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Kerry in context

Democrats have complained that ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth have taken John Kerry's 1971 Senate testimony about Vietnam war atrocities "out of context."

Cable-TV viewers will have the chance to see those atrocity accusations in their entirety at 8 p.m. today when C-SPAN airs Mr. Kerry's complete testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mr. Kerry, then a 27-year-old former Navy lieutenant, was a prominent spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War when he testified on Aug. 22, 1971, that American GIs had committed numerous war crimes in Vietnam. His hour-long testimony will be preceded by an airing of the Swift Boat ad that excerpts portions of that testimony.

Not so bright

"In the latest issue of Harper's, Lewis Lapham has a long, tiresome essay on the 'Republican propaganda mill' -- which, to judge by one of the accompanying graphs, includes the foundation that publishes Reason," Jacob Sullum writes at the Reason magazine Web site (www.reason.com).

"Perhaps the most revealing part of the article is the paragraph where Lapham pretends to have heard the speeches at the Republican National Convention that does not open until [Monday]. Referring to 'the platform on which George W. Bush was trundled into New York City this August with Arnold Schwarzenegger, the heavy law enforcement, and the paper elephants,' Lapham writes:

"'The speeches in Madison Square Garden affirmed the great truths now routinely preached from the pulpits of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal -- government the problem, not the solution; the social contract a dead letter; the free market the answer to every maiden's prayer -- and while listening to the hollow rattle of the rhetorical brass and tin, I remembered the question that [the late historian Richard] Hofstadter didn't stay to answer. How did a set of ideas both archaic and bizarre make its way into the center ring of the American political circus?'

"True, the issue is dated September, but I got my copy in early August, and Lapham must have written those words in July. Didn't it occur to him that his readers might notice he was claiming to have witnessed an event that had not occurred when the magazine went to press? Evidently, Republicans are not the only ones Lapham thinks are stupid."