Bush administration's long, dismal history of UNDERMINING Civil Rights enforcement and VOTING RIGHTS.... usually IGNORED by "mainstream media".

The "Mainstream Media" whores FINALLY NOTICE the Bush administration's serial and chronic assault on VOTING RIGHTS and CIVIL RIGHTS... but only because PURGE-gate investigations have put substance and sworn testimony to the administration's frauds, lies, purges of US Attorneys, and possible PERJURY by senior adminsitration officials, under oath, during those congressional hearings.

Other than that, the Media Whores are plenty happy to pretend "NO (civil rights or voting rights) violations here!" Indeed, according to this article, the Bush administration has brought ZERO voter discrimination cases between 2001 and 2006. Not that such a record would ENCOURAGE discriminating against legal voters, of course.

<< Under the Bush administration, however, all that [bipartisan enforcement of civil rights and voting rights laws] changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections. >>


<< It has notably shirked its LEGAL RESPONSIBILITY to PROTECT voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, NO voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities. >>
---------------------------------------------------

Bush's long history of tilting Justice
By Joseph D. Rich,
March 29, 2007
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rich29mar29%2C0%2C1507657.story?track=mostviewed-homepage

The administration began skewing federal law enforcement before the current U.S. attorney scandal, says a former Department of Justice lawyer.

JOSEPH D. RICH was chief of the voting section in the Justice Department's civil right division from 1999 to 2005. He now works for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats.

This pattern also extended to hiring. In March 2006, Bradley Schlozman was appointed interim U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo. Two weeks earlier, the administration was granted the authority to make such indefinite appointments without Senate confirmation. That was too bad: A Senate hearing might have uncovered Schlozman's central role in politicizing the civil rights division during his three-year tenure.

Schlozman, for instance, was part of the team of political appointees that approved then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's plan to redraw congressional districts in Texas, which in 2004 increased the number of Republicans elected to the House. Similarly, Schlozman was acting assistant attorney general in charge of the division when the Justice Department OKd a Georgia law requiring voters to show photo IDs at the polls. These decisions went against the recommendations of career staff, who asserted that such rulings discriminated against minority voters. The warnings were prescient: Both proposals were struck down by federal courts.

Schlozman continued to influence elections as an interim U.S. attorney. Missouri had one of the closest Senate races in the country last November, and a week before the election, Schlozman brought four voter fraud indictments against members of an organization representing poor and minority people. This blatantly contradicted the department's long-standing policy to wait until after an election to bring such indictments because a federal criminal investigation might affect the outcome of the vote. The timing of the Missouri indictments could not have made the administration's aims more transparent.

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.

Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.

At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions.

For decades prior to this administration, the Justice Department had successfully kept politics out of its law enforcement decisions. Hopefully, the spotlight on this misconduct will begin the process of restoring dignity and nonpartisanship to federal law enforcement. As the 2008 elections approach, it is critical to have a Justice Department that approaches its responsibility to all eligible voters without favor.

Global warming deniers, STAND UP and be counted!

The other day, the craven NEW YORK TIMES published a catty "bash Al Gore" op-ed comentary as a 'news' article, mocking and belittling former Vice President Gore for his urgency in wanting to confront and reverse global warming now.

"Yes, Mr. Gore may have most of the science on his side" was the general uptick of the Times op-ed masquerading as a 'news' article (we're paraphrasing here), "but WHO THE HELL DOES THAT LOSER THINK HE IS, trying to set the national agenda on ANYTHING?!"

Well, as we've said 1,000 times, the New York Times has become a craven den of liars and thieves, their agenda is almost in unanimous accord with the radical right-wing agenda of unlimited police state powers, no oversight by congress or anyone for those abuses of police powers; support for the unending and open-ended Iraq war, support for tax cut for wealthy in time of war; support for "outsourcing" US jobs and "offshoring" US taxes - the New York Times is even happy, in their undercurrent of support for the Bush-Cheney administration, to happily FORGET about all those chemical plants, power-plants, and nuclear-plants LEFT VULNERABLE by the Bush administration despite the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission Final Report.

SO- HOW does the Craven, Cowardly, treacherous, if not traitorous NEW YORK TIMES justify their continued support for the right-wing agenda, as for example mocking Vice President Gore's calls for massive, "Mahhatten Project" levels of effort to confront and reverse Global Warming?

answer- by following the Republican lead, giving MISLEADING "facts" and industry-group funded science AS MUCH, if not more, consideration than the massive body of SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH in the science community!

Well, we're tired of blathering on about how the NEW YORK TIMES, WASHINGTON POST, FOX 'news', CNN, Time-Warner, the Washington Times, and other corporate media liars SUBJUGATE scientific research and fair and open debate, to INDUSTRY TALKING POINTS and VOTER DISENFRANCHISEMENT editorial policy.... so here it is, reactionary Republican Senator JAMES INHOFE's "list of hundreds!" of scientists who REJECT the overwhelming body of SCIENTIFIC evidence that humans are greatly accelerating the global-warming affects of carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases saturating the atmosphere.

=====================================


James Inhofe: The Senator for Suspect Science
27 Mar 07
http://www.swingstateproject.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=327

Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe got so beligerent with former Vice-President Al Gore at the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works last week that new Chair Barbara Boxer had to cut him off (check out the video at the end of this post).

That, presumably, is because Senator Inhofe is accustomed to a different quality of input in testimony before this committee. When he was chair, he preferred likeminded lobbyists (Joseph Bast, Heartland Institute, testimony here)) and fiction writers (Michael Chrichton, testimony here) as witnesses to committee hearings.

Now, Inhofe is reduced to misleading committee members (and the public) with transparent political stunts. For example, at the 1:19 mark in Gore's testimony (realplayer file), Inhofe unveiled a chart, saying, "There are literally hundreds of scientists on this chart and all these scientists disagree with you [Gore]."

Well, that's just not true. Far from "literally hundreds" of names on the chart, we count 88, give or take a couple. At least one name is doubled and another (University of Alberta mathematician Dr. Gordon Swaters) has disavowed the deniers who, at one point, had tricked him into signing a Canadian petition looking for more global warming research.

As for their degree of expertise on climate change (or, in some cases, their demonstrated willingness to offer supportive opinions to the tobacco or energy industry), here's a selection of those "scientists" by which to judge.


August Auer (retired meteorologist, last published research in 10 years)
Nils Axel-Morner (retired, historical earthquake researcher)

Sallie Baliunas (affiliated with 9 organizations funded by ExxonMobil)

Tim Ball (retired geography professor, has not published any peer-reviewed research in over 10 years)

Jack Barrett (has not published any peer-reviewed research in 13 years)

Richard Courtney (coal union spokesperson)

Christopher Essex (mathematics professor, published one peer-reviewed research article on climate change 16 years ago)

Robert Essenhigh (researcher mainly on coal combustion)

Lee Gerhard (oil and gas geologist)

Vincent Gray (retired, coal researcher)

Howard Hayden (retired physicist. last peer-reviewed research published 12 years ago)

Zbigniew Jaworowski (retired atomic radiation researcher)

William Kininmonth (retired, has not published peer-reviewed research in over 30 years)

Hans Labohm (economist)

Douglas Leahey (retired oil and gas geologist)

Ross McKitrick (economist)

Alister McFarquhar (economist)

Patrick Michaels (affiliated with 11 organizations receiving funding from ExxonMobil)

Al Pekarek (oil exploration consultant)

Benny Peiser (3 peer-reviewed research articles, two in sports journal)

Ian Pilmer (studies ore deposits)

Paavo Siitam (no published peer-reviewed research)

Fred Singer (affiliated with 11 organizations funded by ExxonMobil)

Gary Sharp (studies tuna)

Gordon E. Swaters (probably not very happy to be on this list)

George Taylor (meteorologist, published 3 peer-reviewed research articles in last 17 years)

Hendrik Tennekes (retired, has not published peer-reviewed research in over 15 years)

Gerrit van der Lingen (retired, published peer-reviewed research papers over 20 years ago)

David Wojick (coal industry consultant)

Democracy, our American Republic, under assault by the soulless, parasitic "CHATTERING CLASS"....

As powerful as Joseph Palermo's indictment of America's "mainstream media whores" is (click our headline link) he doesn't even point out that it was only the HORRIFIC 'reporting' of the gluttonous, insatiable mainstream media whores for faux 'scandals' from the Clinton administration that made the Bush-Cheney "election win" of 2000 possible.

The New York Times relentlessly portrayed the "Whitewater Scandal!" (a routine real-estate flop in which the Clintons LOST money) as the Alpha and the Omega of Washington corruption and the Savings & Loan debacle - even though the Clintons weren't even in Washington when they lost money on the Whitewater real-estate flop. The BILLIONS upon ONE-TRILLION-DOLLARS in S&L losses that US taxpayers were forced to pay to cover the "PRIVATE INDUSTRY" losses in S&L industry and by other banks having completely escaped the Times' attention.

Madison Guarantee S&L owner and former Clinton partner JIM McDOUGAL -DIED- alone on a concrete floor in a max-security prison, in solitary confinement, denied his heart medication at the specific instructions of "Independent Counsel" partisan Republican prosecutor Ken Starr, despite McDougal's advanced age, heart condition, and complete cooperation. McDougal cooperated with his jailer/torturer to the point of committing perjury as suborned by the Republican prosecutor, Mr. Starr DESPERATE to get SOMETHING on the Clintons to justify his $70 million, subpoena-and FBI-interrogation enhanced 'Whitewater' investigation.

But the "Whitewater" scandalmongering was the least of the Times' and mainstream medias sins... at least there was a conviction of two there - of the hapless McDougal and the equally hapless Webster Hubbell, who was charged with "OVERBILLING!" his law partners and clients.

Speaking of, compare the DC media whores' treatment of Hubbell's "OVERBILLING CLIENTS & PARTNERS!" felony conviction with the JACK ABRAMOFF, 'DUKE' CUNNINGHAM, BOB NEY, and assorted other TOM DeLAY associates' BRIBERY convictions. Clearly, Mr. Hubbell's "overbilling" of clients and partners, while portrayed in the mainstream media as "FRAUD!", was just a typical way of padding one's pay as a bonus or tip for a job well done. Had either partners or clients not been happy with Hubbell's services, they would have simply contested his bill. Indeed, compare Mr. Hubbell's "OVERBILLING!" felony conviction with the news this week that the Bush administration's former number three man at the Department of Interior, J. STEVEN GRILES, pled guilty in what FOX 'news' calls "the Abramoff probe,"
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260584,00.html
"PROBE" their buzzword for "the Abramoff Republican super-lobbyist BRIBERY/EXTORTION scandal!" that was closely allied with both the Bush White House, and the Tom DeLay dominated Republican strong-arm Congress.

Hell, the media whores can't even bring themselves to force President Bush to aknowledge that he personally knew Mr. Abramoff, who visited the White House frequently... just as the media whores allowed President Bush to pretend that he didn't know Ken Lay after Lay was tried and convicted in the ENRON FRAUD collapse.)

See how that works? The New York Times, Washington Post, Fox 'news,' and other "mainstream media" whores pound out a drumbeat, day after day, week after week, month after month, from shouted, blaring, above-the-fold headlines, "WEB HUBBLE OVERBILLED CLIENTS and PARTNERS!"; yet when confronted with real, nation-gutting crimes like the Abramoff-DeLay-Cunningham BRIBERY and EXTORTION scandals (during time of war and national emergency, at that), the MEDIA WHORES pretend innocence, "poor Mr. Griles was caught up in a partisan and vindictive PROBE."

Just LISTING the Chattering Class whoring of fake Clinton "scandals," and whitewashing of genuine Republican scandals, takes over a page of writing, for we haven't even gotten to the "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL!" or the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" both of which Republicans and their mainstream media allies CREATED OUT OF THIN AIR! The "Lincoln bedroom scandal" managed to make the Clinton's overnight guest list into, gasp, "A CRIME!" as if the Clintons were the first to soil the nation's honor by allowing (gasp!) BLACK PEOPLE to spend the night as guests in the White House. (Didn't happen until long after the Woodrow Wilson administration, if our history is correct - the segregationist of the radical right managed to keep the White House, as well as all of the nation's capital, SEGREGATED until well into the 1950s, implying that the mere presence of Black Americans visiting the White House would "soil the honor" of the people's house - the exact same justification the atrocious media whores would make in justifying their scandalmongering "Lincoln bedroom scandal!" coverage.)

And the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" was even worse - an ENTIRELY FABRICATED SCANDAL that smeared the names and professional reputations of departing Clinton-Gore Democratic White House staffers in January of 2001 and for weeks thereafter, with BLARING, ABOVE THE FOLD accusation HEADLINES... WITHOUT ONE SINGLE SOLITARY PHOTOGRAPH OF EVIDENCE!

Clearly, the overpaid media elite - and their narrative that ANYTHING a democratic administration does is criminal, and NOTHING that a neo-imperialist Republican administration does is illegal... is THE WORST THREAT TO AMERICA TODAY, including terrorists and terror weapons. (The media whores have helped the radical, reactionary right UNDERMINE weapons NON-PROLIFERATION treaties, just as they once helped justify segregation, as they once helped the corporate right-wing deny tobacco deaths, and as they now help oil industry behmouths (AEI, the news-media's darling think-tank, is almost entirely funded by Exxon-Mobile's billions) downplay global warming and the need for nuclear non-proliferation treaties.)


(btw, media whores, how is that investigation into the ANTHRAX MURDERS, which were clearly an attempt to TERRORIZE CONGRESS, going? "If such an investigation might step on the toes of the Holy US Military/Defense/Bioweapons industry, it must be sufocated to death!" say our overpaid chattering class whores in unison.)

----------------------------------------------

<< The Bush/Cheney regime has rammed down the nation's throat "signing statements," torture as official policy, secret prisons, illegal spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, political purges of U.S. attorneys, preventive wars, cronyism, no-bid contracts, and an utter contempt for Congressional checks on Executive power. And with all this going on the general contentedness of the chattering classes is startling.


Overpaid prognosticators like Adam Nagourney, David Sanger, Dana Milbank, Michael Kinsley, David Broder, David Gergen, and the rest, continue to serve up their bland and copious political "analyses" as if nothing is out of the ordinary. They even give the cautionary advice to members of the Legislative Branch that they better not push back against President George W. Bush too vigorously lest they be stung by voters in the next election. >>

[note: to the above short list of parasitic media whores who pretend not to notice the destruction of the American Republic under the Bush-Cheney administration, we must add the winners of the MediaWhoresOnline.com "whore of the year" awards, whose 'winners' and finalists included CHRIS MATHEWS, TIM RUSSERT, HOWARD FINEMAN, and GEORGE WILL, all of whom gained hours of media coverage cluck-clucking about the "moral values" impeachmment of President Clinton. We also must add our list of the most prominent neo-con backers of the lies-to-war and invasion of Iraq (and stolen election of 2000), starting with WILLIAM SAFIRE, ABE ROSENTHAL, and ARTHUR SULZBERGER (all three of the NEW YORK TIMES), HOWARD KURTZ, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, and Fineman of the WASHINGTON POST, and WILLIAM KRISTOL, BRENT HUME, and the entire staff of FOX 'news' and the WASHINGTON TIMES.)

=========================================

Democracy or "Decidership?"
Joseph A. Palermo
03.26.2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-a-palermo/democracy-or-decidership_b_44240.html

The Bush/Cheney regime has rammed down the nation's throat "signing statements," torture as official policy, secret prisons, illegal spying, the suspension of habeas corpus, political purges of U.S. attorneys, preventive wars, cronyism, no-bid contracts, and an utter contempt for Congressional checks on Executive power. And with all this going on the general contentedness of the chattering classes is startling.


Overpaid prognosticators like Adam Nagourney, David Sanger, Dana Milbank, Michael Kinsley, David Broder, David Gergen, and the rest, continue to serve up their bland and copious political "analyses" as if nothing is out of the ordinary. They even give the cautionary advice to members of the Legislative Branch that they better not push back against President George W. Bush too vigorously lest they be stung by voters in the next election.
Americans are divided at home and reviled abroad. Our reputation overseas is the worst it has been in our history. And our political commentators warn us against the "over-reaching" of the Democrats in Congress? A Congress that can only muster 218 votes in the House to put limits on an illegal war that was based on a pack of lies? Remember the "mushroom clouds" and the yellow cake from Niger?

At this juncture, we might be just one large terrorist attack away from a form of military dictatorship. If you think I'm kidding, read Chalmers Johnson's new book, "Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic." Just as Gore Vidal and other prescient thinkers have warned, Johnson shows that the "imperial presidency" is overwhelming the system of "checks and balances," and leading us toward authoritarianism.

Since the end of World War Two, with the creation of the CIA, the NSA, the NSC, and the DoD, there has been a real tension between whether the United States is going to be a republic or an empire. Johnson argues convincingly the decision has already been made, like earlier empires, most notably the Roman and the British empires, the United States has reached a turning point: either we abandon our imperial ambitions or we will surrender our republic to the voracious appetite of servicing the empire. Johnson remains hopeful "that Americans can still rouse themselves to save our democracy," but he warns "the time in which to head off financial and moral bankruptcy is growing short."

Contrast the mainstream political "commentators" with the consistent remarks of Bill Moyers over the past few years, and it really drives home the extent of their detachment. Moyers has been sounding alarm bells, and he sees the magnitude of the catastrophe Bush has wrought.
Bush and Cheney have brought the crisis to a head with their largely successful expansion of executive power. They control a global military and intelligence network, a multi-billion dollar secret budget, front companies, "cut outs," secret prisons, and mercenary armies. Unless the Congress and the Courts assert themselves now and with vigor, we're in big trouble. It is painful to witness the corporate media's gatekeepers of our political discourse miss what is right in front of their faces.


In a speech last February entitled, "A Time for Anger, A Call to Action," Bill Moyers said: "Looking backwards, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. What has been happening to working people is not the result of Adam Smith's invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of religious literalism opposed to any civil or human right that threaten its paternalism, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us."

And, as always, the problem boils down to the decrepitude of the corporate news media. Tony Snow and the other right-wing spin-meisters know that any story, no matter how shocking or horrific, whether it is Abu Ghraib or Hurricane Katrina, can be spun and twisted and fragmented and de-contextualized in a couple of 24-hour "news cycles" to the point where it become meaningless, or "yesterday's news." They know the news media will jump to the next big story, and all they have to do is wait it out. Remember the Downing Street Memo? It is the smoking gun for the impeachment of George Bush, and commentators like Michael Kinsley declared it "old news" the second it hit the Internet.

Big questions like the ones Johnson and Moyers pose relating to whether we want to live in an empire or a republic cannot begin to be explored in this abhorrent media environment. If you don't think we're moving in an authoritarian direction, then ask the N.Y.P.D. why it spent a year infiltrating non-violent peace groups all over the country prior to the 2004 Republican National Convention.


In 2000, amidst the presidential campaign, The Nation magazine ran a cover with a caricature of Bush as Alfred E. Newman wearing a button that instead of saying the usual, "What, Me Worry?" it read simply: "Worry." In 2007, now is the time to worry. Bush has plenty of time to make things much worse, (like hatching a pretext to attack Iran). Unless something powerful and decisive comes out of the 110th Congress, no election will be able to provide the nation with the democratic corrective it so desperately needs. All of the pundits should do a little homework; take an afternoon off and read Johnson and Moyers.

TIME magazine CENSORS "Taliban resurgent" cover in US for... bible study cover story!

Ho Hum. TIME magazine's editors and publishers think American readers are... too stupid? ...too biased?... too AFRAID? to see Time's story blaring "TALIBAN ASSERTING CONTROL in AFGHANISTAN!" on the covers of Time magazine here in America?

So... Time's editors do what any sensible editor would do... SELL IGNORANCE and BIGOTRY, as in "the world was created 6,000 years ago, and anyone who wants to teach evolution in public schools is less than one-half step removed from those murderous abortionists!"

The above statement is only slightly hyperbolic.. the great ABORTION debate was the bedrock "MORAL VALUES" issue America's radical reactionary right used to justify SLASHING BIRTH CONTROL and INFANT MORTALITY funding in the "Third World" - once the Soviet Union collapsed and America no longer had to court 'underdeveloped nation' allies in the "global war vs communism." Today, of course, the "global alliance vs terrorism" has morphed, under the Cheney-Bush regime and with neo-con 'mainstream media' intellectual justifications, into the "we can subvert democracy, bribe ruling-class elites (the "economic hit-man" model of "capitalist investment"), declare anyone, anywhere on earth unilaterally to be 'the enemy!' ("terrorists!"); and generally destroy any opposition to our rape-and-pillage agenda, with no cost or consequence to ourselves... much less subverting democracy here in America with voting machines that wouldn't pass a Las Vegas anti-skimming slot-machine inspection."

TIME magazine.... selling IGNORANCE and SELF-RIGHTEOUS MORALIZING as the main course of its 'journalism' buffet, this March 2007.

==========================================

Time Joins Newsweek In Thinking That Americans Really, Really Don't Care About Afghanistan
Rachel Sklar
Sunday March 25, 2007
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eat-the-press/2007/03/25/time-joins-n_e_44218.html

Interesting. This week, Time's cover story is an essay arguing in favor of teaching the Bible in schools, which can be boiled down to this: "Of course the Bible should be taught in schools. Duh. It's religion that shouldn't be." On the cover of its international edition is a story that is less easily boiled down: "The Truth About Talibanistan," about the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (and also, Pakistan), and how it's "the next battleground of the war on terrorism." The story is in the U.S. edition of the magazine but not on the American cover, presumably because Rick Stengel & co. think the Bible will do better newsstand (even though it is a singularly unattractive cover).

This episode echoes a similar decision made by the Newsweek brass in October when the international editions all ran a cover called "Losing Afghanistan: The Rise of Jihadistan " about the resurgence of the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (and also, Pakistan),
and how it's a place from which "Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups [can] hatch the next 9/11." The American cover? An exclusive cover shot and story on Annie Leibovitz entitled "My Life In Pictures" (which was also controversial for whitewashing her life as a lesbian); presumably Jon Meacham & co. thought it would do better on the newsstand.

It's odd that Time would choose to backburner this story after what happened at Newsweek — the swap-out did garner a bit of attention, including a touch of ridicule by Jon Stewart, and the parallels are pretty instantly noticeable (i.e. swapping out an evergreen cover for the very same story about Afghanistan's jihadist tendencies). It's not that teaching the Bible in school isn't importantzzzzzzzzz.... (just kidding, we love tussling over Bible issues but seriously, taking Exodus 21:24 literally? Never mind the Bible, the Talmud in Ketuvot 32b and Bava Kamma 83b should be required reading! C'mon, Time, let's see your cover essay about that). It's just interesting that both venerable newsweeklies chose safer, more homegrown-Americana type covers over deeply reported pieces from the Middle East that advance our understanding of what is happening over there and to what the U.S. may soon have to respond. Plays well in the rest of the world, sure — but I guess not so much in Biblestan.


http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1601850,00.html
The Truth About Talibanistan [Time]

The Rise of Jihadistan Newsweek
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/

Gonzales should be impeached.

Gonzales should be impeached
By Robert Kuttner
March 24, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2007/03/24/gonzales_should_be_impeached/?p1=email_to_a_friend


THE HOUSE of Representatives should begin impeachment proceedings against Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.



The firings of US attorneys had multiple political motives, all contrary to longstanding practice. In some cases, Republican politicians and the White House were angry that prosecutors were not going after Democrats with sufficient zeal. In other cases, they wanted the prosecutors to lighten up on Republicans. In still others, exemplary prosecutors were shoved aside to make room for rising Republican politicians being groomed for higher office.

It's hard to imagine a more direct assault on the impartiality of the law or the professionalism of the criminal justice system. There are several other reasons to remove Gonzales, all involving his cavalier contempt for courts and liberties of citizens, most recently in the FBI's more than 3,000 cases of illegal snooping on Americans.

Why impeachment? In our system of checks and balances, the Senate confirms members of the Cabinet, but impeachment for cause is the only way to remove them. The White House, by refusing to cooperate, has now left Congress no other recourse.

Instead of responding to lawful subpoenas, President Bush has invited congressional leaders to meet informally with Karl Rove and other officials involved in the prosecutor firings, with no sworn testimony and no transcript. Rove narrowly escaped a perjury indictment in the Cheney/Libby/Wilson affair. You might think these people had something to hide.

After the administration refused to cooperate, Republican Senator Arlen Specter inadvertently gave the best rationale for impeachment. Referring to the White House invocation of executive privilege, Specter warned, "If there is to be a confrontation, it's going to take two years or more to get it resolved in court."

Exactly so. By contrast, an impeachment inquiry could be completed in a matter of months. The White House, knowing the stakes, would find it much harder to stonewall. And Gonzales might well be asked to resign rather than exposing the administration to more possible evidence of illegality.

In refusing to cooperate, Bush puffed himself up to the swaggering truculence that has worn so thin, declaring, "We will not cooperate with a partisan fishing expedition." But this investigation is hardly partisan, since several Republican senators and congressmen have called for Gonzales to resign. And if there were ever a legitimate subject of full congressional investigation, tampering with criminal investigations on political grounds is surely one.

As for fishing expeditions, compared with what? The Whitewater investigation ended with no charges related to the original investigation and veered instead into sexual exposé -- which had what connection with Whitewater? Now there was a partisan fishing expedition.

But can the House impeach the attorney general? The Constitution is clear that Congress may impeach "all civil officers of the United States." In our history, the House has impeached two presidents, and just one member of the Cabinet, William Belknap, secretary of war under president Ulysses S. Grant.

Belknap had profited from kickbacks by military contractors. The House began impeachment proceedings, documented the charges, and just before the articles were formally voted, on March 2, 1876, Belknap resigned. But the House voted impeachment anyway. The reason, as House Judiciary Chairman J. Proctor Knott explained to the Senate, "was that his infamy might be rendered conspicuous, historic, eternal, in order to prevent the occurrence of like offenses in the future."

A fine discussion of the Belknap precedent was written last December on the legal website findlaw.com, by, of all people, President Nixon's former legal counsel John Dean. (Astoundingly, the best lawyer the Bush White House can find for advice on stonewalling is another Watergate veteran, Fred Fielding.)

And speaking of Nixon, there's another reason to impeach Gonzales. Though the assaults on the Constitution by Bush and Cheney surely rise to impeachable offenses, the Democratic leadership has been loath to use the impeachment process. The fear is that partisan polarization, so close to the end of Bush's term, would overshadow the issues.

But now, the offenses of a Cabinet member criticized by both parties, and the stonewalling by the White House, have given ample justification. It's time for an impeachment, not just to oust Gonzales, but as a salutary warning to his superiors.

Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a fellow at Demos. His column appears regularly in the Globe.

ConsortiumNews compiles the SMEAR-MOB media whore JIHAD vs Al Gore.. in 2000 and today...

For "one-stop shopping" about how America's major, 'mainstream' media WHORES corrupt American society, government,politics, and elections, this article by ROBERT PARRY of ConsortiumNews.com is an amazing compilation - names, dates, times, and how the WHORES of the press/media, with MALICE aforesight, TWISTED actual comments by Vice President Gore into quotations that seemed to bolster the meme "Al Gore is a serial liar, exaggerator, and prevaricator."

WHY did the media whores react with such fury to VP Gore in the long season of 1999-2000, when Mr. Gore was trying to escape the shadow cast by Bill Clinton's sex scandal? After all, no one, anywhere, could come up with any "dirt" on the Gore marriage... and wasn't President Clinton's extramarital affair(s) the basis of his IMPEACHMENT in the lame-duck Republican Congress?

Well, as Mr. Parry notes in his article, the operative word is "BULLIES." The "mainstream media" learned that, like Roman emperors selling bread & circus to justify their cruel rule, the "major media" player - the network news divisions, the Washington Post, New York Times, TIME magazine and other press outlets, and the relatively new CABLE 'news' talk shows - could sell the MONICA LEWINSKY scandal to readers and TV viewers as realiably as a good soap opera sold a tempestuous marriage episode to their fanatical following. Indeed, in the "good times" of the Clinton 1998 economy, Americans had the luxury of settling into their sofas to watch the latest episode of the Ken Starr soap opera "get your leaked grand jury testimony here for only the price of hanging out on the justice department steps!", which morphed into the Tom DeLay lame-duck Congress impeachment.

And from the EASY MONEY of getting Ken Starr and Republican impeachment leader quotes, the WHORE MEDIA fell like a pack of jackals on Al Gore in 1999 and 2000; trying to sustain their easy feedings at the expense of "boy scout" Gore.

Mr. Parry's article captures the childish lies and exaggerations of the media whores, from Chris Mathews (CNBC) to the Buffalo News to Rupert Murdoch's New York Post to dozens of local, hometown US papers - to, of course, the NEW YORK TIMES and WASHINGTON POST themselves, the self-professed "leaders" in America's national, international, and government news coverage.

We can not top Mr. Parry's exposition of the media's awful, pathetic, often childish whoring of the "Al Gore is a prevaricator!" agenda (even though that it what this blog is specifically set up to do!)

BUT we can point out something JUST AS IMPORTANT: the importance, the NECESSITY, of the DEMOCRATS running for office NOT TO PUT UP WITH SERIAL EXAGGERATIONS and FABRICATIONS by the media whores.

In his second term, President Truman actually wrote a letter to a Washington Post music critic threatening to punch that critic in the nose should they meet in person. (The WP critic had lambasted Truman's daughter's musical recital at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC.) Truman was roundly mocked for his beligerance, but he at least had some fire in his belly. The Clinton-Gore-Kerry-Democrat model for dealing with harsh, even lying critics, is to try to APPEASE them!

Setting the sordid low for that behavior, "I just want to be loved" President Bill Clinton invited New York Times journalistic thug (and former Nixon speechwriter) WILLIAM SAFIRE to a White House function - the week after Safire had written a column (and headlined thus by his NYT editors) "HILLARY CLINTON IS A CONGENITAL LIAR"! IF Bill Clinton had had an ounce of President Truman's outrage, the history of the late Clinton White House might have been written differently. But instead, the Clintons were CLUELESS as to how to neutralize the DC whore media's "gotcha" reporting, allowing even the Clinton's overnight guest list to be turned into a SCANDAL! the so-called "LINCOLN BEDROOM SCANDAL."

Which reminds us - Mr. Parry's otherwise exceptional article doesn't even mention the penultimate DC press corpse SMEAR against Al Gore: the so-called "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL" of January 2001.

This "scandal" started innocently enough, when the incoming Bush-Cheney press spokesmen claimed that some "W" keys had been lifted off of computer keyboards by pranksters of the departing Clinton-Gore staff. But in a typical KARL ROVE smear operation, within daysof the "playful" allegations, the story had MORPHED into - "Clinton-Gore Staffers DESTROY WHITE HOUSE PROPERTY!" and the "WHTIE HOUSE TRASHING!" scandal was born - a "scandal" which the bullies of the Washington Post, New York Times, cable 'news' talk shows, and rest of the pied-piper major media wrote about with blaring headlines - for weeks on end!

The amazing thing about the "WHITE HOUSE TRASHING SCANDAL!" was that NOT ONE PHOTOGRAPH, ever, was produced as "proof" of the so-called "trashing." Indeed, a quarter-million dollar GAO report (commissioned at the insistence of the Republican Congress and Senate) found that "there had been NO damage to White House offices not consistent with any tenant moving out of offices after an eight year lease" - i.e. routine wear and tear on carpets, furniture, and walls removed of pictures, posters, and electronic cables.

The other amazing thing of the entire FABRICATED "White House Trashing Scandal" is that it is all there, in the archives of the Post and Times and "Hardball" footage and other 'news' sources, waiting for some diligent journalism student to write the book "The anatomy of a Right-Wing and major-media FABRICATED SMEAR JOB - on a former Vice President and popular vote-winning presidential candidate!"

The Bush-Rove-Cheney White House SMEAR of departing Clinton-Gore staffers effectively drove Vice President Al Gore - the winner of the 2000 popular vote by over 500,000 votes - OUT OF TOWN, in disgrace, effectively tarred-and-feathered by a journalistic smear mob; and in doing so, the DC "major media" effectively handed President Bush and his and his handlers the brush and palette they needed to RENOUNCE and discard their "MORE BIPARTISAN TONE IN WASHINGTON" campaign pledge of the 2000 presidential race.

BY DRIVING VICE PRESIDENT GORE OUT OF WASHINGTON, IN DISGRACE, the Washington press corps and "major media" ENABLED President Bush to ram his partisan nominees past a stunned and qiescent Democratic senate; and also ENABLED Mr. Bush to go on his 2001 summer of partisan REPULICAN PHOTO-OPS and FUNDRAISER VACATIONS.... while Al Qaida terrorists plotted, unhindered, to HIJACK FOUR US AIRLINERS at one time.

Mr. Bush was so enthralled in his fund-raiser and photo-op vacation of 2001 that he did EXACTLY NOTHING when the CIA warned him, in July of 2001, "AL QAIDA is DETERMINED TO ATTACK in AMERICA, probably by hijacking airliners." Eight weeks later, the New York skylline was bleeding smoke and toxic dust - the DC press corps and "major media" had ENABLED the Repulbican presidential candidate of 2000, who didn't even win a majority of the popular vote, to NEGLECT his sworn duties to "PRESERVE and DEFEND.... these United States."

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U.S. News Media's 'War on Gore'

By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
March 22, 2007
http://consortiumnews.com/2007/032107.html


When historians sort out what happened to the United States at the start of the 21st Century, one of the mysteries may be why the national press corps ganged up like school-yard bullies against a well-qualified Democratic presidential candidate while giving his dimwitted Republican opponent virtually a free pass.

How could major news organizations, like The New York Times and The Washington Post, have behaved so irresponsibly as to spread falsehoods and exaggerations to tear down then-Vice President Al Gore – ironically while the newspapers were berating him for supposedly lying and exaggerating?

Cowardly, Treacherous WASHINGTON POST *CONTINUES* to LIE about CIA-outing scandal, perjury, and obstruction of justice...

The fact that the Democrats in Congress are unaware of the COWARDLY POST's treacherous tendency to LIE.... and that the Democrats are IMPOTENT to call the Post's editors and publisher to account - goes a long way to explain how the Radical Right are so openly CONTEMPTUOUS of the Democrats.

The Democratic controlled Congress and Senate SHOULD haul WP editor Fred Hiatt and publisher Donald Graham, under oath, before committee hearings to allow them to explain why they think the DESTRUCTION of an ENTIRE CIA COVERT OPERATION is such an amusing opportunity to bash the career and record of a retired ambassador and former CIA operative; but because the Democrats are clueless as to the gutter-tactics of the Post - and because the Democratic House and Senate are deeply influenced by the AIPAC neo-con (pro-war and pro-imperial executive powers) lobby - it looks like Hiatt, Graham, and the Washington Post will CONTINUE to have CARTE BLANCHE to betray not only reasonable standards of journalistic decency, but of the very NATIONAL SECURITY that the Post and other neo-con media outlets CLAIM to be supporting these past half dozen years.

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Washington Post Prints New Wilson/Plame Attack

By Robert Parry
March 22, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/032207.html

Rather than fire Washington Post editorial-page editor Fred Hiatt or at least apologize for all the newspaper’s past misstatements about former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, ex-CIA officer Valerie Plame, the Post instead has published a rehash of the lies and distortions about the couple.


This new attack is contained in a column by right-wing pundit Robert D. Novak, who originally blew Plame’s CIA cover in July 2003 and has sought to add insult to the injury ever since. Some of Novak’s past falsehoods about Wilson/Plame also have found their way into Post editorials, apparently without benefit of fact-checking.

In the new March 22 column, Novak can’t seem to let go of a favorite right-wing myth – that Plame wasn’t a "covert" CIA officer overseeing a sensitive network of spies informing the United States about weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

That right-wing myth – insisting that she wasn’t “covert” – was exploded at a March 16 hearing of the House Oversight Committee when Chairman Henry Waxman read a statement approved by CIA Director Michael Hayden referring to Plame’s former status as “covert,” “undercover” and “classified.”

Hayden didn’t want to divulge details about Plame’s sensitive work but did confirm that she had served overseas. “Ms. Wilson worked on the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA,” Waxman’s statement said, adding that her work dealt with “prevention of development and use of WMD against the United States.”

In his column, Novak reports that Hayden’s statement shocked Rep. Peter Hoekstra, a hard-line Bush loyalist who had chaired the House Intelligence Committee when the Republicans were in control.

According to Novak, Hoekstra called Hayden, who reaffirmed the statement that Plame indeed had been “covert.” But Novak then resumes the right-wing quibbling about whether Plame would qualify as “covert” under the special definition of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

This legal technicality apparently was so important to the Post’s editors that they headlined the article, “Was She Covert?” But Novak’s column, like an earlier Post Outlook article by right-wing legal expert Victoria Toensing, gums up how the law actually defines a “covert” agent who qualifies for special legal protection from exposure.

Toensing, who presents herself as one of the law’s authors, has said a “covert” agent must be “stationed” abroad during the previous five years. In her testimony before the House Oversight Committee, she slipped in another definitional word, saying that “the person is supposed to reside outside the United States.”

In his column, Novak reverts back to Toensing’s earlier word “stationed.” However, for all the interest in this legal technicality of whether Plame was “covert” under the narrow provisions of the 1982 law, Novak, Toensing and the Post’s editors have shied away from actually quoting from the law.

Covert or Not?

There appears to be a reason for the lack of precision and curiosity about how “covert” is defined. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 makes it a crime to willfully disclose the identity of a U.S. intelligence officer if the identity is classified and the person “has within the last five years served outside the United States.”

The verb is “served” – not “stationed” or “resided” – a modest but significant difference that would appear to alter the determination of whether the law would apply to someone like Plame, who was based in the United States but who testified that she had undertaken covert missions abroad in the previous five years.

Beyond playing games with the definitions, however, Toensing, Novak and the Post editors are obscuring the larger issue of the damage that can be done by blowing a CIA agent’s cover – and putting in jeopardy the lives of people who have supplied information to the CIA and who clearly do live overseas.

If you adopted the Toensing-Novak language, it would be okay, too, to divulge the covert identity of a Special Forces soldier who was “stationed” at Fort Bragg in North Carolina and who “resided” in Fayetteville but risked his life by conducting clandestine counter-terrorism missions in the Middle East.

The decision to insert a different word in the law’s definition is what lawyers would call “probative” in assessing whether Toensing and Novak are intentionally lying. As someone who was involved in drafting the law, Toensing obviously would know that the actual term used in the law was “served,” but she opted to replace it with other words.

Novak has been caught lying about Wilson/Plame before. For instance, in an Aug. 1, 2005, column also published in the Post, Novak claimed that “the Senate [intelligence] committee reported that much of what he [Wilson] said ‘had no basis in fact.’”

However, the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 – although then controlled by the Republicans – did not conclude that Wilson’s statements about Iraqi intelligence “had no basis in fact.” That was a phrase that Novak culled from the “additional views” of three right-wing Republican senators – Pat Roberts, Orrin Hatch and Christopher Bond.

The full committee had refused to accept that opinion from Roberts, Bond and Hatch – yet Novak left the false impression that the phrase was part of what he called “a unanimous Senate intelligence committee report.”

Novak’s misleading claim proved so effective that Hiatt and his editorial writers adopted the falsehood as one of their own. In a March 7, 2007, editorial, the Post again trashed Wilson for his statements about Bush’s “twisted” WMD intelligence, asserting that “a bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false.”

Work at Headquarters

In the March 22 column, Novak also resurrects other silly arguments that have circulated widely on the Right, such as the assumption that if CIA employees work at headquarters in Langley, Virginian, they must be public.

As Post editors and Novak certainly know, many CIA employees who work at Langley and at other CIA facilities around Washington are still covert. It is ludicrous – if not highly offensive – for the Post to run Novak’s rhetorical question: “How could she be covert if, in public view, she drove to work each day at Langley?”

Novak adds other questions that he feels should have been addressed at Waxman’s hearing, such as “What about testimony to the FBI that her CIA employment was common knowledge in Washington?”

But Novak doesn’t bother to identify who gave that testimony, when the obvious point would be that many people who were under investigation for revealing Plame’s identity had a vested interest in claiming her identity was widely known.

One such witness was Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was convicted of perjury for his claim to federal investigators that he had picked up the news of Plame’s identity from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert.

The Post’s editors also let Novak revive other canards about Wilson that have long since been discredited and for which Novak has presented zero proof.

For instance, Novak writes that “claims of a White House plot [to punish Wilson by exposing his wife] became so discredited that Wilson was cut out of Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign by the summer of 2004.”

What Novak is doing here is recycling a baseless report from Talon News’ former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, whose real name was James Guckert. On July 27, 2004, a Talon News story under Gannon’s byline had reported that Wilson “has apparently been jettisoned from the Kerry campaign.”

The article based its assumption on the fact that “all traces” of Wilson “had disappeared from the Kerry Web site.” The Talon News article reported that “Wilson had appeared on a Web site www.restorehonesty.com where he restated his criticism of the Bush administration. The link now goes directly to the main page of www.johnkerry.com and no reference to Wilson can be found on the entire site.”

That was the extent of Gannon/Guckert’s “proof.”

Kerry Denial

But Peter Daou, who headed the Kerry campaign’s online rapid response, told me that the disappearance of Wilson’s link – along with many other Web pages – resulted from a redesign of Kerry’s Web site at the start of the general election campaign, not a repudiation of Wilson.

“I wasn’t aware of any directive from senior Kerry staff to ‘discard’ Joe Wilson or do anything to Joe Wilson for that matter,” said Daou. “It just got lost in the redesign of the Web site, as did dozens and dozens of other pages.”

Gannon/Guckert, who wrote frequently about the Wilson-Plame case in 2003-2004, came under suspicion as a covert Republican operative in January 2005 when he put a question to Bush at a presidential news conference that contained a false assertion about Democrats and prompted concerns that Gannon/Guckert was a plant.

Later, liberal Web sites discovered that Gannon was a pseudonym for Guckert, who had posted nude photos of himself on gay-male escort sites. It also turned out that Talon News was owned by GOPUSA, whose president Robert Eberle was a prominent Texas Republican activist.

As a controversy built over the Bush administration paying for favorable news stories, Gannon/Guckert resigned from Talon News and its Web site effectively shut down. But his spurious claim about Wilson has now resurfaced in the Novak’s column.

Novak finishes up his column by spinning new conspiracy theories implicating Democrats and insinuating that CIA Director Hayden deserves to be next in line for White House retaliation.

Hayden’s approval of Waxman’s statement about Plame’s covert status “confirmed Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats,” Novak wrote. “When Hayden’s role was pointed out to one of the President’s most important aides, there was no response.”

Novak, it appears, has gone from acting as Bush’s water carrier to becoming an instigator for reprisals against public officials who are not sufficiently “loyal Bushies.”

Hiatt and his colleagues on the Washington Post editorial page apparently see nothing wrong in conveying these thinly veiled threats of reprisals to the broader Washington community.

[For some earlier articles about the Post's anti-Wilson/Plame bias, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Shame on the Post’s Editorial Page,” “Smearing Joe Wilson Again,” “Shame of the WPost, Again,” and "Plame-gate: Time to Fire WPost's Hiatt."]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. To comment

The New York Times' William Broad and Maureen Dowd lead the WHORE Times in selling GARBAGE 'news'....

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THANK GOODNESS! for this excellent article by ERIC BOEHLERT (columnist for the incomparable MediaMatters.Org), which not only deconstructs WILLIAM BROAD's amazingly childish 'news article' about Al Gore's appearance before Congress to testify about global climate change, but as well Boehlert takes us down memory lane and reminds us that NYT columnist MAUREEN DOWD almost singlehandedly took the 'SNARKY' narrative of "Al Gore is a serial exaggerator!" and kicked it into hyper-drive in the vital election summer of 2000, giving the Republican Bush campaign machine PLENTY of ammunition to up the ante from "Al Gore is a serial exaggerator" to "Al Gore is a serial LIAR and prevaricator, in addition to being an eternal bore and 'ozone man' environmentalist."

As a result of Dowd's horrific op-ed columns in that summer of 2001 (Dowd was then probably the most widely syndicated female columnist in America), millions of American women who might have been inclined to give Gore the benefit of the doubt - no one, anywhere, could come up with any "dirt" on the Gore's marriage - may have bought into the Dowd/NYT/Republican "AL GORE CAN'T BE TRUSTED!" meme, and thus helped put George W. Bush within reach of STEALING election 2000, where his brother Jeb Bush's pre-arranged PURGE of minority voters in Florida. (Under the auspicies of Katherine Harris and ChoicePoint data-base corporation, which took the legitimate task of purging deceased voters from the voting rolls as a cover to purge thousands of LEGAL voters from the Florida voting rolls.)

We have maintained for 6 long years that Maureen Dowd is as responsible as anyone in America for putting George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in the White House.... we are thankful that Eric Boehlert's MediaMatters article ads substance and context to our argument.

Maureen - OUR WOUNDED VETERANS, the families of 3,000 dead New Yorkers killed on 9-11; the families of those US GI's killed in Iraq, and those victims who have seen the THIRD major war unleashed on Iraq in the past 2 decades (Iran-Iraq war, Gulf War 1, and now Bush-Cheney invasion of Iraq) ALL THANK YOU!

(Note: not only did Al Gore CHAIR the "White House COMMISSION on Aviation Safety AND SECURITY," but eternal policy-wonk Gore would also have been cognizant and aware of the Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security released findings: THAT TERRORISM against THE US presented the greatest threat to America's global security.
http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/212fin~1.html

It is INCONCEIVABLE that an Al Gore presidency would have done what the Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush-Rove team did when the FBI, CIA, and nation's 'Counter Terror Czar' (Richard Clarke) were all making "URGENT WARNINGS" that not only had Al Qaida gone UNPUNISHED in the 8 months of the Bush administration since the suicide-bomb attacks on the USS Cole in a Yemen harbor, but that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaida were "DETEREMINED TO ATTACK IN AMERICA" to up the ante of their terrorist attacks.

Indeed, not only did the Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney-Rove administration
DO EXACTLY NOTHING to protect America from a repeat Al Qaida threat... but upon being briefed, IN PERSON, by CIA Director George Tenet that "Al Qaida was determined to attack in America," ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT _STOPPED FLYING ON PUBLIC AIRLINERS_ - but left the flying public and aircrews OBLIVIOUS to the threat that he deemed too dangerous to his own person to continue flying on public airliners!
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/07/26/national/main303601.shtml

<< The Hart-Rudman report warned that "mass-casualty terrorism directed against the U.S. homeland was of serious and growing concern'' and said that America was woefully unprepared for a "catastrophic'' domestic terrorist attack and urged the creation of a new federal agency [What would become, after 9-11, the Department of Homeland Security.] >>

Here is Al Franken's deconstruction of the "revisionist history" lies that the Clinton-Gore administration "did nothing" to target Al Qaida after the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole. As Franken documents, the Clinton White House handed the incoming Bush-Cheney team a COMPLETE PLAN FOR WAR to ROOT OUT Al QAIDA - a plan the Bush-Cheney WH promptly IGNORED.
http://www.avatara.com/operationignore0.html

AND HERE IT IS: a New York Times classic, childish hit-job revisited on Al Gore, by William Broad, this March 21, 2007. And THANK YOU, MAUREEN DOWD and WILLIAM BROAD, for the NIGHTMARES that America has been forced to endure since your paper's ATROCIOUS reporting in that long, critical summer of 2000.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/13/science/13gore.html

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The New York Times continues its War on Gore
by Eric Boehlert
March 21, 2007
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200703200006

Scheduled for March 21, former Vice President Al Gore's high-profile congressional testimony on the pressing dangers of global warming will likely surpass the March 16 media spectacle that accompanied Valerie Plame's appearance in the House. Wednesday will both mark Gore's first official visit to Capitol Hill since leaving the Clinton administration and offer a sneak peak at the global warming policies his administration would have likely implemented had the Supreme Court not ordered Florida officials to stop counting the votes back in December 2000.

Gore's right-wing critics, anxious to fuel a backlash against Gore and his award-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, are using his congressional appearance to raise doubts about his global warming crusade. The Republican noise machine is already trying to gin up excitement about a possible global warming showdown, although some of its talking points seem a bit thin. (A Drudge Report "exclusive" this week hyped the fact that following his Senate testimony, Gore might be asked questions by the assembled legislators.)

Busy orchestrating their attacks, Gore's political foes received a gift last week from The New York Times in the form of a front-page Science section article alleging that scientists were raising concerns about Gore's global warming facts. Dredging up the media's 2000 campaign meme about Gore being loose with the truth, the Times resurrected the premise that Gore's an exaggerator who cannot be trusted.

The misleading hit piece was a godsend for Republican partisans. CNN right-wing talker and global warming skeptic Glenn Beck was euphoric the day of the Times report. "Al Gore is finally being slammed in the face for his distortion of science and the facts, and it's being done by The New York Times," Beck told his CNN Headline News viewers. "Some days it just doesn't get any better." And a Rightpundits.com headline cheered, "New York Times SLAMS Global Warming Zealots." The post insisted, "We've always known that Al Gore is a serial exaggerator. Say, remind me who invented the internet?"

Indeed, it's hard to overstate just how closely the Times article echoed conservative talking points about global warming (i.e. alarmists are driving the debate) and about Al Gore (his exaggerations cannot be trusted).

Yet for close readers of the Times, last week's attack came as no surprise. The newspaper's coverage of Gore for years has dripped with an odd disdain; a completely out-of-context contempt for the former vice president. Note that four days prior to its attempted take-down of An Inconvenient Truth, the Times published an op-ed (subscription required) that ridiculed Gore's personal "energy lust" and mocked him as a hypocrite because his utility bills for his home in Tennessee were deemed to be excessive.

The newspaper has been dissing Gore since the 2000 campaign, when the Times, hooked on the story of his purported exaggerations, spent an extraordinary amount of time checking in with experts -- psychologists, academics, political scientists -- trying desperately to figure out what Gore's alleged embellishments meant.

Back then, the Times insinuated that Gore had exaggerated about being shot at while serving in Vietnam, about a 30-year-old conversation he'd once had with Gen. William Westmoreland, about his days as a newspaper reporter, his campaign wardrobe, going to church, his rural roots, "being a dork campaigner," school overcrowding, and a childhood lullaby.

Can we all just collectively shake our heads in amazement that this was what the paper of record was obsessing about during a presidential campaign? (P.S. The Times remained utterly uninterested in factual missteps made by candidate George Bush during the 2000 White House race.) And of course, it was the Times that helped launch the phony Love Story and Love Canal controversies that unfairly labaled Gore an exaggerator in the first place.

Now exaggerations have been dusted off and applied to Gore's environmental campaign. The Times' charge is as flimsy today as it was back in 2000, which explains why the newspaper had to resort to such shoddy journalism to prop up the allegation.

Writing at The Daily Howler weblog, Bob Somerby, who for years has documented the media's War on Gore (he coined the phrase), had it right when he noted that an article analyzing the accuracy of An Inconvenient Truth is absolutely a legitimate undertaking for the Times. Readers deserve to know whether there's serious scientific debate about the most important -- and successful -- scientific movie ever made.

Where the Times went so wrong was that after it discovered there was, in fact, very little serious debate within the mainstream scientific community (i.e. "the middle ground"), the paper still plowed ahead with its controversial thesis and tried to fool its readers by suggesting, very high up in the story, that there were deep rifts among "rank and file" scientists -- "the centrists," as the newspaper called them. If that were true, the Times article, written by William Broad, would have been brimming with rank-and-file scientists questioning Gore's facts. It was not.

Instead, as blogger David Roberts noted, the article had "all the hallmarks of a vintage Gore hit piece: half-truths, outright falsehoods, unsubstantiated quotes, and a heaping dose of innuendo." The article also had all the hallmarks of a journalist approaching a topic with an already confirmed belief and then working backwards trying to prove that point by selectively quoting sources.

The Times piece did prove that the newspaper was willing to cast a very wide net to locate sources with scientific affiliations who expressed doubts about An Inconvenient Truth. No offense, but if an emeritus professor from Western Washington University was the most prominent critic the Times could find (the prof's the first person quoted in the Gore piece), I'm guessing Gore is on pretty solid footing. (Another critic prominently quoted by the Times isn't even an environmental scientist.)

See here, here, here, here, and here for detailed analysis of the article's obvious scientific shortcomings. In short, the article has been thoroughly demolished.

The New York Times chases campaign trivia

Then again, this kind of sloppy sleight-of-hand has become depressingly routine for the Times when writing about Gore. Readers can't help but get the feeling there's an unspoken, anything-goes newsroom rule when it comes to the former vice president, who's routinely portrayed in the Times as a dolt and a phony. That was clearly the case during the 2000 White House run.

What else could explain the paper's overly excited coverage when Gore, in an off-handed, late-night comment once mentioned to a Time magazine reporter that he and his wife, Tipper, were models for the young lovers in Erich Segal's best-selling 1970 novel Love Story. Actually, what Gore said was that, according to an old Nashville Tennessean article, Segal had once made that claim. After Gore's quip, Segal corrected the record by saying that The Tennessean had gotten it wrong, and that both Gore and his Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee Jones, had served as models for Love Story's male protagonist but that Segal did not base any character on Tipper.

The incident defined campaign trivia, yet the Times devoted 30 paragraphs to reporting the story out. Although for some reason, the Times waited until the 21st paragraph of its news story to spell out that the facts vindicated Gore. The newspaper also used a wildly misleading headline, "Author of 'Love Story' Disputes Gore Story (Hint: Tipper Wasn't Jenny)," to suggest Gore had been caught falsifying the past.

Here's the key point regarding the Love Story charade: It was fueled almost entirely by Times columnist Maureen Dowd. Yes, it was the weekly Time magazine that first published the Love Story paragraph. But Gore's trivial recollection created almost no interest in journalism and political circles until Dowd latched onto it (she announced that it represented "the week's most stunning revelation") and wrote a factually inaccurate column mocking Gore for making -- she was sure -- the phony claim. It was only after Dowd's high-profile column appeared that the Republican National Committee (RNC) sprang into action and started pressing the story in the media. (It wasn't the last time that the RNC fed off the Times for stinging Gore attacks.)

Naturally, during the campaign, Dowd accused Gore of having "boast[ed] that he was the father of the Internet," and later announced, "The vice president's campaign woes could make a Nashville country song: "You've been sighin' and you've been lyin'." (Dowd recently penned a column praising Gore for being "prescient," yet Dowd refused to acknowledge, let alone apologize for, her often habitually unfair treatment of Gore in the past.)

And it wasn't just Dowd. The Times itself became so committed to the negative narrative about Gore exaggerating that it actually helped manufacture one key Gore exaggeration. In November 1999, Katharine Seelye famously misquoted Gore during a campaign stop at Concord High School in New Hampshire, where Gore urged students to take an active role in politics. He relayed how a letter written to him in the '70s from a student in Toone, Tenn., had gotten then-U.S. Rep. Gore interested in the topic of toxic waste. "I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "I looked around the country for other sites like that. I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on that issue -- and Toone, Tenn., that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."

The next day, the Times, along with The Washington Post, botched the quote, erroneously reporting that Gore had bragged, "I was the one that started it all." [Emphasis added.] The story that Gore claimed credit for Love Canal then exploded on the Beltway media scene. Later pressed about the incident, Seelye insisted, "I really do think that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It was one word."

The Times finally ran a correction nine days after MSNBC'S Hardball ran video footage making the misquotation apparent (though, for the record, the Times' "correction" continued to get the quote wrong). But that didn't mean the Times let go of the exaggeration theme, which was evident throughout the campaign in the pages of the Times.

At the Democratic national convention, the daily reported that invited speakers stretched the truth, "sometimes with a level of exaggeration that Mr. Gore himself would envy." That same month, an unsigned Times editorial tagged Gore as "no amateur exaggerator." Earlier in the campaign, the Times' editorial page announced, "Mr. Gore will have to offer more than an exaggerated rural boyhood, a resume and an aura of entitlement if he is to win in his own right."

Here's a sample of New York Times headlines from its 2000 news pages:

Tall Tales; Is What We've Got Here a Compulsion to Exaggerate?
Focusing on Gore Hyperbole
Questions of Veracity Have Long Dogged Gore
Gore Admits Being Mistaken But Denies He Exaggerates
Tendency to Embellish Fact Snags Gore
That last one appeared on October 6, 2000, and perfectly mirrored the talking points the RNC was pushing about Gore at the time. How perfectly? The very first person quoted in the Times article for insight was none other than Karl Rove.

Seven years later, they're all playing the same game; Republican talking points about Gore-the-exaggerator are being amplified and given credence in the pages of The New York Times.

The War on Gore continues.

BREAD and CIRCUS: the Media Whores FEAST on selling America BS...

Robert Parry comments on the "PERFECT STORM" that enabled the lies, abuse of powers, and vendetta-like smearing of opponents by the Bush-Cheney-Rove administration. As anyone who knows ANYTHING about Karl Rove knows, Rove's "genius" has been merely to take the hysterical tactics of the lynch-mob era - shouted accusations of "Rape!" or other sins against god and humanity - to build up a monolithic political juggernaut that steamrolled all opposition, whether minority voters, a sitting Vice President who won the national majority of votes in the 2000 general election (the "White House Trashing!" scandal that drove Al Gore from Washington, he and his staffers smeared in disgrace without A SINGLE PHOTOGRAPH OF EVIDENCE being a typical and classic Karl Rove smear operation, or of course other assorted administration critic whistleblowers, from Republican Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill to Sibel Edmonds to Ambassador Wilson to an entire CIA covert operation - ALL these administration vendettas have been ENABLED by official Washington, and especially the Washington institutional press/media. (Or what we call "the DC press/media whores.")

But there is no reason to make this discussion to complex, abstract, or academic.... the simple truth is that the DC institutional press/media - the executives who drive the media narrative, from the Washington Post's publisher Donald Graham to the New York Times' publisher Arthur Sulzberger (the nation's two premier agenda-setters) to all the smaller players down the line; the "Major Media" publishers and presidents have discovered, like the decadent ROMAN EMPERORS, you can feed the Ameican people an almost ENDLESS stream of "BREAD AND CIRCUS."

Rush Limbaugh specialized in getting union-member working Americans to DESPISE the federal government - without which all unions would be at the mercy of company thugs! (UAW founding president Walter Reuther survived two assassination attempts by "security" goons working for the Ford Motor Company.) ENRON was perhaps typical in sponsoring "coke and dancers" parties for its executives... yet Ken Lay and Enron were first and foremost at underwriting George W. Bush's "conservative compassion" and 'moral values' political campaigns.

And of course the DC media - the New York Times, Washington Post, Tim Russert, Cbris Mathews, Ann Coulter, and dozens of others - loved to FEAST on the salacious grand jury testimony KEN STARR _LEAKED_ to the mainstream media, who discovered that, in good times, they could sell America blaring headlines "Clinton affair!" at no more expense than putting their star reporters on the justice department steps.

Ironic, indeed: that the party that proclaims "MORAL VALUES!" and tells us the emulate the life of Christ, actually sound more like decadent Roman emperors selling cruel entertainment to the masses.

And, like good flunkies from 2000 years ago, our "mainstream media" can not say "Ave, Caeser, We Salute You!" to often or too loudly.


Iraq & Washington's Systemic Failure

By Robert Parry
March 19, 2007
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/031807.html

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney may deserve the most blame for the Iraq War, but a core reality shouldn’t be missed: the four-year-old conflict resulted from a systemic failure in Washington – from the White House, to congressional Republicans and Democrats, to an insular national news media, to Inside-the-Beltway think tanks.

It was a perfect storm that had been building for more than a quarter century, a collision of mutually reinforcing elements: aggressive Republicans, triangulating Democrats, careerist journalists, bullying cable-TV and talk-radio pundits, hard-hitting and well-funded think tanks on the Right versus ineffectual and marginalized groups on the Left.

“Tough-guy-ism” from Washington's armchair Rambos had become the capital's controlling ideology, especially after the 9/11 terror attacks. In part, the Iraq War could be viewed as a macho parlor game of one-upmanship gone mad, with very few daring to be called unmanly or un-American.

The war that has killed some 3,200 U.S. soldiers and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis also can be traced to conflicting self-interests, pitting what makes sense for Washington insiders against what’s best for the broader American public and especially military families.

For the politicians and the think-tankers who wanted the invasion, the war was a win-win-win. They amassed greater power and influence; they had the vicarious thrill of dispatching armies into battle; their friends lined up for the gravy train of war profits and the chance to buy up lucrative oil fields.

While cashing in politically and financially, the insiders knew, too, that the human price would be paid by other people’s children and the dollar costs would be passed to future generations. In Washington, a pro-war stance in 2002 and early 2003 was nearly all upside, almost no downside.

However, for those who were sent to fight and for their families, the balance sheet was different. They suffered the casualties, the fear, the uncertainty, the heartbreak. But these two groups – the war’s architects and the troops – rarely crossed paths, representing two disparate social classes.

While American soldiers and their loved ones worried about actual death, what mattered most in Washington was political self-preservation.

Even though many in Washington understood the grave risks behind Bush’s invasion, it made more sense to join the pro-war herd. Even if the war went badly, there would be very little danger of career-threatening recriminations because too many important people were in the same position. There was safety in numbers.

The worst that might happen is that you’d have to make a muted mea culpa a few years later while shifting the blame away from yourself onto someone – say, Donald Rumsfeld – for his incompetent execution of the plan.

Ugly Names

By contrast, there was a risk if you stood up to Bush’s pro-war juggernaut in 2002 and early 2003. You’d get called ugly names; your career would suffer; you’d be treated like a pariah. Just ask the Dixie Chicks, former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and Al Gore.

Though fear of ostracism didn’t compare with the dangers faced by the troops, it’s noteworthy on this fourth anniversary of the war how few Washington insiders dared ask tough questions – and how few of those who helped mislead the nation into this foreign policy catastrophe paid any serious price.

President Bush may be a lot less popular but he’s still in the White House as is Vice President Cheney. Bush’s national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was elevated to Secretary of State. Other war architects, such as Elliott Abrams and Stephen Hadley, got promotions within the National Security Council.

Even the most notorious Iraq War screw-ups – former CIA director George Tenet, Gen. Tommy Franks and pro-consul Paul Bremer – got Medals of Freedom, the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed by the President.

Most pink slips went to officials who were not sufficiently enthusiastic about the Iraq War, from early skeptics like Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill to later doubters like Secretary of State Colin Powell. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld did get fired, but only after he sent the President a memo on Nov. 6, 2006, suggesting a phased military withdrawal. [See Consortiumnews.com's "Gates's Hearing Has New Urgency."]

The most significant accountability exacted on Washington insiders was Election 2006 when voters booted the Republicans from control of the House and Senate and replaced them with Democrats, who have restored some semblance of checks and balances. But even there, it’s not yet clear whether the change will be meaningful or just cosmetic.

The future may still be dominated by Iraq War supporters. All announced Republican presidential candidates, including Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, are backers, and Democratic front-runner, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York, voted to give Bush the power to invade Iraq and still doesn’t favor a complete U.S. military withdrawal.

Clinton personifies the Democratic Party’s instinct for “triangulation,” the avoidance of principled stands in favor of nuanced positions that are calculated to be least offensive to the greatest number of people.

Whatever the Democrats who supported Bush’s war resolution say now, the most powerful motive behind their decision was the consultant-driven advice that a yes vote was the safest political choice. Indeed, a no vote was viewed by many Democratic consultants as political suicide for their clients.

In a way, Washington can be compared to a dysfunctional family with the Republicans playing the abusive husband and the Democrats the abused wife, who only recently has begun to speak up for herself.

Unaccountable Media

Yet, while Washington’s political hierarchy has changed only marginally in the past four years, the national news media has experienced even less accountability.

With the exception of New York Times reporter Judith Miller whose career imploded over her WMD credulity and Washington Post columnist Michael Kelly who died in a vehicle accident in Iraq, the disastrous Iraq War has caused little shake-up in the line-up of national pundits and top journalists.

One could even argue that the wrongheaded Washington pundits are more deeply entrenched today than they were when the invasion was launched on March 19, 2003. Today’s “smart” pundit position on Iraq is to have supported the invasion four years ago but to now complain about poor follow-through.

The few journalists and pundits who were skeptical about the invasion have gotten little reward for their foresight and courage. Washington’s powerful insider crowd generally regards them as “ideologues” or “partisans” who were only correct because their irrational hatred of Bush brought them to the right conclusion by accident.

In the up-is-down world of Washington, it was considered an act of courage to join the pro-war herd; conformity was independence; limited second thoughts about the war are now a sign of wisdom.

The national news media also has undergone very little structural change in the past four years. The Right continues to pour hundreds of millions – even billions – of dollars into building media outlets and creating content, from print to radio to TV to the Internet. This investment gives the Right a huge advantage in defining issues and setting the agenda.

Meanwhile, American liberals and progressives have yet to make anything close to that kind of commitment in terms of media infrastructure. [For more on this phenomenon, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]

One of the few liberal broadcast initiatives, Air America Radio, already has undergone bankruptcy reorganization, and progressive Internet sites are mostly expected to somehow fend for themselves.

Yet, while it may be true that only limited progress has been made in reinvigorating the U.S. political/media structure, it can’t be denied that a significant change has occurred in public awareness of the problem.

Perhaps the most hopeful sign is that many Americans now understand how little the Washington insiders – whether in political office or in the news media – deserve to be trusted. That skepticism, if it is combined with serious demands for change, could be the start of a rebirth for the American Republic.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

Sunday network "news" talk shows are REPUBLICAN PROPAGANDA factory... the networks LOVE big-government and the Bush-Cheney war....

Not only is FOX 'news' UNBALANCED, but so to are the other network Sunday 'news' shows; Only ABC had a rough parity of Republican and Democratic guests; and of course even ABC's Sunday 'news' show "THIS WEEK" hosted by former President Clinton senior staffer George Stephanopolous, does NOT ask the TOUGH QUESTIONS that need to be asked of this administration and this government; for example, why has President Bush never made good on his pledge to fire anyone in his staff associated with the illegal 'outing' of an undercover CIA operative (a deed which we know involved Karl Rove and other senior Bush White House staffers); or why the military ran KANGAROO COURTS for privates and low-level NCO's accused of "ABUSE" - WHILE Mr. Bush INSISTS ON THE RIGHT TO TORTURE PRISONERS, etc.

In short, the first and foremost function of the network 'news' media, as they see it, is STILL to serve as a propaganda organ for the Bush administration; in order to curry favor with that administration and thereby boost corporate profits from reduced taxes and greater ease of buy-outs and consolidations (the ability to swallow up smaller companies and markets to boost overall corporate control, as for example nuclear-arms and weapons manufacturer GENERAL ELECTRIC Co. owning a significant share of the US media market via its NBC subsidiary.

=================================================

If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative
Special Report: How the Right Continues to Dominate the Sunday Talk Shows
http://mediamatters.org/sundayshowreport/

On the Sunday after the midterm elections, in which Democrats took control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, viewers tuned in to NBC's Meet the Press to hear what the Democratic win meant for the country -- only to discover that host Tim Russert did not have any Democrats on at all. Instead, Russert's guests were Republican Sen. John McCain (AZ) and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (CT), who ran in the general election as an Independent after losing the Democratic primary. And after an election in which the public's opposition to the Iraq war was a central issue, Meet the Press hosted two guests who support the war.

But that incident is hardly an aberration. In a new report by Media Matters for America -- If It's Sunday, It's Still Conservative: How the Right Continues to Dominate the Sunday Talk Shows, we show that the Sunday shows -- Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- have consistently given Republicans and conservatives an edge over their Democratic and progressive counterparts in the last two years, the period of the 109th Congress. And, as our analysis shows, the recent shift in power in Washington has yielded mixed results, at best.


OUR KEY FINDINGS:

Despite previous network claims that a conservative advantage existed on the Sunday shows simply because Republicans controlled Congress and the White House, only one show, ABC's This Week, has been roughly balanced between both sides overall since the congressional majority switched hands in the 2006 midterm elections.
Since the 2006 midterm elections, NBC's Meet the Press and CBS' Face the Nation have provided less balance between Republican and Democratic officials than Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday despite the fact that Fox News Sunday remains the most unbalanced broadcast overall both before and after the election.
During the 109th Congress (2005 and 2006), Republicans and conservatives held the advantage on every show, in every category measured. All four shows interviewed more Republicans and conservatives than Democrats and progressives overall, interviewed more Republican elected and administration officials than Democratic officials, hosted more conservative journalists than progressive journalists, held more panels that tilted right than tilted left, and gave more solo interviews to Republicans and conservatives.
Now that Congress has switched hands, one would reasonably expect Democrats and progressives to be represented at least as often as Republicans and conservatives on the Sunday shows. Yet our findings for the months since the midterm elections show that the networks have barely changed their practices. Only one show - ABC's This Week - has shown significant improvement, having as many Democrats and progressives as Republicans and conservatives on since the election. On the other three programs, Republicans and conservatives continue to get more airtime and exposure.

In the months ahead, will the networks address the imbalance in their guest lineups? Or will they continue with business as usual?

We urge you to read the report and take action. Tell the networks to address our findings and consider whether the Sunday shows serve the public interest by continuing to give conservatives the edge in setting the terms of the national debate.


Read the report:
http://mediamatters.org/sundayshowreport/online_version/

Download the PDF:
http://mediamatters.org/sundayshowreport/if-its-sunday-its-still-conservative.pdf

BOB NOVAK "outed" Valerie Plame.. DESPITE "clear communiciation" from CIA officer not to !!

Under direct testimony, and in response to a question by a Republican committee member, Valerie Plame Wilson testified today that she and her husband had been aware for over a week that Mr. BOB NOVAK, reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and news-personality appearing on several Washinton politics TV talk programs (CNN, MSNBC), HAD BEEN INFORMED of her undercover CIA identity, and that Ms. Plame had talked to her CIA superiors to prevent her name being further publicized to the national news media.

Questioning from Representative Tom Davis, R-Va:

"AND THAT Mr. HARLOW HAD TALKED WITH NOVAK before he wrote his infamous "outing" story..."

"Mr. Harlow REQUESTED that Mr. Novak NOT REPORT YOUR NAME in that STORY..."

It can only be said, that through supreme arrogance and hubris, Mr. NovakINTENTIONALLY "outed" Ms. Plame's identity to the public... and therefore to America's enemies throughout the world - despite warnings from the CIA not to, and therefore with malice aforethought.

(Novak's take on his intentional "outing" of Valerie Plame's secret "Covert Operations" identity at CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/

In an August 2005 AP/MSNBC on-line article about CNN's firing of Bob Novak from their "Crossfire" debate show, the article mentions that Novak, in his own column, did indeed receive a request from CIA SPOKESMAN BILL HARLOW _NOT_ to disclose Ms. Plame's identity to the public... but that Novak did so anyways:

<< In his syndicated column Monday, Novak provided some details after having been largely silent about his role. He did not dispute that a former CIA spokesman, Bill Harlow, told him he should not print Plame’s name during conversations they had before the column was published. >>
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8830305


(Update: the TRANSCRIPTS of Mrs. Valerie Plame Wilson congressional testimony is still hard, indicating that the FOUR-YEARS-in-waiting story is STILL receiving LOW PRIORITY in the nation's media/press conscience; here is CNN's transcript for Plame's opening statement.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/16/plame.statement/

=======================================

Plame: My cover was 'recklessly' abused
By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer 13 minutes ago
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070316/ap_on_go_co/cia_leak_congress

WASHINGTON - Valerie Plame, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress Friday that senior officials at the White House and State Department "carelessly and recklessly" blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.

Plame, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.

"It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover," she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice," Plame said in response to a question.

The hearing was the first time Plame has publicly answered questions about the case, which led to the recent perjury and obstruction of justice conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Her appearance was a moment of gripping political theater as Democrats questioned whether the Bush administration mishandled classified information by leaking her identity to reporters. No one has been charged with leaking her identity.

"It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is out job to determine what went wrong and insist on accountability," Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., said at the outset of the hearing.

The man who led the criminal investigation, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, was not on the witness list. He told lawmakers Wednesday that federal law prohibited him from offering his thoughts on the case.

Nobody from the White House involved in the leak was scheduled to testify. Neither were officials from the State Department.

Plame sat alone at a witness table and fielded questions about her CIA career and the disclosure of her name in July 2003 in a syndicated newspaper column. She says she was outed as retaliation against her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who criticized the administration's prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department," Plame testified. "I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained."

Plame said she had no role in sending her husband on a CIA fact-finding trip to Niger. Wilson said in a newspaper column that his trip debunked the administration's pre-war intelligence that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa.

"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority," she said.

Wilson has written a book, and Plame is working on one, "Fair Game," although it has had a troubled history. In May 2006, the Crown Publishing Group announced it would publish her book, a deal reportedly worth seven figures. But the two sides could not agree on a final contract, and two months later an agreement was announced with Simon & Schuster.

Plame's book is subject to a mandatory review by the CIA. On Thursday, Simon & Schuster spokesman Adam Rothberg would say only that the book was "in progress," and that publication was expected soon.

Waxman says he wants to know whether the White House appropriately safeguarded Plame's identity. During the obstruction of justice and perjury trial of Cheney's former top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, it was revealed that many in the Bush administration knew Plame worked for the CIA but not that it was classified.

Fitzgerald never charged anyone with the leak and he told Waxman he could not discuss his thoughts on the case.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the committee, said that since Fitzgerald didn't charge anyone with the leak, the hearings were unlikely to add any insight.

"No process can be adopted to protect classified information that no one knows is classified," Davis said. "This looks to me more like a CIA problem than a White House problem."

Scheduled to testify Friday were attorney Mark Zaid, who has represented whistle-blowers; attorney Victoria Toensing, who said early on that no law was broken and has criticized the CIA's handling of the case, and J. William Leonard, security director of the National Archives, who was to discuss general procedures for handling sensitive information.

James Knodell, director of the White House security office, also could attend to discuss general security procedures, committee officials said.