Another shot of fairness. . .

. . .for SecDef. Rumsfeld comes from Thomas Lifson, over at The American Thinker. As the media and their pork junkie whores in the Senate begin to sense that they're making some progress in undermining his leadership, their calls for his head will get louder, and more emphatic until they finally either force him out, or cross the line of decency and draw a rebuke from the public.

Well, the President has made it clear that the SecDef. is staying for the foreseeable future. So, the prospects of any reason coming from the press corps are pretty dim. Like children being told they can't have what they want, they'll continue to ever more loudly stamp their feet and keen until the grown-ups either give in, or make it clear that the matter is non-negotiable.

Granted, I have a rather skeptical view of the national press with regard to its ability to be objective in any way toward any conservative Republican officeholder. I'm admittedly more apt to suspect the worst when it comes to divining its motives. So, I have to put things in perspective. I have to take into consideration that they might honestly believe that Rumsfeld's tenure has been disastrous, and that he is posing a threat to the security of our forces, as well as our nation as a whole.

So, to bring things into perspective, let's take a look at the past. Is there a recent example of a top-level administration figure whose performance was marked with some imperfections that became so controversial that members of the press and their Senate cohorts felt that they could no longer perform their duties with the confidence of the public?

Well, the first name that jumps out at me is Janet Reno.

During her tenure as Attorney General, she managed the single greatest law enforcement debacle in the history of the United States, when she directed a raid on a religious sect that ended up killing over 80 civilians and four federal agents. She failed to bring indictments against anyone when literally thousands of confidential FBI files turned up in the White House -- exactly where they were not supposed to be. She failed to bring indictments against any key administration figures in the illegal campaign finance scandal involving China.

In fact, she failed time and time again to exercise her duties to the satisfaction of anyone, except partisan Democrats seeking to shield the Clinton administration from any sort of accountability. And, to top it all off, she was responsible for this:



Now, one would think that the responsibility for the deaths of the Branch Davidians at Waco would have been reasonable cause to call for her termination, or resignation. I mean, that's a lot of unnecessarily dead Americans to rack up in the course of serving a warrant for a firearms violation that involved one man a couple of federal agents.

But, President Clinton, and nearly the entire Democratic congressional caucus stood by her and staunchly defended what can most charitably be called a collossal failure. And the Washington press corps ran interference every step of the way.

Make what you will of it. But, to me, it reeks of hypocrisy.