Sunday, July 25, 2010

Truest statement of the week

Somehow, Ezra Klein has managed to drain a little more water out of the already shallow pool of media objectivity. He's introduced the notion that, in some instances, it may not have been a soft bias, but instead a hard one. That's exactly the kind of suspicion and mutual distrust that a party caucus breeds. And, unless the full JournoList is opened to the public, nobody will ever know for sure.

-- Jay Cost, "What's So Bad about the JournoList?" (Real Clear Politics).
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Truest statement of the week II

"The [JournoList] is troubling. At one level it could be thought of as just colleagues throwing ideas out to one another, but from another standpoint it almost looks like collusion . . . where virtual talking points are shared and solidified in a group."

-- SUNY poli sci professor Jim Campbell to Patrik Jonsson for "JournoList: Is 'call them racists' a liberal media tactic?" (Christian Science Monitor).
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A note to our readers

Hey --

Another week, another long edition. Along with Dallas, the following helped on this edition:

The Third Estate Sunday Review's Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, and Ava,
Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude,
Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man,
C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review,
Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills),
Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix,
Mike of Mikey Likes It!,
Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz),
Ruth of Ruth's Report,
Wally of The Daily Jot,
Trina of Trina's Kitchen
Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ,
Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends,
Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts,
and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub.


We thank everyone. What did we come up with?



It was a long edition and special thanks go to Jess and Kat for scrambling to find illustrations when we had no time for new ones. (Ava and C.I. had already decided on the KvH illustration by Isaiah and their TV article runs with the same illustration each week. We had nothing for anything else.)

And we thank you for reading. We hope you found something that made you think, laugh, smile, snarl or whatever.

Peace.

-- Jim, Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava and C.I.
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Editorial: Change you can masturbate to

He promised to change the mindset of war and, boy, did he.

Barack Obama changed the mindset of war. He took a nation opposed to the Iraq War and silenced objection. Turned the peace movement into groupies and whores. He certainly changed the mindset.

The Iraq War didn't end. The only things that stopped were (a) the network media coverage and (b) our peace 'leaders.' (Real leaders like Cindy Sheehan never stopped working for peace.)

He took war into Pakistan, via his murders by drones, and he 'beefed' up the war on Afghanistan.

Change the mindset of war? Oh, you better believe Princess Tiny Meat managed to do that. He waved that magic, albeit, small cock and Carl Davidson and Tom Hayden and Leslie Cagan and Alice Walker and Medea I-Need-Attention Benjamin and Raed Jarrar and all the others whores who pretended to give a damn, who pretended to want to end war, said, "F**k me over and f**k me over hard, I want some killing in my name and in the name of every other American!"

And the world heard and the world watched as Carl, Tom, Leslie, Alice, Medea, Raed and the rest had their first clitoral orgams as Iraqis died, as Afghans died, as Pakistanis died, as US service members died.

And the world heard and the world watched and saw little to no objection.

Change the mindset of war?

Yes, he can!

End the wars?

No, he won't.

Sisters




Bully Boy Bush went out of office after pushing the SOFA through in the US and Iraq. That document allegedly ends the Iraq War in 2012. Maybe it will mean all US military forces out of the country, maybe it won't. It doesn't really matter as America learned last week.

Senator Russ Feingold: Thank you, sir. The State Dept is planning to make up for the departure of US troops by doubling its security contractors. Even though such contractors often don't have the essential security capabilities that are provided by our troops. I'm concerned this will be dangerous and also lead to a situation where we don't have meaningful control over our own contractors. What alternatives have you considered?
Ambassador James Jeffrey: Senator, this is an extremely important point. Uh, if confirmed as chief of mission, my first responsibility will be for the safety and security of the personnel under my supervision and I've put a lot of time and effort into looking at this. Uhm. The -- after the incident in 2007 in Baghdad involving the Blackwater security people, the State Dept did a very thorough investigation called the Kennedy Report. I've read that report. It concluded -- and I think that this conclusion remains true today -- that the State Dept has done a very good job in an extremely lethal environment protecting its people and keeping them alive and safe; however, there needed to be certain steps, technical steps, rule of engagement steps, coordination steps -- coordination both with the US military and with the Iraq authorities, and more supervision. Now we put, uh, a direct hire State Dept officer or person with all movements So -- And we have more technical control through, uh, basically recordings, audio and video equipment and such so that we're able to determine what happened and review any incident and since then there has not been a serious incident. But I want to underscore, this is a very, very difficult mission. This is, uh, uh, a defensive mission, not an offensive one, but it involves thousands of people, many movements in a very lethal environment and it is something we have to remain very concerned about.


James Jeffrey, current US Ambassador to Turkey and nominated by Barack to be the US Ambassador to Iraq, was appearing before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. The Iraq War ends when?


Senator Richard Lugar: Plans submitted by the Administration suggest that U.S. involvement in Iraq will remain robust well beyond that, with more than 5,000 diplomats and civilian advisers working with civil society and the Iraqi government. The uncertain political situation creates risks for our transition plans. Our military has been involved in areas of governance far beyond security, and turning over those critical responsibilities will be challenging. The State Department has asked for more than $800 million in start-up costs for a police mentoring and training program. The program envisions having 350 advisors at three camps who will fan out to 50 sites in the country, about half of which would be reachable by ground and the rest requiring air support. With the military’s departure, we are told, the Department may hire as many as 7,000 contract security personnel. An AP article last month suggested the Iraq mission would need the equivalent of a squadron of Blackhawk helicopters, 50 ambush-protected vehicles, and equipment to protect against rockets and mortars. It is important that the Administration flesh out how all the pieces of this unprecedented operation will fit together in Iraq as American troops depart.


Lugar, the Ranking Member, had a lengthy exchange with Jeffrey who explained, "We [State Dept.] are taking on missions that the US military has done."

The war ends when?

Oh, that's right, it doesn't.

But Barack changed the mindset.

Praise be Barack, praise be the Cult of St. Barack.

[For more realities Raed and the other groupies won't tell you, read "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Kerry, Lugar and Feingold," "Kaufman and Casey" and "Senate Foreign Relations Committee."]
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TV: Everybody is a spy

Sly Stone got it wrong -- "spy," not "star." Everybody is a spy.

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Or apparently wants to be. Which explains a number of current details including the reception USA's newest drama is receiving. Covert Affairs (click here for Hulu page) stars Piper Perabo as CIA agent Annie Walker. Some in the press are wrongly calling her a "CIA trainee." Trainees are on the farm. She got plucked from the farm in the first episode and, at the end, it was decided to keep her in the field. She's not a trainee, she's an agent. It's not surprising that the character of Annie Walker would be downgraded -- the entire premise appears to exist for just that reason. But we'll get to that.

Let's get the cast out of the way. Christopher Gorham is her work-wife Auggie. He's a CIA genius who is also blind and also very horny. What might come off offensive from a sighted man is apparently cute from Gorham -- barring, of course, any surprise plot twist where Auggie gets charged with sexual harassment. Kari Matchett plays Annie's CIA boss Joan Campbell, Anne Dudek plays Annie's sister Danielle and Peter Gallagher plays Joan's husband and the CIA Director of the National Clandestine Service. Eion Bailey plays Ben Mercer whom Annie had hot, steamy island sex with in Sri Lanka before the series started.

Now let's get some of the problems out of the way. First off, green hair. Leave it to the male-dominated Water Cooler Set to use their peckers as some sort of precious metal detector and miss the obvious. Piper Perabo needs a trip to a professional salon where her hair can become the shade of blond she and the producers want it to be and not the cheap, green shade we're seeing on TV. Get it blond or let her go back to the natural color. It is awful and, tongues and knuckles dragging on the ground, the Water Cooler Set never found time to note it.

Some may ask, "That's the most serious problem?"

It is. Annie's nothing but a cupcake. She's not a real character. So let's not pretend that she is. The show's nothing but a cartoon -- nothing wrong with that and we love the spy cartoon Archer (click here for its Hulu page). A lot of people are trying to insist this is like Alias. We made it through that show's shelf-life biting our tongue and ignoring it because we saw nothing to praise. J.J., we owe you an apology. Compare Sydney (Alias) to Annie and there's a hell of a lot to praise.

In conversations with people working on Current Affairs, we repeatedly noted how weak (and pathetic) Annie is. And we were repeatedly told that wasn't the case. Leading us to retort, "Right, it's not just Annie, it's all the women."

They disagree and insist that by having Annie's Sri Lanka affair take place, she starts the show as a "full bodied sexual woman." No, that's not what it means at all. It would be great if it did. If Annie were a sexual being, great, wonderful, saints be praised. But she's not.

First off, she lives at her older sister's. Her married older sister. Who never stops lecturing her. Including when Annie is afraid of agreeing to be the guardian to her sister's children should something happen to her sister and her sister's (unseen) husband. Annie lives with her older sister, who fixes her up with pathetic men.

Seeing a sexual being there?

We're not either and we're not done. In Sri Lanka, Annie spends three weeks of sex with Ben who then leaves a note and vanishes on her. Hold on, we're not done. Annie's recruitment interview focuses on her sexual affair -- we're not joking. And that seems strange -- even for the repressed CIA -- until, at the end of the first episode, viewers learn that Ben is someone the CIA wants. That's why they recruited Annie, that's why they're taking her out of training on the farm and putting her in the field, that's why she's got Joan as her boss.

Sexual being? No, that's not what the affair conveys. It does not convey maturity or anything other than, "Here's a pawn we can use to catch a man!"

On Fringe, J.J. Abrams and company rightly increased the number of women after the show began airing. That included giving Olivia (Anna Torv) a sister. Giving her a sister, not a nag who constantly insults her life with words and actions. Did Annie really get a sister or did she get Phyllis Coates playing a nagging Lois Lane?

Then there's her boss. Joan. When Joan's not insulting Annie, she's chasing down her husband to accuse him of cheating on her, using her position to get lists of his phone calls, etc. Is he cheating on her? The viewer doesn't know but they do know that Joan's forever flying off the handle and when she is supposedly on the front line of the so-called 'terrorist' war, she's actually diverting resources to spy on her own husband.

Into that offensive mix, comes bumbling, stumbling Annie who -- in a throw back to Honey West -- is forever flirting and using feminine wiles to get her way while undercover. Playing a hooker, was it really necessary to stage the scene so that she kneels down at the crotch of the cop questioning her? (Seconds later, viewers and the cop will realize she did that to pick up a pair of discarded shoes.)

There's nothing sexually empowering about her, she's just one more whore slinging her ass around in an attempt to get it to accomplish what her brain apparently can't.

Did someone say "whore"?

Everybody wants to be a spy -- or at least a large portion of people. Which, we'll assume is what explains both Journolist and the grand denials issued since last week's outing. As with most good stories, we first learned of it last week from Hillary Is 44 (see "Hillary Was Smeared First - DailyCaller, Race-baiting JournoList, And DailyKos DailyKooks - The Big Media/Big Blog Cartel," "'Call Them Racists' - The New Racism And The Political Importance of JournoList JournoGate; JournoLister Ben Smith's Delusions; And Scooter Libby" and "The Barack Obama Campaign Started "Call Them Racist" - JournoList Followed - And A Shocking 'Hooray For Tucker Carlson'!") which highlighted and underscored key passages of Jonathan Strong's reporting on the tricksters of Journolist (Daily Caller) -- a list-serve of over 400 people -- who plotted how to attack anyone who questioned or even reported on Barack Obama, plotted how to take down political opponents and much more while pretending to be journalists.

Strong's reporting probably surprised few. For example, it documents the vile sexism. It documents how MSNBC cream puff Keith Olbermann's sexism was well known. They didn't miss it, they knew it. And they ignored it. Why? Luke Mitchell of Harper's magazine explained, "Olberman[sic] is irritating and his obvious sexism is reprehensible. But yes, someone going on TV and saying that torture is bad is a net positive."

Throughout 2008, sexism flourished and we watched with disgust as our feminist 'leaders' refused to call it out. Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan briefly called it out when it was targeting Hillary. They were attacked for doing so and quickly WHORED themselves out to the patriarchy. There is no way to rewrite that or pretty it up, as painful as it is to say, that's what they did.

And, girls, that's who you were helping: Men like Luke. Men who will forever use women as the canaries in the coalmine. We are dispensable, we are disposable. Our safety is not an issue.

"Olberman[sic] is irritating and his obvious sexism is reprehensible. But yes, someone going on TV and saying that torture is bad is a net positive."

Sexism is a-okay as long as you toss out a down-with-torture remark? Because, apparently, without Olbermann, the American people would never know that torture is wrong?

How many prisoners do you think the US tortured overseas? Now tell us many women got beaten in the United States last year? Or raped? We'd argue women were at greater risk in this country than prisoners were around the world at the hands of the US. We're not denying the torture, we know it went on, we know it continues to. We're noting that women in the United States are repeatedly ignored, are repeatedly told to wait, are forever being ignored.

Here are some statistics, from NOW, that Little Luke never grasped:

*According to the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, women experience about 4.8 million intimate partner-related physical assaults and rapes every year
* According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which includes crimes that were not reported to the police, 232,960 women in the U.S. were raped or sexually assaulted in 2006.
*In 2005, 1,181 women were murdered by an intimate partner


Why are these numbers so high? Because men like Luke Mitchell and outlets like Harper's magazine refuse to take crimes against women seriously, refuse to take violence against women seriously, continue to repeatedly sell us out.

Understand please, women will get their turn . . . when every other problem and issue is solved. That's the Luke Mitchell way. And that's why women -- especially those of us who are feminists -- need to stop embracing the patriarchy. Women sold out other women to hop on board the Barack bus so they wouldn't be attacked or called mean names. There was never a reason to do that. And if the Journolist does anything, hopefully it confirms how women are really seen -- even with other women present -- there were women on the Journolist and that didn't mean a damn thing, now did it?

During the Democratic Party primaries, FAIR stayed silent. In all its various forms, it stayed silent. It refused to call out the sexism that never stopped while each week insisting everything was racism. As we noted May 25, 2008, their radio program CounterSpin finally discovered (briefly) sexism:

Peter Hart: One of the most disturbing features of the media coverage of the Democratic presidential race is the way racism and sexism have been expressed. CNN viewers were treated to one pundit explanation that people might call Hillary Clinton a bitch because well isn't that just what some women are. Not everyone's so out in the open. MSNBC host Chris Matthews opened his May 18th show wondering how Barack Obama would connect with regular Democrats? Obviously code for working class Whites. This would seem to make the millions of Obama voters so far irregular. But then consider the May 14th op-ed by Washington Post Writers Group Kathleen Parker. She wrote about 'full bloodness' and the patriot divide between Obama and John McCain offering that there is "different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines through generations of sacrifice." This makes Obama less American than his likely Republican rival and his success part of a larger threat "There is a very real sense that once upon a time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity." Well thanks to The Washington Post, Parker's rant appeared in newspapers around the country including the Baltimore Sun and Chicago Tribune. We're not sure what those papers used for a headline but one blogger suggest [nonsense] would do. Parker's attack wasn't even new. Before in the pages of The Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wondered if Obama had ever gotten misty thinking about his country's rich heritage. John McCain by contrast "carries it in his bones." There's an appetite in corporate media for such repellent ideas as Editor & Publisher's Greg Mitchell recalled, Noonan's column was praised by NBC's anchor Brian Williams as Pulitzer worthy.


As we pointed out then, their cries of racism requires interpretation. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but the discussion of Hillary on CNN was the text itself, no subtext, no searching. And yet, note what happened: One damn sentence. Who called her a bitch? Never are you told. Who participated? No names are given. Because sexism just didn't matter and had we not repeatedly called out FAIR during 2008 and had we not, in fact, shamed them the week prior, that one tiny little sentence of criticism wouldn't have been made. Sexism was a-okay with FAIR. Their former 'women's desk' Laura Flanders couldn't get enough of the sexism either which is how she ended up on KPFA in February pontificating on what she termed Hillary's "cackle" -- pointificating long after the likes of Chris Matthews had stopped using the term after their sexism was called out.

Whores, all of them whores.

Katha Pollitt was just the most transparent. We called her out repeatedly as the Democratic Party primary wound down when she thought she was being 'brave' by calling out Tom Hayden's latest bit of sexism. We weren't offended that she called Tom out, we were offended by the confession she didn't seem to realize she'd made, how she'd decided not to call out sexism to "do my bit for Obama" (we've called her out many, many times for that, first right here). Katha, for those who have forgotten, was the first female columnist to insist that the feminist thing to do was to vote for Barack and not Hillary. Katha's been whoring a long, long time.

Which is why it was no surprise to find her declaring, on Journolist, "I hear you. but I am really tired of defending the indefensible. The people who attacked Clinton on Monica were prissy and ridiculous, but let me tell you it was no fun, as a feminist and a woman, waving aside as politically irrelevant and part of the vast rightwing conspiracy Paula, Monica, Kathleen, Juanita."

The only thing that honestly surprises us about that statement is: Where was Bob? Truly, where was Bob Somerby? Hasn't he made his website all about refuting these sort of lies? Juanita Broadrick is an apparently unstable woman who made a claim that Bill Clinton raped her but never brought charges against him and couldn't get the basic details of her story right. That combined with her emergence during the last days of the Bill Clinton witch hunt has always made her unreliable.

Katha, we don't vouch for crackpots. We know that's hard for you to understand because, without crackpots, you'd have no one to sell your bad 'poetry' too.

Kathleen? Kathleen Willey? Really, Katha? Here's Bob Somerby on 'poor' Kathleen Willey who had Katha weeping tears:

Unfortunately, it soon became clear that there was good reason not to believe Willey’s story. Indeed, Independent Counsel Robert Ray would eventually give up on Willey. In his formal report on the Clinton investigations, Ray said that Willey had lied to the FBI; he even suggested that he had considered prosecuting her for her conduct. But when these embarrassing facts became known, your “press corps” did the thing it does best. It kept the evidence from public view, conducting its latest scam on the public. Few recent events do a better job of showing the depth of this press corps' dysfunction. The Willey affair shows how reflexively dishonest your contemporary "press" really is.

If Katha has trouble brushing off the claims of a professional liar maybe it's because Katha hangs with so many?

That leaves Paula and Monica. Monica had a consensual relationship with Bill Clinton. What's to attack, Katha? A woman decides to have a relationship with a married man. It's not exactly novel, it's not exactly newsworthy. You've certainly slept with married men yourself, Katha. Paula is Paula Jones whose story changed from one moment to the next (as did whom she was suing). Was she propositioned once by Bill Clinton? Did she have an affair with Bill Clinton?

Here's reality for Katha: Journalists are supposed to pay attention to details and when details change repeatedly and when the people involved are paid for their stories, they are no longer seen as reliable sources. We're not surprised we'd have to explain journalism to Katha or, for that matter, to anyone on the Journolist.

Nothing surprised us. That Luke Mitchell of Harper's is a sexist pig surprises us after Third's July 5, 2009 feature "Harper's magazine: Only pencil neck males allowed" which explained that the first six months of the year found Harper's publishing 129 male bylines to 28 female ones? And that feature followed up on earlier coverage of Harper's (also see "Arthur Krystal delivers a lesson in exclusion" and "The sexism at Harper's").

Journalism is supposed to report, it is supposed to inform and illuminate. It cannot do so when it obscures and obfiscates. The people taking part in Journolist were not practicing journalism. They were engaging in conversations that should not have been held. An NPR weirdo thinks she can excuse herself because it was supposed to be "private" but, as Elaine points out, the privacy was the most offensive part of it.

Those who were supposed to bring the truths instead wanted to make like duplicitous spies. They wanted to invent narratives and devise strategies to trick and decieve the American public. That's not journalism. And that they can't figure out what they did wrong is amazing. That they're still employed may be the only truly surprising thing about the entire scandal.

At least in terms of those participating. What's most surprising to us about the scandal is how little has been done. We're talking about by Strong and others. For example, there's a lot of lying going on at Journolist and maybe that's so dots don't get connected.

Weighing in on Keith Olbermann, for example, Spencer Ackerman declared, "I hate both Ben Affleck and Saturday Night Live, but this should end all debate about the merits of Olbermann" -- linking to Ben's wonderful parody.

Are we the only ones who catch the lie? And let's note Spencer's just gone from double agent to triple agent.

Headwriter Seth and pony boy Spence are very, very tight. Does no one make these connections? How about Richard Kim?

Does no one connect The Nation writer to someone else?

Maybe we knew too much during 2008 but we're fully aware that Katrina vanden Heuvel's former coffee fetcher was in regular and repeated contact with Kim. Which raises the issue of the coffee fetchers and the whores coordinating. Certainly Kim's writing was linked to by the coffee fetcher. Linked to at the Obama campaign site. Because the coffee fetcher was the Obama campaign official blogger. Remember that?

We're kind of limited on what we can say here in part because the coffee fetcher had a meltdown and insisted one of us (C.I.) was "destroying my life!" But we can nudge you, we can steer towards where you need to go.

So what we can tell you right now is that Spencer and Seth are tight and that there was coordination between the Obama campaign and the Journolist.

Now nobody may want to connect those dots and we have to review whether we agreed to drop mentioning coffee fetcher by name forever or just through 2008 (agreed when he was in the midst of his meltdown). But those are details, those are threads that people should have been picking up. When the campaign's official blogger, for example, leaves The Nation magazine to work for the campaign, Daily Caller should now be examining the relationships between the campaign and The Nation magazine.

Coffee fetcher left to work on the campaign. Coffee fetcher did the right thing. Had any of the Journolist creeps bothered to do the same thing, they wouldn't be in trouble. You can take a sabbatical and work on a campaign. That is allowed. You cannot, however, use your platform to trick and deceive which is what the Journolist people did.

People thought they were reading or hearing independent thoughts from independent journalists and they weren't. They were being tricked. And that maybe the most damaging thing about a distraction like Covert Affairs or Alias before it. Mindless entertainment gets taken seriously and it gets emulated. You sort of picture Spencer as the Maxwell Smart of his set but you know he sees himself along the lines of James Bond. We'd correct him were it not for the fact that it's more honest than his pretending he's a modern day Woodward and Bernstein.
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Serving under Richard Nixon, Chris Hayes (Ava and C.I.)

peaceresisterliving

Illustration Isaiah's "From the kitchen of the Peace Resister."

"I am not a crook," Tricky Dick Richard Nixon infamously declared November 17, 1973. Nearly thirty-five years later the editor and publisher of The Nation, Katrina vanden Heuvel, got off her own little howler as she declared that her magazine had not worked to do in Hillary Clinton's presidential run, "The women of The Nation are the first to deplore the sexism in media commentary this primary season, but a 'cover up'?"

Oh, Katrina, you dirty, little scamp. Someday, people will nose around the Obama Facebook-Roosevelt Institute axis. It won't be pretty for you but few things ever are.

Your claim that there was no cover up at The Nation was laughable in May of 2008. It's only more laughable today as your 'independent' magazine is revealed as a hotbed of group think.

The Journolist scandal features many Nation names including Katha Pollitt, Richard Kim and Chris Hayes. Were Nation readers supposed to know that what they read in the pages of the magazine and online at the magazine's website were talking points that were hatched on a list-serv by 400 or so 'journalists'?

We're going to zoom in on only one person: Chris Hayes.

A few years back, we were regularly tackling Chris Hayes and then we stopped. We stopped because of Winter Soldier. C.I. contacted (either herself or through an intermediary) a number of reporters to ask them to please cover Iraq Veterans Against the War as it was taking place. A number of Little Media ('independent') journalists promised they would. In the end, only Chris Hayes did. (C.I.: "To his credit, he did cover it. He kept his word. Many others didn't. Ask me someday why I ridicule Jeff Cohen, just ask me.") This was followed by his being promoted from reporter to the magazine's DC editor. It was a big promotion and -- as noted here and Mike's site many times -- we decided to back off our criticism of Hayes due to his honoring his word and now having a very difficult job to get used to. (David Corn's abrupt departure left the magazine scrambling.) So we've avoided Chris Hayes. We've not cut him apart, we've not praised him. We've left him alone.

We had hoped to continue doing so. Journolist makes that impossible.

So we'll start by noting Chris has a conflict of interest and needs to be removed as DC editor. His wife is an assistant attorney in the Office of Special Council. She works for the White House. Yes, Chris did one disclosure on that. That's not enough. He can't cover the beat if he's married to the beat. The left lodged enough complaints about Andrea Mitchell when her husband was the chair of the Federal Reserve, they need to get their own house in order. Chris Hayes should be given a new beat, he should not be allowed to cover the administration. There is the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Not only should he be reassigned at The Nation (and at In These Times), but he should not be brought on programs to discuss the administration. His wife works for it, he may strive to be impartial but few will believe he is. It gives the appareance of a conflict of interest and that should be avoided at all costs.

We don't need to hear that Chris criticized Obama here or there or somewhere. It doesn't matter. You do not let someone whose spouse is in the administration also cover the administration. That's not how it works, that's not how it plays.


Jonathan Strong (Daily Caller) reports of Hayes:

Chris Hayes of the Nation posted on April 29, 2008, urging his colleagues to ignore Wright. Hayes directed his message to "particularly those in the ostensible mainstream media" who were members of the list.
The Wright controversy, Hayes argued, was not about Wright at all. Instead, "It has everything to do with the attempts of the right to maintain control of the country."
Hayes castigated his fellow liberals for criticizing Wright. "All this hand wringing about just how awful and odious Rev. Wright remarks are just keeps the hustle going."
"Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians -- men, women, children, the infirmed -- on its hands. You'll forgive me if I just can't quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama's pastor," Hayes wrote.
Hayes urged his colleagues -- especially the straight news reporters who were charged with covering the campaign in a neutral way – to bury the Wright scandal. "I'm not saying we should all rush en masse to defend Wright. If you don't think he's worthy of defense, don't defend him! What I'm saying is that there is no earthly reason to use our various platforms to discuss what about Wright we find objectionable," Hayes said.
(Reached by phone Monday, Hayes argued his words then fell on deaf ears. "I can say 'hey I don't think you guys should cover this,' but no one listened to me.")

We're confused -- in part because we read Joan Walsh -- something we never recommend and curse ourselves for doing. Joan insists that it was just lefties at lefties outlets and Chris is telling us that no one listened to him. Chris isn't just a reporter. He's an editor at The Nation and In These Times. Just take The Nation, for example, in the spring of 2008, it's very difficult to open an issue without encountering Hayes' viewpoint expressed . . . by John Nichols, by Eudora Smith, by Gary Younge, by . . .

It was an echo chamber. And Chris really wants to pretend that, as one of the editors of the magazine, he had no influence over it?

That's less than honest.

Jeremiah Wright preached homophobia. We called it out. Why didn't The Nation? For that matter, when Barack put homophobes on stage in South Carolina at an official campaign event in November of 2007, why didn't The Nation call it out?

Chris, you're the DC editor, why didn't you call any of that out?

As the general election loomed, Barack yet again deployed homophobes as campaign strategy -- for his 'swing state tours' -- and The Nation remained silent.

What exactly will you fight for, Chris Hayes?

You declared on the list-serv, "Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians -- men, women, children, the infirmed -- on its hands." You're no prophet, Chris, torture continues under Obama. Disappearances continue under Obama. And the Iraqi people? Not only does the illegal war continue but it will continue past 2012 even if the US withdraws the US military because Samantha Power's plan for the militarization of the State Department -- a plan your magazine never found time to report on during the campaign -- is being implemented.

You wouldn't fight against sexism and homophobia in real time because you felt those were the little-ticket items. But you did nothing to fight against the problems you considered "real" ones. Chris, Jeremiah Wright was the problem. His hatred of gay people was the problem and went directly towards the attitudes that keep the US involved in wars. His sexism was the problem.

You dismissed these as minor strands, tiny issues, but these issues are the ones that allow for demonization, are the ones that allow for the creation of "the other," are the ones that spur and grow destruction.

You can say that the above is just our opinion but, here's the thing, we expressed our opinion and did so publicly. We didn't take it to a list-serv and come up with talking points and spin plans and then implement those as if we were operating on our own.

Do you really not get why Journolist is offensive, Chris?

In a smarmy reply to Joan Walsh (which, granted, may be the only way to reply to her), you wrote, "I'm not quite sure what in my emails makes me a 'combative Obama zealot,' nor do I think I engaged in 'Obama worship' but, OK, fair enough: I wanted Obama to win, and I wrote as much [Ava and C.I.: on list-serv]. If you think my devotion to him was particularly slavish, then there's little I can do to disabuse you of that sentiment. (I'll note that I more or less entirely avoided, in my public writing, food fights with Hillary Clinton supporters, or even going after Clinton.)"

In your "public writing," Chris?

You need to review your "public writing." You need to note your smackdown of Hillary and Latino voters following Nevada. But, Chris, your honesty about wanting "Obama to win" that you "wrote as much" about? That wasn't your public writing and there's the problem.

Chris, travel back with us to election night 2000. Sandra Day O'Connor served on the Supreme Court then, remember? She was appointed by a Republican (Ronald Reagan). And when Gore was announced as the winner, she exploded leaving her husband to explain that if a Republican had been elected, O'Connor planned to retire but Gore would mean she'd have to stay on the Court. Remember all that?

A lot of people thought she should have recused herself from Gore v. Bush. She didn't.

Do you think she should have?

We do. And we argue the same point with regards to her that we do with regards to you. You had motives you never revealed to Nation readers. You had motives you concealed from your audience. You betrayed a trust. That's no small issue.

To Joan, you write, "That apostrophe at the end of my name creates a claim that I suggested people accuse those who raise the Wright issue of being racist. I didn't. Not in the thread or anywhere else, so far as I can tell. It's not really my style. If I had, I'd be happy to be whacked for it."

Drop your pants and bend over, Chris.

You didn't call anyone racists, it's not your style, not on the thread or anywhere else? Is that the story you plan to stick to?

Yet, on the controversial Jeremiah Wright, someone wrote this, "Ultimately, though, this controversy, like so many in American life, is about race." You wrote it. And you continued, "It's telling that the issue of Wright's views have percolated among the right-wing fringes for months, but it was only with the discovery of a video, and the images and sounds of an angry black man decrying racial oppression in the cadences of the black church that the media staged a collective freakout." You're calling them racists. That's what you're doing. Don't pretend otherwise.

On a list-serv which you thought was private and no one but the members would ever know of, you strategized and plotted. It says a great deal about your character, Chris, and none of it is flattering. It was, at the very least, a huge misjudgment on your part to participate.

It was an unethical and there is no code of journalism which will embrace your actions or give you a thumbs up.


The Society of Professional Journalists adopted their Code of Ethics in 1926 (it has evolved since then). Look over this section and tell us how your actions matched up:

Journalists should be free of obligation to any interest other than the public's right to know.
Journalists should:
--Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
-- Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
-- Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.
-- Disclose unavoidable conflicts.
-- Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power accountable.
-- Deny favored treatment to advertisers and special interests and resist their pressure to influence news coverage.
-- Be wary of sources offering information for favors or money; avoid bidding for news.

We realize The Nation isn't too high on ethics but we also realize you desire to work in the real world, to move up the food chain. It's going to be hard to do that if you can't learn from mistakes. Instead of making jokes about what took place ("crypto-lefty"), you should have had the grace and good sense to immediately issue an apology at The Nation for your actions realizing that some might find your participation (and strategizing) on the list-serv to be a conflict of interest. That's what you should have done, that's what you should do now. People are watching. Editors and publishers and producers and network executives are watching. The smart thing for you to do would be to issue the needed apology.

You're young enough that it can be chalked up as a mistake. You're new enough in your career that it can be an early stumble and nothing more. Provided you apologize. If you don't, don't blame anyone but yourself for the fate that awaits you.
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Conason plays con man

Fresh faced Cover Girl Barack

When the Journolist scandal broke (Barack groupies conspiring behind the scenes) and it was learned that Joe Conason was among the ones participating, we wondered if there was some way he could be innocent? Conason, after all, knows full well that real reporters do not scheme and plot in the shadows on how to decieve the public. So we hoped there was some way that Joe was only loosely associated with the scandal. He was knee-deep in it judging by his "Journolist, the Rev. Wright, Sarah Palin -- and me" (Salon) -- an attempt at damage control which finds him playing fast and loose with the facts.


On a letter attacking ABC News staff for . . . asking questions . . . in a debate, Joe writes, "My sole contribution was the obvious suggestion that the letter should quote the harsh judgment of the debate published in the Washington Post by Tom Shales." Tom Shales?

Ava and C.I. usually leave it at identifying him as a sexist which is a lot more detail than Joe offered on Tom who, for the record, is not a Democrat. What is he, Joe? You brought him up. Why don't you tell the people what he is?

Again, had Barack had to depend solely upon the support of Democratic Party members in the primaries, he would never have been able to steal the nomination.

The harsh judgment of a radical is what Joe wants to reference, what Joe wants to use to back up his points?

That's cute. It's almost as cute as this passage where Joe wants credit for calling out Wright:

Finally. as a columnist who endorsed neither Obama nor Clinton during the primaries (and criticized both), I should mention that I discussed Wright on more than one occasion -- including a column that appeared on May 1, 2008, two weeks after the ABC debate, after the pastor addressed the NAACP convention:

He apparently thinks Salon readers are idiots (and maybe they are?) because he goes on to quote the column which (a) does call Wright out a bit but mainly (b) excuses Barack. Most importantly, that column was published after Wright went public, after Wright called Barack out, after Wright's National Press Club appearance dissing Barack as "a politician." Are we supposed to be too stupid to realize that, Joe Conason?

When someone tries to pull the wool over your eyes, they do so for a reason. Conason's back pedaling furiously because, as someone who documented how the 'elves' worked their 'magic' on Bill Clinton, he knows damn well that what took place was unethical, because he knows it opens him to charges of hypocrisy and it completely invalidates his body of work to date.

Joe, if you don't like that, blame yourself. You brought it on yourself and the first step to taking accountability is admitting that you shouldn't have been part of some elf workshop just because it was on the left.
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Andrew Sullivan misses his own scoop

We are not Andrew Sullivan fans here, to put it mildly. But the past week, Marcia started distributing his writing on the Journolist scandal. For whatever reason, many of the points he made registered with us.

However . . .

He has something in front of him and misses it completely.


He quotes an e-mail from Ezra Klein (co-founder of Journolist) which states:

I set two rules for members: Center to left, and not working for the government, I didn't exercise discretion beyond that because I didn't want to be in the position of selectively choosing people.

Then Sullivan quotes another e-mail that proves Klein was selectively choosing -- but wait. Sullivan, did you miss it? "Not working for the government."

Then how did Peter Orszag get in?

(Please, no jokes that he slept his way in.)

Orszag is the current OMB and has been that since January 20, 2009. Prior to that? He was the Congressional Budget Office Director from January 2007 through the end of November 2008. So how did Orszag get on Journolist if Ezra Klein was indeed keeping out those who were "working for the government"?

Seems Ezra's been caught lying yet again. Maybe those CJR hot tub parties from years ago, will lead to justifications and enablers but the reality is Orszag's membership demonstrates Klein lied.
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The Whore List

The following pose as journalists. When they can take accountability for their actions, they may be seen as journalists. At present, they are in serious denial about how their actions look to many people. Some have argued that they aren't responsible for every comment left. They're missing the point. Group-think and spin are not supposed to be left values. Hidden plots cooked up in secret are not supposed to be left values. There were at least 400 members of Journolist -- hiding on a list-serv to plot and strategize for to 'win it' for Barack -- here's a few of the losers.

1) Katha Pollitt, The Nation
2) Spencer Ackerman, Washington Independent, Wired
3) Peter Orszag, OMB and poster-boy for Dead Beat Dads
4) Ezra Klein, Washington Post
5) Chris Hayes, The Nation, In These Times, Chicago Reader
6) Richard Kim, The Nation
7) Ryan Donmoyer, Bloomberg News
8) Kate Steadman, Kaiser Health News,
9) Moria Whelan, National Security Network
10) Eric Alterman, The Nation, Media Matters
11) Dean Baker, American Prospect, Grit-TV
12) Steven Benen, The Carpetbagger Report
13) Julie Bergman Sender, Media Consortium, New Politics Institute, attacker of Cindy Sheehan,
14) Ari Berman, The Nation
15) Brian Beutler, The Media Consortium
16) Michael Bérubé, Crooked Timber
17) Joel Bleifuss, In These Times
18) Sam Boyd, American Prospect
19) Lakshmi Chaudry, In These Times
20) Joe Conason, Salon, New York magazine
21) Brad DeLong, Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal
22) Kevin Drum, Washington Monthly
23) Henry Farrell, Crooked Timber
24) James Galbraith, Washington Post, The Nation, et al
25) Todd "the Toad" Gitlin, TPM Cafe and many an after hours dive
26) Merrill Goozner, Chicago Tribune, The Guardian, CJR, Gooznews
27) Ilan Goldenberg, Huffington Post, Democracy Arsenal and now the Pentagon
28) Robert Greenwald, hack director of many a bad film, remembered only for directing The Burning Bed -- a simplistic and static TV movie made riveting only by the amazing performance of Farrah Fawcett
29) Don Hazen, Alternet
30) Michael Kazin, Politico, The Guardian, Dissent
31) Ed Kilgore, The Democratic Strategist
32) Richard Kim, The Nation
33) Ben Smith, Politico
34) David Corn, Mother Jones and future Chubby Chasers centerfold
34) Mark Kleiman, American Prospect, his beard models -- most notably on Retro's cover story "Things from the 19th Century that are never coming back!"
35) Scott McLemee, Inside Higher Ed
36) Ari Melber, The Nation (the Ari everyone forgets)
37) Rick Perlstein, Campaign for America's Future
38) David Roberts, Grist
39) Thomas Schaller, The Baltimore Sun
40) Mark Schmitt, American Prospect
41) Adele Stan, Huffington Post, American Prospect and any place they'll toss a few quarters her way
42) Jonathan Stein, Mother Jones
43) Mark Thoma, CBS Money Watch, Huffington Post, The Guardian, The Economist's View
44) Michael Tomasky, The Guardian
45) Cenk Uygur, Young Turks, Huffington Post and plus-size model
46) Tracy Van Slyke, Media Consortium, Beyond The Echo
47) Kai Wright, NPR, The Nation, The Root
48) Luke Mitchell, Harpers, star of America's Tiniest Gun
49) Josh Bearman, LA Weekly
50) Alec McGillis, Washington Post
51) Laura Rozen, Politico
52) Joe Klein, Time magazine, star of Man of a Thousand Faces
53) Jeffrey Toobin, New Yorker
54) Michael Sherer, Time magazine.
55) Jonathan Chait, New Republic
56) John Judis, New Republic
57) Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic
58) Marc Ambinder, The Atlantic
59) Avi Zenilman, Politico
60) Mike Allen, Politico
61) Paul Krugman, New York Times
62) Eve Fairbanks, New Republic
63) Lisa Lerer, Politico
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Ty's Corner

ty



E-mails. Jim, Dona and Jess help Ava and C.I. (and Eli, Rachel, Martha, Shirley, Heather and who knows who else) with the e-mails at The Common Ills. I read the bulk of the e-mails here with a little help from Jim and a lot more help from Dona. (When I'm on vacation, Ava and C.I. read all the e-mails that come in here.) And last week was a nightmare from volume alone. By Wednesday morning, there were 4,500 e-mails on "Of stupidity and NPR (Ava and C.I.)" and Jim forgot to keep track Wednesday afternoon so Dona and I stopped keeping track but as the e-mails continued to come in on it (and seventeen have arrived so far today on it), it has easily become the most e-mailed on piece in its week. (Ava and C.I. have other articles that have received more e-mail but not in one week.) The bulk of you were thrilled with the article. Three of you were not.

Fred L. Hammond was one of the three who was not thrilled. From his e-mail.
First, I want to state that I found your post to be very interesting but not very accurate nor very thorough. If you had read my blog you would know by looking at my about page that I identify myself as Serenity Home and also give my real name as Fred L Hammond. I am a minister serving two Unitarian Universalist congregations within the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, one in Mississippi and one in Alabama. Serenity Home is a loose translation of my name. Fred literally means 'peace' and Hammond literally means 'Home on a hill.' I translated this to Serenity Home. So Laura Conway crediting the blog to Serenity Home is an accurate thing to do.

Ava and C.I. read three posts on your blog. You may identify yourself as Serenity Home -- possibly as a drag name? -- but, no, only in your crazed mind does "Serentiy Home" equal "Fred Hammond." Grow the f**k up. Crediting the blog means crediting it's title and your blog's title is across the top of your home page: A Unitarian Universalist Minister in the South.

Second, if you had read my blog you would have noted that I listed the dates when these programs aired on Fresh Air. They might have been repeats but they did indeed air again on the dates I mentioned because I listened to a few of them in Alabama where I live. These programs were taken directly from Fresh Air's website as found on their website. So to call me dishonest is a disparaging comment on your part. Further I do listen to Fresh Air on as regular a basis as I can. So to state I do not listen to Fresh Air is a speculation on your part and is false.

No, you didn't and stop your lying. I don't know why you want to insist that other people read your blog and then want to lie about what's actually up there. You were dishonest. We'll give you one hint, Serenity Queen, the Clinton broadcast is from months ago and, we checked, it didn't air on your NPR in July or, being far too kind to you, June. Quit lying. You tried to cook the books and you got caught.

I did not fudge the list. Again, you are calling me a liar when if you had been thorough in your own journalism you would have found these shows listed on the website just as I did. Who is being dishonest now? These were the shows that were listed on Fresh Air's website as recently aired and their dates of these shows being aired last. Here are the sources to collaborate my claim:

No, your 'sources' (weblinks to various installments of Fresh Air) do not collaborate your claims.

You make many claims and only offer four weblinks and pretend to forget the Clinton report you included in your list. The one that's months old. You cooked the books, admit it and quit lying. And before you try to change your posts, let me do you a solid, one gay guy to another, I already took screen snaps. So you can start dealing with reality or you can keep lying.

For someone who seems to feel it was Ava and C.I.'s responsibility to know your entire history before writing about your distortions, you seem unaware that, among other articles here, we've publisehd "Terry Gross Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)" and "Terry Gross Still Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)" -- or that Ann regularly tracks Terry Gross' sexism as her own site. In other words, while bemoaning that everyone isn't insane enough to declare Serenity is Fred, you don't know the first thing about the site you slam.


Third, I am not an individual who offends easily over the use of individual words. Word usage is for me about context and not about the individual word. And in the context of how Louis C.K. is using the word F[word edited by me, Ty]got in his show and I am not afraid to spell it out, is not offensive to me. Not to this gay male anyway. So again you are making a presumption based on your stereotype of what gay men should and should not find offensive. And because you can not believe that a gay male would not have found the use of the word f[ibid]ot used in this story offensive, must then mean that I did not listen to the Louis C.K. interview. What arrogance!

You are presuming to speak for everyone, Cracker. This Black gay man is very offended by the use of f**got. Nor am I alone in that offense. But you're a liar. Ava and C.I., based upon your poor job of 'reporting' what took place on various episodes and when they were aired, made the call that you hadn't listened to the programs. You want to argue that you did.

Fine, then you're a bigger liar than I thought you were. Your a liar because you say you heard the repeated use of f**got and you then took it upon yourself to blog that the show was pulled from MPR because of that episode but you refused, REFUSED, to inform your readers of the non-stop use of that term during the broadcast. That makes you a liar.

What arrogance from the big old Cracker Queen.

I really love it when White people e-mail thinking they can dictate the terms to me. And, yes, I was being sarcastic. Now Freddie, excuse me, Queen Serenity of the Desert, e-mailed his reply on Sunday and a lot of kooks did. One got an e-mail from me that started off nice and ended with me demanding an apology.

I had, he informed me, insulted his organization and taken the position that it was an arm of the government and it was this and was that and -- And, it was just too damn much from one e-mail. Take me to task for what I say. I never wrote one word about the organization. Let me repeat that, I never wrote one word.

I did plan to write many words today but I got a calmer e-mail from the man and I'll let it be water under the bridge.

Some e-mailed to criticize "Was it all about gender? (Ava and C.I.)" running in the same edition as "Editorial: She broke no law" -- fourteen of you felt a defense of Lindsay Lohan negated a defense of Lynne Stewart. "Lynne's a real political prisoner and Lindsay's not," wrote one long term reader. Ava and C.I. didn't claim Lindsay was a political prisoner.

As was explained last week ( "Roundtable" -- and C.I. noted it at her site the day before), Ava and C.I. were asked to cover a series of topics and agreed to. Among those topics were Lindsay. They know Lindsay. They were asked by a performer who'd worked with Lindsay on a film -- a friend of Ava and C.I.'s -- to write something on the issue. Now C.I. had already called out the attacks on Lindsay the week before. Which is why ___ thought she and Ava might write something on it. They were asked to and they realized it was a topic they could cover. But what they especially realized, as they informed us what they'd be doing in the pitch meeting before we started writing, was that Lindsay fans would be reading. And they did. Lindsay fans found it via blog searches and Googles and shared it and passed it around and we had 1355 e-mails on that piece from readers we'd never heard of (thank you to Jim for counting that up). They came strictly due to the Lindsay piece. They read other pieces including the Lynne Stewart piece.

Lynne Stewart is a political prisoner. If you think repeating that over and over every week is going to help her (we think it might), then you want as many people to hear it as possible. Tackling the Lindsay issue allowed readers who might never encounter Lynne's story the chance to learn about it.

Ava and C.I. hate their Lindsay article. Long term readers shout out, "They hate everything they write!" True. But they really hate this. Saturday an actor-director friend was over waiting for them to arrive (flying back from Boston). He was playing around on one of our laptops. When they walked in, greetings were exchanged and he said to wait a second because he was in the middle of their Lindsay piece and they both immediately exclaimed, "Read anything else!" That was the last of four pieces they wrote last week (wrote by themselves, they helped write all the pieces except "Highlights") and they were exhausted. It's a strong article, regardless of what they think.

And I would encourage our regular readers to remember that many times they came to this site via something similar to Lindsay Lohan. In fact, the biggest draw has always been Ava and C.I.'s TV articles. That's what drew you here. Don't second guess Ava and C.I. If you're puzzled why the edition includes a strong editorial in support of Lynne Stewart as well as an article decrying the sentencing of Linsay Lohan, e-mail and ask why. But don't assume (as one did) that they're "blowing their political credibility." They would laugh at that idea and would say, if they had any credibility, the best thing to do would be to blow it.

The Lynne Stewart editorial was very important to them and to many of us. Including a piece on Lindsay, a piece on Joan Rivers, a piece on this and that, to increase the likelihood that a large number of visitors would stop by was genius.

We're taking a breather in the middle of what is obviously going to be a long writing edition. This goes to Joan's e-mail which predicted that this week, "despite protests to the contrary, you'll be leaning on Ava and C.I. all over again." Joan, we have their TV article written. And? They've roughed out -- by themselves -- four articles that we're going to fill in. We hoped to do those ourselves and had various attempts that just didn't work. They were too heavy with background and sunk as a result. As of right now, Joan is correct. But that doesn't mean that we didn't try to avoid it.
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Lynne Stewart

lynne2



Tuesday WBAI's Taking Aim featured Ralph Poynter discussing his wife, US political prisoner Lynne Stewart.

Ralph Poynter: Just a brief statement on Lynne Stewart's sentencing. It's perjury, thy name is the United States government. The president-elect begins lying when announcing candidacy only to reneg on every promise. War, health care, Social Security, economy, etc. To excuse the president, it is quoted, he must perjure him or herself to become president. It is an understood and unstated American way, accepted perjury. When taking the oath of office, the president swears to uphold the Constitution and then proceeds to support the dismantling of the Constitution: The Patriot Act, hypocritical perjury. In office, the president employs signing -- that is, after signing a bill, signing a statement saying he will not abide by the bill. Pre-meditated perjury. There's more perjury gone on in this administration in these few years than all of the Bush administration. When Lynne Stewart was attacked by the government for making a press release on the Sheik's behalf it was revealed that other attorneys had made press releases as she did. The New York federal prosecutor said they didn't know about them. The national federal prosecutor said other lawyers should be charged and arrested. The Second Circuit of Appeals said it was selective prosecution but they would not deal with it and that Lynne Stewart should be further prosecuted and given a harsher sentence. Prosecutorial perjury. Is there anyone on the planet who does not know that the landmark [stage?] was hatched and planned for by the U.S. government with an Egyptian operative named Emad Salem? Is there anyone on this planet who does not know that the F.B.I. directed every step of the plot while promising unemployed, hapless hangers on money to be involved this so-called plot? It was staged, financed and filmed by the covert operative Emad Salem with constant oversight by the F.B.I. They desired to credit the blind Sheik. The F.B.I. charged the Sheik for not reporting the F.B.I. operative to the F.B.I. The blind Sheik merely said, "I don't think this would be good for Islam and go pick another target" -- never acquiesing to a plan of Emad Salem's. National security perjury. The judge first rejected this case against Lynne Stewart as being vague. The judge reversed himself and allowed the case to proceed. The judge allowed Osama bin Laden in the case while saying it had only to do with the state of mind of a third defendant. He allowed the massacre of Luxor in the case -- I guess for dramatic effect -- although having nothing to do with the case. Finally, I want to talk about the perjury on the part of the part of the so-called progressive people who leap to embrace any and every petty accusation made about Lynne Stewart. She is arrogant. She would like to think she would support and defend the First Amendment, speech. She would like to think she would defend the right for people to have an attorney. She is not remorseful. And have people forgotten, have we forgotten bravery, courage, Patrick Henry, John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer? Have we forgotten the principles of Lynne Stewart -- the principles that she stood by for 50 years? Have we forgotten who we claim to be? Progressive people, whose side are we on, brothers and sisters? Let us remember John Paul Jones: We have not yet begun to fight. Join us. Join Lynne. Join the struggle, the view of America that is inclusive and the view that we think America should have and should become.

Ruth transcribed that. And, as she noted, WBAI's Taking Aim this Tuesday (5:00 p.m. EST) is planning on using the full hour to discuss the case of Lynne Stewart.
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Highlights

This piece is written by Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude, Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix, Kat of Kat's Korner, Betty of Thomas Friedman is a Great Man, Mike of Mikey Likes It!, Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz, Ruth of Ruth's Report, Marcia of SICKOFITRADLZ, Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends, Ann of Ann's Mega Dub and Wally of The Daily Jot. Unless otherwise noted, we picked all highlights.

"Come Undone" -- most requested highlight. A rare week when "I Hate The War" gets outvoted by this site's readers.


Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Tales Of Indonesian Folklore" -- Isaiah's very cute comic.

"Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Iraq snapshot," "Kerry, Lugar and Feingold," "Kaufman and Casey" and "Senate Foreign Relations Committee" -- Congressional reporting from the community.

"Lynne Stewart" -- Ruth with the latest on Lynne Stewart.

"Bully Parker" -- Isaiah dips into the archives for this one.


"The Gulf Disaster and the White House Disaster," "the gulf disaster," "Seepage?,"



"Barack wanted to cut food stamps" -- this should have been front page news.



"No travel -- except for princess" & "THIS JUST IN! DO AS HE SAYS, NOT AS PRINCESS DOES!" -- Cedric and Wally on Barack wanting to cut travel . . . except for himself.


"Stocks fail, mortgage rates fall, unemployment soars" and "The economy" -- Trina on the economy.

"Politico misses the point," "Journalists conspired to fix the news," "Spencer Ackerman is a s**t," "David Corn is a Whore," "No boundaries," "It was also MSM," "False cries don't help us,"
"I still have my integrity," "ezra klein's a whore," "Katha Pollitt is trash," "They are not journalists," "Grasp the deceit," "Who smeared the Black church? A White man," "It's not about political leanings," "Recommended reading," "Ben Smith, stop spinning!," "David Corn is one ugly ass idiot" and "THIS JUST IN! DAVID CORN STILL STUPID!" -- some of the Journolist coverage in the community.


"Science Friday" -- Betty continues her Friday science blogging.

"Midnight" -- Ann offers some movie watching thoughts.

"My BFF Kevin Zeese" -- Kat takes another look at Kevin Zeese.

"From books to movies" and "ramona" -- Marcia and Rebecca on turning a book into a movie.

"Chloe" -- Stan's Friday night movie post.

"I feel something in the air" -- Elaine thinks positive.
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