Ruth: I'm no fan of NPR "political analysist" Cokie Roberts. But the problems this morning [Monday] had a lot less to do with Cokie and a lot more to do with the kiddie hosts NPR's turned Morning Edition over to.

Political Analysis
By Cokie Roberts

Political Wrap: Filibuster Debate

Morning Edition, May 16, 2005 · The dominant issue in the Senate this week will be whether to do away with the filibuster of judicial nominees. Current rules require the votes of 60 senators to cut off debate. Majority Leader Bill Frist will try to change that to a simple majority. If he succeeds, the immediate result would be confirmation of several controversial judicial nominees. News analyst Cokie Roberts looks at the issue.

Think of Cokie as a really dry apple challah kugel. Now most days, you'll avoid it. You know it's dry. You wish a certain someone who really can't cook would stop bringing it. But there are those mornings when you've been rushing around and maybe you're blood sugar's a little low.
So you decide to have a piece. But to do that, you need a knife to cut it with. Steve [Inskeep]
is the knife, a really dull knife. And as you use him to try to slice the kugel, you start wondering if it's really worth having any kugel when this dull knife's not helping at all.

Which I say to explain that today Cokie was half-way decent. Today the problem really wasn't Cokie it was dull knife Steve.

Cokie responded immediately to Steve's question about what she thought of the recent dinner between Senators Harry Reid and Bill Frist?

Cokie: Well I'd be a lot more positive about that if I didn't know about the fact that they were having dinner together and it hadn't been so widely publicized. Which leads me to belive that they were trying to show that they are trying to get to a compromise when they are in fact the two people least likely to get there. Bill Frist has presidential ambitions as we've talked about. Harry Reid wants to show the Democrat party as cohesive and hanging tough. And the Democrats don't want the rules changed as we know but they also don't want to seem obstructionists so they had a dinner planned.

That's her opinion and why. So whether you agree with her D.C. gossip chats, she started off strong for Cokie.

As usual with Cokie she had to make it all about John McCain whom she mentioned more than any other senator.

Cokie: The compromise if it comes will come from other people in the Senate. Republican John McCain, Democrat Ben Nelson who are working to try to get something done. As Senator McCain said yesterday people of good will can get to a compromise. The question is how many people of good will there are in the Senate at the moment.

Steve asks a question and it's not where did Senator McCain say this Cokie? He just dismisses that and asks his pre-rehearsed question. But Cokie, to her credit, did identify what network McCain said it on. Possibly because it was on ABC's This Week and she was on that show Sunday as well.

Cokie: These internal questions are always the most contentious. They get to the Senate's own power and the power of the institution. Again as John McCain said yesterday on ABC the very point of the Senate with their two seats per state regardless of the size of the state is minority protection.

Cokie then goes into a very detailed history of the filibuster. She speaks of past fights. She gives examples like Henry Cabot Lodge, Woodrow Wilson, Grover Cleveland, speaks of how historically "bitter" these fights have been. Steve seems to hear none of this, especially about how bitter things have been. It's like he's just waiting the whole time to ask the question someone's written for him.

Steve: And the rulesregarding the fillibuster have been changed before why not do it now?

I was surprised Cokie didn't ask, "Have you been listening to one word I said?" Instead she began her reply with, "Well again that was very bitterly fought . . ." which struck me as a nicer way of asking, "Are you paying attention?"

After which Steve wants to know "Do-do senators, Cokie, think on either side, think the public at large . . ." It was a badly worded question and Steve was so out of his element it was obvious. Morning Edition has suffered from serious discussion since the kiddie patrol took over.

Cokie: Well if they don't reach a compromise we are going to have a truly arcane vote which will be a vote on the motion to table the appeal on the ruling of the chair.

Read that again. Does it read like the punch line of the century? It was to Steve who cackled "Ah-ha-ha-ha!"


Cokie closed with the following: That will be the vote to decide whether the rules of the Senate are fundamentally changed and the minoirty is denied certain rights. The Democrats are quite bolstered as arcaneyist as all this is by polls showing the public overwhelmingly on their side. There's a new poll out in Time magazine today showing again the public is with the Democrats on this. So the pressure from outside unlike with the cloiture change is coming from both sides from Democrat groups who don't want change from Republicans who do. . . .

She identified the poll, she cited the ABC network earlier for McCain, she gave a great deal of history. Today, maybe I was in the mood for kugel, but she wasn't all that bad. It's too bad Steve wasn't up to an intelligent exchange because this segment could have really added up to something.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

First off, this is a linkless post. I'm not in the mood to steer anyone to happy talk about what a great job Daniel Okrent did as the "readers' representative" or "public editor." (Or to steer you to supposed reporters who give him the title of "ombudsman." The Times doesn't have an ombudsman. They could have created that position, with that title, but the Times chose not to.)

In the last two weeks, e-mails have come in about the shining on of Daniel Okrent. Here, we noted that would happen. It's not surprising. It's the end of Okrent's tenure and some feel the need to tie a bow around it and call it a gift, a wonderful gift.

That's not what it was. And people making those claims in their various articles aren't just having opinions that I personally disagree with, they're writing about something they know very little about. When I read an item shining Okrent on that someone's sent to the site (today it was Ryan), I read it and think, "Oh someone didn't pay attention."

Now no one's sent anything on by Jack Shafer of Slate. I'm sure that he'll write something if he hasn't already. And I'm sure he'll praise Okrent. But I'm guessing, and I could be wrong, he'll know Okrent's record.

Anyone can have an opinion. And if they're informed, that's fine. Shafer will emphasize the positive. He will know what to emphasize because he has followed the columns. I'll disagree because I don't think Okrent's done anything that worthy of praise. But Shaefer will be informed.

The things I'm being sent, the people don't know what they're talking about.

They might know of one column, but it's obvious they haven't sat there and read everyone. Please understand, I'm not suggesting that they do. I read them in real time and then in December when we did the two entries on Daniel Okrent ("First of All, There's the Continuing Daily Mistakes . . ." and "Daniel Okrent, Step Down") I spent several hours going over each and every column that he'd written up to that date. What I learned was that Excedrin Tension Headache tablets could almost get rid of the headache that would induce. Almost.

So the last thing I'd do with the misinformed is recommend that they go through Okrent's columns and read them all.

There are a number of problems with Okrent's tenure as "public editor" or "readers' representative."

The most obvious is "George." Sorry to repeat (I know all members are aware of what was done to George), but I don't think you can discuss Okrent's tenure without noting this.

George and Adam Nagourney (reporter for the Times) exchanged e-mails. (Plural.) In one of George's, George offered the hope, after Nagourney's reporting, that Nagourney's children would die in a Republican war.

George is a private citizen. Okrent's policy was that he would print e-mails to his office with the permission of the e-mailer. George never e-mailed Okrent. Adam Nagourney (who apparently scares easy -- Ava and I get far worse than that anytime we review a TV show over at The Third Estate Sunday Review) slides it over to Okrent.

It was truly none of Okrent's business. Okrent made it his business and refused to communicate with George. George did communicate to Nagourney and Arthur Bovino that he did not want his e-mail printed, his name used or his city given. Okrent was too busy to communicate with George but his office was aware of George's wishes. (And the panel's comments last week, they refute the action that Okrent took.)

As the readers' representative, there was no reason for Okrent to inject himself into the matter.
A reader didn't raise the issue. Okrent was there, or supposed to be, for the readers. When he outed George (giving his full name, his location, quoting from a private e-mail . . .) he let his feelings be known.

They weren't private feelings. Bob Somerby had pointed out for some time (long before the outing of George) that Okrent was dismissive of readers. That he handed out scorn in his columns. (Go to The Daily Howler and search "Daniel Okrent.")

So these people trying to shine it on, trying to tie a pretty bow around Okrent's "accomplishments" don't know what they're talking about. They mention the WMD (and don't even the back story). And then they talk in generalities because they don't know what he did in column after column (and what he didn't do -- what was his infamous quote -- "What I wanted to write about?" "What I want to write about?").

Let me correct that, maybe they do know. Maybe they're just being "polite."

Regardless, Okrent did a lousy job and to say otherwise, you better have some concrete examples. (I'm sure Shafer can make a case for Okrent. In that case, it will be a disagreement of opinion. But, again, Shafer knows the columns and these people shining on Okrent don't.)

Granted, I'm probably a little more up to speed on the readers' reactions than the people shining it on. I've read hundreds and hundreds of e-mails to Okrent (members have forwarded them). These e-mails cover his entire tenure. The early ones, especially, are very polite to Okrent and politely explaining the problems that they have with a factual error not being corrected, or a question about something.

Okrent dismissed those. Sometimes he replied (in the early days, he appeared to do the replying, these days what I'm forwarded are replies from Bovino).

If you're going to say he did a great job, maybe you need to speak to the readers?

He was the "readers' representive."

So before the next person shines it on, maybe they shouldn't think about how they reacted personally to one column on WMD and wonder what readers think?

They're praising him like he's a columnist (and Okrent's writing seems to suggest he also thought that). He wasn't. He was heading the complaints department, to be very basic about it.
It's as though they're praising him because they saw him in off hours smiling. They never saw how the complaint department was run. They have little basis on which to base their shining on.

Translation, it's called ignorance. (Again, Shafer will praise him -- if he hasn't already -- and Shafer has followed the columns. I don't think he's polled readers, I could be wrong, but he'll be able to offer some things, concrete things, that Okrent did.)

Writing out of ignorance, they not only shine on Okrent, they reveal an eagerness to flaunt their stupidity.

Does that sound harsh?

Good. There are ombudsmen (former and current) who weighed in to members about the issue of George. Their opinion? They thought it was unethical. We're not going to out them here, that's not our policy. But the reality is four people who have held similar positions think Okrent did a lousy job because of what he did to George. They're keeping silent publicly.

I won't do that. What he did to George was disgusting and vile.

And for a self-identified "free speech absolutist" (or however he worded it) to confuse a "hope" with a "threat" is really sad and goes to his stability or at least fitness for the job.

Okrent was never fit for the job. He was a magazine boy. Readers had to put up with him trying to learn the job (the workings of a paper) as he went along. Right there his praisers should realize there was a problem.

Let's talk about (again) some of the problems readers had. The paper printed titles for people.
Including in obits which are supposed to be factual. They would complain to editors. Editors would write back with a response to the effect of "that's what the person prefers to be identified as." Well that's not their damn title. It doesn't matter what they prefer, what matters are the facts. And that would then be taken to Okrent and he would reply or not but it never popped up in his columns.

Let's be real clear here, the Times gave a title to someone because they wanted it, not because they held it. That goes to factual. That was brought to Okrent's attention. Okrent took a pass.
Guess it wasn't "what I wanted to write about?"

Well it's not really what he wants to write about. Though he seems to never have grasped this, he wasn't hired to do op-eds. He was hired to address the readers' concerns -- hence "readers' representative."

With Nagourney, for whatever reason, he decided to play My Body Guard. That wasn't his job description.

He's praised for writing his WMD thing. Under pressure, he wrote that. Pressure from readers. He notes, in that column, that he always avoided it because he'd stated from the start that he'd only cover what happened under his watch. And shiners say, "He's so brave!"

No, he's not. Immediatley prior to the WMD, he broke his own word. He decided to tackle the coverage of the Tonys. (Again, we've been over this and over this.) Here's a new development. In one article sent to this site, a new one, he notes that no reader asked for that.

Did you grasp that? It's not surprising (we even mocked him over that with something like, "Hey Danny, love you, love your sweater, could you tackle the Tonys!"). It didn't mention any readers in the column. But besides churning out yet another op-ed on a topic that readers didn't ask for (and according to one person at the Times, one that readers complained about in significant numbers), he broke his rule.

The Times had yet to cover the Tonys under his watch. It's right there in the column, one the shiners miss. It's a pre-emptive attempt on his part to make sure that the Tony coverage doesn't do like it did in the past -- the past being before he was with the paper.

In that snide little column, he used words like "racket." If there's anything he can heap more scorn on than the readers, apparently it's the Tonys. What a brave soul. What a patron of the arts. How lucky we are to have Okrent blowing the lid off the "racket" that is the Tonys.

So here's what happened, and let's get this straight because the shiners can't, he broke his guidelines. He covered something from before he was public editor. Readers had been wanting and wanting him to address the WMD issue. He refused to and hid behind the safety of "I only write about what's gone on since I've been here." He blew that excuse out of the water. And sharp readers caught it and called him on it repeatedly in e-mails.

Some were nice, some used words like "hypocrite."

Now those shining it on don't seem to get that fact. Probably you'd either have to know his work or you'd have to speak to readers. And apparently either option is too much for the shiners.

Let's talk about something else. His recent column on the Middle East. Okrent's admitted that he delayed and delayed that. Not for a month, not for two, not even for half his tenure. He delayed it from the start.

He said it was one of the things he'd received the most e-mail on.

Okay, shiners, what does that mean? It means the readers cared about this issue. And Okrent was too busy writing "what I want to write about" to bother to address the concerns of the readers. Get it straight, shiners, he's not an op-ed columnist. He wasn't hired to sub for Friedman. He was hired to be the readers' represenative.

With his statement about delaying the Middle East issue, he revealed that he was negligent in his duties. It's a little hard to reconcile that fact with the shine so many are buffing him up with.

Remember the "what I want to write about" column? He was so proud of Dexter Filkins' article (six days old was it when it appeared in the paper?). Now he could have dealt with the campaign coverage (something he promised readers in print that he would do) but "what I want to write about" was more important than dealing with the readers or with keeping his printed promise.

How do you shine on that?

Am I angry? Yes, I am. I don't like people who pretend to be experts on something but don't know what they're talking about. And these shiners don't know what they're talking about. They cherry pick the WMD column and one other (if readers are lucky) and act like they've done the work required to evaluate him as an "ombudsman" (they love to use that term even though it's incorrect -- possibly had they done the minimal required reading they'd know that term is inaccurate).

We've got a member who kept all his e-mails to Okrent. He wrote Okrent from the start. (Okrent and Bovino can fire up their automated e-mail program and look up "Subscriber on the Verge" as a title. That's revealed with the member's permission.) He said he would try to stick to facts and not opinions. And in his e-mails he did. And Okrent, early on, replies that these are issues. But they never get addressed.

How can you write about whether or not Okrent made a good public editor without knowing what the readers think? You can't. But the shiners sure try to.

They evaluate him based on a column or two that was printed. They have no idea of the topics he avoided. Factual and opinion. They have no idea of how many issues he refused to address.
Or the issue of recipes, or entertainment or sports, or you name it.

Maybe those topics weren't glamorous enough for him? (I'm finding that hard to believe since he worked for lifestyle magazines.) But when serious factual errors are brought to his attention, when they haven't been corrected (and still haven't), don't shine on that he did a good job.

You quite frankly don't know what you're speaking of.

That might be fine. You might want to flaunt your ignorance and play insiders club. That's your choice. But you don't know what you're talking about. He's not Maureen Dowd or Adam Cohen or anyone contributing op-eds. He's the "readers' representative." And to determine how well he did or didn't do his job, you need to know what issues he ignored and what issues he addressed.

The shiners are ignorant. It may be willfully ignorant. But they don't know what they're talking about. They're reading an op-ed or two and thinking, "Hmm, I would've written that." Really?
As an op-ed writer or as a public editor? Because there's a world of difference between the two.

It's as though they're telling you a program worked, a social program, because they heard Okrent say he ran it well. They're not checking with the people on the social program, they're not determing whether their needs were met.

It's quite honestly either arrogance or ignorance but it needs to stop.

It won't. We noted here that halo would be placed on his fair head. We noted that the shine on would start.

And it's a sorry indication of the quality and level of our press that they can't do the basic homework. They can't read the columns and apparently can't be bothered by the great unwashed (readers). It's disgusting, but it is, to use Bill Keller's term, a circle jerk.

They all line up to praise him as though they're participants at a celebrity roast. They're forgetting that they're not sitting on the dais, they're using their reporting space to shine it on.
It says a great deal about the level of journalism in this country.

They even shine on his mini-war with the Business section. A war he created with his own ignorance.

To judge this as a wonderful tenure and shine it on really calls to question what passes for journalism in this country. And shiners should be ashamed of themselves.

A web site or a community shouldn't have to raise the issues that big "brave" press doesn't want to address. So shame on you shiners. You've declared that it's okay to be an uniformed journalists. You've declared that there's no need to do any leg work. You've "circled the wagons" (as one ombudsman put it) around Okrent for some time now and you continue to do so.

Did you even speak to Bill Keller before you started the shine on? If so, did you ask him about his e-mails? The ones from readers who complained repeatedly about Okrent? I've seen some of those as well.

There seems to be an attitude of "Well he's stepping down so let's say something nice." Are you a talk show host or are you a journalist? There's a world of difference. We expect Ellen DeGeneres, for instance, to emphasize the positive and keep things light. But when an actual journalist elects to write on to the topic of Okrent's tenure and you throw out objectivity and every other principle that you're supposed to hold dear (basic research for instance), there's a problem.

Now some of the shiners might argue, "You only saw e-mails from people complaining about Okrent!"

That's not the case. The e-mail address here is public and people use it all the time. If we write in praise of Katrina vanden Heuvel, you better believe some visitor who stumbled onto The Common Ills is going to e-mail (repeatedly) about some imagined slight that occurred years ago.
Or, "Amy Goodman only said hello to me and scribbled an autograph! She said she was 'busy!'
How can you praise someone like that!" (Presumably, Goodman was supposed to invite that woman to Outback and offer to pick up the tab -- I don't know.)

By the same token, when we register our objection to someone here, there are visitors who will e-mail about their experiences (wonderful) with the person involved.

One visitor bragged about how Okrent noted in an e-mail to her how important the topic she raised was and how it was worthy of addressing. He wrote that, she forwarded it. But it never made it his op-eds. The topic didn't.

Now she was thrilled with that. The readers' representative took the time to note how important her issue was. That was all the validation she required.

I don't think it's good enough. Her concern was valid. Her concern did deserve to be addressed. It never was. Not in the brief e-mail or in his columns.

She's not the only one who's praised him. (And some who have sent e-mail exchanges and there were times when he actually dealt with an issue raised.)

So I've seen exchanges people were happy about as well as ones they weren't. What have the shiners seen?

Apparently nothing. You couldn't speak to the readers (and limit it to subscribers if you prefer) and get the impression that this has been a glorious tenure.

I hate posting on Okrent because after Randy Cohen stated Okrent, he thought, received some sort of warning or action for outing George (Okrent's office denies Cohen's belief), anytime he comes up, the e-mails pour in. Posts on Okrent tend to reach a larger audience than our members and usual visitors.

So tomorrow I will once again (if the pattern holds) be wading through e-mails about Okrent.

He may feel I take pot shots at him (and he may or may not be correct on that). Yes, they are aware of what goes up here -- and probably not a good idea to claim otherwise the way some did with regards to Bob Somerby in the CJR article. As Wally pointed out, the actual policy of this site is not complete confidientiality. You toss that out if you lie. And with Okrent, who felt no problem quoting from a private e-mail, I doubt I'd rake my mind for days about whether or not to quote e-mails.

Jack Shafer is a friend of Okrent's. That's fine. He'll write something positive, no dout. You can do that. But Shafer will be informed in what he cites. These shiners do not know what they're speaking of. (Or if they do, they're being vary careful about what they emphasize.)

Rob was one of the first members to ask that Okrent be addressed. That started early on. And in the earliest days, I would reply that he writes op-eds and we don't address op-eds here. (Or I don't. Members can address whatever they want to.)

But as Rob pointed out, it wasn't supposed to be an op-ed. It was supposed to deal with issues of concern to readers. It was supposed to increase readers' trust in the paper. That went out the window long before a reader was outed. A reader and private citizen and, again, Okrent's really lucky George didn't sue. It's not a friendly time in the courts for reporters. George was a private citizen and Okrent used the weight of the paper to humiliate him. Not only that, Okrent's comments to Business Week boreder on evidence of malice.

But the shiners don't want to talk about that. Maybe they harbor some desire to go off on readers as well? I don't know. Or maybe they're just as ignorant on this topic as they are on other issues having to do with Okrent's tenure.

So Rob pointed out why it was important to address Okrent. Rob made a solid case. He had to wait for me to find time to devote to re-reading every column. But he was patient and we addressed it. And we've continued to.

And an Okrent fan will write in saying what gives you the right to write about Okrent. I believe it's called free speech. Beyond that, I do subscribe to the paper, I do read it. I did have hopes that Okrent would make a difference. That's not been the case. Panels have made a difference.
Keller's made a difference (I think he could do more but people who know him swear he's doing all he can and I'll give them the benefit of the doubt).

Okrent was too busy writing "what I want to write about" to make a real difference. There were far too many issues waiting to be addressed, for instance, for him to turn his space over to two professional writers debating whether or not the Times was "liberal."

Okrent had his say on that (and it was the sort of half-baked answer that you'd expect from someone with no intricate knowledge of newspapers -- which is why he and Keller so disgareed over that column -- and I belive that's public knowledge). To turn around and then give the space over to professional writers? That wasn't his space to give. That was the readers' space.
Had he wanted to give two (or more) readers the opportunity to weigh in, fine. But he farmed it out like it was an op-ed space and it was never intended to be that.

When the shiners start shining, they bother the community and that means I hear about it. Going through all the e-mails on the latest shining (Ryan was the first to send it in), I wish I could tell you that the shiners would wake up. But they won't. They'll continue to applaud Okrent. The halo will be placed, the shine will be waxed.

But there's a thing called truth and the truth is they don't write as though they know his record. The Washington Post, to give only one example, has an ombudsman who never forgets that he's there to serve the readers. Jeffrey Dvorkin may not go into the detail needed but he never tells us about his vacations or offers up interviews with himself or make himself the repeated topic of his space.

There are people who do their jobs. I may not agree with the outcome, but they do their jobs in terms of going through the e-mail, letters, calls, etc. and attempting to answer the concerns of readers or listeners. Okrent hasn't done that.

Readers felt the Times was biased in their campaign coverage. As Bob Somerby noted, Okrent responds to that by writing his "Back from Vacation" column where he tells you of his little test: he read nothing but the Times on his vacation. And guess what? He was pleased with the coverage.

How can he make that call? He's read only the Times. If there's a problem with the Times coverage, if things are being left out, how can he determine that if he's not reading anything else?

The only term for that is masturbation. It may not be a polite term, but it's what it was. It was as though partners had complained to Okrent that he was a lousy lay and he set out to prove them wrong by locking himself in the bathroom.

So-called journalists are going to continue to try to shine him on. That's the reality. I understand your frustartions on that. I understand why you feel he was a lousy public editor (and I share that opinion). But with the state of our printed press, let's be honest and admit that reality doesn't often make it into print.

I share the disgust you feel over his tenure. Maybe they would if you took the issue to them. To be honest, I wasn't taking him seriously prior to the e-mails. Rob's the reason I realized this was a serious issue. To me he was as useless as one of Bumiller's White House Letters. So I can understand that the shiners might not grasp how disgusting his work was.

I'm a huge fan of Bob Somerby's. That doesn't require that I agree with everything he writes. When he posted on Okrent's vacation, my thought was, honestly, "Well it's not that bad." It was that bad. I didn't get it until I had to read through one column after another. Somerby called it right and he saw things that I hadn't.

But the difference between the shiners and I (besides the fact that even prior to going through the columns I wouldn't have shined him on) was that I went through every column before writing a word. That was basic to me. And it should have been basic to them. That is what their job entails.

And due to the nature of his position, it also entails that they have some sense of what the readers think. He was their representative. It was as though they wrote "Tom DeLay is a great Congress person! They love him in Georgia!" Well who cares what Georgia thinks? (No offense to Georgia.) DeLay's not supposed to represent Georgia. By the same token, Okrent had a constituency he was supposed to represent.

Now it's one thing to argue that he did that but his evaluations weren't what readers liked. It's another to ignore whether or not he did it. He didn't do it.

And this isn't a secret. Sam Seder led the battle on the outing of George. Whenever an e-mail comes in praising our bravery on that issue, I reply that we've done nothing compared to what Seder did on The Majority Report. And that's the truth.

Bob Somerby has addressed the issue of Okrent. Those aren't the only two who've been public.
I hope we have contributed in some small way because I think what was done to George in the public editor's space was disgusting. But he didn't leave it there. He bragged about his actions and compared George (in Business Week) to someone who sprayed a swastika on a synagogue.
Do the shiners not get how disgusting that was?

Forget his policy of getting permission before printing something (his stated policy, check the columns before George is outed), forget his self-i.d. stance as a free speech absolutist, forget that he brought the weight of the New York Times down on a private citizen. Focus on the fact that the readers' representative interjected himself into a private matter between a journalist and a reader. Focus on that fact and then ask yourself how the shiners can go about shining?

It's disgusting and I understand your disgust. But it's not surprising and it goes to the state of the printed press today. Or as Mike Malloy put it, on a different press issue, last night, we don't have the press of the seventies. Considering what we have, it's really not surprising that the shine on goes down.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This post has been edited to add "Editorial/op-ed" to title to reflect what it is and to change "thing" to "belief."]

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

We'll start off with the topic everyone was talking about yesterday evening, Newsweek's caving.
From this morning's New York Times, Katharine Q. Seelye and Neil A. Lewis's "Newsweek Says It Is Retracting Koran Report:"

After a drumbeat of criticism from the Bush administration and others, Newsweek magazine yesterday went beyond an apology it issued Sunday and retracted an article published May 1 that stated that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, had tried to rattle Muslim detainees by flushing a Koran down a toilet.
The original article was blamed for inciting widespread protests and riots in the Muslim world, where desecration of the Koran is viewed as an incendiary act, and where at least 17 people were killed in the ensuing violence.
"Based on what we know now, we are retracting our original story that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse at Guantanamo Bay," the statement from Newsweek said.
The carefully worded retraction came after the White House said the Newsweek article had damaged the image of the United States abroad. It reflected the severity of consequences that even one sentence in a brief news article can have at a time of intense anti-American sentiment overseas and political polarization, as well as extreme distrust of the mainstream media at home.


Eddie highlights Charles McGrath's "The Reporter Who Put Monica on the Map:"

In discussing the article yesterday, Mr. Isikoff, who supplied the source for the article, said: "Whenever something like this happens, you've got to take stock and review what you did - how the story was handled. The big point that leaps out is the cultural one. Neither Newsweek nor the Pentagon foresaw that a reference to the desecration of the Koran was going to create the kind of response that it did. The Pentagon saw the item before it ran, and then they didn't move us off it for 11 days afterward. They were as caught off guard by the furor as we were. We obviously blame ourselves for not understanding the potential ramifications."
Mark Whitaker, the editor of Newsweek, said in an interview yesterday, "Everybody behaved professionally and by the book in this case." Mr. Whitaker said no disciplinary action was being taken against the reporters because they did everything they should have done. "Grounds for discipline would be unethical behavior, fabrication, sloppy reporting or unwillingness to acknowledge the severity of the problem, and none of those things happened in this case."

No need for discplinary actions? Isikoff's remarks suggest the same. So why's the story being retracted and apologized for? Because reporting something had a reaction? Quick, better let everyone know to stop running Dear Abby! The news is the news. How people react to it or don't has little to do with news. (Though it has a great deal to do with gatekeeping and information management.)

If there's nothing for anyone to be discisplined over that could mean that Isikoff got something wrong. That happens. Sources can burn you. That's not a reflection on Isikoff unless he's allowed it to happen repeatedly. (Which doesn't appear to be the case.) But Isikoff offers that the Pentagon had the report for eleven days with no objection. If there's a problem with the facts reported, then it goes to the Pentagon and not to Isikoff. But this attitude that news should be soft and not be anything that results in reactions . . .

How do you respond to that? Zach says with a laugh and asks that we note the last paragraph from yesterday's entry on Newsweek:

In other related news, the nation's oldest newspaper, the New York Post, has announced that it will be apologizing for reporting that the Union won the Civil War while the Weather Channel has annouced that they regret all weather predictions, both the ones that they called correctly and the ones they got wrong.

Like Sabrina, I'm confused as to why the following story comes via the Associated Press? The Times didn't have anyone to assign to this story? "Soldier Is Found Guilty in Abu Ghraib Abuse:"

A military jury convicted a soldier Monday on all but one of the seven charges she faced for her role in the abuse of inmates at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
A panel of four Army officers and four senior enlisted soldiers convicted the soldier, Specialist Sabrina Harman, on one count of conspiracy to maltreat detainees, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of dereliction of duty.
The defendant, a 27-year-old reservist from Lorton, Va., was acquitted on one maltreatment count. Her sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin Tuesday. She faces a maximum of five and a half years in a military prison.

Barry e-mails asking if what we're about to highlight is a Reuters article or an AFP one? I have no idea, both are credited. "By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE" "Senate Democrats Fault U.S. in Iraq Oil Scandal:"


(Reuters) - The United States did not do enough to curb corruption by American companies involved in the United Nations' oil-for-food program in Iraq, say Democrats on a Senate committee investigating abuses in the program.
A report by the Democrats released late Monday said the State Department and the United States Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control had taken "virtually no steps" to ensure that American companies enforced sanctions against Iraq.

Lynda e-mails to note Craig S. Smith's "French Senator Rebuts Report by U.S. Panel in Oil Inquiry:"


Charles Pasqua, a French senator implicated in the Iraqi oil-for-food abuse scandal, accused American investigators on Monday of a deliberate attempt to link France's political decisions before the current war in Iraq to reports of bribes paid by Saddam Hussein.
"Probably, they think I am close to Jacques Chirac and that I am his adviser," Mr. Pasqua told reporters on Monday, referring to allegations reiterated last week by the United States Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that he received lucrative oil contracts from Mr. Hussein. He repeated past denials that he had received anything.

Lloyd e-mails to note Steven Lee Myers' "Russian Court Delays Ruling in Fraud Trial of Oil Tycoon:"

The judges in Russia's most prominent criminal trial began reading their verdict on Monday against Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, once the country's richest man, indicating they had concluded that he and his partner had committed crimes, but then postponed a final verdict for at least another day.
The climax of Mr. Khodorkovsky's trial began to unfold in a crowded Moscow courtroom much as the government's legal assault has progressed from the start: clouded in confusion, prone to surprise and drowned out by the clamor of those accusing President Vladimir V. Putin of using the case to settle a personal or political score.

Rod e-mails to note Carl Hulse's "Senate Talks on Judicial Nominees Break Down:"

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, broke off talks on Monday with his Republican counterpart on efforts to head off a showdown on judicial nominations, saying he could not consent to Republican demands.
"The negotiations are over," Mr. Reid said as he left the office of the majority leader, Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee. "I have tried to compromise, and they want all or nothing, and I can't do that. It will have to be decided on the Senate floor, hopefully this week."

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Lori just e-mailed to ask if there were any more posts tonight? I'm working on a post that members are asking for and look for it tomorrow. Hopefully in the morning. I had to stop because, as most who've e-mailed will already know, it's on Daniel Okrent. It's an editorial. Dealing with the issue so many of you want addressed. It will go up tomorrow (and hopefully in the morning) but I share your frustrations with "revisionists" (Kara's term).

Let's note Luke of wotisitgood4 in the meantime. Luke wrote several times last week. As I noted here on Saturday, his e-mails were going to the junk folder. I do check that and usually several times a week but last week I didn't have time to check until Saturday.

He wanted to draw our attention to what Sanger's been writing for the Times.

Here's something he wanted to share with the community:

didja see this smackdown of Sanger at E&P re his nthkorea nonsense? http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000920622 there are two outstanding questions: a) why was this information leaked to him? b) why did it get front paged? i wish i had an outstanding answer...

At his site, he's written this:

NTH KOREA WAR?:* wow - after i smacked down that appalling Sanger A1 NYT article on nthkorea, and called it miller-esque, it seems that there has been quite a storm brewing.check out this E&P article - heres the lede:"No reporter of national stature has more often -- and with insufficient skepticism -- reported the White House view of the Iranian and North Korean nuclear threats than David Sanger, the New York Times White House correspondent. The intellectually nimble Sanger has been channeling onto the front pages of his newspaper a combination of leaked factoids and broadbrush depictions of the growing danger to the United States."hers the obvious question: why is such bollox reporting continually shovelled onto A1? surely not by accident - altho i dont really think that the ams are going to bomb nthkorea. why? why? why? 2 things happened - people fed sanger this bollox for a reason, and the nyt frontpaged it repeatedly. why?

An important issue. The administration knows they can't use Judith Miller again. Not and be believed by the public the way they were last time. (The credibility is very low to non-existant with regards to Miller.) Sanger's served on the Elite Fluff Patrol under Elisabeth Bumiller. From what Luke (and Editor & Publisher) noted, it appears Sanger's ready to leave the Fluff Patrol and fly solo where only Miller has before.

Seth e-mailed to ask that we note the roundtable at The Third Estate Sunday Review.
Seth wanted this part excerpted:

Ava: Agreed. Anyone else? Okay, let's move to Bolton. We've discussed the sexual allegations, what about his nomination being sent out of committee?
Jim: I'm really disgusted with the way the case has been argued to the media.
Ty: Right. The Republicans get to spin it as he's "authoritarian." Or "commanding."
Dona: Naomi Klein's written about how, by not addressing torture in the presidential campaign, John Kerry made it hard for Democrats to suddenly bring up the issue with the nomination of Alberto Gonzales. I think that's true. And I think something similar applies here.
Betty: That's the piece where she talks about the refusal to respond strongly to the "global test" nonsense, right?
Dona: Yeah.
Betty: And that's so much a part of this. Are we going to work with others or just be a bully. And the adminstration wants us to be a bully. I don't think we're in any position to be a bully.I don't think even my "husband" Thomas Friedman would argue we're in that position. Not with our economy, our trade record and our job losses.
C.I.: The issue of diplomacy isn't being addressed loudly. I want to note that with the mainstream media, if it's being brought up, it's probably going to be ignored. But in terms of the Sunday Chat & Chews, that's a live mike. Democrats could be making points there, strong points. And this does go to who we are and what we stand for. Do we live up to our self-concepts or toss them out? I don't think an overwhelming majority would say "Trash our beliefs!" But the issue hasn't been presented on those terms to most Americans.
Rebecca: Because God forbid the Democrats look weak! I think that's there worry.
C.I.: I agree with you. And anyone jump in at any time because I can off on this topic forever. But this fear of "weakness" led to support in Congress for the occupation/invasion. It prevents Congress from reflecting the mood of the people which thinks the occupation is a mistake. At some point, the decision was made to give some Republicans and the administration enough rope to hand themselves, my opinion. So instead of coming out strongly against certain issues, then and now, Democrats have basically, as a whole, shrugged their shoulders. What's going on is too important for them to continue shrugging their shoulders. When Condi Rice speaks of a fondness for the cold war, I'd argue it's because even she realizes the stability a bipolar system brought. Not a great system, mind you. If you weren't the United States or the Soviet Union, you were caught in the middle. But we're operating now as though we're in a unipolar system that will never end despite what history demonstrates. Despite the fact that, as Betty has pointed out, we don't hold all the cards. So, out of concern over future shifts, if nothing else, you'd think Democrats could speak out. While they remain silent, and I'm exempting the Barbara Lees and Ted Kennedys, I'm speaking of the party as a whole, who and what we are is changing. If we're going to change, we need an honest and open debate among the people and we're not getting that because the Democrats are running scared from the issues that go to the heart of our country.
Jim: Which is why I'm really enjoying Stop The Next War Now. And, I mean, thank goodness we've got CodePink but is that all we've got? They have to battle the FCC, the conventions of both major parties, the occupation and everything else? Where are our elected officials in all of this? And I do agree that they thought they'd hand the Republican Party enough rope to hang themselves. But for that to happen, the Democrats need to be addressing why you don't always resort to the stick, why you use the carrot, why your belief system goes beyond what happens today and is not something you toss aside one minute and think you can pick up later.
Dona: Because we are judged by our actions. And when our actions go, as they do now, in such an opposite direction of our beliefs, our beliefs are dismissed by others as merely words. I didn't vote for the Bully Boy, I know no one's shocked by that. But I think we can survive four more years --
Ty: Impeach!
Dona: I'm with you there. But I think we can survive four more years provided the Democratic Party doesn't just roll over but provides clear reasoning. I am not saying, "Where is your proposal!" That's such nonsense. The Republicans and the press are starting that shit, "Where's your Social Security proposal?" Well if Bully Boy comes up and says, "I think you'd be happier if we cut off your leg" and I say, "No, I want to keep this leg," I don't need to propose an alternative. I don't need to be forced into accomodation. I can simply say, "No, you're crazy, we're leaving it alone."
Betty: Amen to that. Cokie Roberts and her ilk want the Democrats to propose an alternative plan. It's like Bully announces he's dropping a bomb on your house and you say, "I don't want a bomb dropped on my house" and Cokie's on NPR screaming, "Where is the alternative plan!"It makes no sense. And the Democrats have got to get it together on the war. They need to stop trying to rush to a mike when things look better for a day or a two and copy Bully Boy's Operation Happy Talk. Besides ending up looking stupid when the truth comes out, they give the Republicans the ability to say, "Okay, people died and Bully Boy was wrong, but hey, Hillary Clinton was saying last February that we'd turned a corner so you're no better!"
Jess: Exactly. The Democratic Party needs to be "better." They need to explain in clear terms why things are wrong. They don't have to come up with a plan. Somethings just need a no. And with regard to the occupation, if they started saying what so many feel, that the occupation is wrong, you'd see the country insisting that the troops come home in such large numbers that even some Republicans in Congress would agree.
Ty: Good point. I went home over spring break and there wasn't one person in my family who didn't think the troops need to come home now. But like my uncle said, "So what, who's going to listen?" And a lot of the reaction, or lack of reaction, is the result of Democrats not even trying to fight in Congress on some issues during the last four years.
Rebecca: Jane Fonda went on David Letterman and said the war was wrong. It's shocking that the Democratic leadership in Congress can't do the same. And that they will ignore a Ted Kennedy when he says it's wrong. It's wrong and the longer we stay, the worse it will get.
Dona: Because we are part of the problem. We're there when we shouldn't be but I'll table that and just focus on today. We have not demonstrated good faith. Instead, we've made a lot of promises that never came to pass while we've made back alley deals and the Iraqis are quite aware of that, even if many in America aren't.
Betty: And where are the insurgents or the resistance in the press coverage? I'm so damn sick of hearing whispers about them.

Obviously, I'm part of the roundtable (and need to learn to shut up or be briefer in my responses). Ava, Ty, Jess, Jim and Dona are community members who now run The Third Estate Sunday Review. Rebecca does the wonderful Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude.
Betty does the hilarious Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man. (Rebecca and Betty are community members who, like The Third Estate Sunday Review, decided to start their own blogs and do a great job.)

Seth asked where Folding Star of A Winding Road was? Those things are usually tossed together at the last minute. If Kat, FS or anyone else is around at the time, then they're included. Seth asked if anything was edited out. There was a break (earlier, in a section not quoted) and that's not noted. Outside of the break, everything that's up there is what was said.
And I'm inviting Folding Star to participate in the next one tonight. It's a topic FS is interested in. FS had a Saturday night obligation/event last Saturday.

Jill has something she wants posted and we'll do it tomorrow. Writing about Okrent really tired me out.


The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

We're going to note BuzzFlash again because Cindy's question last week really makes me concerned that people may not realize BuzzFlash not only provides links to important stories from a variety of publications (magazines, journals, newspapers, blogs, etc.), but that they also originate content as well. With the New York Times' decision to go to a for pay site this coming September, I want to be sure that members are aware of what BuzzFlash has to offer as a web site. (And note, as we did in another entry a few months back, which I don't have time to hunt down, the Washington Post has no plans currently to go to a for pay site. They're eager to see if, as with Wall St. Journal, the move hurts the Times in terms of visibility. Should that happen, they are willing to go all out to expand their reach. They won't be peeling off Times readers, they'll be providing safe harbor.)

Currently, if you visited BuzzFlash, you'd find the following items that are original content (and probably more than this, I'm sure I'll miss something).

Let's start with Sibel Edmonds' "Gagged, But Not Dead:"

The Appeal Court’s decision on Sibel Edmonds' Case is out: 'Case Dismissed;' no opinion cited; no reason provided. The Court's decision, issued on Friday, May 6, has generated a string of obituaries; "another major blow, maybe the last one, to Sibel Edmonds, a woman who has faced an unprecedented level of government secrecy, gag orders, and classification." Well, dear friends and supporters, Sibel Edmonds may be gagged, but she's not dead.
On October 18, 2002; three months after I filed my suit against the Department of Justice for unlawful termination of my employment caused by my reporting criminal activities committed by government officials and employees, John Ashcroft, the then Attorney General, invoked a rarely invoked privilege, the State Secrets Privilege. According to Ashcroft, everything involving my case and my allegations were considered state secrets, and whether or not I was right in my allegations, the United States District Court had to dismiss my entire case without any questions, hearings or oral argument; period. According to Ashcroft, the court had to grant his order and dismiss the entire case with no hearings solely based on the fact that he, Ashcroft, said so. After all, our government knew best. As of that day, my case came to be gagged; but I continued on.

From their editorial "Without Media Reform, the Bush Thugs Will Stay in Power. It's That Simple:"

Suppose the Mafia could basically dictate what "news" is on television, radio and in most mainstream newspapers. Suppose the Mafia could even invent stories and create factoids by following the policy that if you repeat a lie five times in the media, it becomes the truth.
Suppose that this has actually happened with the Bush Administration, because it has.
And make no mistake about it, we are dealing with a One-Party government that believes that creating an impression of unbeatable, omnipotent, brutal power is the way to crush the opposition. The rule of law doesn't matter; the Constitution doesn't matter; democracy doesn't matter. In fact democracy is an inconvenient obstacle to dictatorial one-party rule that is accountable to no one but the party leader.
Sounds a bit like a mixture of the old Soviet Union and Franco's Spain.
Well, it is.

A media alert, "The Media Reform Conference, New Media and What You Can Do:"

Some BuzzFlash staffers attended this past weekend's sold-out media reform conference in St. Louis with more than 2200 other people. The energy and commitment to building a pro-democracy media was palpable. Everyone there, to quote Howard Beale in the classic film "Network," was mad as Hell and was not going to take it anymore.
But to get beyond the old media, a little something called money is needed. You know the routine by now: BuzzFlash accepts no advertising in order to ensure that we are only accountable to our readers, not to shareholders and certainly not to the illegitimate Bushevik regime.
We're partisan, if partisan means standing up for the Constitution, an accountable government and an inclusive society. We're partisan, if partisan means that we believe the American government doesn't belong to one radical, extremist sect within the population -- a sect that wants to impose its violent vision and morality upon Americans who cherish their personal liberties and freedom.

They've reposted a link to their 2003 interview with Bill Moyers (and they have some great interviews in their archives):

BUZZFLASH: Are you saying the bottom line corporate culture of large media conglomerates such as the Tribune Company, Time Warner, New York Times Company, Clear Channel or Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp affects the perspectives of their individual media outlets -- as well as the reporting of political and governmental news in particular?
MOYERS: Sure. Rupert Murdoch is in a category by himself -- overtly political. He makes no bones about it. Sure, he wants NewsCorp to turn big profit, as it does. But he'll take losses on the New York Post and subsidize The Weekly Standard to advance his political agenda, which, of course, is ultimately aimed at the kind of government favoritism that boosts his corporate earning. I'm sure you know he's lobbying hard right now for FCC approval of his purchase of DirectTV, which will give him a network of satellite systems spanning Europe, Asia, and Latin America. He's starting all-news networks in Italy and India, and he's so desperate to please the Chinese that he dropped the BBC from his satellite operation in China just to please the communist leaders there who didn't like the coverage.
Few journalists have the guts to take on Murdoch the way columnist Richard Cohen did. He described Murdoch's properties -- including his Fox News Channel -- for what they are: "blatantly political, hardly confining Murdoch's conservative political ideology to editorials or commentary but infusing it into the news coverage itself."
That's the political side of it. Then there's the commercial side. Look, the founders of our government, the fellows who gave us the First Amendment, didn't count on the rise of these megamedia conglomerates. They didn't count on huge private corporations that would own not only the means of journalism but vast swaths of the territory that journalism is supposed to cover. When you get a handful of conglomerates owning more and more of our news outlets, you're not going to find them covering the intersection where their power meets political power.
The fact is that big money and big business, corporations and commerce, are the undisputed overlords of politics and government today. Barry Diller came on my PBS program and talked about what can happen when the media and political elites gang up on the public. Diller says we have a media oligopoly. Kevin Phillips says we have a political oligarchy. Talk about a marriage made in hell! Listen, these guys are reshaping our news environment. They're down in Washington wining and dining the powers-that-be insisting that any restriction on their ability to own media properties is a violation of their corporate First Amendment rights. They want to be the gatekeepers not only over what we see on television and hear on the radio but how we travel online.
Journalists feel squeezed -- those who simply believe we are here to practice our craft as if society needs what we do and expects us to do it as honorably as possible. There's another study around here somewhere done by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and The Columbia Journalism Review. More than a quarter of journalists polled said they had avoided pursuing some important stories that might conflict with the financial interests of their news organizations or advertisers.

Will Durst, whom many know from The Progressive, is providing original content for BuzzFlash.
His latest is "Frequently Asked Questions About the President's Social Security Reform." No excerpt provided because I always feel like I'm blowing a joke when I pull quote, that somehow I've destroyed the set up someone has carefully constructed. It's worth reading and don't take my lack of pull quote to imply anything other than a respect for the hard work involved in making people laugh.

Shirley Smith has another contribution and it's entitled "'Justice' by Design
MS. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON:"

Tom DeLay openly threatens judges that didn't agree with him in the Schiavo case, while at the same time, in his own town of Houston, a baby under six months old was put to death because of a Texas law.
Then we heard of "Justice Sunday," that turned out to be more of a Judgment Day than a day of justice, and then we hear of a minister kicking out the members of his church who voted Democratic.
This week, a federal appeals court, with a unanimous vote, decided that VP Dick Cheney, whose business is to work for the American people, rules in Cheney's favor regarding his secret energy meetings. According to these judges, he can keep doing taxpayers' business in secret. No complaints from the GOP about that justice.

Another contributor is Barbara with her "Barbara's Daily BuzzFlash Minute:"

In all the years have you ever seen or heard an administration who arrogantly proclaimed the establishment of an "Office of Disinformation," designed entirely for the purpose of "selling" fabrications, other than the Nazis? Aided and abetted by Mainstream media, America is becoming just another aggressive nation intent on conquering the world, and it all begins with producing propaganda, another strategy learned from that "other" fascist regime. Knowing what Karen Hughes' image right here in the United States does for public diplomacy, exactly what is it that she will project as undersecretary of State at the U.N., on the world? Obviously Hughes has been selected to be the 21st Century's equivalent of Josef Goebbels!

Tony Peyser is another BuzzFlash contributor and he offers both an editorial cartoon currently and a "Verse-Case Scenario."

We noted the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week (Jeff West) Saturday and that's another example of their original content.

Thom Hartmann does book reviews for BuzzFlash, this month it's Thomas Paine's The Rights of Man:

Some people think that FDR invented the progressive income tax when he raised income tax rates on the super-rich to 90 percent. Some believe that LBJ invented anti-poverty programs when he more than cut in half severe poverty in the US by introducing Medicare, housing assistance, and food-stamp programs in the 1960s. Some believe that Jack Kennedy was the first president to seriously talk about international disarmament, a conversation that Richard Nixon carried on in pushing through and getting ratified the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty so recently discarded by George Bush Jr. Some believe that Teddy Roosevelt - the Republican Roosevelt - was the first to seriously discuss the "living wage," or ways that corporate "maximum wage" wink-and-nod agreements could be broken up. Some believe the inheritance tax to prevent family empires from taking over our nation was the idea of Woodrow Wilson, or that FDR was the first to think up old-age pensions as part of a social safety net known today as Social Security.

They have a new BuzzFlash interview with documentary film maker Matt Kohn:

BuzzFlash: What are the most important things that people need to know about our voting system and what's wrong with it?
Matt Kohn: People need to know that there are two forces which are diametrically opposed to each other creating the system we have. One is that barely 50% of Americans participate in the Presidential election process every four years. What they don't realize, and what the election in 2000 brought out, is that not all election systems are the same. That's what people don't understand. There's also a political difference between the two parties about how to solve the problems of how to count the votes and also how to stop people who shouldn't be voting from voting. The Republicans generally believe that states should have absolute control over the process. Now more people are beginning to believe that there should be a national standard, which is generally supported by Democrats. If you ask people, "Should there be a direct popular vote for President?" 72% say there should be a direct election for the President of the United States. To me, that means the biggest problem with the electoral system we have now is in its initial conception of an Electoral College. That gets in the way of votes actually being counted for the candidate of their choice in the state in which they reside.

They have Steven C. Day's The Last Chance Democracy Cafe which is currently on "episode 34" but I see it as an ongoing novel with posted chapters or installments. (No excerpt because you need to start from the first to really appreciate it -- my opinion.)

Now I'm sure I've missed something. (And my apologies for that.) Where pull quotes exist, they are excerpts so use the links to read in full. But Cindy e-mailed last week thinking BuzzFlash was just a site with links to articles from newspapers. It does provide those links, but it provides a great deal more. And it provides original content.

Back on January 8th (see previous entry) I'd noted that if the Times became a pay site (and I'd add if other papers followed the lead -- which often hapens with the Times) that I didn't think it would effect BuzzFlash.

Hopefully the original content noted above explains to Cindy and anyone else who wondered that BuzzFlash does provide more than links to newspaper articles.

And as I noted in the last entry, BuzzFlash has some additions and changes planned. From "BuzzFlash is Growing:"

If you see a few minor changes or glitches in BuzzFlash, that's because we are growing.
We have increased our server capacity and put in a new coding "platform" -- among other improvements -- that will allow us to move to the next level of media expansion.
In the meantime, you may see some "glitches" as we work to modify our new "backend" system.
This is all good news.
Why?
Because we are now positioned to serve more readers and to expand our Internet presence, including new affiliated sites like GOPHypocrites.com [LINK].
There is much more to come.
BuzzFlash.com is not sitting around waiting for the media to change; we are changing the media.
And all due to our readers, because our main site doesn't accept advertising; we don't charge a subscription; and our e-mail alerts are free [LINK].
BuzzFlash.com is on the move, thanks to you.
We're the site where our readers ARE the celebrities.
[LINK] The modern corporate media -- one of our recent interviewees told us -- is accountable first to its shareholders, second to the White House and Congress, and third to its viewers and readers.
At BuzzFlash.com, we are ONLY accountable to our readers.
That's quite a difference.
And now, our site, with more than 5 million readers each month last October and November is poised to extend its influence, accountable only to you.
[LINK]
Thanks for making our pro-democracy news and commentary site into the powerhouse it is today -- and it's only the beginning.
PLEASE NOTE: If you use BuzzFlash.com syndicated headlines on your site, you will need to change the code as of May 7th. See [LINK] You can also install, for the first time, syndicated headlines using this code.

That's posted in full because it's an announcement and on the day we learn that, as suspected, the Times will become a for pay site, I want to be sure that everyone realizes the Times isn't the only game online.

And again, when I can grab some time to figure out where to put the source code (and other things) we will be adding BuzzFlash headlines to this site.

In the meantime, if you have some money to spend (if you don't that's fine), check out the BuzzFlash premiums. You can also check them out if you're just curious. The premiums are items that, with your purchase, allow BuzzFlash to continue being an independent voice. They don't accept advertisement. No one influences their content. And, unlike the New York Times, they have no intention to become a for-pay site. They are free to any and all. And they maintain that freedom through donations and purchases of premiums from their readers.

Again, that's not a guilt trip. If you don't have the money, don't worry about it. But if you do or if you're just curious about what sort of premiums BuzzFlash offers, feel free to check it out.

And let me note, what I almost forgot, that letters to BuzzFlash are jam packed with information and observation and can be found in the BuzzFlash Mailbag.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

 

We're dropping way back for this entry. "The New York Times floats the idea of becoming a for-pay web site and Marcia is upset (I don't blame her)" went up on January 8th.

The Times will shortly become a pay-site.

From Yahoo, here's "Market Pulse: NYT.com to charge for Op-Ed, other content as of Sept:"

The New York Times Co. on Monday said that, starting in September, access to Op-Ed and certain of its top news columnists on the paper's NYTimes.com Web site will only be available through a fee of $49.95 a year. The service, known as TimesSelect, will also allow access to The Times's online archives, early access to select articles on the site, and other features. Home-delivery subscribers will automatically receive the service, the NYT said.

That's actually not from Yahoo. It's up on Yahoo but it's from Marketwatch. But Yahoo will get the credit. People will remember that they saw it at Yahoo. And that's a point we've covered before. But to give credit, it's from Marketwatch and the author is Carolyn Pritchard. And we'll note that credit for the heads up goes to Romenesko at Poynter Online.

What's my opinion? On the plus side, subscribers will automatically get access. In other regards? Marica and I addressed this awhile back and I said, I won't speak for Marica, everything I felt on January 8th, so we'll note it below:

First, it's not surprising that they want to charge, greed's a basic value. And we'll pick up on the greed in a moment.

But the reality is that a lot of "free" sites will probably become view-for-fee in the future. The Christian Science Monitor had an online survey (this summer?) asking visitors whether or not they'd be willing to pay for some content.

I am a regular visitor to BuzzFlash. And a year ago, I wondered what would happen to the web if and when the dailies moved to fee-to-read status?
They'd be the least effected because they have a variety of features. For instance, we'velinked to their interviews (and interview archives) and to columns exclusive to BuzzFlash (like Maureen Farrell's) and to their editorials (I'll check later for their latest one). They produce exclusive content. But what happens when and if the dailies all begin charging? I'm sure that BuzzFlash has thought about that and have a plan for if that happens. (I believe they've already announced that they will be increasing their exclusive content. The 20 editorials, one each day, leading up to the inauguration may be a part of that.)

[5-16-05 Note: As visitors to BuzzFlash are aware from last week, they're already planning additions to their site. I don't think they'll be effected much, if at all.]

But it will change the web if the dailies start charging.

How will it change this site? I already subscribe to the Times so we'll continue to quote and note. Unless I cancel my subscription (which is always a possibility). But in that case, we'll move on and focus on another paper. I've stayed with the Times despite any shortcomings due to the international coverage and the editorials. While every editorial does not reflect my personal opinion, most of them are are close to, or approach, my own personal beliefs and I can't see paying money for a paper whose editorial board is in direct opposition with every personal belief I hold.

But let's talk about greed for a moment.

The New York Times, USA Today and the Wall St. Journal have the largest print circulation in the country. (Wall St. Journal may, at some point, be asked to explain whether or not their circulation figures include papers never read but dropped off at hotels? Ones that are disposed of unread at the end of the day by hotel staff. Four of you e-mailed about that, four who work at hotels, and I did follow up on that with two visits to hotels where I asked the night staff what was done with the large stack of Wall St. Journals that remained in the lobby apparently unread.) (If this is an issue the Wall St. Journal wants to pursue -- whether or not the papers are being read -- the two hotels I visited were part of the Marriott chain.)

At a time when many papers have seen huge losses in circulation, the Times has maintained their position as one of the top three. (The largest circulation is Wall St. Journal, then USA Today, then the Times, if I remember the last round of figures correctly.)

They're being short sighted if they fail to grasp that the net has impacted their circulation. I read the Times in college. I've lived in a variety of areas, many of which the paper does not service. My most recent move resulted in an area that the paper does service so I can subscribe. But when I wasn't able to subscribe, I did visit the web site.

That kept me interested in the paper and it does the same thing for many people. It also increases the word of the mouth on the paper (good and bad).The Times should throw out their greed and think about the fact that the paper's maintained it's prominence by being available online. (Though not all articles are available online. Reading the print edition of the business section on Sundays, I've noted articles that I've wanted to send to friends. When I got online, they weren't available.) If they move to a for-pay site, they better be prepared for a huge drop off not only in terms of visits but in terms of prestige.

Marcia: "Yes, my local papers carries two or more stories from NYT each day. But most people don't notice that byline. When I, or one of my co-workers, am online at the NYT we're reading it and it's getting credit for the stories it publishes in a way that doesn't happen with syndicated stories. We know we're at NYT and we know we're reading NYT."

It's advertising for the paper. There are many people who've written this site that they never considered subscribing to the Times until they started visiting the web site online.

[. . .]

It's free and it's free publicity. At a time when many "big time" papers have lost their prominence, the Times has continued to be in the forefront. The web site has a great deal to do with that.

Do they lose money on it? I don't see how. They're advertising on the site and that should cover the people who are reading for free. (And, again, there are Common Ills members who've cited the Times web site as the reason they ended up subscribing.)

Take away your web visits and you may still have an article that you post via yahoo or some other service, but you won't be getting the credit you get when someone's reading it at your site. It will be talked about as: "Did you see that story on Yahoo?"

I won't be at all surprised if greed wins out. But the Times needs to think seriously about what's kept them prominent. There online site has helped them continue to be talked of in ways that becoming a for-pay medium will not.

Sulzberger worries about the training of future readers. He should worry more about the present of the paper.

That's what Marica and I stated back in January. I think it covers it. I think it's a mistake. It was a mistake for the Wall St. Journal when it started charging. Back then I said I wouldn't be surprised if greed won out and I'm not now that it has. But it is short sighted in my opinion. If Marcia or anyone else wants to add to this, please note in your e-mails what you're okay with being quoted on.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Media Matters has an excellent post up entitled "Open Letter to the New York Times." Here's an excerpt below:


As a media watchdog, we believe self-examination by news organizations is always useful, so we welcomed the arrival of The New York Times' recent report, "Preserving Our Readers' Trust." Because a democracy cannot operate without an independent, critical, and responsible press, it is incumbent on news organizations to continually assess their own performance to see if they are fulfilling their obligations to the public. Nonetheless, we are concerned about some of the ideas expressed in the report, and we take issue with some aspects of the Times' reporting that the report does not address.
Because of its importance to the functioning of our political and social life, the press will always be subject to criticism and critique. It is the press' obligation to take such critiques seriously; doing so requires not only responding to legitimate criticism, but having the fortitude and integrity to reject baseless attacks designed only to serve a partisan agenda.
If tomorrow the Times ran an article on its front page headlined "Bush is Second Coming of Christ," conservative activists would charge that it proved the paper's liberal bias because it didn't compliment the color of the president's tie. While we do not doubt that many conservatives genuinely believe that the Times, and the press in general, is biased against them, the "liberal bias" charge is above all a political tool they use to obtain coverage more favorable to their goals. All too often, news organizations have reacted to this pressure from the right by attempting to prove them wrong -- not with more objective reporting, but by giving them what they want. "The press responds to critics on the right by bending over backward not to look liberal," noted former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser. "The cumulative effect is the opposite: They're tougher on Democrats" [Eric Boehlert, "The Press v. Al Gore," Rolling Stone, 12/6-13/01]. Though this tendency is not acknowledged in the report, it has been evident in the Times' reporting on numerous occasions.
While there is not space here to list every misstep the Times has committed recently, we would like to point out a number of problems, particularly as they relate to the concerns raised in the report. The first is Elisabeth Bumiller's "White House Letter," about which you have apparently heard from numerous dissatisfied readers but about which the report says nothing. In a recent interview at Salon.com, departing public editor Daniel Okrent said of Bumiller's reporting: "It just drives people who don't like [President Bush] crazy. It would have been the same if there had been a 'White House Letter' about Clinton 10 years ago." But of course, there was no "White House Letter" offering tender, soft-focus portraits of Bill Clinton. Had there been, conservatives would have been outraged -- and rightly so.
If the White House wants the American people to know what's on the president's iPod or how sweet his communications director is to reporters, it can turn to dozens of less serious news organizations that will happily pass that bit of fluff on to the public. But to waste a Times reporter's time and precious space in the paper on an endless series of People magazine-worthy portraits that read as though they were penned by the White House press office is, frankly, beneath you. This is not to say that every last article about politics in the Times must be serious and high-minded. But the "White House Letter" has been a steady stream of starry-eyed palaver, each installment more sycophantic than the last.

Again, the above is an excerpt, click here to read it in full.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Democracy Now! (Marcia: "always worth watching"):

Headlines for May 16, 2005
- Military In Uzbekistan Kills Up to 600 People
- Bush Administration Maintains Close Ties To Uzbek Gov't
- Rice on Iraq: "This War Came To Us, Not The Other Way Around"
- Iraq Death Toll In Last Two Weeks Tops 450
- Rep. Waters Urges Bush To Intervene In Yvon Neptune's Release
- Trial Of Sami Al Arian Opens in Florida
- MOVE Marks 20th Anniversary Of Bombing

Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing"
In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show "Now." We spend the hour playing an excerpt of Moyers' closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri. [includes rush transcript]

And let's note a feature that I should have noted last week but it slipped through the cracks:

NEW FEATURE: Democracy Now! is now offering the program's daily news summary translated into Spanish. Los Titulares de Hoy

The daily news summary is a feature you can sign up for that will, among other things, provide you with the topics of each day's shows. When Amy Goodman's going to be on a TV show other than Democracy Now!, there's usually a head's up to that. In addition, you get updates on the Un-Embed the Media Tour.

And before this slips through the cracks of my cracked mind, let me note that in the first two breaks of Democracy Now! (if you watch or listen online), you'll get Patti Smith performing "People Have the Power" and "Dancing Barefoort" live. (If you watch, you'll see her performing it live.)

At The Daily Howler, Bob Somerby's dealing with a number of issues (including Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay). We'll focus on the Lincoln Bedroom. Somerby notes that figures of donors who have stayed over night at the Bully Boy White House barely caused a ripple. Using that as the entry point, Somerby charts the way the Lincoln Bedroom tales re: the Clintons was spun. And how that brave "liberal" New Republic addressed the issue. There's so much to read and the excerpt below is courtesy of Dallas (thank you, Dallas, I was scratching my head on what section to pull quote).

SPINNING THE LINCOLN: The story of the Lincoln Bedroom was a classic Clinton-era scandal--a story in which Washington's "press corps" quickly got busy reinventing basic facts. For the record, here are a few of the ways those facts were reworked and improved. As usual, major scribes lied in your faces--and their colleagues kept quiet about the deceptions. Even the fiery liberals at your "liberal" publications seemed to know that they mustn't speak up. But then, they ran and hid all through the years in which the press corps waged war against Clinton and Gore. Even today, they keep their mouths closed about what really happened. Here's a bit of what occurred when the "press corps" chose to spin this sweet tale. Here are some of the basic facts about this consuming scandal:
How many overnight guests were involved? 831. Or 938, depending on how clownish a newspaper wanted to be. In March 1997, the White House produced a list of overnight guests for the Clintons' four-plus years in the White House. 831 guests were listed. Beyond that, though, the White House noted that 35 family members had also stayed overnight, and that Chelsea Clinton--twelve to sixteen years old at the time—had hosted 72 additional guests (think: junior high slumber parties). Readers can probably guess what occurred. Wanting to make the scandal seem bigger, most news orgs took the relevant number (831), then added the 72 and the 35, producing a more pleasing total--938 overnight guests in all. There! That felt about twelve percent better! So when newspapers pimped the pleasing claim that the Clintons had hosted 938 guests, they were including 72 teen-aged friends of their daughter and 35 family members, although the papers almost never told readers that the numbers were being jacked up this way. In some ways, the Washington Post clowned most foolishly. On the first day of the story, the paper used the relevant number--831. After that, the paper switched to 938, apparently wanting to keep pace with its embellishing competitors. But as we've noted in the past, this is a standard practice in America's "press corps." Not uncommonly, news orgs which get a story right end up adjusting their accurate work to conform to conventional wisdom--to conventional tales which are wrong.

Lauren e-mails to note Katrina vanden Heuvel's latest at Editor's Cut, "Sweet Victory: Cleaning Up the Cosmetics Industry:"

Each day, women and girls use an average of twelve personal care products, according to a study by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. "Users of these products might assume that somebody is watching to insure that potentially toxic ingredients are kept away from intimate contact with their body," Mark Schapiro wrote in The Nation in December. "They would be wrong."
Thanks to a longstanding loophole, the FDA neither monitors nor regulates ingredients used in cosmetics, many of which contain known or probable carcinogens [http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/report/executive_summary.php]. Yet, in the wake of mounting pressure from a coalition of public health and environmental groups, the American cosmetics industry is finally cleaning up its act.

Tina notes that Corrente has commented on the Newsweek apology. Tina selected the section she wanted highlighted:

UPDATE: Lambert reminds me that plants aren't only found in pots. See his September '04 post here, on the CBS "scandal" that led to Rather's downfall, and the likely disinformation campaign at work there. And while we're reminiscing, check out an old post of mine from last December on how the Pentagon was circulating disinformation to the media, all for a good cause, mind you.

That's Riggsveda at Corrente and Tina wanted that highlighted because "to me it's the most important part of the story. I enjoy the whole thing but to me that's the kernal that makes it worth noting, those links and that 'plants aren't only found in pots.'"

Lastly, let's note Bill Scher and Liberal Oasis. It's Monday, he's giving you the breakdown of the Sunday Chat & Chews. Here's an excerpt:

The infamous "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" memo, reported on widely in Britain, finally showed up on a Sunday show.
Just one show though, ABC's This Week.
And not during an interview with a Bush official (although National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was on Fox and CNN), but with war booster Sen. John McCain.
And McCain's famed straight talk was strangely absent (video at Crooks and Liars):
STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to show you a British memo ... it says, this is [a British intelligence official] reporting on Washington:
"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."...
...Isn't that direct, and somewhat credible, evidence, that the Administration was manipulating intelligence here?
McCAIN: I have not seen evidence that the Administration was manipulating evidence. We're certain serious mistakes made, such as relying on a guy named Curveball --
STEPHANOPOULOS: But what about that memo though?
MCCAIN: Uh --
STEPHANOPOULOS: It says that's what was happening.
MCCAIN: I look at that -- well, first of all, I don’t agree with it.
[. . .]
And McCain went straight to the ye old talking points justifying the war, dodging the original question.
But everyone in the media should see this and recognize that “I don’t agree with it” is not an acceptable rebuttal.
It should not end the questioning. It should spark more.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

We're grabbing five headlines from BuzzFlash today to demonstrate why you should make a point to check in with that site.

1) Right Wing Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chariman Now is Taking Steps to Make NPR a Subsidiary of the Bush Propaganda Machine. And Who Says the Comparisons to the Busheviks, Rove and Goebbels Were Over the Top? At Media Reform Conference, Bill Moyers Revealed Tomlinson Paid a Consultant $10,000 to Watch "Now" and Report Anything Considered Liberal Bias Back to Tomlinson. That's Our Money He's Wasting in His Totalitarian Efforts. Now Ombudsman, Like Soviet Minders, Will Watch Over NPR. Fascism Creeps Up on You, Doesn't It? Until One Day You Realize the Line Has Been Crossed and Democracy is Dead. We Are All Frogs Just Slowly Being Boiled Into a One-Party Franco/Stalin Style State.

2) Bill Moyers Stands Up for a Press That Enriches Democracy, Not Weakens It, at Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis. He Blasts CPB Chairman Tomlinson for Trying to Turn PBS Into Taxpayer Funded FOX News.

3) Dahr "Unembedded" Jamail says the military is lying about "foreign fighters" in Al-Qaim: "it doesn't look good in the press to admit that they are fighting Iraqis who are fighting for their independence" 5/16

4) DailyKos: A roundup of other sources for Quran-down-the-John claims. Has Newsweek retreated from integrity at the drop of a U.S. official's hat? 5/16

5) Where's the news that's fit to print? 5/15

And we'll note this exclusive to BuzzFlash article Sibel Edmonds tells BuzzFlash she's "gagged, But not dead."

I'm rushing this morning, sorry. We'll note a BuzzFlash premium that we haven't noted before,
DVD: "Sunset Story," The Highly Recommended Documentary About Two Activists (Ages 81 and 95) Who Advocate and Agitate Till Their Last Breath. Remember, Your Purchase Keeps the BuzzFlash Dream Alive and GROWING!

For those who missed it, yes, at some point when I can grab time to study it, we will try to automatically offer BuzzFlash headlines here. For now, make use of the permalink on the left. (And, this entry today.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Friday, there were entries highlighting The Nation, In These Times and Rolling Stone. Ned e-mailed in to ask if there was a problem with The Progressive?

Actually there is. Here's the problem. There's a story that people should be interested in, in the current issue, but it's not available online. Friday I was out of pocket, Saturday and Sunday were catch ups (plus help Third Estate Sunday Review in whatever limited manner I can). So we'll do, quickly, a spotlight on The Progressive.

Let's start with the story that's not available online but should be, Nina Segal's "Bioethics, Bush Style."

"There's a black cloud that's been hanging over this research," says [Dr. Robert] Lanza. That cloud has been created by Bush and legitimized by Dr. Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, a panel of experts who advise the Administration on the ethical implications of biomedical innovation. Since Bush's panel was convened in August 2001, the council has politicized biotech research to an extreme previously unimaginable, say top scientists and progressive bioethicists. They charge that the council is promulgating Bush's
anti-scientific policy agenda, and making it all but impossible for scientists like Lanza to do their work.
Kass, a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, promised to promote open debate about the important scientific questions of our time when he became head of the council in 2001. But critics say he hasn't quite kept his word.
[. . .]
Council member Janet Rowley, a professor of medicine, molecular genetics, cell biology, and human genetics at the University of Chicago Medical School, says she had concerns that staff members weren't adequately conveying the diseenting views in their published reports. "On occasion when these discrepancies were brought to their attention, they were more or less ignored." she said.
[Council members are let go who disagree. One possibly for saying that Bully Boy's Medicare proposal was "mysticism of the marketplace run amok." Their spots are filled. Including by Benjamin Carson who has offered "we live in a nation where we can't talk about God in public."
Yes, he was speaking of the United States. Yes, he's supposedly educated. No, I have no idea what he's whining about either.]
Rowley, who remains on the council, says the panel has become less diverse since the new appointments.
[. . .]
Rowley says Kass has discontinued the process of taking votes on issues and "runs this like a graduate seminar," she says. "You don't get council members who are expressing points of view that are at variance with the President's point of view."

A member serving on the panel, among others, was willing to go on record regarding what's happening with "Bioethics, Bush Style." Now granted, magazine "reports" at various sites ignore The Progressive. Lynda did a thing, for instance, on CJR Daily that she was wanting help with. I had no problem assisting in any way other than math. (You don't want me checking your figures, trust me.) If I remembering her figures correctly, she had over a hundred citations of The Weekly Standard and The New Republic in the CJR Daily "Magazine Report." There were no citations for The Progressive or In These Times. The Nation had less than ten (I'm thinking the number Lynda had was four). CJR Daily appears to be going beyond the repeated citations and expanding the "Magazine Report." But the new issue of The Progressive is about to come out and I doubt very seriously that they will address "Bioethics, Bush Style." (I could be wrong and wouldn't mind at all being wrong on this.)

Along with that article, Nina Siegal also conducted an e-mail interview with Kass which The Progressive runs as well. Readers of The Progressive (a large number of people, more so, than for instance, the amount that reads The New Republic) will no doubt pass the information on.
And, again, it's doubtful that any "Magazine Report" from any web site would have highlighted the article. But I do think readers of The Progressive would have e-mailed it to friends. And I suspect that BuzzFlash would have linked to it.

But I didn't have the time or energy to attempt an excerpt (like the bad one above) prior. Which is the reason for the delay. (And part of that problem with excerting was that my issue has no staples. Which, hopefully, is good for the environement but doesn't stop it from sliding around in my lap -- and falling apart -- as I'm trying to type up the excerpt.)

Also in the print edition (and also not available online) is Nancy Shepherdson's "Republican Wing of the Republican Party." In this article, Shepherdson attends a "national board meeting of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies . . . in the post St. Louis suburb of Frontenac." She meets a variety of people concerned with God & country. One 'kind soul' shares the 'Christian sentiment,' I'm sure, that Carol Mosely Braun, "was more like an ape." When not offering up examples of what Jesus wouldn't do, they work on things like "banning abortion for any reason." And we learn, from these psuedo scientiests, that "There's a worker shortage . . . Forty-two percent of the U.S. population isn't here -- they were aborted. When you look at NASA photos of the Earth [at night] from space, most of it is dark!"

Ruth Conniff takes on the book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. That's worth reading if you come across a print edition of the issue. I love The Nation, The Progressive and In These Times equally but I do find myself nodding more with the book reviews in The Progressive than any other. (And as I've noted here before, Matthew Rothschild is an excellent reviewer -- my opinion.)

And that's it. The issue's slid to the floor and fallen apart for the last time this morning. We'll note what's available online.

The Commentary is available online and worth reading. It's entitled "Musical Chairs:"

In retrospect, one of the pivotal moments of the last six years came after George W. Bush had secured the 2000 nomination and Papa Bush tapped Dick Cheney to find Georgie a Vice President who could run the shop on the day to day. As John Nichols notes in Dick: The Man Who Is President, Cheney looked high and low and then gazed in the mirror and declared himself the fairest of them all.
Cheney believes the President has unlimited authority to wage war. He believes that Bush Senior didn't even need Congress's approval to go to war against Iraq back in 1991. "I firmly believe to this day even if the Congress had voted no we had no option but to proceed," Cheney told The Washington Post on January 20 of this year.
To watch the way Bush and Cheney promote the wrong people is to glimpse the arrogance of power. They don't care what the reaction is to their choices. They believe they can appoint whomever they want. And the more galling, the better. If anyone disapproves, tough.
They dare the Democrats to stop them. They dare the media to squawk. They dare the American people to rise up in revulsion.
But for the most part, neither the Democrats nor the media nor the American people have bestirred themselves.
And until they do, the second Cheney Administration will keep going its unmerry way.

Molly Ivin's column entitled "The Whim of a Hat" is available online. From the opening of her column:

Hey, the sun is shining, the bluebonnets are out, our big music festival, South by Southwest, rocked, and the puppy wants to play. You expect me to write about Terri Schiavo, Iraq, and Paul ("There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq") Wolfowitz?
Instead, let us celebrate spring with a roundup of the President's verbal gaffes, boners, grammatical errors, and immortal contributions to logic. Remember, this is a contest between George Bush père and George Bush fils, with the old man still well ahead at this point, though I think you will agree, after reading the latest, that our boy is gaining on him.
These are, as always, taken straight from life and from W.'s mouth.
First of all, there's the ongoing situation in Iraq, where, as he put it, "it is a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life." Our enemies in Iraq are very resourceful, he adds. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we," says the Prez.

Also available online is Amitabh Pal's interview with the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. From that interview, here's an excerpt:

Q: Why were you attacked for planting trees?
Maathai: Planting trees, per se, would not have been a problem. Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees. But I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes. And one of those root causes was misgovernance. The government had approved the clear-cutting of forests that were catchment areas for water and encouraged the cultivating of exotic plantations. It was the government that had allowed the people to go into the forests and to start cultivating food crops. All this had caused the massive destruction of forests, which could absorb water, which could give us normal rain patterns, and which could sustain the rivers. So I knew that even if I planted all the trees downstream, the stream itself was being destroyed by the government. It was important for us to address the government and to ask the government to stop destroying the catchment areas upstream.
The other problem we were facing was that a lot of our leaders in the government, especially in the 1980s, privatized a lot of these common goods. They would literally cut sections of the forest and privatize them, or they would take open spaces in the cities and urban centers and privatize them. So I knew that a major culprit of environmental destruction was the government. I started raising my voice and started holding seminars educating the public on how the environment was being destroyed and who was destroying it. And how it was important for us to hold our leaders accountable for the better management of resources.
This is what the government did not like because the ruling elite was the beneficiary of these malpractices. And so their reaction was to intimidate, arrest, harass, in the hope that I would give up, or the people with whom I was working would give up, and the movement would die. We knew they were greedy and corrupt. So it was a matter of fighting corruption and fighting greed among the ruling elite.
The women were the major force in the movement. We were the ones who were being harassed. We were the ones who were being prevented from meeting. We were the ones who were the victims of the destruction that was going on. We, therefore, eventually adopted a campaign for our rights, to assert ourselves and to demand better treatment from the government. So the tree planting campaign has always been in the forefront. It is the most visible campaign. But we branched into many other activities in an effort to deal with the root causes of environmental degradation.
[. . .]
Q: How do you respond to people who say fighting poverty takes precedence over protecting the environment?
Maathai: Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can't say you'll start to deal with just one. You're trapped. When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become.
So it's a matter of breaking the cycle. From the very beginning, that's what I was telling the women, that we cannot solve all the problems that we face: We are poor, we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have income, we're not able to send our children to school. There are too many problems we face. We have to break the cycle, and the way to break the cycle for us is to do something that is doable, is to do something that is cheap, do something that is within our power, our capacity, our resources.

There are other features available in print and it's worth checking out. If you're planning on purchasing the issue, you'd better do so soon because the next issue is about to come out.

Online currently, you can find Anne-Marie Cusac's "Saul Bellow Reconsidered" and Howard Zinn's "The Scourge of Nationalism." From the latter, here's an excerpt of the opening:

I cannot get out of my mind the recent news photos of ordinary Americans sitting on chairs, guns on laps, standing unofficial guard on the Arizona border, to make sure no Mexicans cross over into the United States. There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
Is not nationalism--that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder--one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking--cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on--have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica, and many more). But in a nation like ours--huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction--what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Click the link above to continue reading (I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail at which point I'll read Zinn and Cusac).

But, to note Ned's question again, the only "problem" with The Progressive was that the articles weren't available online and I didn't have the time to go through the issue typing things up.

Seek it out (there's an article on Columbia that's worth reading as well). And hopefully, at some point, they'll add Nina Siegal's "Bioethics Bush Style" to their Best of The Progressive archives.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]