If a protestor were …

If a protestor were to jump the fence of the White House, get inside, and get close to the President, wouldn’t you understand it if he got arrested? Apparently Peter Jennings wouldn’t understand that.

Oddest comment of the night: Explaining the removal from the convention hall of two protesters who heckled President Bush, ABC’s Peter Jennings was befuddled: “What they could be charged with, other than political expression, I do not know.”

In the Bias Dept., Joe Klein of Time magazine isn’t letting objectivity get in the way of letting us know which party he prefers.

A night after Time magazine’s Joe Klein declared on CNN, “I don’t think I’ve seen anything as angry or as ugly as [Zell] Miller’s speech,” he heartily approved of John Kerry lashing out at Dick Cheney over draft deferments during Vietnam. “It’s about time they did something real,” Klein applauded on CNN minutes before Kerry began his midnight tirade in Ohio. Klein maintained that during their convention the “Democrats almost seemed lobotomized because they never made the case against George W. Bush.” An anxious Klein urged: “Kerry has to make that case, starting now, he has to do it in the strongest possible terms.”

Speaking of Kerry speech, that had to be the lamest attempt to strike back in this whole campaign. Shifting into an entirely different mode, Kerry came at the Bush/Cheney ticket from a bold, new direction; bringing up Vietnam.

Democrat John Kerry hit back at Dick Cheney on Thursday by raising the Republican’s failure to serve in ((surprise, surprise)) the Vietnam War and asking voters to weigh his two tours of duty against the vice president’s five deferments.

Kerry, a decorated Vietnam War veteran ((in case you didn’t know)), bristled at Cheney’s attack on his patriotism ((didn’t happen)) during the Republican National Convention in New York and his ability to serve as U.S. commander-in-chief.

((Subliminal messages)) are mine. The Republicans specifically did not challenge his patriotism. Zell Miller specifically said that it was his judgement, not his patriotism, that was being questioned. Search Cheney’s speech for the word “patriotism”, and you won’t find it. Instead you’ll read this:

The President’s opponent is an experienced senator. He speaks often of his service in Vietnam, and we honor him for it.

Were Kerry’s barbs against Cheney written before he even heard the speech? Probably so. The rest of that paragraph and the following ones challenge Kerry on his record in the Senate and his words in the current campaign, which is what he asked to be judged on. If examination of that record points to problems with his ability to be commander-in-chief, he can’t then turn around and complain about the results of that examination.

Then again, this is John Kerry we’re talking about, so it’s consistent in its inconsistency. Still, that’s not a quality of someone I’d like to see sitting in the Oval Office.

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