THE TENSION: The Decline and Fall of Western Civ for 12 Oct.

After reading: wash, rinse and repeat.

Legacy media has invoked radio silence on news reports of Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's ethical hangup. Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn't personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show, according to the story: AP Exclusive: Reid Got $1M in Land Sale. Radio host Rush Limbaugh today noted:

I'm still watching stories on Denny Hastert and how he needs to resign, and PMSNBC is running a story now about some wacko evangelical who got into Hastert's house yesterday pretending to be -- well, Hastert thought he was just a supporter. This minister shows up, this evangelist, and prays with Hastert for six minutes and then counsels him to resign. Well, all well and good, but where are the calls for Dingy Harry's resignation? He made a greater profit in his land deal than ExxonMobil did on oil prices
I mean, this is absurd. They're still trying to get Hastert to quit, and everybody's, "Well, Dingy Harry, he has amended his filings, and he's submitted it, it was transparent as it could be." Yeah, to who? Organized crime? He submitted his amended filings to the ethics committee, and he's now awaiting word from them (ha-ha-ha) of what's going to happen. You gotta hear a couple audio sound bites. Jerry Bodlander of AP interviewing Dingy Harry about the story that came out yesterday from Associated Press, and Dingy Harry hung up on Bodlander. We have a little clip of that.
The Washington Post downplayed the story on page A3: Reid Land Deal Under Scrutiny. I have also linked the AP video here.

The next three stories have taken their rightful place in the Gallery of the Absurd.

KVUE News reports anti-war activist Casey Sheehan claims she's a Nobel Peace Prize finalist. Video.

In a statement posted today, the U.S. Committee on Environment and Public Works says that David Roberts posted the following response on the Grist Blog today, retracting his earlier statement calling for Nuremberg trials for those in the climate-change "denial industry":

"There are people and institutions knowingly disseminating falsehoods and distortions about global warming. They deserve to be held publicly accountable.
As to what shape that accountability would take, my analogy to the Nuremberg trials was woefully inappropriate -- nay, stupid. I retract it wholeheartedly. More -- much more -- later."
Global warming elites have criticized those in their ranks who resort to emotional pleas over sound scientific reasoning. Then again, there is enough disagreement in the professional scientific community over global warming to take a closer look at the ethics and economic incentives of those who so stridently insist that the world pay attention.

Economists joke about conclusions drawn from studies performed in data-free environments. I'll get to that in a moment. For now, imagine a football game played using rules based on the methodology of what the Washington Post says is a recent study by epidemiologists (folks who study factors affecting the health and illness of populations) who claim 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
OK, back to that football game. So the game would be scored by taking a poll of those in attendance. The poll, of course, would reflect the respondent's answers to questions about who is scoring points without considering the real scoreboard of the game being played. The winner would then be chosen based on the poll data and not the actual score. In any case, it seems the economist's joke is that this study's results conclude more about what Iraqis answers are to interview questions than to a simple bean-count sum using real data like the actual death numbers. The story is also covered by Reuters, AP.

In related news, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's office rejected as inaccurate on Thursday a study that found about 655,000 Iraqis had died due to the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion and later violence, according to Reuters. Researchers surveyed 1,849 households, including 12,801 household members, in 47 randomly selected sites across Iraq.

"The problem with this is they're using an extrapolation technique from a relatively small sample from an area of Iraq which isn't representative of the country as a whole," Blair's spokesman said.
"We have questioned that technique right from the beginning and we continue to do so," he added.
According to WorldNetDaily YouTube blocked a video mocking Clinton administration's Albright-run North Korea policy. The Examiner reports Fox News pundit, author and top-rated blogger Michelle Malkin last week received notice from YouTube that her video had been deemed “offensive.” The result? Her account was terminated and her videos deleted.

Malkin may have been the first casualty in the coming information war but she certainly will not be the last. Yet online conservative elites seem not to care. They fail to realize that voters are increasingly accessing news and information from these new media sources and that these sources are using their editorial discretion to publish and promote a liberal -- not conservative -- agenda.
Last and truly least, CBS News reports former page Jordan Edmund, now 21, met with Mark Foley in person twice, including for dinner in San Diego in 2002. They went to Foley's hotel room but Edmund told agents he left after about 20 minutes and nothing untoward happened. (Edits: it's what happens when you watch TV when you write.)