Van Jones -- Kicked to The Curb (deservedly so)

Van Jones is only one of a whole host of questionable, radical, inappropriate Obama political appointments.

Now that he has been hoisted on his own ugly petard, by his own words (9-11 Truther, overall partisan radical with reprehensible views, comments and attitudes).

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34604_The_Inevitable_Happens-_Van_Jones_Resigns

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/34607_Van_Jones_Statement

Now some on the left are blaming Glenn Beck for "outing" this loser, but frankly, I remember reading about Van Jones months ago at National Review on line (the corner) where some of the writers there tolds us about this guys ugly and questionable background.

Obama quickly throws him under the bus (oh yeah, he "resigned"). But he never should have been on the bus !

Where was the MSM on this ? Nowhere, of course. In the tank for Obama as always.

Read on below:


The Washington Post is on the Case.... [Jonah Goldberg]

You've got to love the Washington Post's coverage. The first story they ran on the Van Jones controversy was yesterday, with the chutzpah-rich headline "White House Says Little About Embattled Jones." Ah yes, that mute-mouthed White House has said so little about a story we at the Post haven't bothered to cover until this story about how close-lipped the White House is.

Today the Post reports in its lede:

White House environmental adviser Van Jones resigned late Saturday after weeks of pressure from the right over his past activism.

Weeks of pressure that you, dear Post readers, never heard about in weeks of reading this newspaper.

Mickey's getting closer to his dream: "I've been waiting for the day when a prominent pol resigns and for print MSM readers it appears to be out-of-the-blue...."


NYT Explains It All For You [Stanley Kurtz]
Why all the caterwauling about Van Jones press coverage? NYT has explained here.


RE: The New York Times [Mark Hemingway]

A couple of takeaways from Van Jones resignation:

1) Remember Chas Freeman? This is actually the second time an Obama appointee has been sunk due to a protracted controversy over past statements and the NYT didn't write a single word about the controversy until after the fact. (Of course, Freeman had merely been nominated when he took himself out of the running for Director of National Intelligence — he wasn't actually in the administration, unlike Van Jones.)

2) While Glenn Beck and others in the conservative commentariat had been shining a light on Jones' radical past for a while, the revelations that finally sunk Jones were broken by Gateway Pundit and other bloggers. Not that long ago, the idea that a guy Googling in the basement would be capable of bringing down a White House staffer would have been a story in and of itself. I suppose some might think this sort of thing is old hat five years after Rathergate, but I also suspect that this aspect of the story will be largely ignored because it makes the MSM look very, very bad. Van Jones is an admitted former communist in an administration that thinks 'vetting' has something to do with universal health care for pets, and no one in the traditional media thought, "Hey, I wonder what we can learn if we just look this guy up on the internet?"


Van Jones & Obama's "Centrism" [Jonah Goldberg]

I just watched David Axelrod, the top ranking political advisor in the White House, and Robert Gibbs, the President's spokesman on "Meet the Press" and "This Week" respectively. Neither of them was willing, even after repeated questioning, to offer a single negative word about Van Jones. Not one word. A 9/11 Truther and defender of Mumia-Abu Jamal is not radical enough for this White House to distance itself from the man in any way. Again and again, this White House has been offered chances to condemn the man's views and they have willfully and quite deliberately refused.

Compare this to the controversy over Lani Guinier, President Clinton's nominee to run the civil rights division at the Justice Department. When her views came to light, president Clinton disavowed her. "This has nothing to do with the political center," Clinton insisted, "This is about my center." Who would have guessed that there's a case for saying Bill Clinton's center had more intellectual integrity than Barack Obama's?

Now, there's reason to believe that Clinton was lying when he said he was unaware of her views when he picked her, but at least Clinton understood that he couldn't claim to be a centrist and associate himself with her views if they became widely known.

Van Jones' views are now widely known. And as far as anyone can tell reading the newspapers this morning or watching the Sunday shows, this White House and this President have nothing but praise for Jones and think he's a fine, self-sacrificing, public servant who simply took one for the team.

I can't think of a more succinct, discrete, example illuminating why Obama's claims to centrism are a fraud.

Update: Oh and the conversation between Tom Brokaw and Tom Friedman about the lessons of Van Jones was a complete scandal. One of Friedman's key take-aways from this whole affair is that too many people will self-censor themselves so they can get government jobs. What a tragedy that fewer people will support cop-killers and anti-American conspiracy groups because of poor Van Jones chilling effect on the culture.

Oh, and listening to Friedman and Brokaw disparage the internet as a useless news medium, makes them sound like cranky old monks lamenting that flash-in-the-pan printing press.


Krauthammer (pre-resignation):


Well, I'm not terribly disturbed about the expletive he used about Republicans. I have said worse about Democrats. Hell, I've said worse about Republicans. I have said worse about cousins of mine.

On one side of the family, anyway.

And I'm not even disturbed that this guy is a communist. It is not the first time we had a communist in the U.S. government. And anyway, with the death of communism, it is a kind of a pathetic intellectual anachronism to remain a communist.

However, the stuff that we learned this afternoon is devastating. Here is a man who signed on to a petition demanding several investigations of the collaboration of the Bush administration with the worst massacre of Americans ever committed on American soil.

Now, that is beyond extremism and radicalism. That is psychotic paranoia. It is a malignant kind of politics. And you have to ask yourselves: In the White House, if you didn't know he is a "truther," then you have got to ask him to politely resign. And if you did [know], is that acceptable in the government of the United States?