Today's Feature Story:
By: Cernig - Crooks and Liars
Yes, according to the Republican that Sarah Palin beat to become mayor of Wasilla.
[Former mayor] John Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. “She asked the library how she could go about banning books,” he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. “The librarian was aghast.” That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn’t be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving “full support” to the mayor.
This comes from a TIME article filed from Wasilla, where journalists are busy doing the vetting that McCain left to a secretive ultra-right group, the Council for National Policy.
The TIME article goes on to describe how Palin back-stabbed early supporters and put gag-orders on her department staff, telling them they couldn’t speak to reporters without her permission. It also outlines how she’s changed what is important to her in successive elections, always taking a position she believes will win her votes rather than taking a principled stand.
But have you noticed, as one of my C&L colleagues pointed out to me, how Palin uses that “not giving full support” phrase as the reason for attempting to have those who disagree with her fired? It’s implicit in her defense on Troopergate and seems to have played a part in her firing of her original police chief in Wasilla too. He, on the other hand, alleged big-politics interests behind her move.
[Irl] Stambaugh, the police chief and a member of Palin’s step-aerobics class, filed a lawsuit for wrongful termination, alleging that Palin terminated him in part at the behest of the National Rifle Association, because he had opposed a concealed-gun law that the NRA supported. He eventually lost the suit. The animosity spawned some talk of a recall attempt, but eventually Palin’s opponents in the city council opted for a more conciliatory route.
So this is the true Sarah Palin. Not only a devoted and principled believer in ultra-right causes and authoritarian control but also a cynical and manipulative politician willing to use underhanded methods and authoritarian edicts to get her way. (Yes, I know - in other words, a Republican.)
As my C&L colleague also says: “This woman is quickly moving from unqualified to downright scary.”
by Bill Hare - Smirking Chimp
Republicans assembled for their national convention along with those delivering talking points on television and radio are speaking with one voice on the subject of the pregnancy out of wedlock of the party’s vice-presidential candidate.
“Leave this alone!” is the cry, as Republicans are angered by the media daring to even mention the subject.
Fox News commentator and syndicated columnist Michele Malkin has once more gone ballistic, as she did in the 2004 presidential election when she angrily told Chris Matthews that John Kerry might have been his Vietnam War battlefield citations after he “shot himself.”
When Malkin was understandably scorned for her absurdity, she blamed the whole thing on Matthews and appeared on Brian Lamb’s C-Span early morning show the next day to sharply condemn the MSNBC talk show host.
Now Malkin is furious at fellow Fox commentator Alan Colmes for daring to mention the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter. The stalwart supporter of the impeachment and removal of office of William Jefferson Clinton for lying about an extra-marital affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky finds it deplorable that Colmes or anyone else in the media would even mention the Palin daughter’s pregnancy.
While the Republican delegates assembled in Minnesota, led by the evangelical right, seek to bury the incident while praising McCain for his selection of a good old right wing fundamentalist for the VP slot, they dodge the important question relating to this incident.
Nobody dodges quite so often or self-righteously as the moral hypocrites of the Republican right. The issue that needs to be thoroughly digested is that Sarah Palin along with other Republican self-proclaimed moralists oppose any instruction whatsoever regarding sexual matters, including high school students that, according to numerous confirmed scientific studies, are at or near their peak of repeated sexual excitation.
This period occurs when they are not nearly as mature as these students will be when they pass from their teens into adulthood.
Those individuals who have pointed out these important factors are scorned and ridiculed by those who proclaim that total abstinence is the only answer when the scientific record shows that, given a period of such acute overheat, sexual activities will and have commenced.
What would have happened had young Ms. Palin and her partner received sexual instruction? What about the scores of other high school students or those even younger who are unknown to us and have encountered identical or similar situations?
The predecessors of the current Republican moralists scorned with bilious hatred in the twentieth century Margaret Sanger, founder of the Planned Parenthood Federation. The smug self-righteous of that era considered Sanger one of the most heinous witches of the western world.
Those now telling us to stop talking or thinking about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s daughter had President Clinton perpetually in their hunting sights, and what a telling metaphor that is considering that Palin was photographed standing pridefully behind a dead and bloodied caribou that she killed.
She has been a lifelong member of the National Rifle Association. Some of the NRA’s most vocal members simultaneously shriek in opposition to any abortion rights as immoral while gunning down four-legged creatures such as deer as great sport.
On the subject of sport, how endearing it was to seek Clinton’s removal from office for lying about an extra-marital affair on an affidavit in a civil law proceeding. The hypocritical trio of Newt Gingrich, Bob Livingston and Henry Hyde went after Clinton hammer and tong, knowing fully well the gross hypocrisy underlying their actions.
Then Speaker of the House Gingrich from Georgia had previously ended the marriage to his first wife by informing her of his torrid affair and that he was leaving her. The news was delivered while she was recovering in the hospital from a cancer operation. This same Gingrich later admitted that, at the very time he served as designated national moral guardian, he was cheating on his then current wife.
After Gingrich was removed from the Speakership by his own party, his successor, Congressman Bob Livingston from New Orleans, resigned in disgrace. This occurred after Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine, sickened by Republican hypocrisy toward Clinton, outed the Speaker from Louisiana by publicizing his extra-marital affair.
Henry Hyde, who served the suburban Chicago district where young Hillary Rodham grew up on her way to becoming First Lady, presented himself as a symbol of moral rectitude who emphatically opposed abortion rights.
The public ultimately learned that the doggedly self-righteous Hyde, inveterate supporter of Clinton impeachment proceedings, not only had engaged in an extra-marital affair. Unlike the brief episode involving Clinton and Lewinsky, Hyde’s affair was extended and heated enough to destroy the marriage of the woman involved and break up her family.
Then, pious Republicans engaging in sanctimonious Minnesota convention proceedings, three other examples surface as well, but certainly do not include all the sexual hypocrisy existing in your ranks.
There was Senator David Vetter of Louisiana and his frequent use of call girls. In a comparable vein there was Congressman Mark Foley of Florida and his persistent pursuit of congressional page boys.
Then there was the incident of Senator Larry Craig of Idaho in the men’s room at Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport. How many of you family values Republican delegates thought about that as you were flying into that same airport for your latest sanctimonious convention exercise?
How many sanctimonious Republicans actually practice that Christian precept of “Let he who be without sin cast the first stone”?
by Nat Hentoff - The Canton Repository/Common Dreams
In his last months, President Bush is working to ensure that his successor will have the greatly expanded power of the executive branch - unprecedented in American history - that Bush instituted after 9/11. His chief enabler in this ever-increasing surveillance of American citizens is Attorney General Michael Mukasey.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and ranking minority member Arlen Specter are aware of Mukasey's plan for new FBI guidelines that could begin national security and criminal investigations of racial and ethnic groups without any evidence of wrongdoing. They have asked Mukasey to delay implementation until Congress can review the changes. Mukasey agreed but wants the expanded surveillance to begin Oct. 1.
Four Democratic senators - with the lamentable absence of their leader, Harry Reid - also have reminded the attorney general of his oath to protect the Constitution. Russ Feingold, Richard Durbin, Edward Kennedy and Sheldon Whitehouse warn not only Mukasey but also the rest of us that the new rules "might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities."
As Lara Jakes Jordan of The Associated Press (Aug. 18) pointed out: "The new policy, law enforcement officials said, would let agents open preliminary terrorism investigations after mining public records and intelligence (including tips from informants) to build a profile of traits that, taken together, were deemed suspicious." There would be no evidence of criminal activity.
Such "traits" could include a person's race or ethnicity.
Michael German, an FBI agent for 16 years and now a policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, warns that if Mukasey goes ahead, he will undermine the restrictions placed on the FBI after the dragnet approach of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO (domestic counter-intelligence program) during the 1950s and 1960s: "... These were corrections originally designed to prevent the type of overreach the FBI engaged in for years."
Long after those years, I obtained my FBI file through the Freedom of Information Act and found I had been "a person of interest" to COINTELPRO agents even though I was on record as a passionate anti-communist. I was just one of millions of innocent Americans looked into as Hoover promised "an FBI agent behind every mailbox."
Mukasey also has "proposed a new domestic-spying measure that would make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years" (The Washington Post, Aug. 16). State and local police agencies would not be hampered by Fourth Amendment's requirements that they must search and seize traces of our activities and beliefs only upon "probable cause" that we are, or have been or plan to be, involved in criminal actions. They would need only a suspicion that we somehow are involved in terrorism or are providing "material support" to terrorism. "Material support" can mean sending a check to a charitable organization that, unknown to the giver, provides funds to a group later listed by the government as a terrorist group.
The Fourth Amendment, contrary to Bush and Mukasey, mandates that state and local police and the FBI "particularly describe the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized" before an American can be entered into a database without probable cause of criminal activity.
If Bush and Mukasey succeed, state and local police and the FBI will increase their infiltration into organizations that object to administration policies as well as keep an unsleeping eye on various individuals with suspicious traits.
On Sept. 17, the occasionally independent FBI director, Robert Mueller, will testify at a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
He will have a patriotic opportunity to insist that Bush and Mukasey return to American citizens our Bill of Rights intact. And he should insist that public hearings be held on Mukasey's plan.
Meanwhile, I've heard nothing from Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain about the Mukasey revisions of the Bill of Rights. Do they care?
Do they remember that Sept. 17 is Constitution Day? Do you?
by Dean Baker - Common Dreams
Two months ago, I wrote a column saying that John McCain wants to drill in your toilet. I was joking at the time, but that comment turned out to be pretty much accurate. The Republicans' top slogan going into the fall elections is "drill here, drill now." It all depends on your definition of "here."
Anyhow, the basic point is straightforward. There is very little oil potentially available in the areas in which the Republicans are anxious to drill here and now. The Energy Information Agency (EIA) - remember, these people work for President Bush - tells us that the oil in the offshore-protected areas will eventually add about 0.2 percent to world's oil output. This would be sufficient to lower the price of gas by 3-4 cents a gallon.
Furthermore, even with the best efforts to drill here and now, it will still take many years to get any oil whatsoever from these protected areas. Regardless of how anxious Senator McCain and the Republicans might be to damage the environment, oil companies will not just spend tens of millions of dollars blindly drilling deepwater wells. They first have to survey the terrain carefully and then dig test wells. The EIA projects that it will take ten years before we get the first drops of oil from drilling in currently protected areas and close to twenty years before we get our full 3-4 cent a gallon savings. That won't do a lot of good for people trying to make ends meet this year.
The remarkable story here is that all the people who follow energy policy know these basic facts. Yet, the Republicans are pushing the "drill here, drill now" line because they are betting the public can be kept in the dark. Just as tens of millions of people supported the war in Iraq because they thought Saddam Hussein was tied to the attack on the World Trade Center, the Republicans are betting they gain votes in November because tens of millions of people will believe that they are offering a credible plan to substantially reduce gas prices in the near future.
In this respect, they are counting on the fact that the major national media, outlets like CBS, NBC, NPR, The New York Times and Washington Post are completely incompetent. The job of the media is to inform the public. If the media effectively informed the public on this issue, they would be telling people the Republicans are proposing an energy policy that can at best have a very modest impact on oil prices in the distant future, and no impact whatsoever for the near-term future.
Few, if any, news stories have made this point thus far. As a result, polls show the majority of voters believe that drilling in offshore protected areas can have a substantial impact on oil prices in the very near future.
Perhaps, we can introduce a system of merit pay for reporters and news producers in which their pay depends on their success in educating the public on key issues, just as many school districts make the pay of schoolteachers dependent on how well their students perform.
Schoolteachers whose students perform badly don't get raises and could even get fired. Imagine that we applied the same standards to CBS, NBC, NPR and The Washington Post. If their audience couldn't answer basic questions about important public policy issues, then the reporters responsible get their pay cut. If the audiences are especially poorly informed, then the reporters get fired.
Unfortunately, this sort of accountability in the media doesn't exist. Most political reporters sound like high school drama coaches as they spend their time talking about candidates' appearance and speaking mannerisms. They almost never bother to discuss the positions advocated by the candidates - that might require a few minutes of real work.
Of course, the candidates know the reporters won't ever bother to verify the claims they make, which gives them incentive to make whatever outlandish claims are most convenient. This is why we have Senator McCain promising to drill for oil in our toilets and most voters actually believing it will lower the price of gas.
by Timothy Karr - Huffington Post/Common Deams
In St. Paul this week, a new generation of media makers is under assault by the city's mayor and law enforcement officers.
These local officials think freedom of the press is a privilege that extends only to their closest allies in mainstream media.
For the rest of us, it's a crime.
While reports of brutal police arrests and home invasions are still coming in, by Tuesday night the picture became clear. Dozens of journalists, photographers, bloggers and videomakers had been arrested in an orchestrated round up of independents covering the Republican National Convention.
Targeting the New Press
The list of those detained ranges from the well-known (Democracy Now's Amy Goodman) and well-established (Associated Press photographer Matt Rourke) -- to the bootstrapping bloggers and video makers who are covering local protests for TheUptake.org, Twin Cities Indymedia, I-Witness and other outlets.
Police -- with firearms drawn -- raided a meeting of the video journalists and arrested independent media, bloggers and videomakers. Journalists covering protests have been pointed out by authorities, blasted with tear gas and pepper spray, and brutalized while in custody.
Democracy Now's Goodman reports that a U.S. Secret Service agent ripped her press credentials from her neck the moment she identified herself to him as a member of the media. Her producers emerged yesterday from their jail cells bloodied and scarred, reporting unusually harsh treatment at the hands of local and federal authorities.
Mayor Coleman's Silence
St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman hasn't responded to repeated phone and e-mail requests for comments on the targeting of journalists. Instead he praised the work of Police Chief John Harrington and painted those arrested as a small band of outsiders and vandals intent upon committing felonies against the good people of his city.
In less than a day, more than 35,000 people have signed a letter from Free Press (my employer) to Mayor Coleman condemning the arrests and demanding that he and local prosecutors immediately "free all detained journalists and drop all charges against them."
But when Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald pressed Harrington and Coleman to respond to widespread reports of journalist arrests, Harrington claimed ignorance while Coleman stood silent at his side.
Police spokesman Don Walsh intervened only to say that "arrest have been made" and that all those arrested were involved in criminal activities and not "simply non-participants."
Strib Forgets About Free Speech
In a bizarre editorial on Tuesday, the Minneapolis St. Paul Star Tribune hailed the police crackdown as "appropriate," blaming unrest on outsiders from beyond the Twin Cities.
"Many of those arrested in St. Paul weren't carrying IDs or wouldn't give their names. Those who were identified came from Lexington, Ky.; Brooklyn, N.Y.; Portland, Ore., and dozens of other U.S. cities," they wrote. "These weren't the sons and daughters of Highland Park and south Minneapolis."
The Star Tribune itself is owned by out-of-towners from Avista Capital Partner, a New York City private equity firm specializing in energy, healthcare and media investments.
Other than a brief story about Goodman's arrest, the paper has failed to report on the apparent targeting of independent reporters, even though groups like the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists have sounded the alarm.
Sweeping Real Journalism Under the Carpet
Here we have every indication of an orchestrated assault by federal and local law enforcement agencies to stifle independent sources of information. As shocking as this conduct is, more disturbing is the fact that the mayor's office and the local daily seem so unconcerned.
It's not difficult to understand why. With local leaders making every effort to roll out the welcome mat for mainstream media and the GOP leadership during a nationally televised convention, they'd rather sweep beneath the carpet those pesky independents who are showing us a side of the event that is less scripted and unready for prime time.
As an elected representative, Mayor Coleman should take a stand on behalf of a free press, rein in aggressive and violent tactics by local law enforcement, stop the targeting of journalists and immediately drop all charges against them.
As a powerful news organization, the Star Tribune should know better, and should be sticking up for a free press, regardless of what form it takes.
But this week, the democratic spirit of journalism can be witnessed not in the "Strib's" newsroom, but among the rough-hewn videos and blogs of those who are covering the convention from the ground up.
Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
The National Journal
Rep. Ron Paul's GOP presidential bid ran aground months ago, but on Tuesday, visitors to the Target Center--just across the Mississippi River from the Xcel Energy Center--might never have guessed. The Texan's "Rally for the Republic" had all the trappings of a traditional convention: an impressive list of speakers, boisterous supporters (including some dressed in Revolutionary War garb) chanting catchy slogans, and the proud candidate himself.
But there were no saccharine protestations of love of party or country at an event that emcee and MSNBC correspondent Tucker Carlson described as having "an aroma of libertarianism." Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura got some of the biggest cheers of the day when he interpreted the Second Amendment as the right to rise up in armed rebellion if government "gets out of control." In another crowd-pleasing declaration, the former pro wrestler known as "The Body" said, "The hell with this [USA] PATRIOT Act."
There was a palpable sense of excitement in the arena as more than 10,000 Paul followers began filing in seven hours before he was scheduled to speak. "There [are] more people here than at the Republican convention," said Colorado alternate delegate Joby Weeks. The McCain team, he quipped, "used the hurricane so they don't look too embarrassed when Ron Paul pulls a bigger crowd than they can."
"I wanted to see the extravaganza! This is big!" shouted Doug Jones of Colorado, who backed Paul in his state's primary but plans to vote for Libertarian Bob Barr in November.
Paul, a fiscal conservative who adamantly opposes the war in Iraq, insisted at a morning press conference that his Campaign for Liberty does not represent the dawning of a new political party. Rather, he labeled it "a plan to influence, if not have a lot of control of, the Republican Party--philosophically speaking." Philip Kourey, a 21-year-old alternate delegate from Pennsylvania, said GOP leaders should pay attention: "The party may not necessarily be as united as they think it is. There [are] tons of people here who are not very happy about" John McCain's nomination.
Rally-goers said they were jubilant that Paul is trying to turn his failed presidential campaign into a lasting movement of like-minded reformers. "What I'd like to see is moving beyond pure politics, being able to get a political action committee going, being able to get an educational organization founded, and being able to keep the movement together long after Ron has moved on," Twin Cities resident John Windsor said.
The Ron Paul revolution, Kourey said, is "just going to get bigger and bigger. And the message of freedom isn't going away any time soon."
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