The Scrutinator

I get a laugh out of Comedy Central's Colbert Report and Jon Stewart's Daily Show.

But just from watching, one doesn't get much of a perspective on their guests. In the spirit of looking closer and thinking harder, consider these:

Daily Show, 1/4: George Packer, author of Assasins' Gate. Read AEI's review for another perspective.

Colbert Report, 1/3: Craig Crawford of MSNBC and CQ. RightWingNutHouse and PowerLine look at some of his writing.

Daily Show, 1/10: James Risen, New York Times author of the NSA wire-taps story (and his well-timed book), triggering an avalanche of discussion on the blogs. Some facets:

• The program's legality discussed at length on PowerLine. Here for instance, though you could spend a whole lot of time sorting through their December archive.
• Some historical perspective with respect to Lincoln here and here.
• More perspective here.
• His sources: true American patriots with no axes to grind? (More.)
• National security: damaged? [2/2: "Very severe[ly]".]
• Leaking, NSA v. Plame: Double-standards? Ties?
• Michael Barone scrutinizes Risen's Today show appearance.
• [1/13] A touchstone: The NY Times and Clinton's Echelon program.

1/11: Peter Bergen, CNN Terrorism Expert. He contributes to a variety of media outlets, including the hard-left Mother Jones and pretty-far-left The Nation magazine. Even so, he seems reasonably well respected across the political spectrum. On tonight's Daily Show, Bergen suggests that our invading Iraq was Bin Laden's "Christmas present." I think Bergen's school of thought is that devout Bin Laden hated secular Saddam Hussein. That school of thought is presently being shaken by what we're finding in Iraq: at least 8,000 radical Islamic terrorists trained in Iraq from 1999 to 2002. Thomas Joscelyn is understandably critical.

1/16: Eugene Jarecki, director of "Why We Fight" (I didn't see this segment). Clive Davis wasn't impressed by it. Time magazine says "the documentary[-producing political] left is back in the Iraq business with Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight ... The film is, of course, a handbook for the converted. Those in agreement will see it, those opposed will ignore it. That is the fate of political documentaries in an age when the left mostly talks to itself." (I'm glad to watch it myself and review it if anyone's really interested.)

1/18: Hats off to James Woolsey, former CIA director. Had some good things to say. Jon Stewart mentioned in passing, "I know you think we're in World War 4..." Indeed some of us do. Woolsey took part in a teach-in at UCLA.

1/30: Bernard Henri-Levy gave an interesting interview on 1/26. Here's a review of his time on C-SPAN with Bill Kristol, by the Powerline folks.

(Guest schedules courtesy of LaughMachine.com and Wikipedia.)

By The Scrutinator @ 9:55 PM