Let’s see if you can wrap your head around this one — according to this blogger, when graduating students at The New School heckled Senator McCain, the students were rude. But when graduating students at the University of Missouri — St. Louis booed and heckled Representative William “Lacy” Clay (D-MO), it was the congressman’s fault.

He nearly incited a riot! Those UMSL students were a “captive audience” to a speaker who said things they disagreed with, for pete’s sake. What else were they supposed to do?

Oddly, I couldn’t find anything about the near riot from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which suggests it was a very minor near riot. The UMSL web site confirmed that Rep. Clay was a speaker at the commencement for the “College of Nursing, UMSL/WU Joint Undergraduate Engineering Program, College of Fine Arts and Communication, School of Social Work, UM-Rolla/Engineering Education Center, Gerontology Program (master’s program) and Public Policy Administration Program (master’s program).”

What do you want to bet the hecklers were engineers? They are a sensitive bunch.

I haven’t found the text of the congressman’s remarks, but according to one of the graduates it must have been hell:

He spent a good five minutes talking about how President Bush lied, there were no weapons of mass destruction, we need to bring our troops home, etc. (the typical rhetoric of the left). He even gave the number of U.S. casualties to date. During this tirade many people began to boo and yell. At one point the jeers were so bad that Mr. Clay said “Now wait a minute, I have the microphone so you need to listen”

The grads had to sit through five whole minutes of actual truth about the President and the war, and understandably they were so upset that the congressman “needed security to escort him from the building.” Poor babies.

(Did Senator McCain need security to leave Madison Square Garden last weekend? Well, actually, he would have had security no matter what. Senator Chuck Schumer spoke at my son’s graduation from Purchase College, or the college formerly known as SUNY-Purchase, last Friday — he didn’t say anything interesting — and there was security up the wazoo even though the audience liked Senator Chuck just fine.)

Now, some of you might think the blogger is being a tad inconsistent. But no, it’s about respect, he says. Some grads from the New School had turned their backs on Senator McCain even before he began speaking, but the grads at UMSL were justified in heckling and throwing a near riot because Rep. Clay attacked the president of the United States (Yes! And for five whole minutes!) and then reprimanded the audience after they started booing him.

“I don’t expect you to understand this,” the blogger says. Actually, I believe I understand it just fine.

Naturally this guy found the protesting of Condi Rice at Boston College extremely distasteful, even though it was mostly silent. The protests “spoiled” the graduation.

It’s a good thing my boy didn’t go to BC; I don’t think I could have endured a speech by Condi without throwing up. That would have spoiled the graduation, I think.

Oh, and someone should explain to the blogger that the most likely reason the AP’s account of the speech and the actual speech were slightly different is that the AP was working from a press release of the speech provided by the Department of State prior to the graduation, and Ms. Rice evidently decided to leave out the part about the use of force in Iraq being “the right thing” at the last minute. Maybe she didn’t want to incite a near riot. That was respectful of her.

Glenn Greenwald, who clearly does not understand respect, blogged yesterday:

So pro-Bush students heckled Rep. Clay’s speech and were so disruptive that the Congressman actually needed security to escort him out of the building for fear that his physical safety would be endangered. Does that show that the Angry Right is deranged and is jeopardizing their chances to win elections? No, it shows the opposite. This incident also shows how deranged the Angry Left is.

Of course. That’s perfectly clear.

According to Instapundit — who cited the Gateway Pundit post and said that “a Hateful anti-war speech by Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO) . . . provokes a near riot” — this episode “[s]eems to illustrate the point made in this WSJ editorial about the Democrats’ penchant for self-marginalization and self-destruction.” The WSJ Editorial to which Instapundit cited condemned the heckling and booing by the New School students of McCain’s speech. But to Instapundit, that same Editorial also shows that Democrats are acting stupidly and angrily when they give commencement speeches and are heckled by Republican students to the point where they need security to be escorted out.

Of course. Democrats are supposed to smile and say “yowzah!” at whatever Republicans do, because to disagree with Republicans is bad as well as politically risky. No one is going to want to vote for Democrats who badmouth Republicans. Even other Democrats will run screaming from a Democrat who badmouths Republicans, apparently. I’m not sure why this would be true given recent polling on the popularity of Republicans, but it must be true. The only Dems who can expect to win elections are docile and respectful Dems. But it’s OK if Republicans insult Democrats because, you know, Democrats deserve it.

Gateway Pundit also points out how hateful Jack Murtha is, because he, too, has been giving anti-war speeches — including at Commencement ceremonies — where he forces Republican students in the audience to heckle, walk out and act disruptively. How come Rich Lowry wasn’t decrying the terribly uncivil conduct towards war hero Jack Murtha? At least according to Instapundit’s rationale, it’s because it is the anti-war speeches themselves that are hateful — not the student’s understandable reaction — and so the speech and the speaker are to blame for provoking the disruptive behavior of those patriotic pro-war students.

So, to re-cap the rules: (1) When a pro-war politician gives a pro-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle and boo him, that shows how Deranged the Angry Left is — because they heckled a pro-war speech. (2) When an anti-war politician gives an anti-war speech as part of a graduation ceremony, and students in the audience heckle, walk out and even riot, that also shows how Angry the Left is — because they “provoked a near riot” by pro-war students.

Glenn says the Wall Street Journal was upset about the heckling of McCain because the students were “sneering at our war heroes.” But he recalls that in the past Republicans have been a tad less than respectful to Democratic war heroes –e.g., Murtha, John Kerry, Max Cleland. “Sneering at war heroes was one of the principal tactics of the Bush re-election campaign and has been a reliable tool to attack and smear any war hero who speaks out against this administration,” Glenn says. For that matter, McCain himself got the smear treatment in 2000 when he was running against George W. Bush for the Republican nomination. He used to be crazy, remember? I guess he got better.

But I think I see the difference. If you express disagreement with a war hero to his face, you are being disrespectful. But if you smear him behind his back, it’s perfectly OK! Clearly, righties understand principal and ethics so much better than we lefties do.

Righties must think there are two New York Cities. The New York City attacked on September 11, city of the flaming towers and flag-raising firemen, glorified in ten thousand cheesy graphics with giant weeping bald eagles looming in the foreground, is one.

And then there’s the other New York City, populated by ultra-liberal moonbats who have forgotten September 11 and who roll over for terrorists and would surrender if attacked.

This may astonish righties, but it’s the truth: These two New Yorks are one and the same city.

I bring this up now because of reaction to the heckling of Senator McCain at The New School commencement yesterday. Righties are dismissing the heckling as the work of “moonbats” and “Marxists.” We find these comments at the rightie blog Daily Pundit:

So McCain is now to be characterized as a “conservative Republican?” Apparently the AP is already in the tank and lying to advance his candidacy.

Oh, and by the way – do you think it is accidental that McCain has taken to appearing at various outposts of Barking Moonbat Central, so that faux commie whackjobs can screech at him, thereby demonstrating his “conservative” credentials, if only in contrast?

Look for him to do more of it as his campaign rolls into high gear next year.

I’ll come back to the question of why it is conservatives refuse to acknowledge McCain’s clear conservatism in a minute. First, I want to remind the blogger, if indeed he ever realized, that The New School is in the same New York City that was attacked on September 11. Indeed, as most of the campus is south of 14th Street, it was within the area surrounded by police barricades for several days after the attack. The New School’s president, Bob Kerrey, said at the 2002 commencement:

Speaking of challenges, there are many challenges for higher education in the United States today, especially for a university located in New York City, inside the impact zone of the September 11th terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. …

… Students aren’t the only ones facing challenges at our university. It’s been an amazing 18 months for me as well. This is my second commencement and I have learned a lot since last year.

Most of all I have learned how much love there is between the students, faculty and staff of New School University. I have seen that love expressed by men and women who were willing to go above and beyond the call after the September 11th attack on the World Trade Center. We were in the impact zone and most of our school was closed for a week. We couldn’t use our largest dormitory for 10 days, and our communications system was shut down for two weeks.

In the weeks after the disaster there were bomb threats that caused the evacuation of the subways used by many of our employees to get to work. Some of our students simply chose to leave fearing the worse. Our enrollments were down, our costs were up, we were struggling with the implementation of our new administrative computer system and our future seemed less than bright. What has happened since has been an inspiration to me. The men and women who have chosen to work and teach at this university simply decided to work a little harder, to sustain the effort through physical fatigue and in short do the one thing that has confounded skeptics over and over again: They refused to give up.

They refused to give up because they know that New School University is a special place, a unique institution of higher education. Thanks to their efforts, today our enrollments are back on target, our financial health has never been better, our Banner system is up and running, delivering more and better on-line services to our students, and I am optimistic about the future of the University, and about the city and the world its graduates will live in and shape.

Mr. Kerry doesn’t say this, but after the students returned to class that September the smells and burning, acrid air of Ground Zero permeated the campus. Students passed armed National Guard as they walked to and from classes. They also lived among the sidewalk memorials that sprang up all over the city in those days; street shrines with pictures of the dead tacked to scaffolding and lamp posts, and with flowers laid on the sidewalk below.

Most of the class who graduated this week are too young to have been enrolled at The New School that day. But The New School student body has nearly three times the number of adult and continuing education students (over 25,000) as degree students (9,300). This means an overwhelming majority of people taking New School classes are New York City residents. And a whopping large majority of New Yorkers are personally acquainted — at least — with people who either escaped the towers that day, or didn’t.

Why did New School students heckle McCain? Here’s a clue:

Noting that Mr. McCain had promised to give the same speech at all of his graduation appearances, Ms. Rohe, who was one of two students selected to speak by university deans, attacked his remarks even before he delivered them.

“Senator McCain will tell us today that dissent and disagreement are our civic and moral obligation in times of crisis, and I agree,” she said. “I consider this a time of crisis, and I feel obligated to speak.”

She continued, “Senator McCain will also tell us about his strong-headed self-assuredness in his youth, which prevented him from hearing the ideas of others, and in so doing he will imply that those of us who are young are too naïve to have valid opinions.

“I am young, and although I don’t profess to possess the wisdom that time affords us, I do know that pre-emptive war is dangerous and wrong,” she said.

She added, “Osama bin Laden still has not been found, nor have those weapons of mass destruction.”

On Thursday, September 13, 2001, I walked to Times Square, where much construction was underway. The construction workers had festooned their hard hats with American flags, and they had hung huge signs from the highest scaffolding calling for vengeance on Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden. Not Saddam Hussein, but Osama bin Laden.

I wonder what those guys would have said then had they known their president would, within a few short months, pull resources away from the hunt for bin Laden and instead bring the might of the United States military against another Middle Eastern bad guy who had had nothing to do with the attacks and who was no threat to the United States? And that, nearly six years later, bin Laden would still be free? What would they have said if someone predicted the President and his party would exploit the attacks shamefully for political advantage while doing next to nothing to make the United States better prepared for terrorist attacks? On that day, they would not have listened to such talk.

Well, folks, they’re listening to it now. Because that’s what happened. It isn’t New Yorkers who have forgotten what happened on September 11. It’s the brainwashed, wingnut, kill-the-Islamofascist Right who have forgotten what happened on September 11.

Righties simultaneously slam New Yorkers for being liberal wusses and soft on terrorism. But they are shocked when New Yorkers refuse to sit and listen politely to someone they associate with the escape of bin Laden and the exploitation of the September 11 dead.

And to those who are critical of the students for being intolerant — can you name any liberals, especially antiwar liberals, who were even invited to speak at conservative college graduations? Let me know when Liberty invites Ted Kennedy or Russ Feingold to be the commencement speaker, and then we’ll see how tolerant conservative students are.

Back to McCain’s conservative credentials — during the 2000 primaries the Bush campaign successfully painted McCain as “liberal” when in fact, based on his voting record, he’s one of the most conservative members of the Senate. Righties have a remarkable tendency to not only believe what they are told but to retain that belief for prolonged periods of time in the face of overwhelming empirical evidence to the contrary. Michael Kinsley noted that because moderates find him likable, they persuade themselves that he agrees with them when, in fact, he does not. “He says plainly that he is for the war, or against abortion choice, and people hear the opposite. It’s a gift, I guess,” Kinsley says. Oddly, McCain is well-liked among people who disagree with him on nearly every issue, but disparaged among people who do agree with him on issues as “too liberal.” Go figure.

Ned Lamont is definitely on the Connecticut primary ballot. Read all about it at MyDD, also here. Lamont did better than expected; the Lieberman supporters are stunned.

I see that the other significant development today is that BellSouth wants USAToday to retract the story that the phone company provided records to the NSA. But TPMmuckraker explains how BellSouth could have made the data available, anyway —

A new Business Week article may help explain how AT&T and BellSouth can say they didn’t help the NSA, despite the spy agency having millions of their records showing the call details of Americans using their networks.

The magazine reveals a hidden corner of the telecommunications world: a small group of companies who specialize in granting the government access to telecommunications records, conversations and real-time data on behalf of the telecom giants.

That’s right: the government now makes so many requests for wiretaps, phone records and call information that an industry has sprung up to handle the load.

From the Business Week article:

The Departments of Justice, State, and Homeland Security spend millions annually to buy commercial databases that track Americans’ finances, phone numbers, and biographical information, according to a report last month by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Often, the agencies and their contractors don’t ensure the data’s accuracy, the GAO found.

Buying commercially collected data allows the government to dodge certain privacy rules. The Privacy Act of 1974 restricts how federal agencies may use such information and requires disclosure of what the government is doing with it. But the law applies only when the government is doing the data collecting.

“Grabbing data wholesale from the private sector is the way agencies are getting around the requirements of the Privacy Act and the Fourth Amendment,” says Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and a member of the Homeland Security Dept.’s Data Privacy & Integrity Advisory Committee.

Oh, and I see there was a prison riot at Guantanamo

THE largest prisoner uprising yet at the Guantanamo Bay detention centre was reported by the US military yesterday as the UN watchdog on torture called for the camp to be shut down.

The revolt took place when ten terror suspects clashed with ten guards trying to prevent a detainee from hanging himself in a communal living space in a medium security section of the camp on Thursday.

Light blogging today — my baby boy graduates college. I’ll check back with y’all this evening. (With my luck, today will be Fitzmas. Well, I won’t mind.)

The Big Event today is the Connecticut Democratic party convention, which we hope will put Ned Lamont on the primary ballot. See also Kos.

Other interesting links: “‘Fairy Tales’:The (lack of) intelligence underpinning Bush’s Iraq policy” by Ken Silverstein; “Coming Down to Earth” by Paul Krugman; “In the Blackwater” by Jeremy Scahill; “KBR and the Laundry” by Bert Stover; and “A Right Turn Holds Perils For Bush” by E.J. Dionne. I hope that’ll hold you ’till I get back!

I hate to do this, but I’m turning “comment moderation” back on. I’m getting slammed with ad spam today. I hope to be able to turn it off again in the future.

Update: OK, I’ve added an anti-spam plugin, so I’m going to turn of moderation to see if it works. Wish me luck.