After the revelations of the past few weeks, there is no longer any doubt that Rep. Tom DeLay is the most corrupt official in Washington -- which is saying a lot, given the ethical standards of Capitol Hill. The Republican majority leader, known as "The Hammer," has broken nearly every House ethics rule on the books in recent years, enjoying lavish trips paid for by corporate lobbyists and foreign agents. DeLay stayed at the luxurious Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel in Hawaii as a guest of the American Association of Airport Executives, who picked up the $52,000 tab for eight members of Congress. He went golfing in Scotland, Russia and South Korea with family members and aides, racking up $283,000 in expenses that were covered by a host of special interests, including Enron, AT&T and the Nuclear Energy Institute. His wife, Christine, and daughter Danni Ferro have received $500,000 from his campaign for their political work on his behalf -- including a late-night party for corporate donors at the Rio Hotel and Casino
in Las Vegas, where a lobbyist poured champagne over Danni's head while she was in a hot tub on the balcony of DeLay's suite. The majority leader -- a master at covering his tracks by laundering corporate gifts through seemingly innocuous groups like the National Center for Public Policy Research -- insists that his first-class jet-setting is undertaken solely for "educational" purposes.
The accusations against DeLay are hardly new. The congressman from Texas has been openly flouting the law for years, receiving an unprecedented three rebukes in a single week from the House ethics committee after he bribed a fellow Republican to vote for a bill and sold his own vote on another in exchange for a corporate donation. What is new, however, is the momentum that is gathering to oust DeLay for his unethical conduct.
With more abuses coming to light each day, even members of his own party are calling for him to resign. DeLay is "an absolute embarrassment to me and to the Republican Party," Rep. Christopher Shays, a Republican from Connecticut, said recently. The man who has long bullied supporters and opponents alike -- once going so far as to order the Department of Homeland Security to help hunt down and arrest Democrat legislators in Texas -- suddenly appears likely to face censure and even indictment.
"Tom DeLay is like a wounded gazelle on the plains of Africa with all the jackals around," says James Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University. "I think it's going to be very hard for him to survive."
But while the sudden downturn in DeLay's fortunes dominates the headlines, the behind-the-scenes campaign that helped bring about his downfall has gone almost unnoticed. During the past year, a small group of Democrats has been quietly working to call public attention to DeLay's wrongdoing -- and to mobilize public sentiment against him. For the first time since their defeat last November, the Democrats are proving that they too can play rough, demonstrating the kind of determined opposition that many political observers were beginning to doubt them capable of.

The above is from Joshua Green's "The Hammer Falls: Are the Democrats tough enough to bring down Tom DeLay?" from Rolling Stone.


Though the Downing memo wasn't addressed until Douglas Jehl's article today, Rolling Stone points out that the memo was mentioned as an aside previously in the New York Times:

But the U.S. media world has just so far simply shrugged. Where did the major dailies play the story? Washington Post: A-18. New York Times: A-9 (buried in a political analysis handicapping of Blair's electoral chances.) The LA Times: A-3.

Rolling Stone steers you to Mark Danner's "The Secret Way to War" from The New York Review of Books:


It was October 16, 2002, and the United States Congress had just voted to authorize the President to go to war against Iraq. When George W. Bush came before members of his Cabinet and Congress gathered in the East Room of the White House and addressed the American people, he was in a somber mood befitting a leader speaking frankly to free citizens about the gravest decision their country could make.
The 107th Congress, the President said, had just become "one of the few called by history to authorize military action to defend our country and the cause of peace." But, he hastened to add, no one should assume that war was inevitable. Though "Congress has now authorized the use of force," the President said emphatically, "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope the use of force will not become necessary." The President went on:
Our goal is to fully and finally remove a real threat to world peace and to America. Hopefully this can be done peacefully. Hopefully we can do this without any military action. Yet, if Iraq is to avoid military action by the international community, it has the obligation to prove compliance with all the world's demands. It's the obligation of Iraq.
Iraq, the President said, still had the power to prevent war by "declaring and destroying all its weapons of mass destruction"--but if Iraq did not declare and destroy those weapons, the President warned, the United States would "go into battle, as a last resort."
It is safe to say that, at the time, it surprised almost no one when the Iraqis answered the President's demand by repeating their claim that in fact there were no weapons of mass destruction. As we now know, the Iraqis had in fact destroyed these weapons, probably years before George W. Bush's ultimatum: "the Iraqis"--in the words of chief US weapons inspector David Kay--"were telling the truth."
As Americans watch their young men and women fighting in the third year of a bloody counterinsurgency war in Iraq--a war that has now killed more than 1,600 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis--they are left to ponder "the unanswered question" of what would have happened if the United Nations weapons inspectors had been allowed--as all the major powers except the United Kingdom had urged they should be--to complete their work. What would have happened if the UN weapons inspectors had been allowed to prove, before the US went "into battle," what David Kay and his colleagues finally proved afterward?
Thanks to a formerly secret memorandum published by the London Sunday Times on May 1, during the run-up to the British elections, we now have a partial answer to that question. The memo, which records the minutes of a meeting of Prime Minister Tony Blair's senior foreign policy and security officials, shows that even as President Bush told Americans in October 2002 that he "hope[d] the use of force will not become necessary"--that such a decision depended on whether or not the Iraqis complied with his demands to rid themselves of their weapons of mass destruction—the President had in fact already definitively decided, at least three months before, to choose this "last resort" of going "into battle" with Iraq. Whatever the Iraqis chose to do or not do, the President's decision to go to war had long since been made.

Click the link to continue reading Danner's essay.

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

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

The Sunday Chat & Chews air Sundays, check your local listings.

ABC's This Week:

Guests:
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., ranking member, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee
Sen. George Allen, R-Va., former governor, Virginia
Anne Graham Lotz, evangelist and daughter of the Rev. Billy Graham

In our roundtable, the continuing fallout over Newsweek's Koran desecration retraction and the published pictures of Saddam in his underwear. Fareed Zakaria, editor of Newsweek International, will join Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, and ABC's George Will. In The List, the growing debate over stem cell research. The president vowed on Friday to veto bipartisan legislation that would ease restrictions on embryonic stem cell research. Two passionate voices on either side of the issue weigh in -- actor Christopher Reeve's widow, Dana, and the Rev. Billy Graham's daughter Anne Graham Lotz.

CBS' Face The Nation?

They currently have the guests listed for . . . May 15th. Who's on this Sunday? Who knows.

NBC's Meet the Press will have Howard Dean. For the full hour.

Not big on the chat & chews. If I were watching? No, not CBS' Face The Nation. I'd go with ABC's This Week to watch Katrina vanden Heuvel. Fortunately the round table comes in the second half hour so I could avoid Joe Lieberman.

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

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

Oliver e-mails to highlight an interview with Dahr Jamail at UK Indymedia. Here's an excerpt from Paul O'Hanlon's interview with Jamail:

Paul: "Is the reality in Iraq very different from the way it is portrayed in the media?"
Dahr: "Exactly, take for example what just happened with this operation Matador (near the Syrian border) the media today in fact is reporting that it’s a success and they've called off the operation and killed I think 125 insurgents and detained however many more but the reality is what I've learned from the ground from NGOs operating and from making phone calls into that area the whole thing is like a mini Fallujah – they didn't let people leave the city, there’s probably hundreds of civilians casualties and many, many homes destroyed and many displaced people and of course none of this is being reported in the mainstream media. It typifies the whole situation in Iraq"
Paul: "something which surprised me was that the electricity is still not fixed some two years after the war. I was speaking to an Iraqi lady called Amal who was saying that at the moment the electricity is currently two hours on five hours off even in Baghdad and in the North of the country as in Irbil the situation is no better."
Dahr: "Yes, my interpreter from Baghdad said about a week ago that the electricity is anything from one to two hours on then four to five hours off. That's pretty typical all over the country"
Paul: "I've heard that ordinary Iraqis have offered to fix the electricity themselves free of charge but have been prevented from doing so by the occupation. The work has to be done by overcharging war profiteers like Bechtel and Halliburton."
Dahr: "Exactly. They won't hire Iraqis because they think they're a security threat. Only 2 per cent of the money allocated is for Iraqi companies."


Lana e-mailed to note an interview Dahr Jamail did with Eric Ruder that we highlighted last month. Lana excerpts this from the interview:

ER-WHEN THE U.S. announced its assault on Falluja, it claimed its goal was to root out the resistance. Can you talk about the strategic goal that the U.S. set for itself and also whether it succeeded?
DJ-I BASICALLY heard two reasons for going in and doing what they did to Falluja: what you mentioned, as well as another primary goal--providing “security and stability” for the January 30 elections.
What happened was that most of the fighters in the city left even before the siege began--even the military admitted to that. So of the roughly 3,000 people killed, the vast majority were civilians. Falluja was declared a "free-fire" zone for the military, meaning that they were not distinguishing between civilians and fighters, which is, of course, a violation of international law in a city where there might be civilians.
As far as accomplishing this goal of "rooting out fighters" and/or providing "security and stability" for the January 30 election, we can see that neither have been accomplished.
They have effectively spread the resistance further around the country. We have another sort of "mini-Falluja" situation in Ramadi, where rather than sectioning off the entire city and doing what they did to Falluja, they're doing it neighborhood by neighborhood. In essence, any fighters who are there are moving to a different neighborhood when one is being hit, and then moving back when the military goes to another neighborhood.
They're going to have to employ the same strategy in Samarra, in Baquba, in Bayji, in Mosul and even in parts of Baghdad. It's a strategy that the U.S. military has been using since almost the beginning of the occupation--using very heavy-handed tactics to fight the resistance. But by doing so, they're just spreading the resistance to other areas around the city or the country, and essentially creating more resistance.

Lana: I'm pretty sure that everybody already gets the criticism of the "award winning" NYT reporter Dexter Filkins. I got to hear Dhar speak. Falluja was more than NYT ever told you via Dexy's Midnight Blunder. I agree, history will not be kind to Filkins.

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

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

From an e-mail sent out to everyone who signs up for alerts and information at The Nation:

And you can watch vanden Heuvel live this Sunday morning, May 22, on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos. She'll be joining a roundtable of journalists in a wide-ranging political discussion. The show airs at 9:00AM est in New York City, 8:00AM pst in Los Angeles and at various other times that morning coast to coast. Check local listings or click below to confirm air time in your area.

We'll spotlight the Sunday Chat & Chews in another entry but Katrina vanden Heuvel being on
This Week is pretty big news and worthy of its own item. As members know, Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editor of The Nation and, online, writes at Editor's Cut.

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

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

Dahr Jamail has another article up at Iraq Dispatches:

Living with her aunt and cousin, she had to work since she was the sole supporter.
"We needed many things, so I wanted the job," she says softly, "Many people were working with the Americans so I felt it would be ok."
But the militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had long since warned Iraqis of collaborating with the occupiers, and said they would not allow anyone to do so. The situation in her area degraded enough for her bosses to tell her to stay home for two weeks.
"After this, I went back to work because my bosses told me the security was better," she adds, "But after I'd been back to work one week, at 7:30am I was waiting for a taxi as I always did to go to my job, and I felt as if I was thrown to the ground but I felt nothing else. My bosses had told me it was secure now."
After a short time someone came up and held her hand.
"I asked him why he did this to me, and he told me he didn't do it and he would take me to the hospital."
She asked him if she was going to die. Two bullets passed through her head, taking her eyesight before exiting.
"He took me to the hospital in Hilla," she explains softly, "And when I was there I told people I worked for KBR. Someone at KBR told the people at the hospital they would come to visit me."
But they never came.
After being transferred to two more hospitals in Baghdad, there was still no word from them.
"But then Mr. Jeff called by his translator after I was in Baghdad for 45 days, and Mr. Jeff told the hospital worker that I was in a hospital inside the Green Zone," she tells me before holding out her hands as if to ask why. She raises her voice for the first time, "But I was not in the Green Zone!"

The article is entitled "Many people were working with the Americans, so I felt it would be ok."

Moving to Bob Somerby's Daily Howler today, he's addressing the "p"s and "q"s proposal offered by a self-styled Miss Manners:

BLOGGER PANGLOSS: As we have often noted, we read Kevin Drum every day, and we do so for a very good reason-- we visit his site expecting to learn things, and we’re rarely disappointed. But we do think Drum has an odd perspective on the functioning of the mainstream press. Yesterday, he penned a piece you ought to read, in which he cautions lefty bloggers against bashing the New York Times too hard. The right wing is trying to destroy the mainstream media, he warns. And then, he offers his nuggets:
DRUM (5/19/05): Given all this, liberals should think very hard before joining the media bashing crusade too eagerly. Sure, the New York Times employs Judith Miller, and the pressure of daily deadlines promotes too much lazy he-said/she-said reporting on their pages, but guess what? It's still the best newspaper in the world, bar none. If you really believe the Times is a piece of crap, your problem is not with the Times, it's with the current state of the art in human perfectibility.
None of this means newspapers shouldn't be criticized. But endless broad brush howling does nothing except enable the right wing's agenda, regardless of what the howling is aimed at. If liberal bloggers were wiser, we'd spend a little more time praising our big national newspapers and a little less time shaking our fists over the fact that sometimes they aren't on our side. Our real opposition is the right wing press destruction machine, not the press itself.
Yes, we agree-- it's nice to be nice. But as a general view of the state of the media, this strikes us as screaming nonsense. Indeed, we think this view is so odd, it's hard to know where to begin.
Let’s personalize this as much as possible. If Drum really means what he says, we at THE HOWLER have only been "enabling the right wing’s agenda" by our foolish "broad brush howling" over the past seven years. The years of time we devoted to detailing the coverage of Clinton and Gore? Crazy! In fact, when we developed the detailed information about what we've called The War Against Gore, we were actually "doing nothing except enabling the right wing's agenda!" And presumably, others have made the same dumb mistake; for example, when Gene Lyons wrote Fools for Scandal, he was surely doing the work of the right-wing destruction machine as well. Yep! When Lyons presented the startling details about the way the New York Times invented the Whitewater hoax, he was making a big mistake. Instead, he should have "spent a little more time praising the Times" for its marvelous work-- perhaps for spelling the word "Whitewater" right, or for failing to run with the claim that Clinton was behind all those murders. When Lyons showed Whitewater was a big hoax, he was doing the right wing’s work for it.

No offense to Drum (or at least none personally) but, at this site, we've stated repeatedly that people need to speak in their own voices. That includes phrases and ways of speaking (and we touched on that again last night in the interview with Ruth). If Drum's advice speaks to you, by all means follow it. We've also (members and myself) dealt with how damaging the "mind your manners" nonsense can be.

There are two Howlers today. There was a Daily Howler intended for Thursday that's now up (and I have no idea when it went up -- it says Thursday but Dallas e-mailed me and he checked this morning). He's addressing the Newsweek controversy and he finds some use for David Brooks but has some criticism of Katrina vanden Heuvel (see note after excerpt):

And, yes, Brooks is also right about his conservative colleagues. "Many of my friends on the right have decided that the Newsweek episode exposes the rotten core of the liberal media," he writes. "Excuse me, guys, but this is craziness." What a shame it took a conservative pundit to state a couple of obvious facts: "The people who run Newsweek are not a bunch of Noam Chomskys with laptops. Not even close. Whatever might have been the cause of their mistakes, liberalism had nothing to do with it." We don't necessarily agree with every particle of that last statement. But no--the perfumed poodles running Newsweek are not a bunch of crazy liberals. They proved this, over and over again, in their wars against Clinton, then Gore. But it's amazing how hard it is to get our fiery "liberal spokesmen" to say this. They have decided to "get over" those recent wars--wars which their fiery "liberal" publications all agreed to ignore in real time.
And sadly, yes, one more thing is true--Brooks is also reasonably accurate in his comments about big progressives. Yes, there's a bit of hyperbole mixed in with the irony. But sadly, not all that much:
BROOKS (5/19/05): Meanwhile, the left side of the blogosphere has erupted with fury over the possibility that American interrogators might not have flushed a Koran down the toilet. The Nation and leftish Web sites are in a frenzy to prove that the story is probably true even if Newsweek is retracting it.
Yes, there's a bit of hyperbole there. But we watched the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel as she played some Hardball Monday night. And yes, we saw precisely what Brooks describes. To our eye and ear, vanden Heuvel did seem to be insisting that the toilet tale was "probably true." Vanden Heuvel has no earthly way of knowing whether the incident happened. But so what? "The allegations have been out there in terms of reporting," she pleadingly said:
VANDEN HEUVEL (5/16/05): I think Newsweek made an error. But the debate, it seems to me, has been very narrow in its fixation on this issue of single sourcing, of anonymous sourcing, because, you know, the allegations of the desecration of the Koran have been out there in terms of reporting, whether in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, in the BBC, detainees who come out of Guantanamo or Bagram in Afghanistan--
MATTHEWS: Right. But the story says--this is very important that I get this straight on my television--
VANDEN HEUVEL: But these are sources--
MATTHEWS: No. I want to make this very clear, what you just said, and I want to clarify it.
VANDEN HEUVEL: Yes, but these are--

Please note, we support Katrina vanden Heuvel as a community. We also support Bob Somerby. We highlight The Daily Howler pretty much daily and will continue to do so.
If the criticism speaks to you, note it, if it doesn't, let it go.

At Editor's Cut, Katrina vanden Heuvel is addressing the CPC:

If you don't know much about the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), you should. With 50-plus members, it's the single largest caucus in the House, and according to a study by Chris Bowers of MyDD, by far the most loyal to core Democratic values.
At a time in which too many Dems have lost their way (read: spine), CPC members--from co-chairs Barbara Lee (CA) and Lynn Woolsey (CA) to outspoken figures like founder (and Senate hopeful) Bernie Sanders (VT), Dennis Kucinich (OH), Jan Schakowsky (IL), John Conyers (MI), Maurice Hinchey (NY) and Barney Frank (MA)--continue to fight for working Americans, stand against the war, and discuss honorable ways out of Iraq. This week, Lee and Woolsey took a significant step towards strengthening the CPC, hiring grassroots organizer, former AFL-CIO staffer, and Capitol Hill veteran Bill Goold as its first full-time staffer. "There are a growing number of people who are getting involved with politics because they are drawn to the basic principles of fairness and justice that the Progressive Caucus has long represented in Congress," said Lee. "Adding a staff member of Bill's experience will allow the Progressive Caucus to more effectively continue our commitment to these principles."

We'll also note Alexendar Cockburn's latest column both because it's on the New York Times and because he comes up in the Thursday-intended Daily Howler:

Sign here to become a member of the 14 Per Cent Club. Twenty bucks plus shipping and handling gets you the t-shirt. Credentials for membership derive from a recent study from the Pew Research Center disclosing, in the words of Katharine Seelye of the New York Times on May 9, that a recent study from the Pew Research Center found that 45 percent of Americans believe little or nothing of what they read in their daily newspapers.
When specific newspapers were mentioned, The Times fared about average, with 21 percent of readers believing all or most of what they read in The Times and 14 percent believing almost nothing. Chalk up another victory for the left. We're been at it for thirty years at least, saying that most things in the Times are distortions of reality or outright lies and here is a robust slice of the American people agreeing with us. Of course the faint hearts who believe that the left can never win anything will say that the credit should go to moles at the New York Times, boring from within, hollowing out the mighty edifice with year upon year of willful falsehoods until at last the whole ponderous structure is crumbling into dust crushing all within.
True to a point.
Heroic moles, entombed in the rubble of your own making, Judith Miller and all the others, back through to the suzerain of sappers, A.M. Rosenthal, we salute you all! As with any empire on the brink of collapse, frantic commands are issuing from the command bunker. Seelye divulges the program of proposed "reform" devised by the editors. "Encourage reporters to confirm the accuracy of articles with sources before publication and to solicit feedback from sources after publication. Set up an error-tracking system to detect patterns and trends. Encourage the development of software to detect plagiarism when accusations arise. Increase coverage of middle America, rural areas and religion. Establish a system for evaluating public attacks on The Times's work and determining whether and how to respond."

Three voices members value, Bob Somerby, Katrina vanden Heuvel and Alexander Cockburn. (Four counting Dahr Jamail.)

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Democracy Now! (Marcia: "always worth watching"):
Headlines for May 20, 2005
- NYT: Army Abuse Report Details Widespread
- Carriles Charged
- Uzbekistan Rejects UN Request
- Haiti March for Aristide Return
- U.S. To Fly 100 Israelis to Testify Against Al-Arian
- Desecrated Koran Delivered by Amazon
- Pinochet Hospitalized
- Child Abuse In Military Families

Battle Over Judicial Nominees, Filibuster Heats Up in Senate
The battle over the filibuster continues to heat up in the U.S senate as the nomination of Texas Supreme Court justice Priscilla Owen comes under debate. Racial politics also entered the debate over the nomination of Janice Brown. We speak with Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress and Jeffrey Johnson of People For The American Way.

Washington Retains Strong Ties With Uzbekistan Despite Notorious Human Rights Record
Uzbek President Islam Karimov has rejected calls for an international inquiry into a bloody crackdown on protesters in the town of Andijan last week that left up to 750 dead. Washington has close links with Uzbekistan despite the country's notorious human rights record. We speak with a researcher with Human Rights Watch, the editorial director of Antiwar.com and we go to Andijan to get a report from the ground.

Indigenous Community in Colombia Fears Start of "Dirty War"
A large indigenous community in Colombia is predicting that a so-called dirty war could break out in an area that has been at the forefront of non-violent resistance to the government of the pro-US regime of President Uribe. We speak with the former mayor of Toribio and a surgeon and human rights activist from Toribio.


Todd e-mails to inform us that BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week is . . .

Welcome back to the BuzzFlash.com GOP Hypocrite of the Week.
Some might call Neal Horsley the "Mule Whisperer" because of his history of mumbling sweet nothings in the hairy ears of a few equestrian hybrids.

To learn how Horsley earned his award, use link to continue reading.

And "let's just give it up to BuzzFlash today" (as Keesha suggested in her e-mail).
Keesha steers us to Dan in Dallas's BuzzFlash contribution "NY Times Hides Galloway in "International," and Leaves Out Damning Testimony." Here's an excerpt:

Today The New York Times hid its news article on the damaging and blistering anti-Bush anti-war testimony of MP Galloway before the US Senate in the NY Times "International" section ... guess that the US Senate is foreign territory now for NY Times editors.And guess who the NY Times had to 'write' its most pro-Bush spin ---- none other than the lying Judith Miller--the neo-cons' mouthpiece at the NY Times. Propagandist Judith Miller is Chalabi's best newswhore that the NY Times put front page for weeks on end in the Bush administration's push-to-war-damn-the-facts "reporter."And don't bother to re-read today's Judith Miller piece on Galloway's Senate testimony thinking you missed what Galloway actually said------because the NY Times did not publish ANY of the damaging testimony of Galloway----IT'S NOT THERE.

Eddie also e-mails to note a BuzzFlash exclusive, Pamela Troy's "Dangerous Clowns" which is the first of a four-part series. Here's an excerpt:

Look up the name "Julius Streicher" in the index of most recent books on the Third Reich and you’re likely to be referred to one or two brief mentions. He was a lout whose anti-Semitic newspaper, Der Sturmer, was so crude that he’s sometimes called “Hitler’s pornographer.” He is usually described as a squat thug with a paltry talent for harnessing the combined power of ignorance and malice, someone who intelligent people could safely ignore with a contemptuous laugh.
Many of those who watched the rise of the Third Reich as it happened weren’t that dismissive. In 1936 Time Magazine referred to him as "One of Nazi Germany’s Most Dangerous Clowns." Hitler himself considered Streicher’s ability to mobilize the masses to the cause of Nazism invaluable and Himmler was quoted in Streicher’s newspaper Der Sturmer, "In times to come when the story of the reawakening of the German people is written, and when the next generation will be unable to understand how the German people could ever have been friendly with the Jews, it will be said that Julius Streicher and his weekly newspaper were responsible for a good part of the education about the enemy of mankind." The tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945 agreed. Part of the indictment against Streicher read:
In the early days he was preaching persecution. As persecution took place he preached extermination and annihilation and, as millions of Jews were exterminated and annihilated, in the Ghettoes of the East, he cried out for more and more. The crime of Streicher is that he made these crimes possible, which they never would have been had it not been for him and for those like him.
For the past twenty years, Streicher's voice has been most faithfully echoed in the pronouncements of people like Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Ann Coulter and countless other less well-known "clowns" who frequent cable TV, talk radio and the Internet. Like Streicher, they are often dismissed as so obviously ridiculous that they’re barely worth the attention of well-informed citizens. And while they are not anti-Semites and their rhetoric is unlikely to lead to the mass murder of those they target, it has, like Streicher's, made mindless hatred not just acceptable in the minds of many people, but downright virtuous.

And another BuzzFlash exclusive is noted by Martha, Wes Owens "Constitutional Crisis 101:"

As I sit here watching the Senate on CSPAN, I see we have arrived at a constitutional crisis.
Because I have made my living working as either a contractor or on the direct payroll of the US Federal Government since 1974, the business of the US Govt has been an interest of mine.I never really appreciated the US Senate as an institution until about 1985 when I became friends with a staffer of ex-Senator Roth (R-Delaware, you remember the Roth IRA?) and was concurrently reading Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson. If I recall, some critics of Caro's work dismissed the 2nd volume of Caro's bio., "Master of the Senate," as a rehash of high school civics. Not so. You see, just today, I was led to re-read the Constitution of the United States (the internet is a wonderful thing).
This reading of our Constitution reminded me of the fact that in the original document, the founding fathers designed the Senate as a forum where tradition, stability and the rights of the minority have not only a voice, but the means to speak dissent to the power and passions of the current majority. This is fundamental, basic and necessary to our system of checks and balances in the governance of the United States.

I'll note Barbara's Daily BuzzFlash Minute. Here's the opening paragraph:

George Bush is a perfect example of why we don't want biased, partisan, faith-based judges appointed to the courts. Thanks to 5 overly biased, partisan, faith-based Supreme Court Judges who took it upon themselves to overrule the majority vote in the United States and appoint a moron to the presidency, we've had 5 long years of pure hell, with no end in sight! And he wants more of the same to insure our demise and his success in the future. I can see it now, the courts stacked with holier than thou judges who would agree with Bush in 2008 when he decides to become the Dictator he's aspired to be all along! No thank you, Frist, no thank you, Senators, we don't want any more of your biased, partisan, faith-based bull shit! KEEP THE FILIBUSTER IN THE SENATE!!!!


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

Via BuzzFlash, Riverbend's latest at Baghdad Burning:


She stood in the crowded room as her drove of minions stood around her...…A huddling mass trying to draw closer to her aura of evil. The lights flashed against her fangs as her cruel lips curled into a grimace. It was meant to be a smile but it wouldn't reach her cold, lifeless eyes… It was a leer- the leer of the undead before a feeding...
The above was not a scene from Buffy the Vampire Slayer- it was just Condi Rice in Iraq a day ago. At home, we fondly refer to her as The Vampire. She's such a contrast to Bush- he simply looks stupid. She, on the other hand, looks utterly evil. The last two weeks have been violent. The number of explosions in Baghdad alone is frightening. There have also been several assassinations- bodies being found here and there. It's somewhat disturbing to know that corpses are turning up in the most unexpected places.
Many people will tell you it's not wise to eat river fish anymore because they have been nourished on the human remains being dumped into the river. That thought alone has given me more than one sleepless night. It is almost as if Baghdad has turned into a giant graveyard.


From Centcom:

SOLDIER KILLED IN VEHICLE ACCIDENT AFTER IED EXPLOSIONLSA ANACONDA, BALAD, Iraq – One 1st Corps Support Command Soldier was killed in a vehicular accident following an improvised explosive device attack during a combat logistic patrol north of Taji at approximately midnight May 20. The Soldier was evacuated to a nearby medical facility where he was pronounced dead.The name of the Soldier is being withheld pending next of kin notification.

From CounterPunch, Stan Goff's "An Open Letter to Democrats: Listen to Galloway and Learn Something:"


Dear Democratic Elected Officials of the United States (with damn few exceptions),
I am writing this open letter to call your attention to the remarks made day before yesterday, May 17, 2005, to the United States Senate, by British MP George Galloway of the independent Respect Party. I do this because he serves as an example of why your party should be abandoned by the U.S. working class, by U.S. women, by oppressed nationalities in the United States, and by anyone who professes to be a progressive or a leftist.
George Galloway did that for which you have proven incapable; he spoke as an opposition. Since there seems to be a great dark space in the middle of your heads where the notion of opposition should be ­ a void filled by parliamentary molasses and the pusillanimous inabilty to tell simple truths ­ I suggest you all review the recordings of Galloway's confrontation with Republican Senator Norm "Twit" Coleman to see exactly how effortless it is to stand up to these cheap political bullies (watch the video). While you are at it, you can watch your colleague Carl Levin demonstrate exactly what I mean about most of you and your party, as he alternately hurls petulant cream-puff insults at Galloway and kisses Coleman's stunned, clueless ass to give that toothy dipshit some comfort in the wake of Galloway's verbal drubbing.
Galloway didn't have to walk up to the docket and slap the cowboy shit out of Coleman ­ though I admit I still struggle with my own secret urges to do just that with most of the air-brushed, combed-over, Stepford meat-puppets who now people the United States Congress. No, all Galloway had to do was tell the unvarnished truth, and it had exactly the same effect. If Democrats had half the spine that Galloway does if you would stop chasing your creepy little careers through the caviar and chicken-salad circuits of duck-and-cover American political double-speak, then not only would people like me not be calling for all to abandon the Democratic Party and take their fight to the streets like good Bolivians not only that, but you'd have won the last election.

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

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

With Douglas Jehl's "British Memo on U.S. Plans for Iraq War Fuels Critics," the memo the Sunday Times of London ran at the start of this month finally becomes the topic of a news story in the New York Times. (For the record, Monday, Paul Krugman discussed it in his column on the op-ed page. Though I don't focus on the op-eds in my comments, "for the record," it bears noting and linking to.)

More than two weeks after its publication in London, a previously secret British government memorandum that reported in July 2002 that President Bush had decided to "remove Saddam, through military action" is still creating a stir among administration critics. They are portraying it as evidence that Mr. Bush was intent on war with Iraq earlier than the White House has acknowledged.
[. . .]
It has long been known that American military planning for the Iraq war began as early as Nov. 21, 2001, after President Bush directed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to begin a review of what would be required to oust Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi leader. By July 2002, the war planning was sufficiently advanced that newspaper accounts that month reported details of some of what was being considered.

Jehl is correct that "[i]t has long been known." If the paragraph inspires anger among some (or possibly many), they will hopefully direct it at the paper and not Jehl. The New York Times elected to front page Judith Miller during the lead up to the invasion/occupation. To this day, Jehl's stories are likely to appear in the Saturday paper, in the paper as in "inside." His reporting loses out to various lifestyle stories that the Times trumpets. But on Saturdays and other days, his topics are usually news.

It's news today. And the article's not given much space, nor is it front paged. As various staff from the Times have noted in e-mails, reporters do not determine where the story lands or the headline for their articles.

As I type this, no one's yet to e-mail about it (placement does determine how much attention an article -- and the information it contains -- receives). But if members want to comment on it, we can do an entry on it. However, please remember that Douglas Jehl did not determine where his story was placed. There's also a good chance that he did not suddenly decide to write it. Yazz will grasp that this is an "in fairness" entry. While there are many things to blame the Times reporters for (and I'm sure Jehl hasn't "hit one out of the park everytime" -- to put in one of those sports analogies the Times so enjoys utilizing), with regards to news of the memo not appearing until now and being buried inside the paper, those are issues with the paper and not the reporter. Were Jehl a part of the Elite Fluff Patrol or not regularly buried inside the paper, I probably wouldn't take the time to make this point which is too bad because even the Fluffers deserve a defense. But they'll have to go elsewhere for that.

(Note that Jehl also has another article on an important topic in the paper today, "Intelligence Czar Is Focus of Legislation," and it too is buried inside the paper.)

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

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

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.
The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.
Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.
"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"
At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

The above excerpt is from Tim Golden's "In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths" in this morning's New York Times.

Francisco e-mails to note Tim Golden's "Cuban Exile Is Charged With Illegal Entry:"

Homeland Security Department officials said Thursday that they had charged Luis Posada Carriles, the violent anti-Castro militant, with illegally entering the United States.
The charge could be the first step in the deportation of Mr. Posada, 77, who resurfaced outside Miami and was arrested on Tuesday after 45 years of shadowy combat against Fidel Castro.
It also represents a legal and political dilemma for the Bush administration.

Taylor draws our attention to David E. Rosenbaum and Edmund L. Andrews' "An Architect of Bush Plan on Retirement Urges Retreat:"

Robert C. Pozen, the business executive who developed the theory behind President Bush's plan to trim Social Security benefits in the future, urged the president on Thursday to drop his insistence on using part of workers' taxes to pay for individual investment accounts.
This was one of two blows during the day to Mr. Bush's policies on Social Security and retirement saving. In the House, Representative Bill Thomas, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, disregarded the methods favored by the president to encourage workers to save for retirement - mostly tax incentives for the affluent - and offered completely different proposals of his own.
The president's Social Security and retirement measures have faced trouble in Congress all year, and the developments on Thursday raised further doubt about their prospects.

Lori notes Katharine Q. Seelye's "Red Cross Reported Koran Abuses:"

The International Committee of the Red Cross said yesterday that it had given the Pentagon "multiple" reports from detainees in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that American personnel had mishandled the Koran. The committee said the complaints from detainees then ceased.
The Pentagon confirmed that it had received these reports from the committee, but characterized the incidents as minor and rare and said that detainees themselves had also mishandled the Koran.

With regards to the Bully Boy's latest war (the war on the Fourth Amendment), Cedric e-mails
Eric Lichtblau's "Democrats Fault Plan for F.B.I.:"

Several Democrats voiced strong objections on Thursday to a plan by the Bush administration and Republican leaders for expanding the Federal Bureau of Investigation's counterterrorism powers and said they would fight to have the issue fully debated in public rather than behind closed doors in the Senate.
"The F.B.I. already has the power to get what they need in investigations," Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who sits on the Intelligence Committee, said in an interview. "I'm unwilling to give the F.B.I. unfettered authority to conduct investigations and take away the last vestige of accountability, which is essentially what they are seeking here."
A proposal advocated by the Bush administration and Republican leaders on the Senate Intelligence Committee would allow the F.B.I. to demand records from businesses and other institutions in intelligence investigations without getting an order from a judge.

Bernado e-mails to highlight Clifford Krauss' "A Tie-Breaking Vote Saves Liberal Leader in Canada:"

Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal government survived on Thursday evening by a single vote in the House of Commons after limping for months as a result of a party scandal.
While the victory in the deeply divided legislature will avert an immediate election, it probably will mean only a brief respite for Mr. Martin from the continuous political troubles that have shaken his ability to improve security and trade relations with the United States and infused new oxygen into the separatist movement in Quebec.


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

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

This morning while doing quick read over the post with members comments on Daniel Okrent, an e-mail arrived from Ruth (her Ruth's Morning Edition Report). Her post went up (as it always will, we enjoy Ruth's posts) but I thought we might follow up with an interview to round it out. Ruth gladly agreed.

First, the community loves Ruth's Morning Edition Report.

Ruth: Thank you and thank you to all the members who write. I would like to do something on the e-mails in the next week again because I enjoy the feedback, the questions and the comments. I'll also say thank you for adding my correction this morning.

You'd heard "lewd" but then realized the guest on Rehm's show had used "food."

Ruth: Right. "Food fight" not "lewd fight." It was in my notes and when Tracey rad over it, she asked me what was "lewd" about Bill Moyers? That's when I realized I had used the wrong word.

And we'll thank our friend of the community who went and fixed that during the day because I'm not able to. And note that it first got fixed as "rude." I got a call and I was saying "Thank you, but it's 'food.'"

Ruth: I'm sorry if there was any trouble.

No, but I knew it was important to you and I wanted to get it fixed it ASAP. But if a mistake goes up in a post, it is corrected, if you catch it or a member does. But mistakes will happen and I wanted to be sure, after you contacted me about it, that you knew it's not a big deal. Mistakes will be made and as long as they're caught and corrected, it's not a problem. Let's jump into the thing Media Matters did this afternoon. We're talking about an interview that aired on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show.

Ruth: My granddaughter came by to pick up my grandson and she asked me if I'd seen it yet and I hadn't. So I immediately checked that out. It was very strong and covered a great deal. I hope people will read it. Instead of discussing the strong points that Media Matters already covered, I'd like to focus on some additional areas.

We discussed a few issues on this earlier, when we spoke of the correction. There was a frustration on your part with Ken Tomlinson, CPB chair, and you felt you weren't able to go into the interview on your own.

Ruth: It was so frustrating to listen to and, I think I noted this, I couldn't deal with it "straight" and I wasn't able to find a way to deal with it humorously, the way Tracey had suggested, because I just found Mr. Tomlinson so offensive and depressing because he's got the power to destroy NPR.

One thing that you'd mentioned was the comments on Israel and Palestine and since that wasn't in the Media Matters item, how about we start there?

Ruth: Well, obviously, I'm Jewish. A Congressman, Brad Sherman, felt that the Middle-East coverage was biased against Israel and Mr. Tomlinson kept returning to that allegation. Diane made the point of that being one complaint and asked is he'd spoken to anyone else? His reply was that there was a meeting with a lot of Jewish people who were offended by the coverage. I don't doubt that it happened. There are a lot of Jewish people in this country who are offended. But there are a lot more who aren't. Myself, I think we need more coverage of reality and I think NPR tries to provide that. Diane offered that, this is a paraphrase from my notes, "whenever we have done a program on what's happening in the Middle East we have always tried to represent the Palestinian perspective and the Israeli perspective and on each program they have been criticized from both sides of having favored one." Mr. Tomlinson wouldn't address specifics and resorted to terms such as case by case basis. He said let it be decided on a case by case basis. Diane asked for an example and he couldn't provide one, he fumbled around and started saying the examples would come later but that people needed to have their complaints heard and addressed. Which led to Diane pointing out something very basic, NPR already has its own ombudsmen doing that and yet he's assigning two ombudsmen in addition to that, to cover both NPR and PBS. Coming as it did in the conversation, it could be thought that the ombudsmen were being added in some part due to the Middle East coverage.

Mr. Tomlinson repeatedly cited a right-wing advocacy group for Israel. He wasn't interested, when Diane brought up the question, of whether or not some listeners might find the Middle East coverage anti-Arab. He also compared NPR to the NRA. Diane asked him if he'd heard any complaints that the coverage was anti-Palestinian and he didn't want to address that issue. He was very selective in what he cited and what he chose to discuss. So, when I was reading the Media Matters review, I thought this was something that didn't get mentioned that we could pick up here.

That segment really bothered you. When we spoke earlier in the day, that was the first thing you identified.

Ruth: It bothers me because I didn't enjoy my religious beliefs being lumped in with people I share nothing with. Mr. Tomlinson spoke as though all Jewish people, because they were Jewish, felt one way which is simply not true. He portrayed as a monolithic, right-wing group. There is a faction of that among Jews in this country but it's a small overall faction. In the larger picture, you do have people who are apethetic and you do have people who feel that the faction is knee jerk and not reflective of any consensus. Diane noted that he was citing the views of advocacy group. Mr. Tomlinson cut her off, as he did frequently, and the issue she attempted to raise was that this group was a sub-section of the American Jewish community. This may have been, it probably was, why I had so much trouble offering anything to the community other than what I did. Mr. Tomlinson stereotyped and traditionally stereotypes have harmed all Jews regardless of their political or personal beliefs.

What you offered was a kind of heads up.

Ruth: Exactly. But it troubles me, and I'm probably not addressing this correctly, that Mr. Tomlinson wanted to advocate a position and instead of honestly stating that he was utilizing a right-wing group of hawks to back up his opinion, he attempted to portray the divide as "The Jewish people are offended." That's not the case. He was using us for cover to hide behind. Then we had Congressman Sherman call in and make similar claims. This was an important part of the broadcast to me and the best I feel like I'm doing right now is going around circles.

Okay, let me offer something and you can respond to it. Tomlinson wants to argue that the coverage of NPR, the reporting, is anti-Jewish, he used that term repeatedly. To make the claim, he appears to equate support for the policies of the Israeli government's actions with being Jewish? Is that a correct reading of your impressions?

Ruth: That's it in a nut shell. Israel is foreign government, a government, not a religion, not a club. No government is beyond criticism. Somehow Mr. Tomlinson appears to feel that because I'm Jewish, my loyalties are with, automatically with, a foreign government. I am American and I am Jewish. I'm also a widow. My husband passed away several years ago. If I wanted to live in Israel, I'd live in Israel. It's not my home. The United States is my home and I felt offended that, because a group of right-wing hawks want to act in a manner similar to the way right-wing Cuban exiles in Florida might act, Mr. Tomlinson wants to equate my religion with some allegience to a foreign government. Mr. Tomlison is doing that to push his own agenda and may or may not be aware of it. But as an elderly Jewish woman, I am quite aware of the nonsense of "Jewish conspiracy" and the nonsense of "divided loyalties" and how both have been used historically to stigmatize Jewish people. He's using it to advance his own agenda and may or may not be aware of how offensive his stereotype is but it is offensive and, historically, that stereotype has resulted in actions that harmed all Jews. That a voice, with power on the CPB, wants to promote stereotypes that are in fact harmful honestly disgusts me.

We have a members in our community who are very intelligent, much smarter than I am, but we also get visitors every day and in case anyone's confused on this point, I'd like to you to elaborate on the "Jewish consiparcy" myths.

Ruth: Historically, they've been used to do harm to Jewish people. Whether it's that we control all the money in the world or that we're sacrficing babies or whatever nonsense has been put out there in this stereotype, it always creates the impression that we're not fully vested in the larger communities in which we live. We're, instead, according to the stereotype, attempting to control the world. The result is that a Hitler or whomever comes along and uses the stereotype to justify harm to all Jewish people. That's the extreme harm that can come, a loss of life, an extermination of a people. But the stereotype is harmful on a day to day basis as well.

There is a faction, of Jews in this country, with loyalties that might appear to lie partially or completely with the Israeli government. But it's a faction. When Mr. Tomlinson equates being Jewish with support for a government, a foreign government, he falls back on a dangerous stereotype that's brought great harm to all Jews. I find it offensive as a Jewish woman. I hope that the use of such a stereotype reveals Mr. Tomlinson's ignorance because I hope that he wouldn't engage in dangerous stereotypes he knew were false just for political gain.

And, while we're addressing the issue of the government of Israel, it should be noted that not all Israelies support the actions of the Sharon government.

Ruth: Correct. There are divisions within their own country. You can see it with the actions of the refuseniks who refuse to serve in the Israeli army or with the opinions regarding the wall that would act as physical barrier or border. I hope that this is just a case of Mr. Tomlinson being an outsider looking in that results in his reducing all Jewish people to a monolithic group sharing one set of opinions and beliefs. But regardless of why he's doing it, what he's doing is stereotyping and using a historically dangerous stereotype. As someone servince on the CPB board --

Corporation of Public Broadcasting.

Ruth: Corporation of Public Broadcasting, right. As someone serving on a public board, he has no business in engaging in stereotypes. I honestly feel he should be removed from the board immediately. He should be asked to step down because he has promoted a very dangerous stereotype that has been historically harmful. Public broadcasting, NPR or PBS, is a domestic organization that's meant to represent the American people. By equating my religion with a foreign government, he's cast me as less American than some. That is offensive to me and suggests that he is unable to represent the people of this country. He did not merely acknowledge that a segment of Jewish people in this country might feel a certain way. He repeatedly implied that this is how all Jews in this country feel, that to be Jewish was to subscribe to this one belief system. That is not the case. When Diane asked him for examples of bias in the reporting, he was unable to provide any. I bring that up again because he is going impressions and stereotypes and anyone doing that needs to be working at a private organization and not one responsible for serving the public.

You spoke earlier of National Congress Radio.

Ruth: Tomlinson only values the voices he wants to value. That's evident when he listens only to one group of Jews. It's also evident when he places so much weight on the opinions of Congressman Brad Sherman, for instance. The wall that CPB is supposed to provide between the Congress and the people at NPR or PBS is being torn apart. Congressman Sherman, who later called in to the program, was cited repeatedly by Mr. Tomlinson. I'm confused as to why a Congressman's opinion matters more than the public's. It is National Public Radio. It is not National Congress Radio. I believe they already have C-Span as their voice and NPR belongs to the public.

With e-mailers and callers, Mr. Tomlinson openly mocked their opinions. It is National Public Radio, not National Congress Radio. Jeff Chester made a similar point when he called in to the show.

Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy.

Ruth: Correct. Mr. Chester made the point that public broadcasting is for the public and not intended to be an arm of the government. Mr. Tomlinson fails to grasp that.

You spoke earlier of how the interview bothered you in terms of NPR's future. What is your
fear of what Tomlinson means to the future of NPR?

Ruth: This is a man, Mr. Tomlinson, who can't comprehend the difference between reporting, which is what NOW often does, and a talking heads show full of pundits offering their opinions. He thinks that NOW and Paul Gigot's show are equivalent. He even said they were both advocacy journalism which implies that he doesn't grasp what advocacy journalism traditionally entails.
Gigot's show is editorializing, it's op-ed, it's not reporting. Mr. Tomlinson equates opinion with reporting and that's a very dangerous misunderstanding. Diane addressed his spoken of desire to replace news programming with classical music. I'm unaware of any public cry for make classical music. But it's another step in removing actual reporting. When it aired, my hands were trembling as I made notes. I thought Diane did a great job. I thought she pressed him to answer questions and I think if it weren't for her earlier show, he wouldn't have even felt compelled to respond to the public criticism. She interviewed him and allowed to him express his opinions. What I heard was disturbing to me.

If we can, I want to return to a point you made earlier, when Tomlinson brought up the NRA.

Ruth: He referred to NPR's listeners as "liberal" and stated that they get aroused when they perceive NPR is under attack the same way that NRA members get aroused when they feel the Second Amendment is under attack.

Second Amendment being the right to bear arms.

Ruth: If he's attempting to suggest that NPR listeners are concerned with the free speech clause of the First Amendment, he's correct. Like the Bully Boy, he's attacking facts as "liberal." He sees "liberal" everywhere. NPR was liberal in its early days. But as Scott Sherman pointed out those days were some time ago. They have moved into the mainstream. Mr. Tomlinson is either unaware of that or he's pulling out a straw man. But when he speaks of Gigot's need to balance out NOW, he's unconcerned that PBS offers stock market programming on the economy but no weekly programs on the economy that address a working class perspective.

He is either unable to move beyond his very narrow views, full of stereotypes, or he's aware that he's being dishonest. Either way, he is a danger to PBS and NPR. I've listened to NPR my entire adult life. Morning Edition has suffered tremendously since the departure of Bob Edwards. But The Diane Rehm Show, Nina Totenberg and other old lions continue to make it worth listening to and continue to provide information and serve the public. I was, and still am, worried about what it means for NPR that the kiddie patrol lacks the skills of the old lions because when they retire or are forced out we're not left with much. The purpose of my contributions here was that by highlighting the current problems, a dialogue could be started and members could address this before it was too late for NPR. If Mr. Tomlinson is put in charge, I fear that there's no time to address it. By his statements, he's interested in destroying NPR as a news provider and he's interested in replacing news with opinion.

NPR's strength is a serious discussion with perspective and that appears to be the very thing that Mr. Tomlinson wants to destroy. When I started doing my contributions here, I assumed that there was time to plant some seeds in the minds of a few members who would plant seeds in their own circles. The hope was that the dialogue would allow for NPR to strengthen their best qualities and that my grandchildren would be growing up with a strong news source. With Mr. Tomlison on the horizon, I now worry that those hopes have been voided.

The community is split on NPR in terms of whether it's worth saving or not. We're a community of the left and we don't see the rampant liberalism at NPR that Tomlinson does. But, as you know from the e-mails that are forwarded to you, your earlier remarks on the importance you still see NPR having did touch some who were otherwise prepared to write NPR off. FAIR's latest action alert regarding the CPB provides contact information and we'll provide a link because I'm thinking that your remarks tonight will make some who haven't gotten involved want to take action.

Ruth: I understand why some would feel "What's the point?" You wrote about that and how you were sure you'd take part in an attempt to save NPR and PBS again but you were distressed by the impression that NPR and PBS stood on the sidelines during the battles. Has your opinion changed?

I think Diane Rehm has done a wonderful job. There's obviously a line she has to acknowledge, as a journalist, and she's done that. She's raised the issue and made sure that NPR listeners had access to information. I'm less impressed with what I've heard on other NPR shows. Rehm's one of the "old lions," as you call them. Media Channel.org has a take action page on this issue and we'll provide a link to that. Media Matters' entry also includes contact information so members who are interested can go there as well. In terms of making a difference, I think to this community, you've made a strong case for activism on this issue. Rebecca (Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude) has noted that your remarks and calling attention to Diane Rehm's previous show on this topic made her decide to fight the fight one more time. Between her post and the e-mails that arrive, I think an impact's been made that wouldn't have been otherwise.
I do understand the attitude of why should we bother again and I do understand those who feel we'd be smarter to invest our time and monies into BuzzFlash, Democracy Now!, The Nation, The Progressive, Free Speech Radio News, et al. Speaking for myself and not the community, I'm willing to sign on for one battle to defend public broadcasting. And I'll give you and Diane Rehm equal credit for that.
Before we go, I'd like to touch on a non-public broadcasting issue. In your last two Ruth's Morning Edition Report, you included no Yiddish words. I wish you would include them. I was discussing that and some members reactions with a friend during a long phone call this weekend (the battery in her cordless phone went out). This week Francisco offered a comment on Daniel Okrent for the community and he used two Spanish words. One was for trash and I understood it immediately. The other I didn't know. That's fine. If I want to know it, I'll look it up and I feel that any member can do that. Type in the word in a search engine and I'm sure you'll be able to find a definition. I've always encouraged Francisco to use Spanish whenever he wanted to. I always harp on the need for more voices -- not less. Part of "more voices" includes not just opinions, but also expression. When you use a Yiddish term, members who know Yiddish, or some Yiddish, are delighted. Those who don't should be able to determine the meaning from the context or by looking it up online. So I hope you won't censor yourself.

Ruth: There have been a few e-mails, as you know, that have requested I stop using a Yiddish word here and there. Tracey, my granddaughter, also expressed her displeasure that none were used in two entries this week. I think, if I had used them in the last entry for instance, I wouldn't have felt so frustrated and unable to address my reaction to Mr. Tomlinson's statements and attitude. So they will be popping back up. If I could, I'd also like to address why it's always called Ruth's Morning Edition Report. That's the show I can always listen to in the morning while I'm getting ready for the day and waiting for my grandson to be dropped off. If I hear a promo for a show on later in the day that sounds interesting, I'll drag out all the toys and we'll be in the middle of the living room playing during that show. I still call it Ruth's Morning Edition Report because if I'm emphasizing Diane's show or another show, it's saying that I heard nothing on Morning Edition that moved enough to comment. When Bob Edwards hosted the show, I could always find something worth commenting on. But if I'm focusing on another show that means that either Morning Edition had nothing that I thought was worth commenting on or that
Nina Totenberg did a report and there's not much I could say to that other than, "Listen, she knows what she's talking about." For instance, this morning she gave a strong, historical report on Robert Bork. You're not going to get that sort of reporting on Good Morning America, The Today Show or whatever CBS is calling their latest attempt at a morning show.

Absolutely.

Ruth: The statement was made, by Congressman Sherman when he called in, that an internal report by NPR was impossible for him to get ahold of. While he did have the report, he didn't have the research data. He was speaking of an internal study of NPR's Middle East coverage. Tomlinson never noted, as Media Matters does, that he's refused to release the study he commissioned with tax payer funds on Bill Moyer's Now. I'd like to quote two paragraphs from the Media Matters report:
In the interview on the May 18 edition of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, responding to an email from a listener who cited "numerous conservative figures" appearing on Moyers' program, Tomlinson responded in jest, "Am I gonna have to go back and hire another consultant and demonstrate this is incorrect?" The reference was to an outside content review study of NOW he reportedly commissioned in 2004. The study is reported to have cost taxpayers $10,000, but Media Matters for America has been unable to determine the identity of the firm conducting the study. Further, Tomlinson never sent the results to the CPB board, and he has yet to release them to the public [The New York Times, 5/2/05].
The identity of the firm conducting the study would be relevant for a number of reasons, including Tomlinson's apparent willingness to engage the services of a conservative firm that employs questionable methodologies. Tomlinson has reportedly contacted S. Robert Lichter, president of the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), "about conducting a study on whether NPR's Middle East coverage was more favorable to Arabs than to Israelis." As Media Matters has noted (here and here), CMPA, which has received funding from right-wing organizations, has conducted numerous flawed studies purporting to confirm liberal bias in media and academia, and Lichter himself has misrepresented those findings in media interviews.
While Congressman Sherman complained that he'd only been able to see a report, not the research, on a study of NPR's Middle East coverage, Mr. Tomlinson refuses to release the report he had commissioned, at tax payer expense, on Bill Moyer's Now.

Good point. Diane Rehm's interview with Ken Tomlinson aired Wednesday, May 18th and people can listen to it online.

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

[This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]