UPDATE: The entire Australian TV documentary, including reaction from the Arab street, will be aired on Democracy Now! and is available from their website.
Bush shows he believes he is above the lawI've seen a lot of this type of thinking going on around the Net and around blogtopia (©SkippyTheBushKangaroo). I think it's wrong. I think it's diagnosing the symptoms while overlooking the underlying cause.
Marie Cocco
Who needs the Patriot Act? Not President Run-amok.
The president has now admitted to secretly authorizing what amounts to an end-run around the law that is meant, specifically and determinedly, to keep intelligence agencies from snooping on Americans at home.
This is a president who believes no law applies to him.
He long ago violated a 1971 statute that bars the detention of U.S. citizens "except pursuant to an Act of Congress." In his "war on terror," Bush has nonetheless thrown American citizens into the clink and asserted he has the right to hold them there indefinitely, without charge and without showing any evidence against them.
He failed to comply with U.S. and international laws against cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners - his political apparatchiks at the Pentagon and in the Justice Department instead concocted justifications for violating them. The president relented only days ago, and only after Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) forced submission by engineering overwhelming votes in Congress to bring a measure of sanity to our detention schemes.
The Geneva Conventions have been tossed aside like wastepaper. They are replaced by gross violations of basic human rights at U.S. detention facilities, secret and semi-secret, around the world. The Pentagon, supposedly restricted from gathering information on the American citizenry, has compiled a vast database of information on anti-war protesters and those opposed to military recruitment practices.
In 1998 (the last year for which I have figures), Federal Grand Juries indicted a few more than 76,000 persons. The population of the United States in that year was about 271,000,000 people. That works out to about one person indicted for each 3,500 people Thus, in a randomly selected group of 1,000 people, the expectation is that about person from the group will be indicted by a Federal grand Jury every three years....which includes five indictments, and five others who shortly will be or have been under investigation.
Let's look at a not randomly selected group of people. A search for Bush Rangers (who bundled at least $200,000 for the Bush campaign) and Pioneers (who bundled at least $100,000 for the campaign) for both the 2000 and 2004 elections returns a list of 940 people.
WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney said in a broadcast interview yesterday that he accepts full blame for mistakenly shooting a hunting partner last weekend, abandoning his tight-lipped stance on an accident that has drawn sharp criticism and proved damaging to the Bush administration. In his first public comments on the incident, Cheney called the day of the shooting "one of the worst days of my life," appearing somber and shaken as he described having shot Harry M. Whittington, a 78-year-old Austin lawyer, Saturday afternoon.It would be easy to focus on the fact that it took 18 hours for the news to come out (and I will in a different post, coming to a VDT near you soon).
Joey Cheek wins speed skating goldSo what did Joey do?
BY BILL SHAIKIN
LOS ANGELES TIMES
February 14, 2006
TURIN, Italy -- Gold was on his mind. What good would a gold medal do, after all, when the applause died down? So, two days before his race, Joey Cheek had coffee with Johann Olav Koss in the Olympic Village, an American speed skater and his Norwegian inspiration.
Koss won four gold medals in speed skating, then devoted his life to the children of the world. Cheek did not ask Koss how to win the race. He asked how he could help others if he did.
"He was talking that he wanted to do something big," Koss said. "I was so humbled to meet such a person. The most important race of his life is coming up in a couple days, and he's talking about what he can do to give back."
Minutes after he won the men's 500-meter race yesterday, he announced that he will donate $25,000 so children in African refugee camps might have a chance to play sports.This is a 26 year old, applying (finally) for college, turned down already by Harvard (meaning he wasn't making it on an academic scholarship, and obviously his speed-skating credentials couldn't get him an athletic scholarship,) so he probably needed the money. He had his fifteen mintues of fame, and he didn't try to land yet another endorsement contract. So, his first thought after winning?
"For me to walk away with a gold medal is amazing," Cheek said, "and the best way to say thanks that I can think of is to help somebody else."
The $25,000 represents the prize awarded by the U.S. Olympic Committee to all gold medalists. Cheek donated his to Right to Play, the organization led by Koss that provides recreation programs to underprivileged children in 20 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
Cheek, citing the U.S. government finding of genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, said he wanted to sponsor programs for what he said were 60,000 children forced into neighboring Chad. Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) wrote last week in the Baltimore Sun that more than two million people had been displaced from Darfur during the last two years.
Cheek, who lives in Park City, Utah, also said he will ask his sponsors -- Nike and Oakley -- and "all of the Olympic sponsors that give hundreds of millions of dollars" to match his donation. And, if he wins the 1,000 meters Saturday, he said he will donate that $25,000 as well.
In the traditional post-competition news conference, gold medalists generally describe the thrill of victory and the agony of previous defeats. But Cheek would not address that lighter side until he had made his announcement, well aware that the world might never again pay attention to him.
Breaking RanksShe gets it. Imagine. A Republican, and a former military serviceperson, who gets it.
By MASSIMO CALABRESI
Posted Monday, Feb. 13, 2006
President Bush may wave away Democratic critics of domestic eavesdropping, but one challenger is proving harder to dismiss: Heather Wilson, a plainspoken Air Force veteran from New Mexico and four-term G.O.P. Congresswoman little known outside of national-security circles. As chair of the House subcommittee that authorizes technical intelligence, she has waged a behind-the-scenes battle for access to information about the controversial surveillance program since word of it leaked in December. She won a significant victory last week. After she called for a full investigation of the spying, the White House ended 54 days of stonewalling and briefed the full House Intelligence Committee.
Two days later, at the House G.O.P. retreat on Maryland's Eastern Shore, after Bush told lawmakers that he had resisted briefing them to keep more program details from getting leaked, Wilson retorted that the original leak appeared to have come from his Administration and that Congress has a right and a duty to exercise oversight. "The men who wrote the Constitution feared most a strong Executive with control of a standing army," Wilson tells TIME. "Our Constitution is set up to protect all of us from tyranny."
A guy walks into a post office one day to see a middle-aged, balding man standing at the counter methodically placing "Love" stamps on bright pink envelopes with hearts all over them. He then takes out a perfume bottle and starts spraying scent all over them.
His curiosity getting the better of him, he goes up to the balding man and asks him what he is doing. The man says, "I'm sending out one thousand Valentine cards signed, 'Guess who?'"
"But why?" asks the man.
"I'm a divorce lawyer," the man replies.
Clinton-Bush clash beneficial for both?Well, while I really have no choice but to vote for Hillary for Senate, and her obvious positioning towards the White House run in two years has me intrigued by the prospect of Bill/Hill finally running the country out in the open, until she finally comes out and slams Bush on the war in Iraq (even if it's halfheartedly condemning his failed prosecution of it), she really isn't taking Bush head-on.
BY GLENN THRUSH AND CRAIG GORDON
NEWSDAY WASHINGTON BUREAU
February 10, 2006
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's winter offensive against President George W. Bush has provoked the expected GOP counterattack - but the conflict just might pay off handsomely for both politicians.
The two most polarizing figures in American politics are locked in a co-dependency of sorts. Their recent skirmish carries distinct advantages for both, according to allies and analysts.
Taking on Bush validates New York's junior senator as a kind of shadow president and provides fodder for her fundraising operation. Battling Clinton allows Bush to rally his conservative troops against their arch-enemy and, similarly, shake the shekels from the faithful.[....]
Clinton campaign guru Ann Lewis sent a mass e-mail to donors and supporters late yesterday. It included a New York Post clipping detailing a Wednesday White House confab between Clinton's main GOP re-election rival, former Yonkers mayor John Spencer, and an aide to Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
The missive ended with a discreet "Contributions to Friends of Hillary are not deductible for federal income tax purposes."
A person familiar with the White House meeting said Rove aide Sara Taylor met with Spencer for an hour and suggested that anything "that could defeat Hillary was good" for Bush.
The Sunday-morning talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are where the prevailing opinions are aired and tested, policymakers state their cases, and the left and right in American politics debate the pressing issues of the day on equal ground. Both sides have their say and face probing questions. Or so you would think.Download the entire report, and read more, here.
In fact, as this study reveals, conservative voices significantly outnumber progressive voices on the Sunday talk shows. Media Matters for America conducted a content analysis of ABC’s This Week, CBS’ Face the Nation, and NBC’s Meet the Press, classifying each one of the nearly 7,000 guest appearances during President Bill Clinton’s second term, President George W. Bush’s first term, and the year 2005 as either Democrat, Republican, conservative, progressive, or neutral. The conclusion is clear: Republicans and conservatives have been offered more opportunities to appear on the Sunday shows -- in some cases, dramatically so.
Among the study’s key findings:
• The balance between Democrats/progressives and Republicans/conservatives was roughly equal during Clinton’s second term, with a slight edge toward Republicans/conservatives: 52 percent of the ideologically identifiable guests were
from the right, and 48 percent were from the left. But in Bush’s first term, Republicans/ conservatives held a dramatic advantage, outnumbering Democrats/progressives by 58 percent to 42 percent. In 2005, the figures were an identical 58 percent to 42 percent.
• Counting only elected officials and administration representatives, Democrats had a small advantage during Clinton’s second term: 53 percent to 45 percent. In Bush’s first term, however, the Republican advantage was 61 percent to 39 percent --
nearly three times as large.
• In both the Clinton and Bush administrations, conservative journalists were far more likely to appear on the Sunday shows than were progressive journalists. In Clinton’s second term, 61 percent of the ideologically identifiable journalists were conservative; in Bush’s first term, that figure rose to 69 percent.
• In 1997 and 1998, the shows conducted more solo interviews with Democrats/progressives than with Republicans/conservatives. But in every year since, there have been more solo interviews with Republicans/conservatives.
• The most frequent Sunday show guest during this nine-year period is Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), who has appeared 124 times. Sen. Joseph Biden (D-DE) has been the most frequent guest since 2003.
• In every year examined by the study –- 1997 - 2005 -- more panels tilted right (a greater number of Republicans/conservatives than Democrats/progressives) than tilted left. In some years, there were two, three, or even four times as many right-tilted panels as left-tilted panels.
• Congressional opponents of the Iraq war were largely absent from the Sunday shows, particularly during the period just before the war began.
In short, the Sunday talk shows on ABC, CBS, and NBC are dominated by conservative voices, from newsmakers to commentators. The data from the Clinton years indicate that the disparity cannot be explained simply by the fact that Republicans currently control the government.
Bird Flu Found in Italy, Greece, BulgariaI'd go one step farther and say that this spread has guaranteed its mutation to a form that will spread rapidly through the mammalian population. In fact, Ed Bremson reports that we are only one or two mutations away from a full-on mammalian flu.
By MARIA SANMINIATELLI
Associated Press Writer
February 12, 2006, 6:24 AM EST
ROME -- Bird flu has reached Western Europe, with Italy and Greece announcing Saturday they had detected the H5N1 strain of the virus in dead swans.
The announcement that the disease was detected in five swans in southern Italy came a day after the opening of the Winter Games in Turin, several hundred miles to the north. Italian officials said the virus had only affected wild birds and posed no immediate risk to people.
The European Union said the deadly strain, which has infected at least 166 people and killed 88, most in Asia, also had been confirmed in swans in Bulgaria.
No human infections were reported in the three countries, but the outbreak raised concerns that the spread of the disease could increase chances for it to mutate into a form easily transmissible among humans, who generally catch the disease from domestic poultry.
"It's a relatively safe situation for human health; less so for animal health," Italian Health Minister Francesco Storace said.
Also Saturday, authorities in Nigeria said they were investigating whether the deadly strain, which was discovered in the country last week, had spread to humans after at least two children were reported ill.
The U.N.'s chief bird flu expert said the spread of bird flu, which has been ravaging poultry stocks across Asia since 2003, increased the chance that the virus would mutate into a form transmitted between humans and set off a pandemic. Most human deaths from the disease so far have been linked to contact with infected birds.
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