Is That Legal?

How to say this? This is total crap. Refusing to cart the press around as you work to evacuate the living and collect the dead: not a press restriction. Carting them around is a subsidy, and there's no good reason for it. Asking the press to refrain from showing the dead: again, not a press restriction. The press remains free to be as ghoulish and disrespectful of the dead as they'd like.

Josh has a web site to sell, and needs the story line to go with it.

What's your excuse? Aren't you gainfully employed? There's no need to repeat idiotic crap like this. It's bad enough that Josh has to say it to pay the bills.

Thought that this might be of interest to you.

I just got back from a FEMA Detainment Camp
http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/fema.html

"These are the marks of repressive government, which mixes inefficiency with authoritarianism."

[libertarian cynicism]Some would say that describes all governments, to a varying degree.[/libertarian cynicism]

In this particular case, I mostly agree with Thomas.

Josh describes this as "FEMA orders barring members of the press from photographing anything to do with the recovery of the bodies of the dead." [emphasis mine]

This simply isn't correct. "U.S. officials asked the media not to take pictures of those killed" is the way the Reuters story opens. Nothing in the story bears out what Mr. Marshall contends. Asking is not equal to "ordering".

Everything else Thomas writes about the story itself is also correct.

The one area where I differ with Thomas is the area of motive: the idea that Josh is doing this because he "has a web site to sell". I'd like to think (and I do) that Josh actually believes what he's writing, and so does Eric. That inattentiveness, and an excessive eagerness to "attack Bush" lies behind what we see here, not malice or incompetence or a desire to use the sad victims of Katrina for political reasons.

We all suffer from unwillingness to assume guilt of "our side". I've been slow to conclude that Brown is an imbecile undeserving of Presidential appointment to anything other than the National Arabian Horse Judging Council. I still haven't concluded this, though I'm at least halfway there.

Nonetheless, Thomas is right. This is silly stuff. Crap even.

If you can, please give to the Red Cross (if non-US, please make it clear you are donating for Katrina relief), or such other aid as you can give.

Regards,
Holmwood

So, how does this compare with Gov. Blanco ordering seizures of legally owned guns?

Via Cursor.org, on treatment of "evacuees" in Colorado:
http://blueowlsix.blogspot.com/2005/09/welcome-to-rockies-now-get-behind.html

Does anyone realize that part of New Orleans was built on a Superfund site that never got cleaned up?

Josh Marshall reports: "CNN files lawsuit against government agencies seeking to bar press coverage of victim retrieval process."

...recognizing however that some of the comments to that Colorado blog entry are pretty far off the deep end...

More from Josh Marshall: "Rather than fight a lawsuit by CNN, the federal government abandoned its effort Saturday to prevent the media from reporting on the recovery of the dead in New Orleans."

So apparently Thomas, and to a lesser-extent Holmwood, were wrong in saying Marshall was full of "crap."

Nope. Read the transcript of the court appearance. CNN tried to gin up a controversy, but there wasn't one. Their lame attempt should, and in a decent society would, have been roundly condemned. After all, the only thing worse than taking pictures of the dead of Katrina for profit, is pretending to be some sort of martyr for the cause by doing so.

How to say this? This is total crap. Refusing to cart the press around as you work to evacuate the living and collect the dead: not a press restriction. Carting them around is a subsidy, and there's no good reason for it. Asking the press to refrain from showing the dead: again, not a press restriction. The press remains free to be as ghoulish and disrespectful of the dead as they'd like.