Fox's Henneberg repeats right-wing myth that hate crimes bill could gag ministers

Fox's Henneberg repeats right-wing myth that hate crimes bill could gag ministers
Molly Henneberg uncritically reported the false claim made by religious groups that the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act would allow individuals or groups to "be prosecuted for their religious beliefs."

However, the assertion that the legislation would allow individuals or groups to "be prosecuted for their religious beliefs" is false: Section 8 of the bill states that "Nothing in this Act, or the amendments made by this Act, shall be construed to prohibit any expressive conduct protected from legal prohibition by, or any activities protected by the Constitution," and the First Amendment to the Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof" (emphasis added). Indeed, the House Judiciary Committee's report on the legislation states that the purpose of Section 8 of the bill is "to lay to rest concerns raised in the 110th Congress mark-up of the legislation, and repeated since then, that religious speech or expression by clergy could form the basis of a prosecution. ... Nothing in this legislation would prohibit the constitutionally protected expression of one's religious beliefs."

Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11 by Marjorie Cohn

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn't believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury's 2005 memos asserted that "enhanced techniques" on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush's illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 "subject to a determination of legality by the OLC." She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Team Bush claimed - and still claims - that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.

CIA reportedly declined to closely evaluate harsh interrogations

CIA reportedly declined to closely evaluate harsh interrogations
"I cannot describe the specific methods used," Bush said. "But I can say the procedures were tough, and they were safe, and lawful, and necessary."

By then, Bush administration officials had become concerned with a shifting legal landscape. Congress had passed new laws on the treatment of detainees, and the Supreme Court issued a ruling that undercut the administration's claim that detained terrorism suspects were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention.

But officials said that the first high-level concern about the direction of the CIA's interrogation program had come in 2003, when then-CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson began distributing draft copies of his report on the program across the executive branch.

The document triggered alarms about waterboarding, documenting that it had been employed far more frequently -- including 263 times against two Al Qaeda suspects -- than had been widely believed.

The report also faulted how agency operatives applied the method, dumping large quantities of water on prisoners' faces, apparently violating the agency manual and its agreements with the Justice Department. Nervous about the report's implications, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet suspended the use of waterboarding in 2003.

The document also was critical of other approaches, including sleep deprivation. But for all of its criticism of the program, the 200-plus-page document also included passages that have been cited by some as evidence that the interrogation operation was effective.

A May 2005 Justice Department memo noted that the inspector general's report described an "increase in intelligence reports attributable to the use of enhanced techniques."

A U.S. intelligence official familiar with its contents confirmed that the inspector general's report contains language that is consistent with the assertions by former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden and others that the interrogation program accounted for more than half of the intelligence community's reports on Al Qaeda.

But officials said the document did not assess the quality of those reports. It also did not attempt to determine which methods were yielding the best information, or explore whether the agency's understanding of Al Qaeda would have suffered significantly without the use of coercive techniques.

"Certainly you got additional considerable volume of reporting when you started up with anything enhanced," the U.S. intelligence official said. "But nobody went back to say exactly what were the conditions under which we learned that which was the most useful."

In fact, Helgerson's team had steered away from that question by design, the official said, hoping that agency leaders would turn to interrogation experts for a thorough study on which methods were working and which should be discarded.

White House National Security Council officials who saw the inspector general's report became concerned with its conclusions, current and former officials said. Stephen Hadley, then the deputy national security advisor, was particularly persistent on pushing the CIA director to follow up on the inspector general's recommendation.

Goss, who had taken the helm at the CIA four months after the inspector general's report was filed, eventually complied. But Helgerson had envisioned a group of experts, perhaps including specialists from the FBI; Goss turned instead to two former government officials with little background in interrogation.

Gardner Peckham, a national security advisor to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, produced the approximately 10-page document that praised the program. It concluded that the program was "very structured and very disciplined," said a former official familiar with its contents, but did not assess the effectiveness of various methods.

A separate report, submitted by John Hamre, a former deputy Defense secretary, was similar in scope and led to no significant alterations of the program. Hamre and Peckham both declined to comment.

Despite the high-level attention, former Bush administration officials said they never saw the results of the audits that Goss had commissioned.

"They never came and presented anything to the White House that said in response to the I.G. report they have commissioned a review," said one such official. "They essentially came back with the recommendations that this was the program and it couldn't be changed."

Fox News figures pick up tenuous claim that harsh interrogations thwarted L.A. plot

Fox News figures pick up tenuous claim that harsh interrogations thwarted L.A. plot

Neil Cavuto, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Catherine Herridge joined other Fox News figures in advancing Marc Thiessen's claim that the use of harsh interrogations techniques on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed "stopped an attack on the Library Tower." But the Bush administration has said that the attack was thwarted more than a year before Mohammed was captured.

More details at Former Bush Speech Writer and CNSNews Caught in Blatant Lie About Library Towers Plot

Republicans Torture Party: Waterboarding Used 266 Times on 2 Suspects

Tortured Decision
FOR seven years I have remained silent about the false claims magnifying the effectiveness of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding. I have spoken only in closed government hearings, as these matters were classified. But the release last week of four Justice Department memos on interrogations allows me to shed light on the story, and on some of the lessons to be learned.

One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.

It was the right decision to release these memos, as we need the truth to come out. This should not be a partisan matter, because it is in our national security interest to regain our position as the world’s foremost defenders of human rights. Just as important, releasing these memos enables us to begin the tricky process of finally bringing these terrorists to justice.

The debate after the release of these memos has centered on whether C.I.A. officials should be prosecuted for their role in harsh interrogation techniques. That would be a mistake. Almost all the agency officials I worked with on these issues were good people who felt as I did about the use of enhanced techniques: it is un-American, ineffective and harmful to our national security.

Fortunately for me, after I objected to the enhanced techniques, the message came through from Pat D’Amuro, an F.B.I. assistant director, that “we don’t do that,” and I was pulled out of the interrogations by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller (this was documented in the report released last year by the Justice Department’s inspector general).

My C.I.A. colleagues who balked at the techniques, on the other hand, were instructed to continue. (It’s worth noting that when reading between the lines of the newly released memos, it seems clear that it was contractors, not C.I.A. officers, who requested the use of these techniques.)

As we move forward, it’s important to not allow the torture issue to harm the reputation, and thus the effectiveness, of the C.I.A. The agency is essential to our national security. We must ensure that the mistakes behind the use of these techniques are never repeated. We’re making a good start: President Obama has limited interrogation techniques to the guidelines set in the Army Field Manual, and Leon Panetta, the C.I.A. director, says he has banned the use of contractors and secret overseas prisons for terrorism suspects (the so-called black sites). Just as important, we need to ensure that no new mistakes are made in the process of moving forward — a real danger right now.

Ali Soufan was an F.B.I. supervisory special agent from 1997 to 2005.

Al-Qaida's plot to bomb the Library Tower was not worth torturing anyone over

Al-Qaida's plot to bomb the Library Tower was not worth torturing anyone over

What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument) is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got—an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"—that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003.

Complete article at link

History Professor Gingrich Falsely Claims U.S. Presidents Don't 'Smile And Greet' Russian Leaders

History Professor Gingrich Falsely Claims U.S. Presidents Don't 'Smile And Greet' Russian Leaders

Dr. Gingrich, who has a Ph.D. in European history, should re-read his history books. As the Cold War waned, President Reagan (whose foreign policy Gingrich repeatedly praises) met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at four summits, leading to nuclear arms reductions. President George H. W. Bush negotiated the Start II treaty alongside Russian President Boris Yeltsin, and President Clinton discussed foreign investment with Yeltsin. President Bush, of course, said he saw into Vladimir Putin's soul after a private engagement. Each meeting had smiles all around

A Ton More People Were Wiretapped Than We've Been Led to Believe

A Ton More People Were Wiretapped Than We've Been Led to Believe
This week the New York Times revealed that the National Security Agency has continued spying on Americans well into the Obama era, with government officials listening in on phone conversations and monitoring e-mails on a massive scale.

Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau -- who broke the story of the Bush administration's domestic spying program in December 2004 -- reported that "in recent months," the NSA has engaged in an "overcollection" of domestic communication, far exceeding the already broad legal limits Congress established when it passed legislation to legalize the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program and granting immunity for the telecoms that enabled it.

The same article reveals that in 2005 or 2006, the NSA attempted to wiretap an unidentified member of Congress, lending further credence to speculation earlier this year by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., that he might have been spied on.

For many who have followed the long political saga that saw warrantless wiretapping revealed, debated and ultimately legalized at the hands of Congress, this report comes as no surprise.

"Everyone knew that the FISA bill, which congressional Democrats passed -- and which George Bush and Dick Cheney celebrated -- would enable these surveillance abuses," Glenn Greenwald wrote after the story broke.

Nevertheless, for many people it may come as a shock that nearly 4 1/2 years after the illegal program was uncovered, not only has the government continued to spy on Americans with total impunity, most of the details of Bush's warrantless wiretapping scheme remain a mystery.

"What really concerns me is that we still don't know the truth," Thomas Tamm, a former FBI official told me. "We do not know what they did."

Tamm should know. He is the person who blew the whistle on the NSA spying program, a former employee of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, a highly sensitive unit of the Justice Department. He remained anonymous for years, until his identity was revealed in a front-page story by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff late last year.

The article described how Tamm, a veteran employee of the FBI, came across proof that the U.S. government had been unlawfully eavesdropping on Americans by intercepting domestic communications.

No Amnesty for Torturers

Obama, Seeing Darkness, Conjures up the Mists of Time

by Dave Lindorff

Back in 1965, as a 15-year-old kid, I had a chance to spend half a year as a student at a boy's gymnasium (high school) in Darmstadt, the cultural capital of the German state of Hesse, which had the distinction of having been one of a handful of cities in Germany (Dresden was another) that were selected by the Allies to test out the terror tactic of firebombing. The town was chosen for incendiary bombardment precisely because it had no military value and thus, no air defenses (and because it consisted mostly of wooden structures). With Germany still wreaking horrific damage on the Allied bomber fleet, this made it an inviting target.

Friends and teachers recounted to me the terrors of that night, when the entire city of several hundred thousand, built mostly of wood, went up in a giant bonfire so hot and powerful that it sucked people into it with a 200 mph vortex of inward rushing air. People who hid in shelters were asphyxiated by the lack of oxygen, while those who tried to flee sank knee deep into asphalt streets. Two mountains outside town were man-made piles of rubble left over from the city's ruins, which were for the most part just carted away. There was little left to rebuild.

While I was stunned by the horror of it, I at the time still felt that after all, Germans had brought this disaster on themselves. After all, they had allowed the Nazi monsters to gain control of the nation and then proceeded with a genocidal campaign of extermination of Jews-even German Jews who were their own neighbors--of Gypsies, of gays, and of course, of Communists, and had launched a war that ultimately killed 10s of millions of people around the world.

I mention all this because one thing I noticed back then, not among young people in Germany, but among adults my parents' age and older, was a widespread denial about what Germany had done. And I remember feeling, as many Americans and Europeans still do, and as many Chinese and other Asians still feel about Japan, that these two countries have never been willing to face up to the crimes that they, as a nation, permitted to happen in their names.

Older and wiser now, I am well aware that our own country has committed many crimes, some on a scale approaching those of Germany and Japan: the near extermination of Native Americans, the mass, centuries-long enslavement and cultural and physical destruction of millions of African slaves, the use of nuclear bombs on civilian targets, the decade-long saturation bombing and herbicidal poisoning of most of Indochina...

It's a long and terrible list, and for the most part, in our schools, in our politics, in our histories, we don't talk about, and even justify and deny our own atrocities.

Now we have a president who is perhaps doing something worse. Admitting that the last administration of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney ordered up a program of illegal and inhuman torture of captives in the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and in the so-called War on Terror that was launched by them in the wake of the 9-11 attacks in 2001, and offering up documentary evidence of the chain of command that set the country on this criminal course, President Obama now says that to move beyond this "dark and painful chapter in our history," he will not seek or permit any prosecution of those who committed torture of captives.

"Nothing will be gained," Obama said, "by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past."

I'm not that concerned about whether individual torturers in the CIA or the military get prosecuted. If the president had said he would not prosecute people who "thought" they were acting under proper authority and behaving legally, but then added that he would pursue those who authorized and ordered them to torture, I would not have fussed. But that is not what he said. The implication of his statement, and the fact that he has not, this far into his term, ordered his Attorney General to appoint a prosecutor to investigate those who were responsible for the crime, given what he clearly knows about its authors, is the worst possible of travesties, and rises to the level of a war crime itself.

Now I don't want to equate America's torture of a few hundred or a few thousand captives by making them endure waterboarding or by placing plastic neckbands and leashes on them and slamming their heads into walls, with what the victims of Buchenwald or Auschwitz endured, but that is really not the issue. The issue is, do we as a nation now subscribe to the idea that the way to deal with evil perpetrated by ourselves is to bury it?

Isn't that precisely what we have been for decades accusing the Germans and the Japanese of doing: burying in the mists of time their criminal behavior as a people and as a nation?

And now our president-whose own wife and daughters are descendants of slave victims of another era of American atrocities-is telling us we should do the same thing as Germany and Japan: forget and move on.

But the president is wrong. Darkness does not go away when the fog comes. It just gets darker.

Let's shine a light. Sign the petition: No Amnesty for Torturers!

Torture 'stains US image, endangers soldiers'
"If we engage in that kind of activity, we put our soldiers at increased risk," he said.

"Our place in the world has been eroded" by the use of torture in interrogations at "war-on-terror" prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, said Ken Robinson, who served for 20 years in organisations including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and National Security Agency.

"We have lost the moral high ground," he said.

Sarah Mendelson of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, which hosted the forum along with Human Rights First, deplored the Bush administration's "new ambivalence towards torture prohibition".

In a report, Dr Mendelson accused the Bush administration of appearing "increasingly prepared to pay lip-service to or ignore entirely US obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law".

Republican Rick Perry a Supersized Embarrassment

Republican Rick Perry a Supersized Embarrassment
I've had enough of Rick Perry.

At least the Perry who stood on the steps of the Texas Capitol today bashing our federal government and talking openly about Texas seceding from the United States.

This isn't the Perry I knew 25 years ago, when he first ran for the Legislature from my part of West Texas, and it's not the Perry who earned the respect of his colleagues and most Capitol reporters in the late '80s for his work on the House Appropriations Committee.

Perry's always been a conservative, but that isn't the issue. He's a demagogue now, and every single newspaper in Texas with a decent editorial page should denounce these remarks and call for him to retract them publicly or resign.

I mean that. This isn't a joke.

Partisanship and political philosophy aside, I can think of few things more irresponsible in this economy than the governor of Texas speaking freely about secession. What business is going to relocate to Texas with him talking like that? Who wants to come to a state to do research at its large land grant universities with a governor who sounds like George Wallace or Lester Maddox naming the regents.

The reality is that few if any Texans believe he is serious, and Texas isn't going to secede. Most Texans just pass this off as Perry pandering to a crowd of right-wing malcontents to whip up support for his upcoming re-election.

*more at the link

Conservatives outraged at DHS assessment warning of violent 'rightwing extremism'

Conservatives outraged at DHS assessment warning of violent 'rightwing extremism'
An April 7 report by the Department of Homeland Security is causing waves of indignation among conservatives for labeling "rightwing extremism" the "most dangerous domestic terrorism threat in the United States."

In its key findings, the 10 page document (PDF link) put forward by the Office of Intelligence and Analysis states that there is "no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence," but warns law enforcement agencies that the economic recession, coupled with the recent election of the first African-American President of the United States, is driving radical groups' recruitment.

"The DHS under President Bush was apparently more reluctant to make such assessments about the right. According to CQ, a 2005 report outlining terrorist threats 'does not mention anti-government groups, white supremacists and other radical right-wing movements,'" noted Think Progress. "Bush's report did, however, list the threat of left-wing groups such as the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. And a 2001 report from the Energy Department examined "Left-Wing Extremism: The Current Threat."

Rightwing blogger and occasional Fox News editorialist Michelle Malkin referred to the analysis as "a sweeping indictment of conservatives."

Her blog on the topic came on the same day as a Washington Times report on the analysis and a high-profile link from rightwing news blogger Matt Drudge.

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said in a 'tweet' late Tuesday afternoon, "The person who drafted the outrageous homeland security memo smearing veterans and conservatives should be fired."

The first outlet to carry details of the DHS paper was Alex Jones' InfoWars.

"A recent example of the potential violence associated with a rise in rightwing extremism may be found in the shooting deaths of three police officers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on 4 April 2009," the report states. "The alleged gunman’s reaction reportedly was influenced by his racist ideology and belief in antigovernment conspiracy theories related to gun confiscations, citizen detention camps, and a Jewish-controlled 'one world government.'"

Media Holds Democrats to Different Standards

US News Media Fails America, Again by Robert Parry
Watching Glenn Beck of Fox News rant about “progressive fascism” – and muse about armed insurrection – or listening to mainstream pundits prattle on about Barack Obama as the “most polarizing President ever,” it is hard to escape the conclusion that today’s U.S. news media represents a danger to the Republic.

By and large, the Washington press corps continues to function within a paradigm set in the 1980s, mostly bending to the American Right, especially to its perceived power to destroy mainstream journalistic careers and to grease the way toward lucrative jobs for those who play ball.

The parameters set by this intimidated (or bought-off) news media, in turn, influence how far Washington politicians feel they can go on issues, like health-care reform or environmental initiatives, or how risky they believe it might be to pull back from George W. Bush's "war on terror" policies.

Democratic hesitancy on these matters then enflames the Left, which expresses its outrage through its own small media, reprising the old theme that there's "not a dime's worth of difference" between Democrats and Republicans - a reaction that further weakens chances for any meaningful reform.

This vicious cycle has repeated itself again and again since the Reagan era, when the Right built up its intimidating media apparatus - a vertically integrated machine which now reaches from newspapers, magazines and books to radio, TV and the Internet. The Right accompanied its media apparatus with attack groups to go after troublesome mainstream journalists.

Meanwhile, the American Left never took media seriously, putting what money it had mostly into "organizing" or into direct humanitarian giving. Underscoring the Left's fecklessness about media, progressives have concentrated their relatively few media outlets in San Francisco, 3,000 miles away - and three hours behind - the news centers of Washington and New York.

By contrast, the Right grasped the importance of "information warfare" in a modern media age and targeted its heaviest firepower on the frontlines of that war - mostly the political battlefields of Washington - thus magnifying the influence of right-wing ideas on policymakers.

One consequence of this media imbalance is that Republicans feel they can pretty much say whatever they want - no matter how provocative or even crazy - while Democrats must be far more circumspect, knowing that any comment might be twisted into an effective attack point against them.

So, while criticism of Republicans presidents - from Ronald Reagan to the two Bushes - had to be tempered for fear of counterattacks, almost anything could be said against a Democratic president, Bill Clinton or now Barack Obama, who is repeatedly labeled a "socialist" and, according to Beck, a "fascist" for pressuring hapless GM chief executive Rick Wagoner to resign.

The Clinton Wars

The smearing of President Clinton started during his first days in office as the right-wing news media and the mainstream press pursued, essentially in tandem, "scandals" such as his Whitewater real-estate deal, the Travel Office firings and salacious accusations from Arkansas state troopers.

Through talk radio and mailed-out videos, the Right also disseminated accusations that Clinton was responsible for "murders" in Arkansas and Washington. These hateful suspicions about Clinton spread across the country, carried by the voices of Rush Limbaugh and G. Gordon Liddy as well as via videos hawked by Religious Right leader Jerry Falwell.

While not accepting the "murder" tales, mainstream publications, like the Washington Post and the New York Times, often took the lead in pushing or exaggerating Clinton financial "scandals." Facing these attacks, Clinton sought some safety by tacking to the Right, which prompted many on the American Left to turn on him.

The stage was set for the Republican "revolution" of 1994, which put the GOP in charge of Congress. Only in the latter days of the Clinton administration, as the Republicans pushed for his ouster through impeachment, did a handful of small media outlets, including Consortiumnews.com and Salon.com, recast the war on Clinton as a new-age coup d'etat.

Yet, despite the evidence of that, the major American news media mocked Hillary Clinton when she complained about a "vast right-wing conspiracy."

After Clinton survived impeachment, the national press corps transferred its hostility toward Vice President Al Gore in Campaign 2000 , ridiculing him as a serial exaggerator and liar, even when that required twisting his words. [For details, see our book Neck Deep.]

Then, when George W. Bush wrested the White House away from Gore with the help of five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court, the drumbeat of hostility toward the American President suddenly disappeared, replaced by a new consensus about the need for unity. The 9/11 attacks deepened that sentiment, putting Bush almost beyond the reach of normal criticism.

Again, the right-wing media and the mainstream press moved almost in lockstep. The deferential tone toward Bush could be found not just on Fox News or right-wing talk radio, but in the Washington Post and (to a lesser degree) the New York Times - and on CNN and MSNBC. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "America's Matrix."]

To some foreigners, the U.S. news media's early coverage of the Iraq War had the feel of what might be expected in a totalitarian state.

"There have been times, living in America of late, when it seemed I was back in the Communist Moscow I left a dozen years ago," wrote Rupert Cornwell in the London-based Independent. "Switch to cable TV and reporters breathlessly relay the latest wisdom from the usual unnamed ‘senior administration officials,' keeping us on the straight and narrow. Everyone, it seems, is on-side and on-message. Just like it used to be when the hammer and sickle flew over the Kremlin." [Independent, April 23, 2003]

Bush's Slide

Bush skeptics were essentially not tolerated in most of the U.S. news media, and journalists who dared produce critical pieces could expect severe career consequences, such as the four CBS producers fired for a segment on how Bush skipped his National Guard duty, a true story that made the mistake of using some memos that had not been fully vetted.

Only after real events intervened - especially the bloody insurgency in Iraq and the ghastly flooding of New Orleans - did the mainstream U.S. press corps begin to tolerate a more skeptical view of Bush. However, the news personalities who had come to dominate the industry by then had cut their teeth in an era of bashing Democrats (Clinton/Gore) and fawning over Republicans (Reagan and the two Bushes).

With Barack Obama as President, these "news" personalities almost reflexively returned to the Clinton-Gore paradigm, feeling the freedom - indeed the pressure - to be tough on the White House.

Fox Promotes and Supports Teabaggers

Fox Promotes and Supports Teabaggers

To quote Gregg Levine, "What Part of “FNC TAX DAY TEA PARTIES” Don’t You Understand?" But I guess we're going to have to dive once more in to the obvious.

Glenn Beck:

I'm going to also -- and we'll announce this later today -- I'm going to do a fundraiser for them. I'm going to try to squeeze in a speech for lunch. So you can come and you can have lunch with me. And I think -- I don't know any of the details, but I've heard it's like $500 a plate or something like that.

Reynolds says "if heavily-promoted coverage is the same as 'financing' then the MSM 'financed' Obama’s campaign." Did I miss those $500 a plate fundraisers that Keith Olbermann and Brian Williams were throwing for Obama and promoting on air? Somebody shoot me a link.

Media Matters:

TaxDayTeaParty.com lists Fox News contributors Michelle Malkin and Tammy Bruce as "Tea Party Sponsors." The sponsors section also lists American Solutions for Winning the Future, whose general chairman is Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich. Gingrich filmed a video "invitation" to attend the April 15 protests.

Pirates Aplenty in These Waters

Pirates Aplenty in These Waters
Of course, all reasonable efforts must be made to free the captain.

But before anyone gets too trigger happy here, it's important to remember why piracy is "suddenly" a problem.

Somalia is about as failed a failed state as you'll find on the planet. Piracy, once a minor problem in the region, exploded into a major matter after the collapse in late 2006 of the Islamic Courts Union, which had controlled the central and southern regions of Somalia.

Now, the country is lawless and impoverished. And desperate young men are taking to the high seas in search of illicit income.

The U.S. -- which has been too busy establishing military bases in the region -- needs to get a lot more serious about the specific economic and political crisis in Somalia and the broader problems of northeast Africa. That does not mean that the U.S. should be thinking about invading countries or imposing governments; rather the U.S. should be working with the United Nations and African-based organizations to get needed resources and support to those forces on the ground that can feed the people and stabilize the region.

Unless that is done, piracy will remain the preferred option to those who do not choose to starve quietly beyond the reach of international attention and concern.

More than two years ago, following a massive and dramatically destabilizing military incursion into Somalia by neighboring Ethiopia, Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold(D), the chairman of the Africa subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared that, "The U.S. must play more of a leadership role, instead of relying on the piecemeal diplomacy that has failed us in the past. The key challenge now is to transition Somalia from a failed state to a peaceful, stable country. We must help establish a credible government that can work to eliminate the conditions that have long made Somalia a haven for terrorists and a source of instability in a critical region."

"As part of a real strategy for Somalia and the Horn of Africa, we should dispatch a presidential envoy to the region and work aggressively to help stabilize and rebuild that country..." Feingold continued. "Without aggressive U.S. engagement and international determination, Somalia will remain what it has been –- a haven for terrorists, a source of instability throughout the region, and a threat to our national security."

Rep Bachus There are 17 socialists in the House

Rep. Bachus: There are 17 socialists in the House
While touring his district yesterday, Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, declared that 17 of his House colleagues “are socialists”, according to the Birmingham News:

But he said he is worried that he is being steered too far by the Congress: “Some of the men and women I work with in Congress are socialists.”

Asked to clarify his comments after the breakfast speech at the Trussville Civic Center, Bachus said 17 members of the U.S. House are socialists.

Roll Call reports, “An e-mail to Bachus’ spokesman about the names of those 17 Members was not returned.”

Fox&Friends Pushes Persecuted Christian Theme to Stoke The Notre Dame “Controversy” And Smear Obama

Fox&Friends Pushes Persecuted Christian Theme to Stoke The Notre Dame “Controversy” And Smear Obama
The Christian “Fox Nation” does love to play martyr and what better time to do it than Holy Week, which is a time when Christians reflect on the crucifixion of Jesus and which presents the right wing conservative Christians, on Fox News, with an opportunity to whine about how they are being “persecuted.” The poor, persecuted Christian against the evil secular liberal theme is a Fox&Friends fave. In February, good Christian Gretchen Carlson kvetched about how the atheist sign in Seattle and an image from the Sistine Chapel on a condom poster were examples of how these poor, conservative Christians are being so scourged. Recently, she used the “controversy” about Obama’s invitation to Notre Dame to work in a little editorial comment about how the “controversy” is an example of how Christians are persecuted. The culture war isn’t going too well lately; but that didn’t stop the Fox crusaders from using Holy Week, a time of pious reflection for the Christian community, as a platform for bashing Obama and the standard Christian conservative persecution meme. Such a heavy cross to bear!!!!

This morning (April 8) the “War on Christianity” segment began with the comment "as Christians observe the most holy week in the calendar (while images of the Pope, who is not the leader of all Christians, played on the video) politics is playing hardball with the very religion that founded this country.” (Comment: Historians, excluding Larry Schweikart, would take issue with that). The chyron read “Newsweek Cover:Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Steve Doocy said that “Christianity appears to be under attack” and introduced Mark Littleton, a former pastor and author of “Big Bad God of the Bible.” (Unlike CNN, I still haven’t seen any pro Obama invite clergy on Fox but I could be wrong.) The chyron read “Notre Dame Controversy, Christian leaders protest Obama’s invite.” Doocy, who obviously doesn’t understand that the media is only reporting on religious trends, said that there has been a "confluence of anti-Christian talk" and cited the Newsweek article. Littleton said that Satan is trying to eradicate Christianity and “has gotten a strong foothold in the US.” Brian Kilmeade got to the heart of the matter when he asked if the Notre Dame invitation is “an attack on Christianity.” I was shocked (and I’m sure the boys were too) when Littleton said “we live in a nation where there is free speech…” and continued to defend the invitation while noting that Jesus “hung out” with unsavory characters in his day and that Jesus “could tolerate Obama.” Doocy wasn’t willing to let that pass and needed to get out the Fox talking point (Obama invitation baaaad) and noted that “Notre Dame is America’s pre-eminent Catholic University” and cited how the Catholic Church is “polar opposite on embryonic stem cell research and abortion” (not noting that Obama and his church agree on social justice issues). When he said that “if you going to stand for something, stand for something,” Littleton said “shouldn’t a public university stand for freedom of speech.” When Doocy said that ND wasn’t a public university, Littleton said that even a private university “should train students in free speech” and that “Christians shouldn’t shut liberals down.” While he was speaking the chyron read “Obama’s new faith group member Henry Knox, who is critical of the Pope.” (So Obama’s faith group selections need to pass a pro-Pope litmus test? There are many Protestant and Jewish clergy who, while respectful of the Pope, are critical.) A video of an anti Obama protest was shown with a quick cut to a fetus sign. Kilmeade asked if Littleton was “bothered” by Obama’s statement, in Turkey, that we’re “not a Christian nation.” While Littleton spoke, the chyron said, “Obama’s new pick, Henry Knox, describes the Pope as discredited leader.” Littleton wasn’t bothered. He said Obama was trying to be conciliatory and that America is still 70% Christian. Doocy wasn’t willing to let that that go and said, “it just does seem the media, also the president’s comments during Holy Week (?), you know targeting Catholics (?) targeting Christians” and then asked “if these comments were made during Ramadan” (WTF?). Littleton then lost some points when he said “they would be up in arms. Why is it that the only people who can’t speak up, like in Hollywood and elsewhere, are Christians and conservatives"? (uh, they get plenty of air time on Fox.) The chyron read “Is America a Christian nation, Obama says no” and “Obama in Turkey, Us not a nation of Christians.” Doocy said that these religious discussions can be found on the Fox Nation website a website for “people who love America.”

Comment: First, the meme that Christianity is being attacked by liberals is troubling as it is reminiscent of the type of propaganda that Hitler used when accusing the Jews of undermining German culture. Second, the “boys” don’t seem to know that the US was founded by men, of diverse beliefs (Anglican, Unitarian, Quaker, and a few Catholics), who were secular deists and who did not want this country to be a theocracy. Hence, there is no mention of God in the Constitution. The Treaty of Tripoli, during the Jefferson administration, stated that we are not a Christian nation. The propaganda pitched by Doocy and the chyrons were truly amazing as Henry Knox was not even a subject of the discussion and who the hell cares what he thinks about the Pope! America is religiously very diverse and the implication of the chyrons and question about “Christian nation” are very offensive to non Christians as it implies that somehow they are not included in what is defined as America. It does appear that Fox’s target audience is Christian. The propaganda intent is evident in the fact that Obama’s whole quote was not shown or discussed: "One of the great strengths of the United States," the President said, "is ... we have a very large Christian population -- we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values."

Too bad Fox News doesn’t believe this.

From Republican Rhetoric to Right-Wing Terror

From Republican Rhetoric to Right-Wing Terror
The slaughter of three Pittsburgh policemen by an assailant who "didn't like our [gun] rights being infringed upon" has again highlighted the growing danger from incendiary Republican rhetoric spawning right-wing terror. After all, just days ago, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) announced, "I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous." Fox News host Glenn Beck warned of a "Constitution under attack" and predicted a coming "civil war" while featuring guests like NRA chief Wayne Lapierre whose group spent millions in 2008 denouncing Barack Obama's supposed "deep-rooted hatred of firearm freedoms."

Disturbingly, the paranoia in action of Pittsburgh cop killer Richard Poplawski is hardly an isolated episode. As I've suggested previously, whether concerning guns, abortion, gay Americans, immigration or judicial appointments, the line connecting the rhetoric of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement behind it to right-wing terror is a very short one.

***full article at link

'Too Big to Fail' Is Too Big -- Period

'Too Big to Fail' Is Too Big -- Period
As skiers and backcountry hikers know, a whiteout is a blizzard that's so intense that those caught in it can't even see the blizzard.

That's how I think of the Wall Street bailout now swirling around us. So many trillions of our tax dollars are being blown at the financial giants that we're blinded by the density of it, unable to see where we are or know what direction we're headed.

However, one way to get your bearings in this bailout blizzard is to focus on the central point that both the bailors (Washington) and the bailees (Wall Street) keep pounding as an irrefutable truth that everyone simply has to accept -- namely, the institutions being rescued are too big to fail.

Even sheep know to flee when coyotes howl in unison -- and we commoners need to confront the absurdity of this "too big" claim, which forms the rationale for the entire diversion of regular people's money into rich people's pockets.

Wachovia, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Bank of America, AIG -- omigosh, cried the Powers That Be, these behemoths are linked to every other behemoth, so if we don't stuff them with tax dollars ... well, we have no choice, because they're just too big for the government to let fail.

Point No. 1: They have failed. They are kaput. It costs more to buy a snickerdoodle than to buy a share of Citigroup stock. AIG is 80 percent owned by you and me, the taxpayers. These once-haughty outfits are insolvent -- wards of the state.

Point No. 2: If they're too big, why should we sustain them? Let's be clear about something the establishment doesn't want you and me to understand -- these giants did not get so big and interconnected because of natural market forces and free-enterprise efficiencies. They amassed power the old-fashioned way: They got the government to give it to them. In the past 20 years or so, they lobbied furiously to get Washington to rig the rules so they could latterly bloat ... and float out of control.

A new report by Wallstreetwatch.org reveals that from 1998 to 2008, the finance industry made $1.7 billion in contributions to Washington politicians (55 percent to Repubs, 45 percent to Dems), spent $3.4 billion on lobbyists (3,000 of them on the industry payroll in 2007 alone) and won a dozen key deregulatory victories that led directly to today's financial meltdown.

Inherent in the industry's push for unbridled expansion was the unstated goal of guaranteeing that they would get taxpayer bailouts if things went badly. So many investors, businesses, employees and others would be hooked into these multitentacled blobs that government would be compelled to rescue the banks from their own excesses.

Fox News falsely claimed Obama budget "4x bigger than Bush's costliest plan"

Fox News falsely claimed Obama budget "4x bigger than Bush's costliest plan"

On America's Newsroom, on-screen text falsely claimed that President Obama's $3.6 trillion FY 2010 budget is "4x bigger than Bush's costliest plan." In fact, President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for FY 2009 and a $2.9 trillion budget for FY 2008.

Republicans Spread Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama's budget proposal

Republicans Spread Myths and falsehoods relating to President Obama's budget proposal
Summary: Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods related to the proposal.

Following the release of President Obama's proposal for the fiscal year 2010 budget, media figures and outlets have promoted a number of myths and falsehoods about the proposal. These myths and falsehoods include the suggestion that Obama's proposal would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses and the suggestion that using reconciliation to pass major policy goals would represent an unusual or unprecedented tactic. Media have also engaged in a pattern of criticizing Obama for addressing heath care in the budget or elsewhere, given the size of the current and projected U.S. federal debt, without addressing the president's response that health-care reform is essential to the long-term economic and fiscal health of the country.

1. Obama's budget proposal would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses

Many media figures and outlets, including CNBC host Joe Kernen, CNBC host Maria Bartiromo, ABC News' Jake Tapper, CNN's Dana Bash, Fox News' Sean Hannity, CNN's David Gergen, Politico, the Associated Press, The Washington Post, and The New York Times, have advanced, uncritically repeated, or failed to challenge the debunked Republican falsehood that Obama's income tax proposals would increase taxes on a large percentage of small businesses. For example, Kernen didn't challenge Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) on the March 26 edition of CNBC's Squawk Box after Gregg referred to Obama's proposal as a "tax policy that basically is focused on raising taxes on small businesses especially."

In fact, according to the Tax Policy Center's table of 2007 tax returns that reported small-business income, 481,000 of those returns -- about 2 percent -- are in the top two income tax brackets, which include all filers with taxable incomes that would be affected by Obama's proposals to let portions of the Bush tax cuts for wealthy taxpayers expire and to reduce the tax rate at which families making more than $250,000 could take itemized deductions.

2. Using reconciliation to pass major policy goals would be an unusual or unprecedented tactic

Media figures and outlets have advanced the falsehood that the Democrats' potential implementation of the budget reconciliation process, which would allow Congress to pass "policy changes in mandatory spending (entitlements) or revenue programs (tax laws)" by a simple majority in both Houses, is unusual, unprecedented, or was not recently used by Republicans. A March 31 article in The Hill, for instance, pointed to "GOP critics" claiming that the reconciliation process "was never intended to ram through major legislation" but did not mention that Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass several major Bush initiatives, as The New York Times and the blog Think Progress have noted. Similarly, Fox News correspondent Molly Henneberg made the false claim on the March 27 edition of Special Report that "[r]econciliation was last used in 2001 by Republicans to pass the first Bush tax cuts" -- an "error" for which her colleague Bret Baier later "apologize[d]," noting that Republicans had in fact used reconciliation more recently. Indeed, Republicans used the process to pass Bush's initiatives throughout his tenure, including the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003, and the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005.

Additionally, Hannity falsely claimed on March 20 that reconciliation would allow the Obama administration to pass legislation "without any Republicans even having an opportunity to vote." In fact, the budget reconciliation process does not deny Republicans or any member of Congress "an opportunity to vote." According to the House Rules Committee's description of the budget reconciliation process, the version of reconciliation legislation agreed to during the conference process is then "brought back to the full House and Senate for a vote on final passage. Approval of the conference agreement on the reconciliation legislation must be by a majority vote of both Houses."

3. Obama should not attempt health-care reform given the current and projected federal debt

Many media figures have claimed or suggested that given the size of the current and projected U.S. federal debt, the Obama administration's health-care reform proposal is untenable. For instance, Hannity said on March 26 that "Obama wants to expand government. We've got health care, unbelievable amounts of spending -- we're gonna bankrupt the country." However, in making such statements, neither Hannity nor other media figures addressed the argument Obama has repeatedly made in response to such claims: that health-care reform is essential to the long-term economic and fiscal health of the country.

For instance, during the question-and-answer session following his March 24 press conference, Obama said: "What we have to do is bend the curve on these deficit projections. And the best way for us to do that is to reduce health care costs. That's not just my opinion; that's the opinion of almost every single person who has looked at our long-term fiscal situation." Indeed, Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag, who formerly headed the Congressional Budget Office, said in March 4 testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee about the administration's 2010 budget that "[t]he principal driver of our Nation's long-term budget problem is rising health care costs." Orszag continued:

If costs per enrollee in our two main Federal health care programs, Medicare and Medicaid, grow at the same rate as they have for the past 40 years, those two programs will increase from about 5 percent of GDP today to about 20 percent by 2050. (As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and others have noted, there are reasons to expect cost growth to slow in the future relative to the past even in the absence of policy changes. But the point remains that reasonable projections of health care cost growth under current policies shows that they are the central cause of the Nation's long-term fiscal imbalance.) Many of the other factors that will play a role in determining future fiscal conditions -- including the actuarial deficit in Social Security -- pale by comparison over the long term with the impact of cost growth in the Federal government health insurance programs. Health care is the key to our Nation's fiscal future, and health care reform is entitlement reform. [emphasis added]