The release is clearly designed to lead the reader to believe that Rush was not arrested. He was. A quick check with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office confirms this. The only shame is that the prosecutor who cut a deal with him was obviously not a Rush fan– otherwise, he might have taken Rush at his word: “Too many whites are getting away with drug use…Too many whites are getting away with drug sales…The answer is to go out and find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them and send them up the river, too.”

The full press release is below the fold.Press Release
Source: Rush Limbaugh

Reports Stating Rush Limbaugh Was Arrested Are Inaccurate; Limbaugh’s Attorney Holds Press Conference at 8:00 pm Tonight
Friday April 28, 7:55 pm ET

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla., April 28 /PRNewswire/ — A spokesman for Rush Limbaugh said some news reports that state Mr. Limbaugh was arrested are inaccurate.

Separately, Rush Limbaugh’s attorney, Roy Black will hold a press conference at 8:00 pm this evening at the Marriott Hotel at 1001 Okeechobbee Road in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Mr. Black will discuss the agreement reached today with the State Attorney’s Office whereby a single count charge of doctor shopping that was filed today by the State Attorney will be dismissed in 18 months.

As previously announced, a primary condition of the dismissal, Mr. Limbaugh must continue to seek treatment from the doctor he has seen for the past two and one half years. This is the same doctor under whose care Mr. Limbaugh has remained free of his addiction without relapse.

Mr. Black stated, “Mr. Limbaugh and I have maintained from the start that there was no doctor shopping, and we continue to hold this position. Accordingly, we filed today with the Court a plea of ‘Not Guilty’ to the charge filed by the State.

“As part of this agreement, Mr. Limbaugh also has agreed to make a $30,000 payment to the State of Florida to defray the public cost of the investigation. The agreement also provides that he must refrain from violating the law during the 18 month period, must pay $30 per month for the cost of “supervision” and comply with other similar provisions of the agreement.

“Mr. Limbaugh had intended to remain in treatment. Thus, we believe the outcome for him personally will be much as if he had fought the charge and won,” he said.

Contacts: Sitrick And Company
(310) 788-2850
(212) 573-6100

Mike Sitrick
Tony Knight
Tammy Taylor
Anne George

Source: Rush Limbaugh

That said, he’s been doggedly following the Muhammed cartoon controversy, and it would be a pleasure to see him develop a slightly more mature view of press freedom. In a post yesterday, he noted the suspension of two student editors:

Their offense? They provided information to their readers, critical to understanding a major global story. That’ll teach them to commit journalism.

Of course, he’s referring to the editors’ decision to publish the cartoons that sparked the current worldwide controversy. He’s at least consistent; he would have also published the photos from Abu Ghraib and aired the video of Nick Berg’s beheading. He’s failed on two counts, however.

First, for someone who prides himself on his journalistic credibility, he’s done an absolutely awful job of accurately representing the story. These two students who were “practicing journalism” ran the cartoons as an editorial statement without consulting the rest of the editorial board. Further, from the editorial board’s statement:

We want to make it clear that while we do not necessarily disagree with the decision to print these cartoons, we disagree with how they were run. There was a tactful way to do this, and it is unfortunate it was not run in that manner….

This situation was bad enough, but Gorton tried to make it worse by writing yet another hasty column. He also brought in Humair Sabir to write the reaction in the Muslim community. With all due respect to Sabir, he has been friends with Gorton for one-and-a-half years, and one of the primary pillars of journalism is to NEVER interview one’s friends. This newspaper is appalled that Gorton would even consider using his friend in the newspaper as a voice for the Muslim community. To actually do it is beyond embarrassment.

This isn’t a case of the students being punished by the administration for exercising their right to freedom of speech. This is a case of students being punished by their peers for acting in a deceitful manner and engaging in poor journalistic practices. By representing the situation differently, Mr. Sullivan has failed his readers.

Second, his conception of press freedom is simply immature. Freedom of the press is freedom from prior restraint, it is not freedom from the consequences of one’s actions. To argue that everyone should publish cartoons that some find offensive to assert press freedom is silly, at least in America. How many editors feel that they cannot publish the cartoons for fear of repercussions to themselves or their papers? Not many– at worst, they might lose the subscriptions of some devout Muslims and their sympathizers. This is hardly censorship; individuals have a right to choose what they do and do not purchase, and some choose to stop purchasing newspapers because they dislike what they perceive as an anti-Christian bias, or because they can’t stand Sally Forth.

In fact, there’s a good reason other than fear to decide not to publish the cartoons: it would be bad journalistic practice. This is a rather unique situation, as the press is covering a press controversy, and by displaying the cartoons, a paper sacrifices its neutrality– it has cast its lot with those who approve of the publication of the cartoons. For Andrew’s sake, I’ll highlight two basic rules of journalism:

1. Don’t create news, report it.
2. Don’t become the news.

Finally… for my readers’ edification, the cartoons in question can be viewed by those who do not consider the depiction of Muhammed to be a sin (and even by those who do) here. I’m not personally offended by them, and I find the violence that is occurring overseas abhorrent. I simply find that the controversy created by publishing the cartoons in the United States would overshadow the informative value provided by their display; that because the act of publishing them is in large part the whole story, doing so again would sacrifice a paper’s neutrality; and that they’re easily found on the internet anyway, if someone is interested. Crying “press freedom!” as an excuse for ignoring these other considerations is immature– it reflects an unwillingness to accept the responsibility that comes along with freedom.

“Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW’s, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel’s life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad? 

Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable.”

Yes, Ben, he lied. He lied while trying to cover up his attempt to spy on the Democratic National Convention. Why was he spying? To help secure his reelection. So yes, Ben, he lied, as politicians have done many times before, but that’s not what really matters here. What matters is the fact that Nixon was abusing his power as President in a bid to weaken the opposition so that he might remain in power. That action is a fundamental violation of the principles of democracy. Ben, if you can’t see that fact, you’re an enemy of our nation, an enemy of our way of life. We live in a democratic society; any attack on our democracy is an attack on our entire society. If you support such attacks because they happen to serve your interests, you’re a danger to us all.Of course, Ben Stein isn’t an American first and foremost. His allegiances lie more closely with the State of Israel, which is fine, but a good reason for him to live over there instead. He makes this obvious:

“(Have you noticed how Mark Felt looks like one of those old Nazi war criminals they find in Bolivia or Paraguay? That same, haunted, hunted look combined with a glee at what he has managed to get away with so far?) 

And it gets worse: it’s been reported that Mark Felt is at least part Jewish. The reason this is worse is that at the same time that Mark Felt was betraying Richard Nixon, Nixon was saving Eretz Israel. It is a terrifying chapter in betrayal and ingratitude. If he even knows what shame is, I wonder if he felt a moment’s shame as he tortured the man who brought security and salvation to the land of so many of his and my fellow Jews. Somehow, as I look at his demented face, I doubt it.”

The allusion to Mark Felt being in any way similar to a Nazi war criminal seems totally out of the blue, until Stein makes it clear that he actually believes that Mark Felt’s actions, which exposed an attempt to undermine American democracy, were a crime against Nixon the man and Israel the state. By adopting this absurd stance, Stein makes it clear that to him, Israel’s national interests are more important than the foundations of American democracy. If there’s a traitor, it’s Stein.

While Stein’s the only one who seems to view Felt as a Nazi, other conservatives have been drawing absurd parallels, too. Consider Mike Lester’s cartoon [page bottom] on the topic, which contrasts the treatment of Mark Felt to that of Linda Tripp. The comparison makes sense, of course, unless you’re capable of making the distinction between leaking information about illegal, anti-democratic acts and leaking information about merely distasteful acts. The right-wing can use the “but Clinton…” defense night and day, but it doesn’t become any more coherent. Clinton’s sexual escapades, spin them as you might, didn’t threaten to undermine our democracy.

The Daily Show last week featured Robert Novak, G. Gordon Liddy, and Pat Buchanan all denouncing Felt as well, accompanied by the usual brilliant commentary of Jon Stewart.

As a final example, William F. Buckley, Jr. managed to jump on board with both the myth of equivalence between Nixon and Clinton and the idea that Nixon was forced to resign due to the lies themselves, and throws in a new piece of idiocy for good measure:

It was thought for some 30 years that Deep Throat did as he did to preserve the honor of his country. Perhaps that was the precipitating motive of Mark Felt. But to agree on that point requires that you agree that getting Richard Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern, in which event it would have been OK to shoot him… 

It can certainly be argued that Mr. Nixon dug his own grave by making the mistakes he made. Presidents do that all the time. They make fateful mistakes. But the judicial arbiters of history tend to come up with appropriate punishments. Monica Lewinsky came close to tossing President Bill Clinton out of office. Yet it does not follow that because the president dallied with Ms. Lewinsky he should have been impeached and tossed out. Nixon’s overreaction to the publication of the Pentagon Papers didn’t mean that his mandate to govern was for that reason forfeited.

No, what ejected Nixon was the accumulation of crossed stories.

Again, yes Mr. Buckley, Clinton and Nixon both lied. Every President has, and we know that you’re smart enough to see beyond such simple distinctions. Nixon resigned in the face of a bipartisan agreement that he needed to be impeached. Clinton was impeached and acquitted after a partisan witch hunt. There is no equivalence. Nixon’s mandate wasn’t forfeited just due to “overreaction”, it was forfeited due to his abuse of his executive powers to spy on his political enemies. That’s the critical difference. It wasn’t Nixon’s lies that got him, it was what he was trying to cover up. If an “accumulation of crossed stories” were really why Nixon was ejected, our current President would have been out the door a long time ago.

The real keeper in Buckley’s piece is at the beginning, though. By arguing that in order for Felt to have been serving his country and justice, we must “agree that getting Richard Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern, in which event it would have been OK to shoot him”, Buckley opens up two interesting points.

First, we should consider whether getting Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern. I argue that it was. I’m happy to grant that Nixon accomplished many good things for our country; I’m actually a fan of most of what he did. However, no matter how good the leader, our democracy itself is more important. I would rather a poor leader who is democratically elected than a great one who subverts the process. Buckley and other conservatives (see Stein, above) appear to be a little more Machiavellian; democracy is to them less important than the outcomes acheived.

Second, we should examine the non sequitur that if we believe that getting Nixon out was the supreme national concern, “it would have been okay to shoot him.” Buckley doesn’t leave the door open for another option, which was the one that actually occurred– the information got out to the public, outrage mounted, and the democratic process led Nixon to the door without bloodshed. Shooting President Nixon would have been criminal in the same way Nixon’s actions were criminal– it would have robbed the American people of the democratic process. The way that Buckley passes over the importance of democracy again in favor of outcomes buttresses the point that he simply doesn’t care about democracy.

The right’s campaign to smear Felt, as they’ve attempted with everyone else who doesn’t slavishly adhere to their views (witness the savage attacks on Michael Schaivo’s character, for example), is despicable. We can never know for sure what Felt’s motives were, but we can know that as a result of his actions, at least one man with a lack of respect for the foundations of our nation was called to account. The great shame is that so many others have flourished since then.

How can it be that, on every page of every other edition for months now, the New York Times has been stating categorically that Iraq harbored no weapons of mass destruction? 

Now, if one didn’t understand the situation in Iraq from the 1980s to the present, this certainly would sound like a good question. However, if one doesn’t understand such things, it’s usually better not to let it be known through a widely-read column.The answer, by the way, to Hitch’s question: after the Gulf War, critical components of the sites were disabled, destroyed, or removed, and UN monitoring began. Thus, not only did Iraq not have weapons of mass destruction, but the facilities for developing WMDs were useless to Hussein. He simply could not have used them to create WMDs. This position is even supported by the Bush administration, which has both noted Hussein’s desire to obtain WMDs and admitted that after an exhaustive search, none could be found.

As though that weren’t enough, Hitch offered another stupid question:

The U.N. inspectors, who are solemnly quoted by Glanz and Broad as having ‘monitored’ the alarming developments at Al Hatteen and elsewhere, don’t come out looking too professional, either. If by scanning satellite pictures now they can tell us that potentially thermonuclear stuff is on the loose, how come they couldn’t come up with this important data when they were supposedly ‘on the ground’? 

Answer: The materials in question were present prior to the American invasion. They disappeared between the removal of the inspectors one day prior to the invasion and the securing of the facilities by American forces months later. The inspectors don’t look stupid– we do.