Myers ignored key facts in reporting on controversy over Obama's home purchase

Myers ignored key facts in reporting on controversy over Obama's home purchase

Summary: In a "web-only" report, Lisa Myers cited anonymous "[c]ritics" who suggest that indicted Chicago businessman Antoin Rezko's paying "top dollar" for a lot adjacent to Sen. Barack Obama's home somehow influenced the price Obama paid for his house. But Myers did not note that Obama has said he was "not involved in the Rezko negotiation of the price for the adjacent lot" or that Obama has asserted that he was able to purchase the house for less than asking price because "the house had been listed for some time, for months, and our offer was one of two and, as we understood it, it was the best offer."

Domestic Spying Inc

Domestic Spying Inc

A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement.

The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance.

Republican Weekend Retreat Funded by lobbyists

House GOP’s retreat funded by lobbyists

This weekend, House Republicans are gathering at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia to have a conversation about cutting earmarks. As GOP members gather to talk about how to cut ties with lobbyist money, Ben Pershing notes that their weekend retreat is being partly funded by lobbyists:

As Bush stood in the banquet room addressing the assembled lawmakers, projected onto a giant screen next to him were the words “Congressional Institute.” [..]

The group is run by a high-powered board of Republican lobbyists, all of whom presumably value the entrée into Congressional affairs the institute provides

Fox News Dick Morris Claims Senator Clinton is the Type to slit your throat

Fox News Dick Morris Claims Senator Clinton is the Type to slit your throat

Summary: Syndicated columnist Dick Morris asserted on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes that Sen. Hillary Clinton's "temper is a cool, angry, 'I'll, you know, slit your throat in the middle of the night' temper." As Media Matters for America has noted, media figures have repeatedly portrayed Clinton and her advisers as violent or ruthless.

Fair and Balanced? How about rabid and unhinged.

Limbaugh defended Matthews' trashing of Clinton

Limbaugh defended Matthews' trashing of Clinton

On the January 18 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, referring to MSNBC host Chris Matthews' January 17 statement regarding his controversial comments about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), Rush Limbaugh said: "The one time Matthews gets something right, and he apologizes for it because of pressure from the Hillary front group Media Matters for America." On January 8, Matthews had said of Clinton: "[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." Limbaugh asserted that Matthews' original comment "hit the nail on the head" and went on to state: "I've said that in far more explicit terms behind this very golden EIB microphone. Hillary Clinton is where she is because she is the most cheated-on woman in the world." Limbaugh added that because of Matthews' January 17 statement, "Hardball last night turned into Suckball."

Limbaugh later said that conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer "had an even better line today," referring to Krauthammer's January 18 column, in which he wrote that the "presidency is her [Clinton's] due -- the ultimate in alimony." Limbaugh stated that Krauthammer "said this whole bid for the presidency is just one giant alimony payment," adding: "Even without the divorce. So, yeah. We're all -- we're the ones paying for it. That's exactly right -- a giant alimony payment, and we're the ones paying."

Contrary to Limbaugh's characterization, Media Matters is an independent, nonprofit, progressive organization unaffiliated with any candidate or political party.

True Populist John Edwards

No matter who wins the Democratic election, the John Edwards campaign has set the domestic agenda for the entire field

The triumph of global capital and crony capitalism over the past several decades has created a country of Silicon Valleys and Berlins, SoHo lofts and storm-ravaged Lower Ninth Ward bungalows. The last time Edwards ran for President, he called this the "Two Americas" and promised to stitch them together. But from the day Edwards announced this campaign in the Lower Ninth, he has presented himself as a warrior for one of those Americas as it fights to wrest back some of the ill-gotten gains from the other one--the "moneyed interests" and "entrenched corporate power" that have a "stranglehold on our democracy."

This populism makes the establishment media uncomfortable: consummate Beltway pundit Stuart Rothenberg recently worried in a column that the stock market would tank the day after Edwards was elected. When the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton, it chided the 2008 populist incarnation of Edwards for his "harsh anti-corporate rhetoric." But "harsh" pretty accurately sums up the country's judgment of the past seven years. In New Hampshire exit polls, two-thirds of Democrats and half of Republican voters said they were "angry" with the Bush Administration. The economy was the top issue in both parties, with nine out of ten voters expressing anxiety about it. All of which should redound to Edwards's benefit. The coalition envisioned by his campaign would stack different classes atop one another until the sum towered over a conservative minority of plutocrats. It would bring together the urban poor, the working poor in far-flung exurbs, the white working class in shuttered mill towns and the deeply anxious college-educated middle class. But it has been unable to put such a coalition together. When election day had come and gone, Edwards managed only 23 percent even on the favorable terrain of Berlin; Hillary Clinton won the town easily with 50 percent of the vote.

Edwards and his campaign point out that they've been fighting uphill: out-fundraised and outspent in Iowa six to one (probably closer to three to one, when independent 527 expenditures are figured in) and constantly contending with a press corps that, in the words of one Edwards staffer, "has never found a place for us in their story." These disadvantages are compounded by the shortcomings of Edwards's message. He almost never, unprompted, says a word about foreign policy; his pugilism can get the better of him (as when he took a cheap, sexist shot at Clinton for tearing up); and his stump speech, sharp and focused and righteous as it may be, is also so full of pathos it prompted something close to muted despair in me every time I heard it. Watching Nataline Sarkisyan's family give a raw, emotional account of their daughter's death in a hospital after Cigna waited too long to approve a liver transplant, I felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through my sternum. I couldn't imagine calling voters or knocking on doors or even going to polls. And I don't think it was just me. Unlike at Obama and Clinton rallies, where the crowds cheer at the slightest provocation, during most of Edwards's stump speech you can hear a pin drop. It's a bit like attending a funeral for the American dream.

Academic protest pope

Academic protest pope

Lecturers and students at a prestigious university in Rome want a planned visit by the Pope to be cancelled as they object to his position on Galileo.

Pope Benedict XVI is to make a speech on Thursday at La Sapienza university.

Sixty-seven academics have signed a letter saying the Pope's views on Galileo "offend and humiliate us".

They say he condoned the 1633 trial and conviction of Galileo for heresy. The astronomer had argued that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Bush Comes Full Circle Reinstates Iraq Government He Overthrew

Iraq to reinstate Saddam party followers

Iraq's parliament passed a benchmark law Saturday allowing lower-ranking former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to reclaim government jobs, the first major piece of U.S.-backed legislation it has adopted.

Traveling in Manama, Bahrain, President Bush hailed the law as "an important step toward reconciliation."

"It's an important sign that the leaders of that country understand that they must work together to meet the aspirations of the Iraqi people," he said.

The seismic piece of legislation had been demanded by the United States since November 2006 and represented the first legislative payoff for Bush's decision to deploy 30,000 additional troops to the country to quell violence.

In announcing the troop buildup more than a year ago, Bush said it would provide the Iraqi government "breathing space" to begin tackling legislation designed to reconcile Iraq's Shiite and Sunni Arabs as well as Kurds.

Other benchmarks languish, though, including legislation to divvy up the country's vast oil wealth, constitutional amendments demanded by the Sunni Arabs and a bill spelling out rules for local elections.

It was not immediately clear how many former Baathists would benefit from the new legislation, titled the Accountability and Justice law. But the move was seen as a key step in the reconciliation process.

Before the party was outlawed — the first official act of L. Paul Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority — its membership was estimated at between 2 million and 6 million.

The strict implementation of so-called de-Baathification rules meant that many senior bureaucrats who knew how to run ministries, university departments and state companies were fired after 35 years of Baath party rule.

Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority order No. 1 of May 16, 2003, had effectively stripped key government ministries, the military and top economic institutions of centuries of cumulative experience.

The order also was blamed for fueling the Sunni-dominated insurgency that took root in the late summer of 2003, under the leadership of ousted Sunni Baathists who sought vengeance against what they saw as their American tormentors.

Hypocrit O'Reilly Claims Personal Attacks Are Wrong

O'Reilly criticized as "personal attack" Matthews' assertion that Clinton owes political career to her husband's "mess[ing] around"

Summary: Bill O'Reilly stated that "some NBC commentators continue to slam Senator Clinton" and aired a video clip of MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews' comment about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton: "[T]he reason she's a U.S. senator, the reason she's a candidate for president, the reason she may be a front-runner is her husband messed around." O'Reilly called Matthews' comment "rough" and said: "We don't do that here. We would never say that Senator Clinton got her job because her husband messed around. I mean, that is -- that is a personal attack. And it is questionable whether a network should allow that or not."

America's Love-Hate Relationship with Drugs

America's Love-Hate Relationship with Drugs

While Americans are inundated with coverage of the Democrats' quibbling over Barack Obama's use of marijuana and cocaine as a teenager, a truly important drug story continues to be neglected: The hypocrisy of Big Pharma, psychiatry officialdom, and justice institutions regarding mood-altering (psychotropic) drugs -- specifically the denial of the similarity between illegal and psychiatric drugs.

Author and science writer Michael Pollan observed the following about Americans' illegal-psychiatric drug hypocrisy: "Historians of the future will wonder how a people possessed of such a deep faith in the power of drugs also found themselves fighting a war against certain other drugs with not-dissimilar powers. ... We hate drugs. We love drugs. Or could it be that we hate the fact that we love drugs?"

When we recognize that psychotropic prescription drugs are chemically similar to illegal psychotropic drugs, and that all of these substances are used for similar purposes, we see two injustices. First, we see the classification of millions of Americans as criminals for using certain drugs, while millions of others, using essentially similar drugs for similar purposes, are seen as patients. Second, we see a denial of those societal realities that compel increasing numbers of Americans to use psychotropic drugs.

Bush Lied - Was Told In August Iran’s Nuclear Program ‘May Be Suspended’

Bush Lied - Was Told In August Iran’s Nuclear Program ‘May Be Suspended’

On Tuesday, President Bush said he was never forewarned by the intelligence community that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003:

In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was.

Now the White House is revealing that wasn’t true. In fact, Bush did know what the information was. CNN reports:

President Bush was told in August that Iran’s nuclear weapons program ‘may be suspended,’ the White House said Wednesday, which seemingly contradicts the account of the meeting given by Bush Tuesday.”

The White House statement released by Dana Perino tonight also states McConnell told Bush “the new information might cause the intelligence community to change its assessment of Iran’s covert nuclear program.”

On Tuesday, Bush said “nobody ever told me” to back down from his hawkish rhetoric on Iran. No, maybe not. But Bush knew Iran “may have suspended” its nuclear weapons program and that the intelligence community was in the process of “changing its assessment.” And yet, he continued to warn of “World War III” and a “nuclear holocaust” because nobody told him specifically to stop.

Two authors, a rabbi and an atheist, debate religion and science

Two authors, a rabbi and an atheist, debate religion and science

"And you can't explain the place of science in human life in scientific terms. Just like you can't explain what an idea is in scientific terms. It's intangible and philosophical and religious," Wolpe said.

To this Harris observed: "The one thing to notice is that the dialogue between science and religion has gone this way: It . . . has been one of relentless and one-directional erosion of religious authority.

"I would challenge anyone here to think of a question upon which we once had a scientific answer, however inadequate, but for which now the best answer is a religious one. Now, you can think of an uncountable number of questions that run the other way: Where we once had a religious answer and now the authority of religion has been battered and nullified by science and by moral progress and secular progress generally. And I think that's not an accident."

Many religious claims, Harris added later, "are at odds with science. The belief that Jesus was born of a virgin may be a cherished claim by most Christians. It is also a claim about biology. That is why you can't keep science and religion apart."

Creeping Fascism History's Lessons

Goebbels Would be Proud

It has been two years since top New York Times officials decided to let the rest of us in on the fact that the George W. Bush administration had been eavesdropping on American citizens without the court warrants required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978.

The Times had learned of this well before the election in 2004 and acquiesced to White House entreaties to suppress the damaging information.

In late fall 2005 when Times correspondent James Risen’s book, “State of War: the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration,” revealing the warrantless eavesdropping was being printed, Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., recognized that he could procrastinate no longer.

It would simply be too embarrassing to have Risen’s book on the street, with Sulzberger and his associates pretending that this explosive eavesdropping story did not fit Adolph Ochs’s trademark criterion: All The News That’s Fit To Print.

(The Times’ own ombudsman, Public Editor Byron Calame, branded the newspaper’s explanation for the long delay in publishing this story “woefully inadequate.”)

When Sulzberger told his friends in the White House that he could no longer hold off on publishing in the newspaper, he was summoned to the Oval Office for a counseling session with the president on Dec. 5, 2005. Bush tried in vain to talk him out of putting the story in the Times.

The truth would out; part of it, at least.