Herr Froomkin Nails It Again

In one of the stupidest moves ever committed by the Washington Post, Dan Froomkin was purged from the online edition after Obama's election. Today he outlines a perennial problem in how word gets out to America of the doings of the powerful in Washington. His is an always-valuable perspective, worth adding to your reading list.

Plutocrats Corrupt Reporters

Blog Resumes

After an 8-year hiatus, Media Macedoine returns to my list of useful activities to pursue. I intend hereby to save my friends from stuffed mailboxes, sending them (instead of prose) simple URLs to these posts. Naturally anyone else who stumbles across this compendium is welcome to riffle its pages at leisure. Bon appetit!

Cheney Could be Forced to Testify in Plame Suit

The indefatigable Murray Waas, whose National Journal reporting has discomfited the Whitewash House perjurers at every point, appeared this morning on Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzales’s radio show “Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report.” The blockbuster teaser: Waas thinks the Paula Jones precedent of a sitting president testifying in a civil case will force Dick Cheney to testify in Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame’s civil suit against him for destroying her covert career.

AMY GOODMAN: Final question, Murray, and this goes back to the top story, and that is Scooter Libby getting a sentence of two-and-a-half years, quarter-million-dollar fine: what now happens to Valerie Plame? What happens to her lawsuit that she has against him?
MURRAY WAAS: Well, I think the civil suit -- the civil suit can proceed when the criminal stuff is over. So I think what it does, I think the thing that happens today, or perhaps it starts, pending the appeal, is that they can then proceed with that civil suit. And, you know, it’s very rare to bring a civil suit against the Vice President. The only kind of similar thing I can think of is the Paula Jones case against President Clinton, so we’re into uncharted territory. But it seems like it’s a much more substantial case or much more serious case than the Paula Jones case. So we’ve seen the Paula Jones case proceed, so we assume this will go ahead, too. And the civil case should be a vast source of information, discovery of new information, and perhaps the historical record will get straight, as, you know, more information about what happened comes out.
AMY GOODMAN: Could it lead to a parallel criminal investigation of Vice President Cheney?
MURRAY WAAS: Well, I think that Fitzgerald is pretty much -- his hands are tied beyond what happened today, absent Scooter Libby making a deal and testifying against any other official of the administration. But what’s interesting is what Ken Starr did, was look at erroneous, well, supposedly false statements for perjury, alleged perjury by President Clinton in the Paula Jones case. So, by having a vast civil record, by having days and days of sworn testimony and officials on the record, including perhaps the Vice President, it does open the possibility that those statements could be scrutinized by Pat Fitzgerald in the future or whoever else would have, you know, jurisdiction in case he wasn’t still in government at that point.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/06/1415230

Justice Official Admits Voter Suppression Acts

Despite forgetting more than Alberto Gonzales ever did, a top Justice official confirmed in testimony to the Senate that he led a deliberate attempt at voter suppression in Missouri.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usattys6jun06,1,3807235.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Peering Into The Bubble

If you only register at one site, let it be the Washington Post so you can read Dan Froomkin’s daily media roundup of Whitewash House reporting. It’s so good it’s not allowed in the paper, only online, and only on weekdays. I’ll post a link here daily in case you forget to go looking.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/06/05/BL2007060501030.html

God & Gold Win GOP Debate

Fortunately, nothing any of these irrelevant men said last night will ever make any difference. Viva Fred Thompson, the unannounced actor-candidate who will lose to the Dimmycrat in 2008.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/deja-vu-mccai_b_50886.html

Bush’s Feeble Effect

Bush tries to sing that great heroin-addict’s anthem, “Freem’s jist ‘nother word fer nothin’ left ta lose,” but instead of joining in on the chorus, Europe moans, “Iraq war has undercut trust in western values.”



http://www.guardian.co.uk/cartoons/stevebell/0,,2096569,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2096361,00.html

New Yorkers Scoff at Terrorist Plot

Administration hype again exaggerates influence of insane homeless men.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/6/12129/24459

Gitmo Detainee Decision Explained

Here’s a more detailed exploration of the legal quandary US torture defenders find themselves in following a military judge’s finding that certain Guantanamo detainees cannot be tried.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brent_mickum/2007/06/enemy_or_unlawful_enemy.html

Bush Officially Irrelevant Now

The intrepid Wonkette team riffs on Rethug candidates’ attitudes to the piss-poor failure they will never, ever succeed as Preznit.

http://wonkette.com/politics/go-to-bed-old-man-dept%27/republicans-promise-to-keep-bush-active-in-his-retirement-years-266402.php

Healthcare Should Be A Right, Not A Business

Dailykos diarist Snarky McAngus, from Texas, tells the sad tale of not-for-profits driven out of the marketplace by Rethugs unwilling to face competition from volunteers.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/4/1493/19935

Taxonomy of Lies

Dailykos diarist “jmcmeans” writes entertainingly on the linguistic pollution at the heart of the Rethug regime.

“Under the leadership of communications specialist and political advisor Karl Rove, the Bush Administration has perfected the art of prevarication to a level previously unknown in American politics. It sometimes seems that administration officials lie out of habit or just to keep in practice. See Attorney General Gonzales’s recent testimony to Congress.

“Some might simply wish to call these lies "baldfaced" or some other familiar or common term, but if critics use the term "baldfaced lies" the administration could deflect criticism simply by using spokesmen with a moustache or beard.

“The Bush administration’s untruths have been remarkably effective because the lies are more clever by half and thus more notable than the historic American political lie. These new lies need a name that acknowledges the creativity, some might even dare to call it genius, that goes into their creation. Therefore, in recognition of Karl Rove’s innovative leadership in the field of confabulation, henceforth a political half truth with an above average level of sophistication and sophistry should be called a Karlrovian Lie.”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/4/135637/0514

40 Years In Review

The scamps at Wonkette provide a pretty good look at forty years of history.

http://wonkette.com/politics/dept%27-of-it-was-40-years-ago-today/birthdays-in-the-news-progress-on-the-march-265839.php

Libby's in the Can

Jane Hamsher on G. Gordon Libby, er, Scooter's lack of remorse at his sentencing today for perjury and obstruction of justice. "Libby doesn't believe he's done anything wrong. The modern Republican party is built on the construct that all government is bad, and once in power they set about bringing into fruition this self-fulfilling prophecy with ruthless efficiency. "

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/06/05/notes-from-the-libby-sentencing/

Wingers Stabbing Bush in the Back

The sinking ship of Rethugism tries to abandon the rats in the Whitewash House.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/06/04/fraud/index.html

Cheney's Visitor Log Revealed

(click here to view)

John Sherffius Jun 5, 2007 EditorialCartoonists.com

Bloody Kansas 1859 vs. Exploding Baghdad 2007

NY Times opinion-editorialists called to order over levity in the face of criminal mischief.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/not-a-joke_b_50792.html

Radically Uninformed on Iraq

Six Senators read the full National Intelligence Estimate (to which Senate staff were refused access) before voting on Bush’s war in 2002. These did not include Clinton, Obama, Edwards, Kerry, Reid or Kennedy among Dimmycrat leaders nor Thompson, McCain, Brownback or McConnell among Rethugs.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce/the-iraq-war-vote-was-69_b_50742.html

Howdy

This blog will present items from my daily online or tree-based reading that strike me as provocative, insightful, hysterical, savagely ironic, or otherwise worth the goddam time it takes to read ‘em.

Sometimes I will annotate the links, sometimes not. I am still groping toward a blog format that allows me to notify friends of significant items without actually forcing said items down the clogged e-mail portions of the “series of tubes” that are said to constitute the internets.

So now I’m going for links. Some of the sites will require registration for content access. When/if I remember, I will include my registration info so you can get in if you haven’t registered yourself.

Bon Appetite!