Thinly veiled racism at the Drudge Report

Matt Drudge rarely passes up an opportunity to smear Muslims. On his site he trumpets that Five Muslim soldiers were "arrested" on allegations they Poisoned fellow soldiers at Ft. Jackson. Yet even the story he links to does not actually say anyone was arrested and other reporting says that nothing was substantiated. So much for "presumption of innocence."

It's this mindset that led to so much abuse during the Bush administration. It's the mindset that turns accused or even merely suspected detainees into "Terrorists" who can and should be tortured because they might know something. It's the mindset that leads to profiling that gets any Muslim or anyone some ignorant fool thinks may be Muslim (like a Sikh) targeted. Meanwhile we're somehow supposed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims while treating them as enemies without distinction.

Meanwhile, hours after contrary reports emerge that don't fit his narrative, Drudge leaves up his accusatory headline. A quick Google search shows it's already going viral on various right-wing blogs and sites even though it's already been debunked. As is so often the case, the truth will have a hard time ever catching up to the lie, which is the insidious thing about the way Drudge operates whenever he's dealing with one of his favorite themes (climate change, Sarah Palin, Obama approval ratings, corrupt Democrats, among others).

Actually, it IS an indictment of the system

There are few things more predictable than pablum from law enforcement officials about how any outrage perpetrated by the criminal justice system is just an "isolated incident" or "mistake." Whether it's another botched SWAT raid on an innocent home-dweller, a questionable police shooting or someone exonerated after spending many years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, it's never the system at fault.
Sometimes they will even claim that the fact that Mr. John Doe was released after spending several decades in prison is proof that the system works. No, that's a system failure folks. Especially when the system works so hard to prevent those exonerations from going forward.
The latest is a certain Timothy Masters, released after spending nine years in a Colorado prison for murder when DNA tests proved he wasn't the killer after all.
The DA (not the one who put him away), Larry Abrahamson, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying Masters' case " is not, in any way, and indictment of the criminal justice system."
Actually, it is, of course. We've had so many DNA exonerations that support for the death penalty in this country has eroded significantly and overall trust in the system declined.
I don't have a philosophical argument with the death penalty in theory, but my faith that it's can be fairly, consistently and justly be applied has evaporated.
One also has to wonder how many people are sitting in jail for crimes they didn't commit that don't lend themselves to DNA evidence.
We've had many DNA-based exonerations for murders and rapes, which both often leave usable DNA evidence. These cases also get the most attention from the police and from the innocence projects.
But it seem logical that the error rate for many other crimes is at least as high. But convenience store robbers, burglars, drug offenders, etc., don't often leave relevant DNA evidence, and even if they did, no effort would be expended on finding it for such low-level crimes.
It's often said as a joke that prisons are full of "innocent men." There may be more truth to the joke than we thought.