McIlheran: So, so busted

Yesterday morning I pasted a copy of this post into Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial board member Patrick McIlheran's blog comments. McIlheran, knowing full well — as I didn't — that his blog does not accept even the simplest HTML code, not even for italics, published the comment anyway, without taking the 30 seconds it might have cost him to at least delete the code for the links.

The result is basically unreadable. Then McIlheran "replied," if you can call it that, with a bizarre stream of contradictions and paranoiac fantasy. Perhaps McIlheran didn't appreciate my deliberate language, all of which is supported by previous posts at this here blog and elsewhere (those were the links in my comment to McIlheran's blog).

But if that's the case, then McIlheran doesn't come across too many letters to the editor, which is odd, because he's a member of the Journal-Sentinel's editorial board. Nor did his reply, incidentally, even remotely attempt to engage any of the substantive points I made and supported. Whatever.

This morning I noticed that, in his capacity as editorial board member, he had joined his colleagues for a fairly extensive interview with Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler which, according to the time stamps on the video, took place on Tuesday, March 13.

Since that time and over the last few days, a mini-controversy has erupted over Jessica McBride's inept scheme to portray Justice Butler as a liar (the inept scheme is even ineptly executed, but she calls him a liar anyway). Then, on Friday, McIlheran posted a triumphalist link to McBride's laughable hit piece, quoting freely from it as if it was somehow related to the data she was failing to debunk.

Having posted on the question a number of times, I finally decided to check into the numbers that the Butler campaign was giving out, and determine exactly what criteria the Butler campaign was using, and how the campaign's figure of 70% (75% has also been mentioned) matched up with those criteria, or that criterion, as it turns out.

As I noted last evening, the percentage is based on criminal convictions, and whether decisions of the Wisconsin Supreme Court had reversed those convictions. This, one would think, would be precisely the first order of business for any journalist with a mind to question the final figure: find out what it means. Yet neither McBride nor McIlheran did any such thing, in their obvious eagerness to defame Justice Butler.

But McIlheran has himself to thank, ultimately, because to tell the truth, it was McIlheran's annoying treatment of and response to my comment yesterday that motivated me to take the (not a whole hell of a lot of) time to see what the final number meant, and that it's based on convictions, and that the 70% figure checks out to within less than a percentage point. (McBride spotted a typo.)

Well, guess what? I'll let Justice Butler speak, from during his March 13 interview* with the Journal-Sentinel editorial board, which includes, as I said, none other than Patrick McIlheran:

When we got those figures that were being thrown out there that 60% of the time we are siding with criminal defendants ... okay ... I wasn't sure where that comes from, I'm still not sure where that comes from. But rather than react, we went back and we did an analysis of the cases. ... Now, one analysis was real easy. If you factor in all the cases including cases involving petitions for review that come before the court, I voted to uphold convictions 97% of the time. It was 3% ruling against convictions in [those cases].

But we'll step back ... and talk about the cases actually accepted by the court. If you go through — and we've done this, and I challenge everyone to do this — look at the cases count by count [conviction by conviction], count by count [conviction by conviction] we'll look at all the counts [convictions] that have come before the court, we'll look at all the cases that have come before the court. And what it shows is that I voted to uphold the convictions 75% of the time.

Yes, that's right, Patrick McIlheran sat across a boardroom table from Louis Butler and, complete with the prefatory remarks quoted above (and then some) listened to Butler say the word "conviction" or its synonym, "count," eight times in the course of explaining the percentage figure. Eight times. With emphasis (watch the video).

Now, setting aside all the other myriad skepticisms that should immediately spring to mind when reading an alleged work of journalism — especially one produced by the outlandishly partisan Jessica McBride — containing the deliberately inflammatory language that McBride's does, and seeing that it was questioning Butler's quoted percentage, and noticing that nowhere in either of McBride's two pieces does she explain how the Butler campaign came about its number and, only days after having sat across a table listening to Butler himself explain how the figure came about ...

Well, you can figure out the rest. So, so busted. Yet McIlheran took umbrage at my charges of sloppy journalism. How's that for a laugh.

A damn good laugh, I reckon.

* Link opens a video player.

eta: This comment was left on McIlheran's blog Sunday evening (containing no HTML commands):

I played your numbers game for you, Mr. McIlheran. It also turns out that Justice Butler had previously explained the basis for the percentage in advance to you, when you were literally sitting across a table from him.

It's all on my blog. Go have a look.

My only question at this point, Mr. McIlheran, is: Are you going to give your apology to Justice Butler at least the same prominence that you gave McBride's hatchet job?

Patrick McIlheran's Supreme arrogance

A couple of days before the April 1 State election, Patrick McIlheran of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel printed an exceptionally silly — even for him — bit of absurdist fluff mocking Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler for a comparison that had arisen between Butler and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

In a textbook demonstration of Proverbs 16:18, McIlheran wrote that one need only be "minimally sentient" to understand that the comparison is "towering nonsense."

The ironic truth is that McIlheran's manifestly supercilious pronouncement applies perfectly to his own ill-informed scribblings.

As I pointed out to McIlheran at the time,

Butler's approach in [State v.] Jensen is very similar to that of the most conservative members of the U.S. Supreme Court. It's a near-classic example of a very narrow reading of the text supported by an analysis of the original intent behind the Confrontation Clause.

In fact, that is one of the reasons why SCOTUS will very likely rule for the defendant/appellant in Giles v. California, a case that presents the identical question of constitutional construction that Butler addresses in his Jensen dissent.

I directed McIlheran to my own discussions of State v. Jensen posted here and then offered to bet McIlheran that Justice Scalia would adopt precisely the same approach in Giles as had Justice Butler in Jensen.

That Giles presents the identical constitutional question Justice Butler had addressed in his lone dissent in Jensen:

Does a criminal defendant “forfeit” his or her Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause claims upon a mere showing that the defendant has caused the unavailability of a witness, as some courts have held, or must there also be an additional showing that the defendant’s actions were undertaken for the purpose of preventing the witness from testifying, as other courts have held?

The Jensen of Jensen, it may be recalled, is Mark Jensen, who was convicted of first-degree intentional homicide for the murder of his wife, whom he poisoned with antifreeze.

McIlheran declined the wager, perhaps realizing that his March 28 blog post was nearly as foolish as his earlier celebrated uncritical acceptance of this laughable characterization of Jensen:

[Justice Butler] wanted looser standard than other justices on allowing hearsay; standard preferred by Jensen's attorney

On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Giles v. California. As Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog — who has forgotten more about the law than Patrick McIlheran and the demonstrable liar who wrote the ungrammatical nonsense indented directly above will ever know put together — reports,

Justice Antonin Scalia was the most fervent champion of Giles’ cause, suggesting that the Court in [an earlier SCOTUS decision] had interpreted “the meaning of the Confrontation Clause” as it was understood “when the people adopted it.”

And the meaning of the Confrontation Clause "when the people adopted it" is exactly at the core of Justice Butler's reasoning in State v. Jensen. The complete transcript of the SCOTUS oral arguments is archived here (.pdf; 60 pgs.).

During the oral presentations, Justice Scalia takes pains to distinguish an exception to a hearsay rule of evidence known as the "dying declaration" from the requirements of the Confrontation Clause, which he calls "a totally different situation," precisely as Justice Butler had done. Throughout the oral arguments, in classic Scalia fashion, Scalia helps along the lawyer arguing for the defendant, Giles, and gives the attorney representing the State of California an extremely hard time ("siding with criminals"?).

Even Patrick McIlheran should be able to see this, since he claims to have been "minimally sentient during some portion of Scalia's years on the bench." I beg to differ, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt in this case. Of course McIlheran himself may be "minimally sentient," but the said minimal sentience has little to do with understanding comparative jurisprudence generally or in particular the close parallels between Justice Butler and Justice Scalia's reasoning pursuant to the meaning of the Confrontation Clause.

McIlheran's fatuous yet arrogant commentary is a perfect example of the mis- and disinformation spread by a number of undeservedly prominent and irresponsible Wisconsin media chumps and other alleged "journalists" during the State Supreme Court election campaign — not to mention by Mike Gableman and his direct handlers and enablers themselves — and we have them all to thank for that "stellar example of democracy in action" whereby roughly 9.6% of the State's registered voters rid the other 90.4% of one of the smartest appellate court judges in the country. As smart as the beatified (and not in the Jack Kerouac sense) Antonin Scalia, it would appear.

And they're actually "proud" of it, evidently in the Proverbial sense.

eta: It looks as though April 24, 2008, is Let Us Now Celebrate the Wisdom of Patrick McIlheran Day in the Wisconsin blogosphere:

Taking Pro-Life to the X-Treem

Patrick McIlheran loves DDT

McIlheran v. People of Earth

And even a wistfully touching defense:

We can't all be Nino [Scalia]

McIlheran interviewed a hand-selected conservative GOP hackette named Kellyanne Conway? Oh well, then; I take it all back. :rolleyes:

Wrong wing-guy: McIlheran versus the law

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's blogging "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran is proving himself a bit more foolish and irresponsible this morning than has been his prior custom.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin, charges McIlheran, is accusing the Wisconsin Department of Transportation of engaging in "a sinister racist plot."

Well, no. The ACLU isn't. Nor does it even need to.

If McIlheran had actually taken a few moments to read the ACLU's complaint (.pdf; 14 pgs.), he might have noticed (no guarantees!) that its claims are based on the WisDoT's failure to conform its actions with federal law in its capacity as a receiver of federal funds.

To wit, 42 U.S.C. § 2000d:

No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

The complaint doesn't allege that the WisDoT took affirmative steps — i.e., "plotted" — to ensure discrimination. The only reference to intent contained in the complaint refers to the WisDoT's allegedly intentional disregard for the requirements of federal law.

That is a fundamental and profound distinction, which has evidently completely evaded Patrick McIlheran's reportorial faculties.

More specifically, the WisDoT's disregard for federal administrative law promulgated in furtherance of the above federal statute:

A recipient [of federal funds] ... may not, directly or through contractual or other arrangements, utilize criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting persons to discrimination because of their race, color, or national origin, or have the effect of defeating or substantially impairing accomplishment of the objectives of the program with respect to individuals of a particular race, color, or national origin.

As a very special added bonus, McIlheran unwittingly and to unintentionally comedic effect (ironic, also) confirms the foregoing when he remarks sarcastically:

Letting people go somewhere is the same as making them go somewhere.

Likewise, discriminatory impact is not the same as discriminatory intent, nor is the latter required to prove the former. And, to top it all off, McIlheran can't even spell Atty. Karyn Rotker's name right.

UPDATE: And to really top it all off, check out this reader comment below McIlheran's blog post:

WOW, this isn't racist, it's just another attempt by the ACLU to be relevant. Using the word "racist" supposedly adds some sort of sting to it. ... I think if anything, the plan is insensitive to the needs of people.

Except it was Patrick McIlheran who invoked the term "racist," and it's the ACLU complaint that addresses "the needs of people." This comment perfectly demonstrates precisely the effect McIlheran's misleading and ill-informed commentary has. What a McShame.

McIlheran serves his Journal-Sentinel employers, those who rely on the credibility of their various scribes, very poorly indeed.

McIlheran voices support for Soglin, Butler

Patrick McIlheran, the self-described "generally right-wing guy" who composes comedy routines for the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, posted this little puzzler the other day: The Gall! In it, McIlheran observes that bloggin' Mayor Soglin and others picketed the Madison HQ of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce on Wednesday.

As readers of this here blog are well aware, WMC and its fellow travelers are engaged in a suspicious and empirically-challenged negative political campaign against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler on altruistic behalf of the cash-strapped Michael Gableman, the Burnett County Judge who has himself leveled a number of preposterous claims at the sitting Justice.

McIlheran's perfunctory two-paragraph burlesque contains links to two items, one a brief report of the picket, and the other a 2005 editorial by McIlheran's beloved Wall Street Journal brain trust. It's not entirely clear what McIlheran's point is, but since it's filled with faux outrage and labeled "First Amendment," presumably he was writing in support of Soglin and Co.'s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. Indeed, McIlheran's own link notes the pickets were meant to "draw attention to [WMC's] funding of political ads."

The WSJ editorial, "Alabama North," which purports to critique two of Justice Butler's opinions (one of which he didn't write), is also a favorite of WMC propagandists as well as WMC video star Rick Esenberg, who cites it in his celebrated Federalist Society paper, "A Court Unbound?" ("A Court Unbound," by remarkable coincidence, is WMC's theme for its World Breakfast Tour, which brings its tasty flapjacks to flip in Green Bay next Friday.)

Ever the lovable zany, McIlheran, in the space of about four sentences, manages to describe the two decisions — which together run nearly 350 pages — as a "whim."

As the WSJ noted in August, 2005, "GOP Congressman Mark Green is already making this part of his campaign for Governor, while Democratic Governor Jim Doyle has yet to make a firm public statement." And as Justice Butler's attackers are tirelessly fond of reminding us, Louis Butler lost his electoral bid for the Supreme Court in 2000, and is seated there now only by dint of his 2004 appointment by Governor Doyle.

The implications being that Butler is merely a political appointment, and that the people of Wisconsin don't really want him there, because when presented the opportunity in 2000, they declined the invitation. What WMC and its surrogates are less likely to tell you, of course, is that the aforementioned Señor M. Green lost his own election bid to Doyle in 2006, in spite of his desperate attempts to make Justice Butler an issue.

So this was McIlheran's project after all, to show that WMC's hoary talking point is proven to be not only just a wash, but it's been positively superseded by more recent polling data in demonstration of the fact that the 2006 election of Governor Doyle was also a popular endorsement of Justice Butler.

You really have to keep a close eye on these conservative columnists, they can be a pretty sneaky bunch. And since the impending State Supreme Court election is nominally a non-partisan affair, even the support for Butler voiced by a dependable GOP mouthpiece like Patrick McIlheran is legitimate. That alone is a refreshing change.

[Please visit the iT Butler/Gableman archive.]

Patrick "Li'l Milton" McIlheran

Speaking of Journal Communications, Inc., how pleasant it must be to write a guest op-ed for the local paper only to have it savaged within hours by a member of that same paper's editorial board as "a morbidly wretched example of willful, stone-blind irrationality."

Unfortunately the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran's right-wing guy-savagery is widely misplaced, as he doesn't seem to have understood what the object of his Randian derision was talking about (no surprises there).

In fact, that's the weird part about Patterson's essay: He hooks up "feudal" and "capitalism" in the apparent hope of discrediting the noun with the adjective. But it's like saying "Christian Islam" or "dry water"* — the phrases work only if you wildly distort what you're meaning [sound effect of exploding irony meter goes here].

If Milton McIlheran has never come across the descriptive term feudal capitalism, then he can't be much of an expert in economics, which is supposedly his strong suit. (Or, at least, it's the most common product of his daily rummaging around right-wing blog-sites, regardless of their comically dubious provenance. See, e.g., Dad29.)

One needn't expect McIlheran to endorse Marxist political theory, obviously, any more than one would expect a socialist to approve the Chicago Boys' hopping into the sack with Augusto Pinochet.**

But at least the latter can be reasonably well-informed about it. Unlike the former, who appears to have forged a career out of embarrassing himself in print (admittedly, much to our delight).

McIlheran says the emergence of his dearly beloved capitalism is what ended feudalism. Well, no. Feudalism never went away, is the point. And elements of feudalism survive in the present system as evidenced by the situations described (accurately) by John Patterson.

Patterson's observations seemed straightforward enough to me, and hardly irrational, whether you agree with his prescriptions or not.

But we know by now that McIlheran is a ridiculous calumnist who will stop at nothing — including lying — in his failed attempts to discredit his perceived political opponents.

Or, in this case, discredit an author who'd dare to suggest that the species of capitalism practiced in the U.S. is less than ideal. So McIlheran had to mark his spot, as they say in the animal kingdom.

What's morbidly wretched is that the perceptive John Patterson (or the like) isn't featured more often and the hackish McIlheran, less.

Meet your Journal Communications supastars: "P-Dendro" McIlheran, Charlie "Gone Galt" Sykes, and James T. "Hip Musings" Harris.

* McIlheran came from Minnesota, yet he's unfamiliar with ice.

** Disciples of "Brongblart's Hollywad.com" reportedly sustained a series of mini-aneurysms upon learning Obama Hussein's Malcolm X-Mas tree had no decorative Carlos Castillo balls on it.

I believe it's known as 'chain of command'

"It's right north of Pakistan, Mr. President," scoffs the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's senior military affairs analyst, Patrick McIlheran.

"Our president, it turns out," Mr. McIlheran can now reveal (having typically gotten it someplace on the internets from somebody who saw it on the teevee box), "has talked to his top general in Afghanistan once since the guy got to that country where the real war is happening. Whatever that country is called. Af-something."

Ho ho.

That general, Stanley A. McChrystal, reports to General David Petraeus of U.S. Central Command, who in turn reports to the Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates. But Patrick McIlheran apparently hasn't the slightest idea how often or to what extent the president communicates with either General Petraeus or Secretary Gates.

Furthermore, the interview with 60 Minutes to which McIlheran refers — although broadcast last night — was taped on or about August 24. And McChrystal only assumed his current position on June 15.*

So Patrick "I Possess Skills" McIlheran really doesn't know whether President Obama has talked to General McChrystal "only once" or not.

Yet he just goes ahead and says it anyway.

Concludes McIlheran: "As Dad29 puts it, Obama is voting 'present' on this war." Patrick McIlheran is purported to be a journalist, and "Dad29" is an anonymous suburban wing-nut blogger.**

Mr. McIlheran is also a credentialed expert on the United States Constitution as well as on the atmospheric sciences.

His column is regularly indistinguishable from parody.

* Following a series of procedural delays by Senate Republicans.

** Here, "Dad29" claims former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Janine Geske asserted that a proposal to collect DNA from State misdemeanor arrestees prior to even a probable cause hearing is "not unconstitutional." Justice Geske most certainly did not say that.

Such is the credibility of Patrick McIlheran's anonymous sources. That the foregoing appears at a respected daily newspaper is pathetic.

Dr. McIlheran's advice for rape victims

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "generally right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran thinks it's wonderful that a Washington, D.C. pharmacy has stopped dispensing contraceptives altogether.

That's because if the pharmacy bans all birth control pills (which have other than contraceptive purposes), then that would necessarily include the so-called "morning after pill," Plan B, since, McIlheran claims, it's been shown to prevent implantation of fertilized eggs.

As evidence for the foregoing proposition, McIlheran links to a spec sheet that suggests in passing that Plan B "may inhibit implantation" of a fertilized egg despite the drug's explicit formulation for preventing pregnancy and the spec sheet's bold, underlined warning that Plan B "is not effective in terminating an existing pregnancy."

But that remote, merely alluded to possibility is good enough for McIlheran. And more than sufficient for Patrick McIlheran M.D. to describe Plan B as an "abortifacient."

Then McIlheran goes on to compare being pregnant with having the flu. Well, it's not exactly the same: "You generally don’t just unknowingly catch it" (pregnancy), observes Mr. Dr. McIlheran.

Doc Mac admits (albeit parenthetically) that some women do "catch it," for example, you know, victims of rape. But according to Dr. McIlheran's professional colleagues at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, "this is a comparative handful."

So to blazes with them, because the alleged comparative handful of inhibited implantations of two haploid cells clearly trumps the documented comparative handful of rape victims.

Zygotes FTW!

And anyway, advises Herr Doktor Patrick McHippocrates, y'all rape victims can just up and locate another pharmacy, because you have all of 72 hours before Plan B doesn't work at all anymore.

So go catch a bus along with your flu/pregnancy by rape.

Of course if one pharmacy refusing to dispense contraceptives according to so-called "moral objections" is wonderful, then more pharmacies similarly refusing must be even more wonderful and the next thing you know, your 72 hours starts running down in a hurry.

Thus proceeds the logic of the male "pro-life" aficionados, and woe betide those women who "unknowingly catch" a pregnancy.

McIlheran: Case study in irresponsible journalism

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's clownish "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran continues to shamelessly embarrass himself. Pointing once again to Jessica McBride's ludicrously misguided and uninformed "analysis" of some Wisconsin Supreme Court cases, McIlheran repeats McBride's utter falsehood that information provided by Justice Louis Butler's campaign is "riddled with legal errors."

As demonstrated yesterday, McBride's remarkably irresponsible charge is completely debunked. The "legal errors" McBride claims result from her determined, blinkered insistence that Justice Butler not make reference to the very cases that Burnett County Judge Michael Gableman has been using since November to attack Butler, a situation of which she is clearly unaware.

And McIlheran himself levels his own thoroughly unsupported charge, that Justice Butler "retains at least something of a soft spot for criminal defendants looking for a way off the hook." What an idiotic thing to say, not to mention compelling evidence that McIlheran hasn't the slightest clue about how judges approach cases. But this doesn't stop him.

Even though a further demonstration of McIlheran's risible cluelessness isn't required, he provides one anyway, by also linking to Rick Esenberg's latest post here. Esenberg not only confirms that McBride's hopeless attempt to exclude certain cases is totally wrong, but Atty. Bill Tyroler, writing in Esenberg's comments thread, eviscerates Esenberg's own purported methodology.

Setting aside the demonstrable truism that many of these cases' dispositions do not easily lend themselves to the often false dichotomy of categorization according to either "favoring criminals or law enforcement," Tyroler confirms something I had mentioned earlier: that even requests for review from lower courts of appeals decisions that the Wisconsin Supreme Court declines to accept may legitimately factor into these statistical compilations.

Even that obvious fact puzzles McBride.

And in an earlier Esenberg thread, commenter John Foust makes the salient observation that in many cases, the Supreme Court decisions say just as much — if not more — about errors made in the lower courts than they do about the reviewing court's reasoning, let alone that of some individual justice on that reviewing court.

Foust isn't a lawyer, yet he gets it. What's McIlheran's excuse? He has none. He's doing little more than abusing his position to spread falsehoods to a wider audience.

The bottom line here is that the Wisconsin-based Coalition for America's Families was lying when it alleged that Justice Butler "sides with criminals 60% of the time" regardless of whether Jessica McBride discovered a typo or two in the Butler campaign's proffered list of cases, and she and McIlheran are two peas in a laughably irresponsible journalism pod.

The above was also submitted to McIlheran's comments.

P. McIlheran's glow-ball warming

Predictably (what took him so long, though?), ace reporter Patrick McIlheran has latched on to the East Anglia e-mail "scandal," wherein a bunch of scientists, annoyed by professional denialists like P. McIlheran, shared around some catty messages with each other.

Several of the illegally obtained messages make reference to suggested manipulating of data, and those are certainly a bad reflection. But nobody's come up with any proof of any data fudging in any actual research papers, which is what McIlheran is claiming.

And nobody should be surprised that scientists are annoyed by denialists. We observe it as a regular feature of the so-called "controversy" over evolution. Even in that milieu, however, it's rare to see, 'Next time I see Duane Gish I'm going to punch his lights out.'

Yet even that degree of intemperance is no evidence of "fudging data" or "dangerous frauds," as McIlheran darkly puts it.

McIlheran, aside from the standard litany of tediously grandiose and false conclusions, has nothing to offer except a link to the squash-playing denialist Steve McIntyre and a couple more to the Daily Torygraph, a venerable Fleet Street subsidiary of Fox "News."

And then the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel just republishes this, specially adorned with McIlheran's paranoid, addlepated phantasies. Do they really think their readership is that gullible?

McIlheran would never send you, for example, here.

Just a teensy bit more than meets the eye. I bet it took longer to
edit those e-mails than it did to write Sarah Palin's entire book.

Patrick McIlheran is not a Nazi

Well, that's good to know. Then again, nobody ever said he was.

But Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel calumnist McIlheran's affirmative denial is typical of the curiously aggressive defensiveness that's lately arisen among a couple of local right-wing commentators/brethren.

They are upset because two opinion columns appeared in the New York Times over the weekend purportedly connecting causally the screaming, weeping outrage pimps at Fox News and elsewhere with some recent celebrated acts of apparently political violence.

That the NYT columnists attempt to make the connection (their success on that account is what's debatable) is in fact evidence of the columnists' own incitement of general animus against conservatives.

Or so the argument goes, as framed by Patrick McIlheran and his intellectual idol, Marquette law professor Rick Esenberg.

In particular, McIlheran & Friends don't much appreciate the references to James von Brunn — an 88-year-old unreconstructed British Israelist-style nutcase who staged an attack on the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. with a Father Coughlin-vintage blünderbüss — connecting him with right-wing ideologies.

Because Esenberg and McIlheran would have you know that they don't wish to be associated with those ideologies. Or something.

Here's McIlheran, approvingly quoting Esenberg on their insipid "Weekly Standard" talking point once again:

[James von Brunn] is also a self avowed socialist whose alternative target was apparently the offices of The Weekly Standard.

The implication, of course, is that because the Weekly Standard is reputed to be a conservative magazine, von Brunn's distaste for it must then spring from a well of leftist (read: socialist) hate.

But that's false. For the extreme right, the magazine and its proprietor, William Kristol, stand for Zionism, and its targeting is perfectly in accord with white supremacism and anti-Semitism.

This is obvious to most observers, I would have imagined, but apparently it isn't, at least to these two, who keep repeating that. The evidence is easy enough to locate, although I'm not placing a link to the renowned liberal David Duke's website on this blog.

For von Brunn the neoconservatives, most of whose movement founders were and are Jewish, are of a part with an ancient and giant Jewish conspiracy "to destroy Western civilization and the Aryan Nation that created it." It says so right in his 189-page manifesto.

Mayhap McIlheran and Esenberg should actually read it, before they start ascribing to von Brunn's views a leftist bent.

In fact according to von Brunn, liberalism, Marxism, and international "Jewry" are synonymous, and he equates the three throughout his deranged screed. A self-avowed socialist? Not exactly.

Prof. Esenberg thinks it's simply "ankle biting" to point this out. Of course he would, since it's central to his alleged debunking of Mike Plaisted's own opinion piece, whose author the demonstrably oblivious Patrick McIlheran ironically describes as "dimwitted."

If your argument that James von Brunn isn't a classic right-wing extremist rests on the false claim that von Brunn opposes the goals of the Weekly Standard crowd with respect to their Israel policy because Kristol et al are conservatives, then you have no argument.

These objections bring to mind the self-obsessed self-righteousness emanating from the political right when the Obama administration released a pamphlet (assembled largely during the Bush II administration) warning of potential right-wing extremist violence.

If they're not talking about you, Ms. Malkin, then why worry about it?

But with regard to the murders of George Tiller and Stephen Johns, the security guard at the Holocaust Museum, that DHS report was right [sic] on the money. (Oh, and James von Brunn hates the Anti-Defamation League as well, and we all know how popular and beloved the ADL is among contemporary American conservatives.)

Patrick McIlheran gets his hack bum spanked

Ouf.

George Stanley is the Journal-Sentinel's managing editor. It's about bloody time somebody in-house corrected Patrick McIlheran's drivel.

Good on Stanley.

eta 01 OWN's Scot Ross concurs in part, dissents in part:

Two cents: I think it's incredibly hypocritical of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to point this out, when it pays [McIlheran] to churn out this right-wing, pro-corporate propaganda on a regular basis without any consistent voice of opposition. Until he strays from the company line ...

eta 02 Jon Entine responds. Mr. Entine, a journalist and American Enterprise Institute (Scaife, Bradley, etc.) "fellow," wrote the article from which Patrick McIlheran produced the pregnant children:

Mr. Stanley ... is flat out 100% wrong. He lied to his readers.

P. McIlheran hisself next appears in-thread. Flamewar!

eta 03 Jon Entine returns for some more:

For the record, Mr. McIlheran did not contact me. I noticed this article on Google News and read the comments. Frankly, Mr. Stanley's comment is so undeniably wrong and irresponsible, I believe he should be publicly reprimanded by the publisher and perhaps even fired. It's so antithetical to the established canons of journalism. Moreover, he criticized his own reporter[*] in public, which is as unprofessional as it gets. And he was wrong to boot. He should start with a public apology. And I would suggest an independent review of the Journal Sentinel's reporting on BPA and chemicals as it is apparent that his judgment is polluted beyond repair. What a disgrace for the JS.

Good Day Sir!

* McIlheran was not "reporting" and Stanley didn't "criticize" him.

eta 04 And yet still more additional Jon Entine:

For example, Health Canada's ban came after its science advisory panel concluded, starkly: "Bisphenol A does not pose a risk to the general population, including adults, teenagers and children." It was then overruled by the political arm of Health Canada, which said in its news release that "decisions have to be made to meet society's expectations" — in other words, in response to hysteria generated by the likes of the JS.

I don't know where the AEI "fellow" Jon Entine's quote comes from, but Health Canada's website reads:

Health Canada's Food Directorate has concluded that the current dietary exposure to BPA through food packaging uses is not expected to pose a health risk to the general population, including newborns and infants.

Emphasis added. Health Canada then goes on to note its steps were/are taken to protect "this sensitive segment of the population."

So why does Jon Entine hate Canadian newborns and infants?

(By the way, positive and approving appeals to "This is how Canada does it!" are something you hear quite often from journalist Patrick McIlheran when he's on the healthcare warpath, aren't they. Oh yes.)

And: Medium wave howler Charlie Sykes to the rescue!

Well, there's at least one common denominator emerging here: The Bradley Foundation. Can law perfesser Rick Esenberg be far behind?

What did Herb Kohl ever do to Patrick McIlheran?

Probably nothing. [eta: See below*]

You've stooped to new levels, dude. Taking shots at the guy walking out the door ... I expect this from McIlheran, but I'm surprised by the J-S edit board for allowing this to happen.

I'm not. Funny, the premise to Patrick McIlheran's cheap and bitter sarcasm is his assumption that Sen. Kohl did nothing, period. Which is why Herb Kohl couldn't have done anything to Patrick McIlheran.

According to Patrick McIlheran's own reasoning (such as it is).

Even F. James Sensenbrenner, Scott Walker, and Ron Johnson honored Sen. Kohl for his long service to the State of Wisconsin.

You know you're hurting bad when you've got less class than them.

* Aaand, this comment was deleted by the MJS by Sunday morning. There was nothing particularly offensive about it, except it began, "Just when I thought McIlheran couldn't possibly be a bigger dick ... "

Why don't the editors delete Patrick McIlheran's posts, if they're that concerned about causing offense? After all, McIlheran is the dick.

Patrick McIlheran's drooling idiocy

Simply won't stand for this slight against Glenn Palimbaugh

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's award-winning calumnist Patrick McIlheran complains that Leonard Pitts doesn't blame Democrats enough for their opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964:

[B]ack when King actually was marching, it wasn't political conservatives hating on him. It was Robert Byrd (D-W.V.), an ex-Klansman and the only current member of the Senate to have voted against the Civil Rights Act. And it was, by and large, Democrats who opposed the bill and civil rights.

In fact it was southern political conservatives of both parties, including Byrd and his, which Leonard Pitts clearly acknowledges:

[I]n the century after the Civil War, ... conservative Southern Democrats violently repressed would-be black voters, made a shadow government of the Ku Klux Klan, turned a deaf ear to the howling of lynch mobs and lynch victims.

You'd expect a journalist of McIlheran's stature could calculate that those 100 years extended even beyond the CRA's enactment.

(Depending on your construction of "stature," of course.)

The civil rights bill "would dictate to private businessmen who they must do business with," said ex-Mississippi Gov. J.P. Coleman. It "would further impinge on the right of private property in this country," said Georgia Sen. Richard Russell.

The latter are the corollaries to Rand Paul's recent sentiments, which were first announced to the editorial board of the Louisville Courier-Journal, not when "left-wing talk show hosts" were "baiting him."*

Both J.P. Coleman and Richard Russell were Democrats. Russell was a powerful leader for decades in the U.S. Senate,** and a white supremacist. Calumnist Patrick McIlheran, obviously, is the drooling idiot, who doesn't even read the articles he purports to criticize.

Then McIlheran cites approvingly Bruce Bartlett, who just said:

In short, the libertarian philosophy of Rand Paul and the Supreme Court of the 1880s and 1890s gave us almost 100 years of segregation, white supremacy, lynchings, chain gangs, the KKK, and discrimination of African Americans for no other reason except their skin color.

Look, there's those 100 years again. (Speaking of the Supreme Court, who wrote Shelley v. Kraemer? FDR-appointed liberals, is who.)

So it's fine and dandy for Bruce Bartlett to point that out, but not for Leonard Pitts,*** according to the award-winning Patrick McIlheran, all because Pitts insulted poor little race-hustling Rush Limbaugh.

* "Baiting" = posing a simple question. McIlheran's contempt for journalism is usually only manifested in his alleged practice of it.

** Where he actually has a building named after him.

*** Pitts is black, by the way; McIlheran is the oppressed white man.

J-S blogger advocates intellectual property theft

"Wiki-steal this book," advises the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "generally right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran, in twin reference to WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange's forthcoming memoir and Yippie radical Abbie Hoffman's 1971 tome, Steal This Book. In the latter case, it was the book's own author that endorsed its theft. Here it's McIlheran, a third-party actor who was positively delighted when the private e-mails of climate scientists were stolen and leaked last year.

Mr. McIlheran is upset by Assange's "anti-American irresponsibility."

Yet apparently for McIlheran, the wholesale theft of intellectual property — the ownership of which is under other circumstances considered a sacred, inviolable right by American conservatives — is representative of pro-American responsibility, and here is its advocacy appearing on the pages of a major daily newspaper.*

Julian Assange has yet to be charged with any WikiLeaks-related crime, although several of Patrick McIlheran's political idols have alleged the commission of treason against the U.S. but without explaining how an Australian citizen might be held to such account.

McIlheran's other problem is that there is no copyright protection available for government documents whereas the unauthorized reproduction of Julian Assange's memoir would clearly be unlawful.

Which is what McIlheran is urging. Not that anybody has ever accused McIlheran — an award-winning journalist — of drawing logically valid analogies but this one is remarkably inapt and inept, even for him.

* Whose own legal disclaimers warn against unauthorized use.

Rick's nature trick: Hide the denial

So Professor Esenberg doesn't care for certain descriptive English words, as he indicates in his latest missive on what he's christened "Climatequiddick," which is apparently a light-hearted and cute allusion to the tragic drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in 1969.

The careful reader will note that what has got Prof. Esenberg's dander up was this post, highlighting his false claim that compilers of a chart on the cover of a 1999 report of the World Meteorological Organization "combin[ed] two different measurements and pretend[ed] they are the same thing and mischaracteriz[ed] what data show."

This is the claim of Prof. Esenberg's with which I took issue. Except he avoids this and instead inventories a collection of vocabulary employed from time to time at this blog (which is part of the internets and tends occasionally to adopt its vernacular, although I don't believe I have ever used Ms. Kopechne as a figure of fun):

"Teabagger", "wingnut", "not very smart", "moron", "calumnist" "ignorant," "fraud," "dishonest," "lying," etc. You'd think that arrogance, if it must be expressed, should be earned, but I guess that "denializer" is not so bad.

This is supposed to be an argument, I guess, so please feel free to use the search function at the upper left corner to determine whatever context they were used in and if it was even me that was using them and not as part of a quotation from somebody else.

For example, "teabag," the verb, was coined by a Fox News reporter.

"Morons," as Prof. Esenberg conveniently overlooks, is what his friend Charlie Sykes called some Milwaukeeans who held a vigil at North Ave. and Oakland on Friday night to commemorate the conference on climate change currently underway in Copenhagen.

It's my understanding that Charlie Sykes is not exactly a shrinking violet himself when it comes to colorful language describing his perceived political adversaries (in this case, the youthful idealists that Sykes so abhors and mocks at every available opportunity).

So how come Prof. Esenberg doesn't similarly take Sykes to the woodshed, if it's so terribly not nice to call people morons? Evidently it's acceptable as long as you're Charlie Sykes, whose obsequious consideration of Prof. Esenberg is as a "renaissance man."

(Perhaps he'd settle for just "medieval warming period man.")

"Calumnist" is a term coined by yours truly (I think [eta: not]) to characterize the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's self-described "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran, because that's exactly what he is.

"Calumny," in fact, is a relatively mild description for McIlheran's fatuous rhetorical efforts, e.g., to falsely tie one of Obama's advisers in the Department of Education to the notorious North American Man-Boy Love Association, which is what McIlheran did.

As a matter of fact, it was McIlheran's series of gross distortions, risible misunderstandings, and deployment of so-called "experts" like the Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley that inspired a number of posts here on the topic of "Climategate."

I personally find it more than a little appalling that the biggest daily newspaper in the State of Wisconsin would see fit to publish such pure nonsense, but that's just me. It's a crazy expectation, I know.

Call me a youthful idealist (and see you at Pizza Man).

As for frauds, "dangerous frauds" is how McIlheran described scientists whose private correspondence was unlawfully uploaded to a computer server in Russia last month.

And "dangerous frauds" is how McIlheran has described those scientists despite being comically unaware* that the much-celebrated "decline" referenced in one of those e-mails was not a decline in measured temperatures but rather a decline in sensitivity to changes in temperature observed within a particular collection of a particular species of tree in a particular location in the Northern Hemisphere.

Except I have never seen Prof. Esenberg condemning Mr. McIlheran for his hysterically reactionary "opinions," which are themselves in turn grounded on his not even knowing what the hell he's talking about. No, instead Prof. Esenberg rambles away about Al Gore, who has nothing to do with any of this, as far as I'm concerned.

Ironically, it was none other than Prof. Esenberg who wrote:

On the left, bloggers like Illusory Tenant are redefining the term "denialist." There is, they say, nothing to see here and "wing nuts" who say other things are so stupid — not at all like us smart people.

Now suddenly he affects to be troubled because I placed him in the denialist camp (for good, empirical reason, as opposed to faux-trage at choice of the same nouns and adjectives his local right-wing colleagues use), an awfully slippery double standard on his part.

While I never said there is nothing to see here, I did predict very early on that the political right would attempt to construct fallacious bales of straw from what seemed to me little more than scientists "sharing around some catty messages with each other."

Which is precisely what has happened. And, despite Prof. Esenberg's continuing use of his own coined expression "Climatequiddick," he's yet to address the question I'd put to him more than once: "So I'll ask again: Is this really all you guys have? 'Hide the decline'?"

Still waiting.

* For two weeks, after which he dismissed as a "subtlety" the somewhat fundamental question of whether temperatures were rising or declining. I'm not kidding. "Renaissance man" notwithstanding, it hardly comes as a surprise that Mr. McIlheran looks up to Prof. Esenberg as he "whom I want to be as smart as someday."

To be sure, Prof. Esenberg is in fact very smart indeed, which makes some of the positions he stakes out that much more questionable.

Like this one, for example:

The rationale behind the recusal motions filed against Michael Gableman are [sic] primarily (although not quite entirely) based on the now infamous Reuben Mitchell ad and certain statements made by Gableman’s lawyer, Jim Bopp, in the course of defending Justice Gableman on ethics charges stemming from the ad.

While Attorney Rob Henak is a talented advocate, I don't believe he's quite mastered time travel, as his original motions were filed in April, and Jim Bopp didn't deliver his statements until September.

McIlheran scours for Obamojevich

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran is predictably bound and determined to find Barack Obama's fingerprints all over Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich.

Relying on a Slate.com column by John Dickerson, McIlheran can now reveal that one of those "being mulled" for Obama's vacant U.S. Senate seat was the president-elect's longtime friend Valerie Bowman Jarrett, named in the FBI's affidavit as "Senate Candidate 1."

Dickerson says the indictment [sic] "suggests" that Obama was "pushing for [Jarrett] to get it." Not really. Blagojevich doesn't seem to have known any more than what he and his aides heard on CNN.

Much like McIlheran doesn't know any more than what he reads on the internets. And besides, Dickerson also refers to Blagojevich as "delusional." How exactly that squares the governor's profane ravings with the forced Obama connection is anybody's guess.

McIlheran certainly isn't telling. Nevertheless, he's facetiously skeptical of Obama's statement today. He doesn't explain that either.

One thing that's undeniably clear from the affidavit, however, is that Blagojevich had no intention of appointing Valerie Jarrett to the U.S. Senate without receiving something in return for himself.

As Blagojevich puts it, "They're not willing to give me anything but appreciation. Fuck them." "They" and "them" being the Obama camp.

(Wherein McIlheran's own "story" completely eludes him: How did Blagojevich know that Obama didn't want to deal on Jarrett?)

So desperate for validation is McIlheran, in fact, that he even cites to James T. "Hip Beggings" Harris, who prophesies Barack Obama will pardon Blagojevich ... on Inauguration Day, no less. Uh huh.

Harris has long been employed by local journalists as a credibility-bolstering device. His résumé also includes striking oil on Uranus and the belief that humans cavorted with dinosaurs aboard Noah's Ark.

Right-wing busts open the latest conspiracy

Yesterday an anonymous commenter here left behind a strange deposit alleging that criticism of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce is part of an "orchestrated campaign."

Just coincidentally, I'm sure, an earlier post at Milwaukee medium-wave harlequin Charlie Sykes's so-called blog claimed as Maestro of the said "orchestration" the governor of Wisconsin:

Sore Loser Lefty of the Day — John Wiley. First: none of these attacks on WMC is coincidence. This attack, Louis Butler's, and all the other "WMC is the problem" voices out there are being orchestrated by Jim Doyle, who is still wanting to make WMC pay for not supporting him last election.

Sykes actually considers this baseless conspiratorial observation a "savvy" one. Seriously.

And sure enough, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's dependable "right-wing guy" Patrick McIlheran is all over it:

Why would Wiley do this? Sykes' blog quotes a listener who contends by email that this is all orchestrated by Jim Doyle, ticked off at WMC.

Sounds plausible. The left-wing pressure group One Wisconsin Now has been trying to get its followers to flood WMC members' inboxes with emails saying they'd better stop being so Republican.

How's that for an intuitive handspring. So, what — Jim Doyle is running One Wisconsin Now, now? Sound plausible?

"The nerve of those tradesmen," McIlheran snorts. I don't know about McIlheran, but I detect the presence of no tradesmen among WMC's Board of Directors. I see corporate CEOs, managing partners at the State's biggest law firms, bankers, and financial consultants.

No manufacturers of tinfoil hats, however, which Sykes and McIlheran and their dedicated followers must be purchasing from out-of-State.

I doubt McIlheran would find any tradesmen among the partisan hacks who orchestrate WMC political campaigns either. Unless he has in mind steamfitters and plumbers in the Nixonian sense.

And non-union ones at that, naturally.

But he would definitely find lots of tradesmen on Epic Systems's construction site near Madison working for David Cullen, who withdrew from WMC in the wake of WMC's multi-million-dollar campaign of sleazy personal attacks against Justice Louis Butler.

As far as I can tell, everybody who opposes WMC's political techniques does so for their own individual reasons and indeed, one of WMC's most energetic critics, Paul Soglin, actually supports many of its goals. In most cases, it's the means and not the ends that are at issue in this ongoing debate.

If both Sykes and McIlheran seriously believe Governor Jim Doyle is acting as the puppetmaster to the WMC critics, you'd think they could come up with some better evidence than an unsigned e-mail from one of Sykes's own devoted and clownishly "savvy" acolytes.

Then again, probably not. Because the only conspiracy in evidence here is the one between fellow Journal Communications, Inc. employees Charlie Sykes and Patrick McIlheran. Forward, meme.

More from the cappermeister.

McIlheran now charging $97 to read his blogs

Get a load of Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel funnyman Patrick McIlheran, dissembling frantically here. He says he's proven something or other (Greenland "was much nicer"?), all you have to do is go and read these links. Except the first two cost $31.50 a pop, the other $34.00. And don't just bring your cash, you better bring your advanced degree in solar physics, also.

Seriously, Patrick McIlheran expects anyone to believe he's actually read these articles? And never mind the physics, McIlheran can barely get past the arithmetic. McIlheran offers the 2003 Senate testimony of Tea Party activist Willie Soon,* a singular man who becomes "Harvard astrophysicists" in McIlheran's dark matter uniperverse.

It's hard to tell him from The Onion sometimes.

* Note the photo caption. McIlheran answered the call.

Dear David Haynes

Thanks for the link. You wrote:

The Tenant takes our own Patrick McIlheran to task, calling him a "tinpot philosopher" for wondering just where God fits into all this.

Please let's not forget that my reaction was inspired by comparing Willie Hines, Jr.'s thoughtful curricular proposal for a "scholarly discussion of ethics" with McIlheran's clear suggestion that morality proceeds from the teachings of Christ (the "Him" of whom he spoke).

That, coupled especially with McIlheran's comically nonsensical gloss on the First Amendment's Establishment of Religion Clause and its application to public schools.

McIlheran wasn't simply "wondering just where God fits into all this." If that was the case, then his tinpot credentials would have remained for the time being confined to his habitually fallacious anecdotal outrage, the impetus for much of his daily scribbling.

But by opining that Mr. Hines was only "on to something," he's saying that Hines hasn't gone far enough.

Now, only a fool would deny that even a scholarly discussion of ethics — i.e., that branch of philosophy — doesn't touch on some questions of divine attachment. See, e.g., Plato's Euthyphro (or, for that matter, the link to the Hume/Kant dialogues provided earlier).

The trouble resides with McIlheran's embedded assumptions. Witness the following observation from fellow traveler Dad29 located at Prof. Esenberg's blog:

Well, it is certainly possible to found social morality on natural law without mentioning that natural law is a subset of Divine law, although it is philosophically impossible to specifically exclude Divine law, if pressed ...

Hello? The objective existence of "Divine law" (and, obviously, its equally Divine Revisor of Statutes) is simply assumed? I think not, or else one of these days, Lord knows somebody needs to prove it.

Never mind the countless human interpretations of this so-called "Divine law," even if one accepts that there is such a thing.

Whose is to take precedence, McIlheran's own personal Judeo-Christian version? Even within that widely disparate set of traditions, there are so many competitive doctrines, all declaiming their respective infallibilities, that any attempt at scholarly discussion under those circumstances is dead in the water from the get-go.

It's a chump's errand to even begin embarking on that path in the context of government schools, regardless of one's view of the correctness of the Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence (which is primarily Prof. Esenberg's concern, although he seems to believe that the state's neutrality toward religion itself necessarily impinges on the moral deliberations of the religious).

In any event, casually bland insistences that "Divine law" somehow underpins and controls the arrangement of human society do not for a truly useful discussion of ethics make, and they certainly do not coincide with the culturally egalitarian mission of the public schools.

Yes, we all understand that some people believe this, that, or the other thing, and there's no crime in acknowledging any of it. Nor should they be made into pariahs for so subscribing (or not).

But for better or ill, the state doesn't get to push any particular sectarian belief at the behest of those particular believers.

The point being that there is common (even universal) ground on ethical matters to be discovered without introducing allegedly god(s)-given law (and god[s]-meted punishment) into the equation.

Mr. Hines, for one, gets it. McIlheran, it seems, does not. I applaud, however, the woolly hat, as it better facilitates the electrical conductivity of the neurons, notwithstanding its aesthetic features.

(P.S. It's illusory, not illustory, which looks to be somebody's trade name. Don't get me sued; the last thing I want to do is hire a lawyer.)

Earlier: Clutch said ...

Tabernak, comment embarrassant

My friend Jay Bullock a.k.a. folkbum just took me to the constitutional woodshed in the course of lamenting the ineligibility of Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm for the office of the vice presidency, pending the annexation of Vancouver, British Columbia as a U.S. military base, like John McCain's Panamanian birthplace.

For some reason this reminded my of my other friend and facile Francophone — he speaks better French than I do — capper, who kindly sent me a link to some screed by Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel "right-wing guy" columnist Patrick McIlheran the other day.

Apparently McIlheran is concerned that a lot of people in Miami speak Spanish. But, not to worry, because:

This is, I reiterate, plainly not the advent of the kind of social fracturing suffered by Canada because of its efforts to accommodate French-speaking Quebec.

It seems every time McIlheran mentions Canada, some manner of utter nonsense ensues. Last time, he was claiming that Canadians have no access to health care without a dedicated family doctor to make referrals. Before that he was expressing surprise at French traffic signs in Ontario, evidently unaware that many communities there are almost entirely French.

(Ask me about the month I spent in Hearst one weekend.)

Speaking as an inhabitant of Canada for nearly 40 years before taking up permanent legal residence in the U.S., I have no idea what McIlheran is talking about by "social fracturing" and "suffering" or, for that matter, "French-speaking Quebec."

Quebec is one of Canada's ten provinces, the (very) rough equivalent of U.S. States. Its own federalist relationship with Ottawa, the seat of Canada's national government, is long and complex.

While it's true that there was some trouble in 1970 when a handful of extreme Québécois radicals kidnapped and strangled a liberal journalist and provincial politician named Pierre Laporte, what McIlheran terms "social fracturing" and "suffering" I recall as healthy debate and democratic initiatives.

Those initiatives included a number of provincial referendums on separating from the federal scheme, one of which came within less than a percentage point of succeeding.

And, certainly, there are the elements of stereotypical Gallic arrogance. For example, Lucien Bouchard, the former chief of the Bloc Québécois who ended up Leader of the Opposition by dint of Canada's multi-party parliamentary system despite only running candidates in Quebec, notoriously refused to move into his official residence.

But with very few exceptions, English Canadians value Quebec's distinctive culture as much as Quebeckers themselves do.* Culture and its preservation in fact is the raison d'être underlying Quebec's separatist sentiments, unlike McIlheran's beloved Albertans, whose ludicrous and abortive attempt at separation was based entirely on greed.

Rather, what annoys many Canadians about the separatist initiatives are some of the proposed mechanics of Quebec sovereignty, which seek to establish complete political autonomy while retaining all the benefits of its association with the rest of Canada.

The attitude of the opponents of Quebec separatism was essentially, "Don't leave, but if you do leave, make a clean break and don't count on any further support from us. À bientôt, mes amis."

Years ago when I was working on a construction project in Iroquois Falls (another predominantly Francophone Ontario community), my old buddy Robert Lapointe and I hooked up with an engineer from Montreal, who was visiting the site to supervise the installation of his company's pulp grinding machinery.

A more virulent and provocative Quebec separatist you could not imagine. Also a very intelligent and articulate one, and he almost had even me convinced to assist in rescinding his citizenship and help boot him out of the country, or at least facilitate his exile to St. Pierre et Miquelon.

But that didn't prevent any of us from enjoying a riotously entertaining and extremely late evening carousing about Timmins,** beginning at the engineer's temporary digs, where he generously treated us to dinner. (How I miss those expense accounts.)

Who knows where in the world Patrick McIlheran gets his weird fantasies of "suffering" and "social fracturing," but I'm here to tell you they certainly don't originate with Canadians.

* Québécois heavy metal we could do without, but at least we all managed the consolation of ridding ourselves of Celine Dion. You're welcome.

** Ms. Chubak Kapel does not say "oot."