Subject: You fired Dan Froomkin?

Shocked. I am shocked. Tell me; when do you merge with The Washington Times? Any day now?

Pathetic. Hire him back, TODAY, if you want the least bit of credibility with me and literally millions of other readers. Otherwise...the dustbin of history awaits you. Katharine Graham is rolling over in her grave today. You blithering idiots!

His reply:

Thanks for writing. As you may know, as ombudsman I operate independently from The Post's newsroom and management. But I regularly inform them of what I'm hearing from readers. Currently, I'm receiving a large number of e-mails from readers like you who are unhappy with Mr. Froomkin's departure. I appreciate your comment and will share your views.

Best wishes,

Andy Alexander
Washington Post Ombudsman

Me:

Thanks for your reply. If I may offer one more bit of advice before the Washington Post falls into irrelevance:

Write a column about it, and take a stand. This is ridiculous, and if you don't know it, you aren't comprehending the situation. Froomkin was the only person in Washington who skewered what needed to be skewered, who talked about what needed to be talked about, who informed us about what we needed to be informed about.

We aren't stupid. If Obama makes a mistake, or if Obama continues a Bush policy that is absolutely abhorrent (and about 99% of them were, that is NO joke), if Obama uses an excuse as lame as 'we wish to avoid Dick Cheney being made fun of on late night television and comedy shows', and nobody else is reporting this...then you NEED Dan Froomkin.

You just lost a lot of readers. Your management needs to know this. If they don't care, then they obviously don't see the direction newspapers are taking these days. They'll be at the elephant graveyard before they ever know it.

The ombudsman's reply was a bit bland, but it could have been worse. Like the response I got from the New York Times in 2001: I wrote and asked their ombudsman why, after eight years of investigating President Clinton for what was ultimately bogus Whitewater corruption charges, they were not investigating Vice President Cheney as intensely for his involvement in Halliburton's $100 million Enron-style writedowns?

I have the email somewhere, but this is the gist of it, swear to God:

We'll investigate Vice President Cheney when the Democrats start hollering about it, and not before.

Some wankering, eh? Swear to God.

It took six years to wait for as good an example as this, but these examples are only going to multiply as long as John Roberts is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

John Roberts has written that he thinks it's more important to uphold previous judicial rulings that are WRONG than it is for a person convicted wrongly to be able to prove it. Via the Daily Kos:

Although Roberts conceded that "[i]t is now often possible to determine whether a biological tissue matches a suspect with near certainty," he determined that Osburne has no right to pay for a test that could exonerate him for a crime he did not commit. Allowing Osburne to prove his potential innocence, Roberts said, risks "unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice."

Read that last clause. Unnecessarily overthrowing the established system of criminal justice.

A lot of folks sitting in prison waiting to be exonerated for ANY reason just lost all hope.

In August and September of 2003, a great verbal war was ongoing. On one side, George W. Bush and his Lying Liars all screeched day and night that if we did not invade Iraq, we would suffer another 9-11. Bush put the screws to Congress for an authorization for the war. It was put to a vote in the Senate.

I was against it, but I knew only too well that George would get his way. The two previous years had seen him get everything he asked for and more from Congress, in the name of his 'War on Terror'. I knew this much: No matter HOW Congress voted, no matter what they did, even if they outright FORBADE Bush from invading Iraq, Bush was going to invade Iraq. The Constitution, legal U.S. statutes and two other branches of government be damned, not to mention public sentiment. He was going to invade.

The Senate seat held by my state's only Democrat was not in good hands. The Senator had voted for Bush's tax cuts; voted for quite a few of his draconian conservative issues; she was a decent representative of my very conservative state.

I still maintain that I wanted her to vote FOR the AUMF for one reason only: To be able to hold her seat. If she's going to vote FOR insane wars led by would-be dictators, then what's the point of keeping her in? A DINO?

In order to keep her seat, she couldn't be seen as a pinko hippie war-hater. But there are more important issues to vote on than just one war resolution.

Supreme Court nominees, and Federal judges, too.

It was a Sysiphian effort. To this day, it never ends.

But I guess in fairness, we're going to have to start counting Barack Obama's lies, too. So far, not many people have died for those lies. But we'll be watching.

This is yet another example of Obama's lawyers blatantly violating the president's promise not to "protect information merely because it reveals the violation of a law or embarrassment to the government."

And for his trouble in reporting this debacle, Dan Froomkin was fired.

We're back to Bizarro-World, politically speaking.

Holy fucking shit.

The only honest voice willing to criticize George W. Bush AND Barack Obama is now gone from the Washington Post. Wow.

Not that it'll do a lick of good...but write the ombudsman and tell him what you think. Mine's already sent.