Forgotten Posts

Somehow all these posts went to the wrong blog! So I'm catching up. The links died while stored in Blogger. Go figure. (Do a search if you absolutely have to know...)

Et tu, Georgie?

Capitol Hill Blue:
"Bush on the Constitution: "It's just a goddamned piece of paper."

Last month, Republican Congressional leaders filed into the Oval Office to meet with President George W. Bush and talk about renewing the controversial USA Patriot Act.
Several provisions of the act, passed in the shell shocked period immediately following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, caused enough anger that liberal groups like the American Civil Liberties Union had joined forces with prominent conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Bob Barr to oppose renewal.

GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

"I don"t give a goddamn," Bush retorted. "I"m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one aide in the meeting said. "There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush screamed back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!""

Every time I think of this exchange my blood pressure goes up. So where are all those right-wing defenders of the Constitution? Did all the blood of American patriots spilled red and often so our Chief Executive can dismiss what they bled for? Where, indeed, is the outrage? It's been over a month now and nary a peep from Fox News.

Modern Slavery

From CNN.com (December 9, 2005):

"MONMOUTH, Oregon (AP) -- Time off? What's that? Melinda Marie Jette, an adjunct professor at Western Oregon University, is teaching four courses this semester, and on the three days a week she has no classes, she grades papers, works on her own research and applies for tenure-track jobs.

Jette, who teaches early American history, is a member of a growing army of part-time professors at the nation's universities. Like her counterparts across the nation, she makes far less than her tenured colleagues and is kept guessing as to whether she will still be employed a few months down the line.

'All I do is work. That's all I do. It's not stable, professionally, or financially,' said Jette, who got her Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2004.

The number of adjuncts is on the rise nearly everywhere, as state universities search for ways to keep tuition and costs down and deal with falling state support. Lower-paid adjuncts like Jette free up their tenured colleagues for upper-level courses and research.

The American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 50,000 adjuncts around the country, says that 43 percent of college faculty members around the country are part-time, non-tenure-track professors, up from 33 percent a decade ago."

And it is getting worse…

Media for Sale

"AIM Press Release - Saudi Billionaire Boasts of Manipulating Fox News Coverage - December 7, 2005: "Saudi Billionaire Boasts of Manipulating Fox News Coverage
December 7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Accuracy in Media (AIM) is urging a full inquiry into a report that a Saudi billionaire caused the Fox News Channel (FNC) to dramatically alter its coverage of the Muslim riots in France after he called the network to complain. The Saudi billionaire, Al-waleed bin Talal, is a friend of News Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and controls an influential number of voting shares in the company.

'This report underscores the danger of giving foreign interests a significant financial stake in U.S. media companies,' declared Cliff Kincaid, editor of Accuracy in Media.

The controversial comments came at an Arab media conference featuring representatives of Time magazine, USA Today, PBS, The Wall Street Journal, and other news organizations. The conference and the Saudi Prince's growing influence in News Corporation are among the subjects of a new December-A AIM Report that has just been posted at the AIM website (www.aim.org). The report raises the specter of Arab money influencing News Corporation and other U.S. media companies.

Liberal journalist Danny Schechter, a participant in the conference, reports that Al-waleed, who is a member of the Saudi Royal Family and investor in the Fox News parent company News Corporation, gave an interview boasting that he had called Fox to complain about coverage of the 'Muslim riots' in France. He said he 'called as a viewer' and 'convinced them to change' the coverage because 'they were not Muslim riots but riots against poverty and inequality.' And 'they changed' the coverage, the Saudi reportedly said. "

So the facts change if you have money, now that is news.


Of War and Traffic

From Informed Comment:

"Rumsfeld complained at SAIS a week ago that there are 14,500 murders a year in the United States and 42,000 driving fatalities, and the US press isn't covering that, whereas, he implies, 43 people getting blown up on a bus in Baghdad is front page news.

Rumsfeld is committing a logical fallacy here. He is comparing apples and oranges. Does Rumsfeld think that there is not also a murder rate in Iraq beyond the guerrilla violence? The likelihood from the information that has leaked out from the Baghdad morgue is that Iraq is among the more murderous societies in the world at the moment. (As you would expect, since where there is no law and order, criminal elements act with impunity. "

Don't expect logic from a man whose boss thinks the Constitution is just a scrap of paper.