​Local conservative provocateur Ann Coulter appeared on Real Time With Bill Maher last night, sparring with the Hollywood-elite comedian at every opportunity. The two are "friends" in real life (Maher introduced Coulter as "my first wife," and the two reportedly meet for lunch from time to time). But on the show, it was Coulter's antigovernment railing versus Maher's someone-please-explain-the-teabaggers: comedy gold.More >>

​Ann Coulter is either cynical or crazy. I'm hoping for the latter, because I'd hate to think my home state contains anyone willing to dissemble as freely and viciously as she does in her latest column -- a hot mess of half-assertions and quarter-truths too sloppy to illuminate anything even in the dark, violent alternate universe where Ann Coulter is right on the money.

The column's called "Next Time, Use FedEx." The dishonesty starts early, when Coulter writes:

American intelligence operations located Osama by following his trusted couriers, whose names were given up by al-Qaida members during harsh interrogations at CIA black sites under President Bush. Yes, the same interrogations endlessly denounced by the entire Democratic party (save Joe Lieberman), the mainstream media, and an especially indignant Jane Meyer in the New Yorker.

The minor dishonesty first: Jane Meyer's writing about America's black sites is hardly "indignant." It's clinical almost to the point of unreadability. If Coulter had actually read the stuff, she'd know it.

More important, though: If Ann Coulter knows the conditions under which the military obtained the real name of Bin Laden's courier, she's shooting herself in the foot by hiding away the news in her weekly column. That same information is being eagerly sought by the New York Times and Slate, to name just two of the media outlets that would pay top dollar for Coulter's scoop.More >>

Ann Coulter has something to say.

​Now, this isn't exactly a new Coulterian utterance, but it is a remarkable one. Remember last month, when Ann Coulter put her foot in her mouth by claiming to know more about radiation than physicists? Remember how she claimed that nobody died of radiation poisoning as a result of the Chernobyl meltdown? Remember how she accused liberals of being scare-mongering anti-science crazy people because they object to flooding vast populated areas with radioactive dust? Remember her claims that the Japanese are lucky, because ionizing radiation is good for you?

Oh, excellent! I'm glad you remember it. Because that'll make the following video a lot more hilarious.

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​A few last words on Coulter's radiation fetish. Two weeks ago, she claimed ionizing radiation could act as a cancer vaccine, and that nobody died of radiation poisoning at Chernobyl. Then she appeared on the The O'Reilly Factor to defend the column. Last week, she devoted a second column to the promulgation of her pro-ionizing-radiation ideology, entitled "Liberals: They Blinded Us With Science."

The Juice has covered Coulter's previous radioactive rants twice already (here and here), so there wouldn't be any reason to talk about her latest if there wasn't something accidentally brilliant about it. In a very clear way, it demonstrates exactly where most people of all political persuasions go wrong in thinking about science, and why we lay folk are so often baffled by science writing.
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​Ann Coulter says crazy things. She does it all the time, and most of us are used to it. But there's crazy, see, and then there's Crazy -- the kind of blithely lethal insanity that'd make you scream and run if it weren't proffered by a pretty, grinning, blond lady on The O'Reilly Factor. And Ann's latest deployment of Crazy stunned even Bill into silence. (Watch it here!) Bill O'Reilly, who increasingly finds himself in the unfamiliar position of being the resident sane person/moderate on Fox, couldn't quite contain his skepticism when Ann sashayed onto his set to explain that exposure to ionizing radiation -- à la  Hiroshima/Nagasaki/Chernobyl -- is good for you.

I've already written about Ann's pro-radiation column, debunking the strange idea that nobody died from radiation sickness at Chernobyl. But after watching the O'Reilly Factor appearance, I got to thinking: Where does Ann get her ideas? Is there even a shred of truth to them? So I did what writers (including Ann Coulter) ought to do when confronted with a question about radiation and called up a physicist. 
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Early radiologists often suffered "radiation necrosis." It has claimed this man's fingers.

​SoFla's sexiest pundit, Ann Coulter, published a singularly weird article this week, extolling the many health benefits which our friends in Japan may expect to derive from their exposure to excess radiation.

"With the terrible earthquake and resulting tsunami that have devastated Japan," she begins, "the only good news is that anyone exposed to excess radiation from the nuclear power plants is now probably much less likely to get cancer."

This only seems counterintuitive because of media hysteria for the last 20 years trying to convince Americans that radiation at any dose is bad. There is, however, burgeoning evidence that excess radiation operates as a sort of cancer vaccine.

Coulter then proceeds to list studies which support this idea, and concludes that the improvement in the health of living cells by radiation ("radiation hormesis") is real, proven, and happens all the time. Unfortunately, she can't know that. Radiation hormesis is a subject of intense debate within the scientific community, and even the scientists Coulter cites wouldn't claim otherwise. There's just too much uncertainty. Coulter alludes to a John Hopkins study showing that shipyard workers exposed to radiation don't get cancer. Fine. Here's another one showing they're at increased risk of leukemia. (I didn't link to the Hopkins study because I can't find the damned thing. Coulter says it exists, and lots of people talk about it, but the actual study seems to have gone missing from the interwebs.)

But Coulter won't write about that study, because she doesn't deal in uncertainty -- in fact, the written record suggests she's never experienced a moment of it. Which is why she has the cojones to write:

Amazingly, even the Soviet-engineered disaster at Chernobyl in 1986 can be directly blamed for the deaths of no more than the 31 people inside the plant who died in the explosion...

Meanwhile, the animals around the Chernobyl reactor, who were not evacuated, are "thriving," according to scientists quoted in April 28, 2002 Sunday Times. (UK)

To this, a reasonably informed person can say only: Bullshit!

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Surrounded by enemies, but smiling.

​Tuesday on Coulter Watch, I tried defending SoFla's sexiest pundit for her Q&A performance at last week's CPAC. I stand by my defense. In those twenty minutes, she seemed to honestly wrestle with issues of concern to both her and her audience. And if she came to conclusions with which I disagreed, oh well. That's America.

But yesterday, Coulter was back to her usual cynical sophistry. In her weekly column -- a light rewrite of the speech she gave before last week's Q&A -- she was so intellectually dishonest, and so shallow, that no defense seems possible. The entire screed would be beneath commentary, if only people didn't take it seriously.

The screed's subject was the liberal's desire to destroy America, empower dictators, and subvert democracy wherever we find it. There is a nervous-making Orwellian vibe to her analysis, given that her jumping-off point is the left's support for the pro-democracy movement in Egypt. By supporting Egyptian democracy, she suggests, the left reveals its profound distaste for democracy.

"The Middle East is on fire again," Coulter begins,

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​Much has been made in the blogosphere of Ann Coulter's off-the-cuff remark at the Conservative Political Action Conference that "there should be more journalists in jail." The obsession is a waste of bandwidth. Coulter was asked an un-serious question, and she gave an appropriately un-serious answer. Ann knows that freedom of the press is essential to the proper functioning of a democracy. She also understands a subtler point: that a sense of humor is no less essential, and much more elusive.

It feels strange to write this story. I'm not usually one to defend Ann Coulter -- I have abused the lady frequently in this very space, and look forward to doing so again. But it's hard to dislike the Coulter pictured in the CPAC video. Yes, she makes a tasteless joke about imprisoned journalists. Yes, she's abrasive, nasty, and dangerously jacked on Jesus Juice. But for those of us who have heretofore believed she was a cynical manipulator of others' ignorance, the much-maligned Ann Coulter of this years' CPAC is a stiff corrective. Here, she is thoughtful, articulate, sincere, and even brave  -- at the end of the pictured Q&A, she issues an unsubtle challenge to her party's less tolerant fringe, and seemingly wins them over.More >>