is currently running the NYT into the ground - is engaged in a cat fight with the opinion section of the WSJ. The intellectual bankruptcy of Sulzberger rivals only what he seems to be doing to his company.

The WSJ’s Daniel Henninger concludes his thought-provoking piece today “Bin Laden as Patrick Henry? Confusion reigns five years after September 11.“:

It is possible to sharpen the focus of this matter further. The critics of the anti-terror surveillance programs such as the NSA’s warrantless wiretaps give the impression that these efforts somehow violate principles laid down at the ratification of the Bill of Rights. The legal arguments, however, revolve around the requirements of Title III (establishing probable cause for electronic surveillance) and the FISA statute. Both laws, from the 1960s and ’70s, in part were a reaction to government wiretapping of individuals involved in the civil-rights movement and anti-Vietnam War protests.

Many of those in the opposition on these surveillance issues–in Congress, the legal community and the press–are people whose personal and intellectual formation is rooted in the events of that era. This is the prism through which they transmute any political event; does it pass or fail the commandments carved in the ’70s? But this is 2006, not 1974. Islamic jihad and al Qaeda are not the Montgomery marchers or Kent State, and our debate and laws should reflect that. Applying transaction analytics to telephone traffic is not the same as two cops with headphones in a hotel listening to the people in the next room.

Perhaps there’s a silver lining. The public demonizing of Messrs. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales as ruthless tramplers of civil liberties is a throwback to the anti-LBJ, anti-Nixon style of Vietnam-era protests. This has been catastrophic for shaping public policy around this issue. But if the bad guys go slow because they think that George Bush and Dick Cheney are RoboCops willing to do what they gotta do track, trap and catch them, hey, maybe our crackpot “system” works after all.

Maybe. But the RoboCops are only in office until 2008 and the bad guys are operating on a time scheme very different from ours. I’m not so sanguine as Mr. Henninger (and I wonder if he’s so sanguine himself).

Soccer Dad steps in at the last minute.

The Israelis have now arrested sixty-some Hamas officials and threaten to try them for terrorism. No doubt many of them could be convicted, but the obvious intention here is to put pressure to obtain the release of Gilad Shalit, the kidnapped soldier. The problem with the Israeli strategy is this: Maybe the officials won’t want to go home. Where would you prefer to spend the rest of your life - Gaza or an Israeli prison? (I report; you decide.)

Is this what Howard Dean means when he says the “sixties are back”?

Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades sources claimed Thursday they fired a rocket with a chemical warhead at Israel. The IDF said they did not identify an impact of any such rocket nor was there even evidence of a launch.

Since Google now wants take all our identification numbers to ” Speed the Online Checkout Line,” why not go the natural extra step - develop the “Google Family Plot” so that, upon our deaths, we can be immediately uploaded to our final resting places in cyberspace? It’s quick and easy - and think of the ecological benefits. And then of course there’s the “Google Birth.” Why even bother with a body?

Why doesn’t someone just give him a show? [Maybe you could use him at Pajamas Media with one of your podcasts.-ed. Yes, we are planning on expanding those. I'll think about it. Who's his agent? Maybe he'd like to be on the Glenn and Helen Show.]

Whoo-hoo… The Israeli’s have buzzed the home of the ophthalmologist.

Israeli warplanes buzzed the summer residence of Syrian President Bashar Assad early Wednesday, military officials said, in a message aimed at pressuring the Syrian leader to win the release of a captured Israeli soldier.

The officials said on condition of anonymity that the fighter jets flew over Assad’s palace in a low-altitude overnight raid near the Mediterranean port city of Latakia in northwestern Syria. Israeli television reports said four planes were involved, and Assad was home at the time

Did his glasses fall off?

UPDATE: Dept. of Yeah, Right - Syrians claim they drove the Israelis off.

If there’s one thing I loathe in most American political discourse, it’s the sports page mentality dividing right and left. Everyone must be either for the Lakers or Celtics do or die - an analogy that dates me, I’m afraid - when in the political realm - most of us are simply basketball fans. We just want things to go well.

Mainstream media - probably because of its finanical disarray - more than ever seems to have a vested interest in this dichotomy. “Our team is red hot; your team is diddly-squat,” as I said on another occasion. It’s all a form of short hand, but it is dim-witted short hand.

Howard Kurtz - generally a thoughtful sort - engages in it today by seeing the New York Times controversy in terms of deeply old fashioned political alignments, when the true progessive (not the fuddy-duddy progressive of the mainstream media) wants to see those alignments smashed and consigned to the dustbin. What people like Kurtz can’t seem to grasp - don’t want to grasp, I think - is that there are many people who may be far to the left of him (excuse the use of the fusty term) on many issues and far to the right of him (again excuse the rubric) on others.

Which leads me to the New York Times. I don’t regard it as a left-wing newspaper or even, in any significant way, particularly liberal. I regard it as outright stodgy, rarely able to see outside the box of the “Zabar’s Zeitgeist.” That “zeitgeist” is essentially a culture of self-interest which creates a progressive veneer to preserve itself, making it, in some sense, if you think about it, ultra-conservative - a preservationist cult. In another way, it can be seen as an “as if” culture, erecting an alternative self for the public in order to enhance its primary interests - financial gain and power (not doing well on either of these at the moment). In this way, the NYT is not unlike other many other social and political institutions in all countries, which are in fact the mirrors of themselves.

This not to say, however, that the NYT is on the way out. Those of us working in the world of new media have a long way to go to seriously compete with its power - a very long way to go. Don’t look for the NYT to immolate soon. And I will continue to read it, teeth-ganshing though the experience may be, as long as it continues to publish journalism on the level of the Chris Caldwell article mentioned below.

James Taranto has it exactly right on the grand-standing pols trying to enact a flag-desecration amendment: Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots. (via Glenn)