Lawmaker: Cartoonist Questioning Wrong (Cox, R-Calif)

[Khephra]

WASHINGTON -- The Secret Service used "profoundly bad judgment" in seeking to question a Los Angeles Times cartoonist over a political cartoon depicting a man pointing a gun at President Bush, a senior House Republican said Tuesday.

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said the Secret Service owed Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez an apology "and the public is owed an explanation both of how this happened and why it will not happen again."

The use of "federal power to attempt to influence the work of an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times," Cox said in a letter to U.S. Secret Service Director Ralph Basham, "reflects profoundly bad judgment."

more....................

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-secret-service-cartoon,0,1080115.story?coll=sns-ap-politics-headlines

[Democat]

1. They attacked a Bush ass kisser

Now the other Bush ass kissers don't know what to do. Do you defend the secret service, who is supposed to protect the guy whose ass you kiss, or do you defend another Bush ass kisser, like yourself.

[alaine]

2. "You mean he's one of our guys? Oopsie!" (n/t)

[casual_observer]

3. No doubt that Cocks wouldn't have bothered if the guy wasn't

a well known right wing bastard. Cocks would have been the first one to bellow "crucify him!!" otherwise. No doubt the secret service idiot didn't understand the "gag" & figured it to be a slam at the chimper.

[brook]

4. On California news...

this evening, they said that the Times refused entry to the SS guy. If you've ever been to their building in downtown LA, it gives new meaning to *bunker*. Impossible to enter without proper clearance. As I recall, they were fire-bombed when they broke the unions - and they've been holed up ever since then.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

5. Can't find it on LATimes site

but I found it here:

http://cagle.slate.msn.com/politicalcartoons/PCcartoons/ramirez.asp

[haymaker]

6. The dumbshits finally realized it was a Bush apology

cartoon, basically saying it is all politcs this whole nucular weapons flap.

What a bunch of lobotomites.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

7. No. I see it more as Bush being subject to the fickle finger of fate

same as everyone else. :evilgrin:

[Peace_2_Everyone]

8. Thanks for the info and link to the cartoon

Here is the link to the original photo, there was no LIVE TV from Nam (that I know of)
I remember seeing this incident on the CBS Evening News, and feel it was a major turning point against the intense brutality of the war.

They showed the shot, and Van Lem falling to the ground.

http://users.mildura.net.au/users/marshall/weapons/propaganda.html

[saigon68]

13. WAR IS AN EYE FOR AN EYE

Eddie Adams who took the shot was troubled that the true context was not known when the picture was released.

The guy W/ the gun in the photo is General Loan

Thursday, 16 July 1998 General in '68 Vietnam execution dies

On Feb. 1, 1968 Nguyen Ngoc Loan, whose execution of a Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon in 1968 became one of the most chilling images of the Vietnam War, died Tuesday. He was 67. The former South Vietnamese general died of cancer at his home in Burke, a Washington suburb. He fled South Vietnam in 1975, the year the communists overran the country, and moved to Virginia, where he opened a restaurant.

Loan was director of South Vietnam's national police and the North Vietnamese had just begun the Tet Offensive, their huge military push southward. Firefights had broken out all over Saigon, and Loan's police were trying to rid the South Vietnamese capital of Viet Cong guerrillas. Loan led the prisoner, his hands bound, onto a street corner and in front of a group of journalists pulled his pistol and shot the prisoner point-blank in the head. The general told the newsmen that the prisoner was a known Viet Cong captain.

Eddie Adams' photo of the execution won a Pulitzer Prize for The Associated Press. NBC also showed film of the execution. Adams said yesterday that Gen. Loan's actions were misinterpreted because of the picture. "The guy was a hero. America should be crying," said Adams, now a free-lance photographer. "I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him." Adams said the man Loan shot had been seen killing others and that Loan was justified in executing him.

http://www.treefort.org/~cbdoten/rvntanks/080-4450.htm

[Rex]

9. Wow, good thing Ramirez is a Bush Loyalist

Just think if it was one of em commie LIEberal cartoonists! Off to camp X-ray with nary a due process!

[sonias]

10. Undermining of our constitutional rights

If this cartoon was something that ran on Boondocks or Doonsebury either of those two would be in custody right now. It's only because this guy is a right winger that he got off easy.

And where the hell has Rep. Christopher Cox R-California been on the U.S. Patriot Act? That certainly has stifled dissent and is attempting to influence free speech. I'm sure that his protection only applies to repuke speech however.

Support your local effort -Bill of Rights Defense Committee
http://www.bordc.org/index.html

Sonia

[oustemnow]

11. The most disturbing aspect of this story is,

Ramirez won a Pulitzer Prize? WTF?!!?

[regnaD kciN]

12. Ramirez is scum...

...no better than Coulter, Hannity, Savage, et. al. I wonder what would happen if they had questioned a liberal cartoonist? I guess none of us would ever know...except the inmates at Camp X-Ray, who would at least be enjoying the new art on the restroom walls...

:grr:

[Gman]

14. I've no doubt someone over at FR called the Secret Service

on this one and reported a threat on the "president's" (and I use the term loosely) life. They were beside theirselves over that cartoon.

[TahitiNut]

15. The death of sarcasm.

Sarcasm no longer exists as a rhetorical tool in Amerikan politics. It can no longer be distinguished from normative stances taken by partisans on the right. In attacking an allied ideologue, the GOP has demonstrated such a wholesale surrender to hyperbole and deceit that they cannot even detect sarcasm in service to their own agenda.

[realFedUp]

16. and how does Cox feel about people rounded up

and put in solitary without representation? I bet
he's been sleeping on that just fine.