Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion.
|
"News that's not known, or not known enough." Helen & Harry Highwater's cranky weblog of news and opinion. |
|
| 
|
|
|
There's no link to accompany this, because I haven't seen anyone but me complaining about it, but — why is Robert Mueller still the Director of the FBI? He's a Bush-Cheney
Former Catholic Archbishop Rembert Weakland says he didn't know that sex with children was a crime. Seriously. And seriously, if you're a member of the Catholic Church or if you've ever written a check to the Catholic Church, may I just ask, Why? In the lawsuit over Bush-Cheney administration's illegal wiretaps of the Islamic charity Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation, Judge Vaughn Walker (Bush41 1989) has rebuked the Obama administration for "continuing to assert legal positions already specifically rejected by the court in previous orders" and "refusing to cooperate with the court's orders." [ Electronic Frontier Foundation ]  U.W. Clemon, formerly Alabama's most senior federal judge, has written a scorching letter to Attorney General Eric Holder itemizing gross misconduct by federal prosecutors involved in the Siegelman case and demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into the matter. "The 2004 prosecution of Mr. Siegelman in the Northern District of Alabama was the most unfounded criminal case over which I presided in my entire judicial career," he writes. "In my judgment, his prosecution was completely without legal merit; and it could not have been accomplished without the approval of the Department of Justice." Clemon goes on to note that prosecutors engaged in judicial forum shopping, attempted to poison the jury pool, and filed and pressed bogus 
An Iowa man has accepted a plea bargain, and now faces up to 15 years in prison, for possession of a comic book filled with disgusting drawings of pre-teens in sexual situations. Again, drawings, not pictures. [ newsarama.com ] Because of prosecutorial misconduct, charges have been dropped against the guy who allegedly opened fire at Delaware State University in September 2007. The prosecutor withheld information on a witness who said that the alleged shooter wasn't the shooter. And in coverage that's absolutely up to Associated Press's standards, the prosecutor isn't named, and there's no mention of whether he or she will face even the slightest wrist-slap. [ Associated Press ] President Obama has claimed Bush-like dictatorial powers to hold people in prison without trial. [ Obsidian Wings ] From President Obama's disappointing speech last week, here's his alleged rebuke of war crimes and torture of the Bush-Cheney administration: Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell Translation: "Howdy, Kettle, I'm the Pot. What's cookin'?" [ The Guardian ] In an outrageous but not surprising decision, the Republican-dominated US Supreme Court has ruled that people illegally and unconstitutionally rounded up and held prisoner for months without charges after the Defense lawyers say that the Obama administration's proposed changes to Bush-Cheney's rules for military trials on Guantanamo are mostly cosmetic and nowhere near enough to give prisoners the fair trials that any accused person deserves. Here's what's perhaps the most troubling aspect of this, from deep in the New York Times' coverage: Mr. Obama's statement on Friday said that "the use of hearsay will be limited." But the filing showed that military prosecutors would continue to rely extensively on hearsay evidence that might be barred in federal court. A memorandum describing the administration's changes that was filed with the military judges said that such "hearsay admissibility remains much broader than in domestic courts" in the United States.One of the senior administration officials said that although federal courts bar many kinds of hearsay evidence, "the hearsay rule is not one of those things that is rooted in American You know, the rule against hearsay isn't just a tradition or a nicety. It's part of the Bill of Rights: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his In their ongoing experiment to find the stupidest line of bull that Americans will swallow, Republicans keep claiming that evil bad terrorists can't possibly be housed in America's prisons, I guess because Muslim terrorists are actually super-villains capable of leaping tall barbed-wired and electrified fences in a single bound. But, ah, guess what? It ain't so. [ National Security Network ] A study suggests that having cameras mounted all over everything and building a surveillance society doesn't have much impact on crime. [ The Guardian ] The feds and an undercover cop from Minnesota came to Iowa and infiltrated a peace groups in Iowa City last year. There probably won't be much or any outcry over this, because the group is described (by police) as an "anarchist collective". Anarchists get a bad rap, due to the 100-year-old mostly-false stereotype of a guy in a trenchcoat with a bomb. All the self-described anarchists I've ever known (a dozen or so) have been more peaceably-natured than your average American. [ Des Moines Register ] It's alleged that the Catholic Church in Maine is violating the law by being actively involved in signature-collection for a referendum to deny gays and lesbians civil rights. [ Associated Press ] 69% of Americans do not want Roe v. Wade to be overturned. That leaves 31% who might like to see such judicial activism. That's a landslide, and it suggests that most Americans understand that it's a complex, painful issue, and that most Americans are uncomfortable having the government overrule a woman's right to choose. [ MSNBC News ] The Obama administration continues doing jack diddly nothing about "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", while an endless parade of soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who'd be called heroes in any other context get drummed out of the military for the audacity of being gay. [ The Rachel Maddow Show, distilled by americablog.com ] Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) is leading a band of small government, states' rights, local-control politicians — Dems and Republicans — in opposing the DC City Council's move to recognize gay marriages performed in other parts of the country. [ Salon ] Philadelphia, Mississippi, the town so well known for its lynchings and deep-seated racism that Ronald Reagan announced his 1980 Presidential candidacy there, has elected its first black mayor. Wow.
US District Judge Arthur Spatt (Bush41 1989) is going to hold a hearing to decide whether to block Newsday from publishing photos of a politician in handcuffs. There's no serious clue in the coverage what possible grounds the judge would have for even considering such a decision, beyond the notion that the photos might damage the politician's chances of finding a fair jury to hear his case. Is that fair grounds for overriding the First Amendment? [ Newsday ] The Chicago alderman who ordered this mural destroyed — though it was on private property — certainly seems smug and unconcerned about it. I'm rooting for a lawsuit with a hefty price tag for the city to pay. [ Chicago Public Radio ] You may not know it, but if you have a wireless router, a cordless phone, remote car-door opener, baby monitor or cellphone in your house, the FCC claims the right to enter your home without a warrant at any time of the day or night in order to inspect Things are so idyllic in Illinois that the legislature has passed a law that would strip former Governor Rod Blagojevich of any income from any book he might write. "This is patently unconstitutional," says Blagojevich's publicist. He's right, but only if a judge considers the constitution, which is generally a coin-flip. Next month, Alysa Stanton will become the first African-American woman to be a full-fledged Jewish rabbi. [ Cable News Network ]
Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, the attorney for Guantanamo prisoner Binyam Mohamed, says he was beaten and tortured through means worse than waterboarding, and that everything he "confessed" to was tortured out of him, and that the CIA lied about pretty much everything concerning his arrest and interrogation. [ Cable News Network ] Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gave his approval to torture while he was White House counsel, several months before the memo from now-Federal Judge Jay Bybee (Bush43 2003) purportedly said it was legal. [ National Public Radio ] People at the CIA are worried, despondent even, over the possibility that their "harsh interrogations" might be investigated and punished, though President Obama has said that won't happen. If they'd conducted themselves within humane conditions they'd have nothing to be concerned over any "review". "Will I be in trouble five years from now for what I agree to do today?" The answer should be, you bet your damn ass, if you break the law. The Senate intelligence committee is pursuing its investigation into whether harsh interrogations, including waterboarding, brought forward worthwhile intelligence, as agency and Bush administration officials have BS. The question needs to be: is or was "torture" used? Of what possible use was intelligence that said Saddam might have al Qaeda operatives roaming Iraq? How does that have any relevance to justifying torture, other than in the tortured minds of Cheney/Bush to somehow cover their asses? How about just old fashioned common sense and the American concept of fairness? I know that neocons consider fairness and common sense as treason now but they've been traveling without a full deck mentally for so long they're too befuddled to be rational. Radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller underwent six seconds of waterboarding on Friday, with a paramedic standing by, with a polite countdown, with no restraints, with a pre-arranged signal to stop it, and with full knowledge that he would emerge alive and well. And even the arch-right Mancow, who had previously denied that waterboarding is torture, recognized immediately that it's drowning, and it's torture. [ balloon-juice.com ] Former Vice President Dick Cheney tried to stall and mislead the CIA Inspector General's investigation into US torture policies. [ TruthOut ] The corporate-controlled media gave former Vice President Cheney acres of ink and air time last week, covering yet another Cheney speech lauding torture and blasting the Obama administration for being less enthusiastic about torture. On at least three TV networks, Cheney's speech was accompanied by archival footage of the attacks of Not since the Civil War has any American who held power at Cheney's level pounced so vehemently and so quickly on his successors, and of course, any high-profile Democrat who launched attacks like this against a Republican would be shouted down as treasonous. To my knowledge, McClatchy was the only mainstream media source that took the trouble to actually check the facts on Cheney's claims (surprise — his speech really tortured the truth), for which McClathchy was taken to task by Brent Bozell's arch-right Media Research Center. [ McClatchy Newspapers ] In reviewing Phillippe Sands' book Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Value, the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin presents, in thorough but easily readable detail, a mountain of evidence that torture at Abu Ghraib wasn't coincidental or the work of low-level grunts, but reflected the policy of the Bush-Cheney administration. Of course, the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin can't do this in the Washington Post, so he does it in his blog. [ niemanwatchdog.org ] Last week, some black Muslims were arrested for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in the Bronx. The details of the case (like the Sears Tower case, like the Fort Dix case, like other such cases in recent years) sound suspiciously like entrapment to me. But disregarding that concern for the moment, let's consider the facts — the men arrested had no weapons, no explosives, and no plausible means to obtain weapons or explosives. They presented no immediate danger to life or limb. By my definition of "newsworthy" there's not much to this story, and no reason for their arrests to merit more than a few paragraphs in the back pages of New York newspapers. But, of course, the coverage was nationwide, omnipresent on every channel and on the front page of virtually every mainstream newspaper. You know and I know, if they hadn't been black and Muslim their arrest never would've made the news. [ Crooks & Liars ]
Pentagon officials claim without evidence that 74 released Guantanamo detainees are now engaging in terrorism. And the New York Times prints it, with no caveats of doubt until the article's seventh paragraph. [ ThinkProgess ] The Washington Post continues its new tradition of letting arch-conservatives have access to its editorial pages — not to write opinion pieces, but to lie. [ Media Matters ] It's curious that Associated Press quotes, without correcting, a fleet or conservatives as they falsely imply that prisoners from Guantanamo will be released among the American populace, but when a Democrat says "We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States," that's when AP interjects that "No one, of course, was talking about releasing terrorism suspects among the American populace." [ Media Matters ] The New Yorker thinks John Roberts is "the Supreme Court's stealth hard-liner", and I suddenly find myself thinking a lot less of The New Yorker. There's nothing that was "stealth" about Roberts' rabid right-wing tilt — it was obvious to anyone who spent ten minutes looking into his record when Bush nominated him. [ The New Yorker ]
Is there any precedent for the broadcast media's overworking of Mary Cheney as an expert analyst of former Veep Dick Cheney's pro-torture press appearances? Mary Cheney's only qualification as an "expert" is that she was presumably spawned by the sperm of Dick Cheney, but under the ordinary rules of mainstream journalism that should be a disqualification, not a qualification. [ Washington Monthly ] Fox's Bill O'Reilly wants cops to provide special hassles for blacks and Hispanics (as if cops haven't done exactly that forever). [ NewsHounds ] The San Diego Union-Tribune, in the midst of another round of layoffs, is requiring employees to sign a non-competition agreement, stipulating that they won't hire employees or recent ex-employees of the Union-Tribune at any other news operation. [ voiceofsandiego.org ] In defending his Philadelphia Inquirer from completely true reports that it's paying torture architect John Yoo to write a regular column, the Inquirer's editorial page editor, Harold Jackson, offered misleading information and smeared Will Bunch — the Philadelphia Daily News writer and Attytood blogger who broke the story. As Mrs Pynchon of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune frequently explained, a newspaper's credibility is always on the line, and Jackson has gone well past that line. [ Philadelphia Daily News ] Former Vice President Cheney gave a speech, and The Village Voice gave it the coverage it deserved. Journalism that reports such words straight, as if such thoughts are worthy of serious consideration, is journalism that just shows what's wrong with journalism. This, on the other hand, is fair, balanced, but not imbecilic coverage that lets the meaning of Cheney's words sink in a little. [ The Village Voice ]
The US government is apparently installing new leadership in occupied Afghanistan, though the New York Times isn't willing to say so in so many words. Administration officials insisted that the United States was not behind the idea of enlisting Mr. Khalilzad to serve in the Afghan government, and they gave no further details on what his duties might "They" — US officials — gave no further details on what his duties might be? This guy Zalmay Khalilzad, "who was President George W. Bush's ambassador to Afghanistan", sure sounds like what used to be known as a "mole". Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that there can be no compromise with Palestine, on Jerusalem, on statehood, on anything really. "The Palestinian problem" serves Israeli purposes so well, Netanyahu and other Israeli officials will continue to do all they can to ensure that the problem never goes away. [ Associated Press ]
It's easy to scoff when small towns and even big cities propose banning plastic bags, as if that's going to make any difference, but it really does. And we get to see how the difference adds up on a grand scale, now that plastic bags have been semi-banned in China. The regulations are, we're told, commonly flouted, but as Chinese customers have become accustomed to bringing their own re-usable bags to the grocery, China has saved the equivalent of 1.6 million tons of oil, in just the first year of the new restrictions. Seriously, if you've been putting it off, buy the re-usable bags. In addition to their lovely greenness, they're much better at carrying groceries. You can put 'em down on wet pavement without worrying that the bag will disintegrate, and you can load 'em heavy without worrying that the bag will rip. [ The Guardian ] Nepal's new Prime Minister is a communist, and I don't know much of anything about him but I like that. I'm not a communist, but I very strongly believe that the world will be better off with a few viable but non-totalitarian communist governments. [ Associated Press ] Blue whales, long since driven away from Alaska by whalers who decimated the species, are returning. This is genuine good news, a sliver of daylight piercing the planetary twilight. [ Associated Press ]
At the cordial request of the American Bankers Association, Congress has "asked" the Financial Accounting Standards Board to relax accounting rules, allowing banks to look healthier on paper than they really are. Hopefully, this solution will be applied in other areas of the economy as well, thus solving all the country's economic problems (she said, sarcastically). [ The Nation ] The so-called stress tests were obviously phony, so the Wall Street Journal did its own analysis, and concludes that more than 600 US banks are imperiled. [ Wall Street Journal ] At the Treasury Department under Timothy Geithner, thumbs are busily twiddling. [ Washington Post ] BankUnited has failed, been seized by the FDIC, and been sold to the Carlyle Group. [ Washington Business Journal ] Observe, as President Obama takes the health care crisis and quite probably makes it worse while pretending to fix it. [ Robert Reich's Blog ]
While the Republican plan for healthcare is seriously ridiculous, the Frank Luntz memo about selling the plan is slick, deceptive and it could work.I've written before that the modern Republican Party has been entirely about marketing rather than functioning substance, and that's why the Republicans have succeeded in terms of superficial wins in the last three decades, but their policies have been epic failures. Healthcare is one of many great examples. The Republicans heretofore have been successful using nearsighted bumper sticker slogans about bureaucrats, socialism and rationing while our private for-profit healthcare system has failed in every way other to make the healthcare providers very wealthy.So I urge you to read the Luntz memo here (pdf). Every Republican I've seen on cable news in the last week has quoted this thing verbatim. ... And with the president's healthcare fight on the horizon, we have to be ready. We can't allow the current system to continue on — unchecked, sinister, deceptive and, in too many cases, Almost 60% of American doctors support universal health care, which is, of course, not under consideration as a possible solution to the health care crisis. [ Reuters News Agency ] Not content to merely turn a blind eye to torture and war crimes, the Obama administration is also actively working to block a lawsuit over Cheney's illegal and almost inarguably treasonous outting of CIA agent Valerie Plame. [ At Largely ] There are plenty of perfectly valid reasons to criticize Rep Nancy Pelosi (D-California). Hell, I'm pretty much incapable of thinking of her without at least thinking of a criticism. It's certainly plausible that she was briefed on torture and never whispered a word to anyone — plausible but unproven and pretty much trivial. Let's have a big 'ol investigation to find out all about it!
But what can you say about people who can't criticize Pelosi without making their criticisms gender-based, without buckets of misogyny? What can you say beyond, they're Republicans being Republicans. Their native language is the insult, and the ruder and more vulgar the better. [ Crooks & Liars ] Those darn CIA documents that "prove" Pelosi was briefed on "EIT" (enhanced interrogation techniques) curiously use exactly that acronym, though the term and acronym weren't coined until years after the briefings allegedly took place. And further evidence keeps mounting and mounting and mounting, that the CIA's claims of which members of Congress were briefed on what methods of torture are bogus. It's so unexpected — who on earth would've thought that the CIA might be lying? [ TPM Muckraker ] The CIA, of course, has a long and well-known reputation for lying to Congress, and lying in general. Neocon revisionism has become so strident that it's difficult to believe we've gone through the 20th century awake. The CIA is a misnomer — it should've been renamed AFCO (Agency for Covert Operations) years ago. Its original purpose of gathering intelligence was scrapped in the Eisenhower administration after the Gary Powers U2 fiasco. After that incident the gathering of intelligence took a back seat to an escalation of covert operations, about which the CIA kept the Congress completely in the dark. When leaks of operations began to emerge, the CIA sat before the Congressional Committees and lied. For the Republicans now to shamefully lie in the media, feigning indignation at the thought that the CIA might lie, is mind-boggling.
Congressman John Boehner (R-Ohio) says that Pelosi "ought to either present the evidence or apologize". Boehner is, if you'll excuse the vernacular, a misleading sack of sh*t. Pelosi can't "produce the evidence" that the CIA lied to her, because in these briefings nobody is even allowed to take notes... except the CIA representative. Of course, Boehner knows this and so do you, but he's not trying to reach the audience that knows better. No, like most Republicans, he's trying to reach the audience that isn't all that well-informed, the audience that hears only the headlines and assumes that a Congressman like Boehner probably wouldn't stand in front of a microphone and make blatantly misleading statements. [ Washington Post ] The Republicans who are most loudly criticizing Pelosi for "attacking" the CIA have a long track record of attacking the CIA. [ TPM Muckraker ] The Democratic Party is doing all it can to discourage Rep Joe Sestak (D-Pennsylvania) from challenging newly born-again Senator Arlen Specter ('D'-Pennsylvania) in the upcoming Democratic primary. Which is, of course, all the more reason Sestak should run. Seriously, screw the Democratic Party — nobody who gives a damn about democratic principles should be supporting the Democratic Party in any way — they don't deserve a dime. But a few good Democrats deserve your support, and Joe Sestak might be one of them. [ Salon ]
Raw Story and too many people who should know better want you to be outraged that Thomas Hogan (Reagan 1982), the judge who sent the New York Times's Judith Miller to jail for refusing to name her sources, has been appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court. Look, if you want to be outraged that the FISA Court exists I'm right there with you, and if you're outraged that the Supreme Court's top fascist, John Roberts (Bush43 2005), gets to choose who sits on the FISA Court we're still in complete agreement. But if you're angry about Hogan getting a seat on that bench because he ordered Judith Miller jailed, you're missing the point. Judith Miller should have been jailed, for refusing to name her source. Journalists worth being called journalists use their power to watchdog the powerful and report on wrongdoing, but Judith Miller did the opposite — she took the somewhat sacrosanct reporter's vow of secrecy and gave it, not to a whistleblower or someone trying to expose a scandal, but to a DC insider trying to smear someone who tried to prevent a war based on lies. She refused to name the Bush-Cheney administration officials who outted a CIA agent in hopes of discrediting her husband's public statements that Bush, Cheney, et al were lying about the reasons to attack Iraq. Judith Miller wasn't doing a reporter's work, exposing corruption and criminality. She was assisting in the corruption and criminality. And there needs to be no special protection for someone doing that kind of work. [ Raw Story ] By a margin of 86-3, the US Senate voted Thursday to approve a $91.3 billion supplemental funding bill to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through September 30. The bill brings the total expended on the two wars of aggression to more than $900
Democracy in America, the good guys group founded by Howard Dean, is cleverly using Norm Coleman's legal battles over the Minnesota Senate election to raise funds for Democratic Party candidates. [ myngp.com ] And I'm no lawyer, but from the facts as described here, it sure looks to me like Norm Coleman owes Al Franken $161,510.63. [ Minnesota Post ] Here's a collection of lies and paranoia being peddled by the National Rifle Association (NRA), an organization I'm a bit embarrassed to admit I was once a member of. It was years ago, though, when the NRA was run by honest gun enthusiasts instead of deranged simpletons. [ Crooks & Liars ] "The era of apologizing for Republican mistakes of the past is now officially over," says Republican Party chairman Michael Steele. Uh, I do try to follow the news, but I guess I completely missed the era of apologizing for Republican mistakes. Seriously, which Republicans apologized and when did this happen? [ Cable News Network ] When Steele has a black audience, Obama's victory is "a testament to struggle, perseverance, and opportunity." When Steele has a white audience, he thinks Obama is a "magic negro" who just won because of liberal white
KBR's shoddy work in Iraq has electrocuted to death at least two, possibly as many as five American soldiers. But that didn't stop the Army from paying KBR tens of millions of dollars in bonuses. And when you think of KBR, remember — it was a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton until 2007, and remember the allegations of human trafficking. [ Reuters News Agency ] The bastards of Big Tobacco have lost an appeal, and stand again convicted of racketeering and fraud for decades of knowingly lying to consumers about the deadliness of smoking. [ Associated Press ] Wyeth cheated Medicare on prescription drugs, says the Justice Dept. Personally, I find these allegations awfully hard to disbelieve. [ Associated Press ] The headline here asks, Are Wall Street speculators driving up gasoline prices? Well, duh. This crap is no longer news. We go through it every spring now. We're robbed year after year, while politicians in Washington look the other way with the brush-off — "it's a matter of supply and demand" — and we just have to grin and bear it. Today gas at my corner gas station is at $2.45. By Memorial day it will be as close to $3.00 as they think they can get away with it. I shudder to think what July fourth will bring. The Federal Trade Commission is going after those "Your car warranty is about to expire" robocalling bastards. We've been called by these scumbags — Transcontinental Warranty Inc. — perhaps two dozen times, and we don't even own a car. [ Los Angeles Times ] AIG CEO Edward M. Liddy says he'll quit. I wonder how many millions of dollars he'll get for going away. [ MSNBC News ] These guys want you to send a message to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, and let him know that you don't approve of his lobbying to kill the Employee Free Choice Act. Knock yourself out, but I don't think Howard Schultz gives half a damn what you or I think. I'm mostly including the link just so I can briefly tee off on Starbucks. Even disregarding the fact that it's a giant soul-sucking chain in a line of business that used to be dominated by mom & pop shops, their coffee is just awful. The stink of burnt coffee permeates every Starbucks I've ever walked past, so I gotta assume it's burnt on purpose, burnt as policy. The one time I actually entered a Starbucks and tried to drink their coffee (someone else was buying) it was so rancid I couldn't take a third sip. So screw Starbucks and either brew it yourself or go to a non-plastic coffee shop. [ stopstarbucks.com ] Thanks to the DMCA, we need a Right-To-Repair Act not just for cars, but increasingly for all the things we Don't look for Green Day's new album at Wal-Mart. The band said no, they won't edit their songs to meet the big-box retailer's dubious moral standards. Gotta respect that. Me, I don't much listen to pop music any more. It's like a steady diet of Cheetos and Quarter Pounders for your ears. But I'm vaguely familiar with Green Day and for other old fogies like me I can vouch that they're good. [ MSNBC News ] Verizon to cops: we won't help you track down sick, possibly dying man unless you pay his $20 phone bill. [ boingboing.net ] While America's automakers are all agog over new federal mandates that might require fuel efficiency to reach 35 miles per gallon by 2016, Volkswagen says its two-hundred-and-thirty-five mpg car might be ready for sale next year. [ greencar.com ] Here's the silliest phony controversy of the week: The Obama White House sent a wreath to Arlington National Cemetery to remember and honor Civil War soldiers who fought for the Confederacy, same as every President has done every year since Woodrow Wilson was President, and somebody wants you to be offended. [ Dallas Morning News ]
This isn't a paid ad, just a happy memory: If you can afford a vacation it's pretty hard to beat the camaraderie and the just plain fun of a trip anywhere in America via Green Tortoise. [ Green Tortoise ] Michael Moore is about to go bowling for bailouts — his next documentary is all about Wall Street corruption and the Bush and Obama administrations' response, which Moore (and anyone with common sense) describes as "the biggest robbery in the history of this country." [ Variety ] I'm embarrassed to say it, but ABC's new V miniseries looks, well, looks like it might not
If you're looking for the latest dialogue, there's plenty of it and it's well worth a click to our dialogue page. [ Our dialogue page ] Media Matters Pro Publica ThinkProgress Washington Monthly TruthOut
| Big howdy | Disclaimer for dummies | Our privacy policy |
|
|
