Today's Blogs

“The Voice of Jihadism”

Bloggers discuss the trial of Mohammed Bouyeri for murdering Theo van Gogh. They also debate Karl Rove’s role in the Valerie Plame case and allegations that former Georgia Sen. Zell Miller kept $60,000 in state funds while he was governor.

“The voice of jihadism”: Bloggers were disgusted by Mohammed Bouyeri’s calm admission that he killed Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh. Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim, had remained silent since the shooting and stabbing last year. “I did it out of conviction,” he said in court yesterday. “If I ever get free, I would do it again.”

Shey, a Texan and Muslim who writes at Shey’s Rebellion, had a message for Bouyeri and his ilk. “I’m so annoyed and frustrated by ‘Muslims’ like him,” he writes, “if you live in Amsterdam, the world’s most liberal city, you must be able to accept criticism and ridicule. Please stop using the Quran as an excuse for violence against people who do not share the same views as you.”

Pieter Dorsman has been following the case at Peaktalk. “[I]n Mohammed Bouyeri we have pure, unrefined jihadist material at our disposal like we have never had it before,” writes Dorsman, a Dutch economist living in Canada. “… just by observing [Bouyeri] we can paint a pretty scary picture, one that reminds us again of what we’re actually fighting.”

Conservative Andrew Sullivan calls Bouyeri “the voice of jihadism.” Sullivan cites Bouyeri as proof that “our fundamental enemy is a medievalist theological fascism, buried in the recesses of a legitimate religious faith. It would be nice if we could talk these people out of it, or hand them concessions to buy them off, or hug them till they saw the joys of the New Age. Until then, we have to bring them to justice—on the battlefield or court-room.”

Read more about the van Gogh trial here.

Stonewalled: Democrats cheered the White House press corps’ grilling of press secretary Scott McClellan on Karl Rove’s involvement in the leak of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA agent.

Lefties at DailyKos debated whether Rove would be fired for his indiscretion. “What good does it do anyone to demand that Rove be canned?” writes contributor Rainey. “Whatever Bush has said he would or would not do, he’s demonstrated over and over again that he has no intention of doing anything other than what he wants. … Does anyone think—wherever Rove’s office is located or whoever signs his checks—that Rove won’t continue to operate freely to push Bush’s agenda and kneecap anyone on Bush’s enemies list?” Commenter TeresaInSammamishWA replied, “If he were fired, he’d at least be off taxpayer payroll. That alone would be satisfaction to me.”*

Some on the right deemed the reporters’ attack on McClellan unfair. “What the partisan David Gregory and Terry Moran were reacting to was not the contents of Matt Cooper’s notes and email, but to the very name of Karl Rove,” suggested Lorie Byrd at conservative group blog PoliPundit. “… If what the Newsweek story says is correct, Rove did not name Plame, and was not engaging in any retribution, but was rather correcting the bogus, false story that Joe Wilson was peddling.”

Billmon tried to figure out the White House strategy at his left-leaning Whiskey Bar. “I guess the decision to have Scotty zip it could be read one of two ways,” he estimates. “Either as a sign the crew is freaking out because they finally realize [prosecutor] Fitzgerald isn’t just going through the motions, or as a sign that Rove, like his old role model, thinks he has the case on ice.”

Read the transcript of the White House press briefing and of earlier White House statements on the CIA leak. Read more about what bloggers are saying about Karl Rove here. Read Slate’s Timothy Noah on Rove here and here, and Jacob Weisberg on the decision by Time to reveal its sources here.

Zell breaks loose: According to a report in the Macon Telegraph, former conservative Democratic Sen. Zell Miller kept more than $60,000 earmarked for entertainment and other expenses at the Georgia governor’s mansion. He also cashed in more than $20,000 of “unused leave,” a sum he later paid back, according to the article.

Waveflux, a St. Louis blogger, calls Miller a “public thief.” He goes on, “This Republican-in-Democrat’s-clothing, who thought nothing of betraying his party and its nominee during the presidential campaign, is now exposed as having betrayed the public trust as well.”

Miller has argued that he was entitled to take the funds because no one said he couldn’t. DownWithTyranny and others noted the irony that Miller’s last book was titled Deficit of Decency, in which he lambasted the Democrats’ integrity. Julia at The American Street, a liberal group blog, proposed that “we may have discovered why his party ‘moved away’ from Zell Miller … they got tired of being unable to leave their valuables unattended.”

Read more about Zell Miller here.

Correction, July 13: Because of an editing error, part of a post that should have been credited to Daily Kos contributor Rainey was attributed to commenter TeresaInSammamishWA. (Return to the corrected sentence.)