Tim Russert Caught! Mischaracterized Howard Dean Statement

Tim Russert Caught! Mischaracterized Howard Dean Statement
Media Matters

We know Tim Russert knows far better than to pull something like this:

On the December 19 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, moderator Tim Russert mischaracterized remarks former Vermont Governor Howard Dean made on the program a week earlier about the Democratic Party's position on abortion. Russert played a clip from the December 12 Meet the Press, in which Dean suggested that the party "ought to make a home for pro-life Democrats" and have a "respectful dialogue" about the issue. Russert then asked Wall Street Journal national political editor John Harwood if Democrats are "rethinking their position on cultural, moral issues, on abortion?" But immediately preceding the section of the clip of Dean that Russert played, Dean had clearly stated that Democrats should change their "vocabulary" but not their "principles" on abortion, and that the Democrats are "the party of allowing people to make up their own minds about medical treatment."

Russert's video clip of Dean also cut out the middle portion of Dean's answer to Russert's question on abortion. In between the clips Russert aired, Dean had strongly asserted that Democrats who are pro-life should be welcomed into the party because they stand for other core Democratic values: "[T]hey're pro-life not just for unborn children. They're pro-life for investing in children's programs. They're pro-life for helping small children and young families. They're pro-life in making sure adequate medical care happens to children. That's what you so often lack on the Republican side."

So why on earth do you suppose he did it?

Let them know you know - and that you're not at all happy about it.

Contact:
Tim Russert mtp@msnbc.com

Contact:
Meet the Press Meet the Press

Contact:
NBC Nightly@NBC.com
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10112
Phone: 212-664-4444
Fax: 212-664-4426

Greensboro, NC Bloggers: You're In the News

Greensboro, NC Bloggers: You're In the News

The good word about the community spirit of bloggers of Greensboro, N.C. is spreading like wildfire across the blogiverse.

Today at the Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman expands upon Jay Rosen's Press Think story. Joe has posted a cross section of comment and links on the story -- "which could mark the first step in a new era for newspapers". Many of the links are from Greensboro-based blogs; he also links John Robinson's News-Record in Greensboro.

David K. Beckwith, also known as Anonymoses Hyperlincoln, of Charlotte N.C., has posted about a rather heated discussion taking place at the News Record and had also made mention of my long-distance connection with the Greensboro bunch. I recognized them, early on, as a group with the collective heart it takes to become a community that can effect real and meaningful democratic change. A writer at The American Street, Mr. Beckwith has also spread the saga of the Greensboro bunch at the widely-read website.

*I had written about this last week when showcasing Greensboro (Bloggers) Meet-Up organizer (and my literary colleague) Billy Jones' Christmas classic "The Reindeer Shoe".

At the Moderate Voice, I offered to vouch for my own hometown newspaper, the Post Standard, which has been a willing sponsor of blogging for over a year in Syracuse NY.

Greensboro has definitely got it goin' on!

I must also vouch for my hometown newspaper, The Post Standard of Syracuse N.Y.

The Syracuse newspapers have incorporated a plethora of blogs from freelance writers into their website at http://www.syracuse.com/weblogs/

I know this because I am one of their many bloggers. http://syracuse.com/weblogs/politics/

Jay Rosen has an excellent update on the story at Press Think, which includes a brief interview with Roch Smith Jr, founder of the aggregator and forum site Greensboro101. Jay also provides a discussion about the evolution of the News and Record's editor John Robinson's search for a new model in online journalism. The Lex Files and Ed Cone are used as resources.
*Great job on this story, Jay --Jude*

Kos: Exley doesn't "get it"

Kos: Exley doesn't "get it".

Kos spills it, straight as an arrow. He thinks Zach Exley, who acted as online communications chief for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, is an "idiot". A strong statement? Yes. Read Kos' blog to find out why this is his belief.

"...there's a reason people are still loyal to Dean even after Kerry has been abandoned by legions of Democrats.

Unlike Kerry's effort, what Dean and Trippi built was the stuff of political movements, and it was built on a foundation of communication. Exley can laugh this off all he wants, but the Kerry campaign never came close to matching up.

The Kerry campaign had little interest in communicating with supporters, and Zach Exley, regardless his fancy title, was a big part of the reason why."

Orange Stars of David?

"..The settlers are sending an appalling and misguided message to the people of Israel and the world..by likening the Holocaust to a political process, the horror of the Holocaust is being deligitimized and fuel is being provided for Holocaust denial.Using Holocaust imagery is an offense to survivors, the Jewish people, and taints the memory of Holocaust victims.."

--Abraham Foxman, National Director, Anti-Defamation League

Orange Stars of David:
Gaza Settlers Step Over the Line of Good Judgement

According to MSNBC, "some Jewish settlers said Tuesday they will soon start wearing orange stars on their shirts in a provocative campaign comparing the government’s Gaza withdrawal plan to the Nazi Holocaust."

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Anti-Defamation League has issued a statement against the use of the orange Star of David badges to protest the disengagement plan.

“This is a very troubling comparison. The Nazis put Jews “into gas chambers, killing them, crushing their bones, spreading the remains in great piles all over Europe. What is going on here?”

--Shevah Weiss, a Holocaust survivor

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“The plan to wear orange stars perverts the historical facts and damages the memory of the Shoah.”

--Yad Vashem’s director Avner Shalev, who has urged the settlers to refrain from using the stars.

Eliot Spitzer Watch 12/21

Eliot Spitzer Watch 12/21

-New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer will appear on CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer at 5:00 pm EST this afternoon.

-From Newsday:

"Will Tony Bennett leave his heart in Massapequa? The silky-voiced singer has created a buzz by agreeing to croon at Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi's Jan. 13 fund-raiser. Suozzi fans hope the event will show state Democrats that their guy could be an alternative to gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer. But it'd be hard to outdo the attorney general. Given his deep pockets, Spitzer could hire any headliner. The Rolling Stones, anyone?"

-From the Boston Globe:

"When Spitzer recently announced that he would run for governor of New York, Democrats cheered him as a figure popular enough to win back the Empire State's governorship and nervy enough to reconnect his party to the little guy through David-vs.-Goliath attacks on corporations. But while Spitzer seems like a pretty strong candidate for 2006, whether or not three-term incumbent George Pataki stands for reelection, his brand of politics runs counter to almost all the trends that were visible in the recent election: He is running as a non-ideological enforcer of the public interest in a political era hot-wired with ideology."

-From The Seattle Post-Intelligencer-

"..an investigation begun in the spring by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer resulted in a series of subpoenas and lawsuits against major brokers and insurance companies. His actions sent the share prices of the companies tumbling, and legal and regulatory action in 2005 could further affect earnings, analysts say."

Our soldiers at Mosul

AP photo, BBC

"..Amid the screaming and thick smoke in the tent, soldiers turned their tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot [..]It made no difference whether the casualties were soldiers or civilians, Americans or Iraqis [..] "They were all brothers in arms taking care of one another." [..] Insurgents have fired mortars at the chow hall more than 30 times this year."

Our soldiers at Mosul

I am beyond speech right now.

Ansar al-Sunna has claimed responsibility for the attack.

James Reynolds, a BBC correspondent, says the military was aware its dining hall was vulnerable to attack and was building a stronger structure nearby.

They were sitting ducks and we knew it. The risk was acceptable to us. Knowing we sent those soldiers to Mosul in a rush to crush an insurgency without adequate or proper security, the words "Bring them home!" are the only ones that repeat in my mind...over and over again. I can't help it. I know the President wants to bring democracy to Iraq, but the people of Iraq must learn to desire it strongly enough to fight for it themselves. I don't see it happening. We can't fight their civil wars for them forever. Is my patience wearing thin? You bet your Army boots, it is!

I'm not alone. Any belief in a contribution to American security resulting from the Iraq war is diminished by the fact that, in a recent poll, 70% of Americans said they thought any gains have come at an "unacceptable" cost in military casualties. 56% in the Washington Post-ABC News survey said the Iraq War was a mistake, period.

A Tribute to Greg Rund

"Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him."

--Henry Miller

A Tribute to Greg Rund


Photo: ABC News

My heart goes out to the family of fallen marine Greg Rund. His story caught my eye because he was a survivor of the infamous Columbine High School massacre. He had been a freshman at the time. Yet, that's not what his family would have you remember about their son. "Greg made us so proud, but he never wanted to be recognized for his actions," said the statement from his family. "Neither Columbine nor Iraq was to define him." People who knew him best said that Greg had a "God-given gift" of being able to make people smile and laugh.

It was this depth of feeling, his pastor said, that led him to enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps just a month after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

"His passion touched his patriotism on 9/11," said the Rev. Stephen Poos-Benson at the service at Columbine United Church. "His sense of patriotism was offended. Greg felt called to respond."

Hold Rumsfeld Accountable, Regardless of Sentiment

Hold Rumsfeld Accountable, Regardless of Sentiment

President Bush may believe Donald Rumsfeld is a caring soul with the best heart in the world, but nothing will change the fact that a lot of our troops have died and have been maimed because of his piss-poor ideas.

The road the HELL is paved with good intentions.

Hold him accountable.

Make him step down.

Jacoby Book on "Freethinkers" Reviewed at The Revealer

Jacoby Book on "Freethinkers" Reviewed at The Revealer

The Revealer, edited by Jeff Sharlet, is one of the best blogs on the web, in my opinion. I recently nominated them best of the blogs at Wampum.


As a self-avowed "freethinker", I enjoyed reading Brendan Boyle's review of Susan Jacoby's book Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism (Metropolitan Books, 2004):

“Freethinker” isn’t a very fashionable term. The adjective-noun coupling gives it a faintly archaic redolence. Susan Jacoby would like her book to inject new life into this once-venerable but now out-of-favor designation. The first two-thirds of the book is a loving treatment of an assortment of so-called secular humanists. It’s a wildly mixed bag. Jefferson takes top billing, followed by Revolutionary insurrectionist Thomas Paine, firebrand abolitionist William Garrison, emancipator-cum-cipher Abraham Lincoln, Seneca Falls planners Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and the “Great Agnostic” Robert Ingersoll. Along the way, Walt Whitman, Clarence Darrow, and Margaret Sanger make brief cameos.

I live just a short drive from Seneca Falls, the home of the alleged real-life setting for "It's A Wonderful Life's" Bedford Falls. A few years ago, I attended a "gala preview" in Seneca Falls with guest speakers Ken Burns and Paul Barnes, who'd just finished preparing their PBS documentary about Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, titled "Not For Ourselves Alone". Elizabeth Cady Stanton's great-great granddaughter (in her 80's) was in attendance, and what I recall best about her was that she stood up and spoke about how much her own grey curls resembled those of her beloved Grandmother's. Having lost none of her Grandmother's determination to keep women independent and disappointed that the 19th amendment had still not come to the fruition of what she imagined her Grandmother's expectation would have been, the contemporary "Cady-Stanton" had never lost the sentiment and Christian-based spirit that tied her to her ancestor through the wisp of those sweet grey curls.

Brendan Boyle's review strikes a chord of harmonious agreement in me when he comments on the decidedly spiritual emptiness of Jacoby's "freethinker" frames:

"Jacoby is embarrassed by the faintest whiff of religion in one of her freethinkers. Susan Anthony somberly mused that, “if it be true that we die like the flower, leaving behind only the fragrance … what a delusion has the race ever been in … what a dream is the life of man.” For this weakness of will, Jacoby bumps her down one notch in the secularist standings and elevates instead Ernestine Rose, Polish emigre and hardened atheist “who unflinchingly and unfailingly rejected the idea that it was possible to communicate with spirits of the dead.” This is the lowest point of the book. To read Jacoby, we might have thought Anthony was leading a séance, conjuring up spirits from the other side. But of course she is doing nothing of the sort. Her existential sounding -- echoed by other freethinkers like Garrison, Lincoln, and Ingersoll -- is not a failure of nerve but expressions of a deeply felt human need to see purpose in the world."

Henry Ward Beecher said: "Faith is spiritualized imagination."
Imagination.
That leads me to a freethinking literary luminary named Anais Nin, who said:"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do." Transcendence of thought leads to great vision. When selecting those whose thought has been truly "free", we secularists tend to idolize all we de-spiritualize and enthrone those with the steeliest assuredness that God does not come into the equation whatsoever. Oh, how I disagree. "Freethinking" has its place in the spirit as well as in the secular world and I would personally place those who, throughout the course of their lives, examine all thought - mystical and secular - as the most careful, trustworthy, humble, and completely free thinkers of all.

Let Elizabeth Cady Stanton's own words ring loud and true:

"The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls."

--Elizabeth Cady Stanton

~~~~~~~~~~

According to The Revealer, Florida State Senator Daniel Webster said last week that he is "exploring the possibility" of proposing a constitutional amendment to repeal Florida's separation of church and state. The proposal comes in the wake of a November Florida court ruling against using vouchers for religious schools, and Webster said he thought of proposing an amendment after realizing "how clear the constitution seems on the matter" of separation of church and state. The Florida A.C.L.U. translates: "'So if the constitution stands in the way of their radical agenda, don't change the radical agenda -- change the constitution.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The writers at the Revealer say they can't stand to read yet another story about the battle for Christmas, but if we're convinced that American Christians are victims, or that Christmas is a Christian conspiracy, "here's some fuel for our indignation from The Washington Post's Alan Cooperman. Quote: "There's a push-back by many conservative Christians, perhaps emboldened by the recent election.."
Hardcore Christmas partisans will want to turn to the New York Observer's Nicholas Von Hoffman, who investigates the nasty economic roots of the "suicide season." My favorite line: "The mobs of long ago have become the agitated shoppers of today."

More news on the Clinton Curtis story

More news on the Clinton Curtis story

Here's the latest on that Clinton Curis story that you are definitely NOT hearing on CNN or MSNBC or FOX News. (This, my dear readers, is where bloggers are of the greatest service to the people of their country).

According to RAW STORY (and thanks to Brad Blog), we learn that Curtis' former employer (who allegedly asked him to create a vote-rigging prototype) has been caught in an apparent (substantial) lie about hiring an illegal alien which may be related to a case of missile technolgy-based Chinese spying. (The illegal alien had pled guilty to trying to send missile parts to Beijing).

I cannot believe this stuff is happening so far below the mainstream media's detection radar. Perhaps they are afraid to talk about it. Who knows? All I know is that I am thankful for bloggers like John Byrne and Brad Friedman.

How We Became Barbarians

photo credit: zeldapinwheel.com

"Someone who can scarf popcorn all through *both* Kill Bills will go hoarse about the killing of innocents in Israel or Iraq or anywhere suitably distant. Someone who'd cheer a B-52 strike on Baghdad will murmur feelingly about the perfect little hands of a second trimester fetus [..]..the claptrap about terrorism has gone far enough. Brutes should at least recognize their own brutality. None of us, left, right, or center, are all that bothered about the deliberate killing of innocents. [...] ..What makes atrocities criminal, even for barbarians like ourselves, is when they go beyond what self-interest commands..."


How We Became Barbarians

Michael Neumann, philosophy professor at Trent University in Ontario, Canada wants to know: Are you in touch with your inner terrorist?

Michael Hardt: On Collaboration & 'The Multitude'

Michael Hardt: On Collaboration & 'The Multitude'

There is an interview with co-author of the book Empire, Michael Hardt at the minnesota review titled "The Collaborator and the Multitude".

A section of the book explores "how the multitude can become a political subject," and describes the multitude as "an insurgent multitude against imperial power." Walter Benn Michaels, in another minnesota review interview, has called the section of the book that deals with this subject matter as a "paean to the poor, as if poverty were a culture."

""[ .. ]in Empire, which I've just been writing about, you get Hardt and Negri, who are not interested in culture but who ontologize the world the same way that cultural identity does, so they reach a point where they have this kind of paean to the poor, as if poverty were a culture. You want to say it's not the point to admire the poor; surely the point is to get rid of the fact of their being poor. The difference between the rich and the poor is that the rich, as Hemingway kept saying, have more money. When you start treating the poor as an identity category, what's left of your Marxism is precious little."

Hardt's comments, in part:

"If we recognize that global power is tending toward the form we describe as Empire, and that we're inside of that, and that we're all contaminated by it and part of it, and that there's no outside from which we could claim purity—that recognition doesn't have to be a resignation. It can be the basis of a project from within, posing something different. [ .. ]
My feeling is that September 11, and then the war on terrorism afterwards has been very comforting to a certain style of left theorists, or even left political thinkers. Prior to that it seemed like the old concepts didn't work and things were changing in the world, forming new kinds of power, and the old forms of political resistance didn't work. Then, post-September 11 and through Afghanistan and particularly with Iraq, it's as if all the old categories work again. What we have is U.S. imperialism, what we need is a national liberation struggle, etc. Which leads to a quite active debate: Should the anti-war movement be explicitly in support of the Iraqi national resistance? Of course, if it's imperialism, that's what you should do. That's what we did throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies. The response to imperialism is national liberation struggle."

For those who collaborate on writing projects, I found this statement by Michael Hardt, who co-authored Empire (Harvard 2000) with Antonio Negri, to be interesting:

"What interests me is partly a question about voice. I've noticed that when I write with Toni, or when he writes with me, one tends to write differently. The first way of describing it is that one tends to ventriloquize, even with the ideas of the other person. Each of you tries to write in the voice of the other. But I think that you're not really writing in the voice of the other; you're both writing in some third voice that's neither of your voices. I'm tempted to call it an anonymous voice, but if you want to connect it to multitude it would better if it were a kind of common voice."

Holiday Card

From the Talent Company
*thanks to Nick Lewis for pointing it out

Eliot Spitzer 2006

"The Old Testament teaches that a people without vision will perish. That's so relevant for us today in New York. We need a vision for change because without it, this state and its
great tradition of providing unparalleled
opportunity will be further eroded."

-Eliot Spitzer

Eliot Spitzer 2006

Become a friend of Eliot Spitzer here. (I've become a friend of Eliot- I encourage you to join me.)

Learn more about Eliot here.

Contributions to Eliot's campaign can be made here.

In today's headlines:

WSTM/TV3 Syracuse:Two years out, Democrats appear more prepared for governor's race

"Democrats appear more prepared for the governor's race of 2006 than do Republicans who have held the job for the past decade. That's because the Democrats have a clear front-runner. Earlier this month, state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced he is definitely running for governor."

NY Daily News: Gov. Flip-flopper - Pataki is a leader adrift and his have-it-both-ways stand on fair hikes is the perfect symbol

"When George Pataki first ran for governor in 1994, the subway fare was $1.25, and candidate Pataki said an "increase is something we do not want." He was elected governor, gaining control of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, and within a year the fare jumped to $1.50. When Pataki sought a third term in 2002, he again opposed a fare hike, saying, "We want to have the system operate more efficiently and attract more riders ... that's the way to balance the budget." He was reelected - and soon the fare hit $2."

Poughkeepsie Journal: Spitzer contacts local station in payola probe - Radio pay-for-play is investigated

"New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has contacted WDST (100.1 FM) in Woodstock as part of an investigation into pay-for-play practices in the music industry...Pay-for-play, or payola, involves record companies or independent promoters working for record companies paying radio stations with money or other compensation in return for the station playing particular songs more than others. Payola is illegal when not disclosed to listeners."

Matthew Gross Promotes GoMainStream.org

Mathew Gross Promotes GoMainStream.org

Mathew Gross, Mark Sundeen, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are appealing to values which most Americans hold in common - regardless of whether we're on the right or left; whether we live in cities or in rural areas; whether our respective states are considered politically red or blue.

We all want clean air, clean water, and open lands.

Matt asks us to take one minute to learn about his new organization and to forward this email to everyone you know, and ask them to join GoMainStream.org.

His e-mail reads:

We’re building an army, and you are among the first to sign up.

GoMainStream.org was launched when Mark Sundeen and I joined up with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and asked ourselves -- could we combine Bobby’s dedication to defending the environment with our lessons from the Dean campaign and revitalize the conservation movement in the United States?

We formed GoMainStream.org as an answer to that question.

We formed GoMainStream.org because more than 90% of Americans hold our values in common -- clean air, clean water, open lands -- yet 40% think that "most environmental activists don’t really care about people."

We formed GoMainStream because the corporate plunderers have hijacked our public lands and the public process.

And we formed GoMainStream because they’ve hijacked our language. They call polluting the air "Clear Skies" -- and they call it "development" and "access" when they lock Americans out of the public lands that we hike, hunt, fish and love.

We’re going to change that. And we’re going to change it by building a new coalition from the bottom-up -- an organization that helps Americans take action and that works to reframe the debate about the future of our country.

We’re going to do it by connecting hunters fighting to maintain access to elk habitat with suburbanites combating urban sprawl.

Because conservation is not an issue of right or left, or urban versus rural, or red versus blue.

It’s an issue of who we are as Americans.

In the coming months, we’ll be rolling out the online elements of GoMainStream.org -- tools that will speed up the networking potential of online activists, and that empower Americans to defend our way of life.

But first we have to build the army, and you can help today.

Take one minute to forward this email to everyone you know, and ask them to join us. They can sign up by clicking here:

http://www.gomainstream.org

Thank you for being with us at the very beginning.

Mathew Gross
GoMainStream.org

At Billy Jones' website, Billy speaks highly of Matt and the hope for the success of his new organization:

Ever heard of Mathew Gross? How about Howard Dean? Well it just so happens that my hometown friend and neighbor, Matt Gross, is the man who helped found Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidental Internet movement. That’s right, Matt Gross gave up months and months of his life to work-- sometimes for free-- to put Howard Dean in the White house. Regretfully-- at least for some of us-- it just didn’t work out.

But you haven’t heard the end of Mathew Gross, not yet. Through the use of his weblog MathewGross.com, Matt has managed to cultivate a daily readership of thousands upon thousands of everyday people like me and you who see the current White house administration as the leaders of a horde of Lemmings bent on destroying themselves and everything else with them. Now Mathew Gross, his friend, Mark Sundeen, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have teamed-up to start their biggest project yet-- GoMainStream.org-- a nonprofit environmental organization that all of us, true liberals and true conservatives alike, can join to help save the world from current and future environmental nightmares.

*Well-said, Billy*

Mel Gilles will be providing critical organizing support for GoMainstream.org.

Karma

Karma

For what it's worth, I took a karma test today. The test is meant to measure what shape your karma's in.

I was told:

jude, in the last year you've earned 874 karma points

You've earned these points by doing good things, therefore allowing good things to circle back to you. There are 6 different ways people earn karma, and by looking at your responses to this test, we can tell that your compassionate nature is earning you the most karma.

In fact, you seem to have a real knack for both understanding what people are going through and finding ways to support them during difficult times. By being a sensitive person with a keen sense of empathy, you can do much to alleviate others' pain. This has been an important way you've earned your karma up to this point. This kindness strengthens your current relationships but suggests it will come back to you positively in the future. Through your concerted efforts to care about and tend to the needs of others, you generate good karma for yourself and the universe.

I find this to be an accurate statement about my nature. Over the past year, I have donated many hours to helping others in my community, with no expectation of reward for myself. The old "I feel your pain" cliche is true for me. Sometimes I wish I could escape feeling the pain of others, but it is my nature to be empathetic at all times. I should have a gigantic "E" etched into my forehead. What does it get me? I'm not sure--and I don't really care--but I did score those 874 "Karma points". Yee ha.

Jude, Patron Saint of Other's Walking Shoes.

Washington Times'"reliable source" on al-Qaqaa Story is fired

Washington Times'"reliable source" on al-Qaqaa Story is fired

Last October I told you about a Washington Times story by Bill Gertz in which a so-called "reliable source" at the Pentagon, Jack Shaw (deputy undersecretary for international technology security) gave "reliable information" that Russia was allegedly behind the 342 tons of missing explosives from al-Qaqaa.

Well, it seems Jack Shaw's been canned (after refusing to resign).

Laura Rozen says Shaw seems to believe he's a victim of payback for his investigation of an Iraq cell phone deal allegedly benefiting friends of the office of Douglas Feith.

Chalk it up to an overabundance of trouble in Undersecretary paradise.

Omar & Muhammad: Propagandists?

"Many people (notably, Prof. Juan Cole, but there are others) think that Omar & Muhammad might be part of a Administration spin campaign--an accusation that, given this Administration's, shall we say, problematic relationship with truth and reality, isn't too far-fetched.."

Omar & Muhammad: Propagandists?

"...the issue of the Iraq War is very emotional for a lot of people, including me. This is the first war, after all, in which we chose to go to war. People invested a lot of their credibility, on both sides, on the outcome of the war. Seeing as how it's turned out so far, how can anybody be surprised at the heat of the rhetoric? People who were, and remain, pro-war, are now in the position of grasping at anything, no matter how tenuous, in order to justify their position, which in hindsight, was the wrong one to take.

I think what Omar & Muhammad are doing in Iraq is courageous, and if that tragic land is going to have any shot at freedom, it's going to be because of people like them, who take a bold leap into the unknown maelstrom of democracy. I salute their efforts, and if I have a chance to tell them face to face, I'll do so.

Nevertheless, no matter how badly, how earnestly [Jeff] Jarvis and other pro-war bloggers wish it to be otherwise, the majority of Iraqis are highly opposed to our occupation of Iraq. And in that context, someone like Riverbend is more reflective of what Ahmed in the souk really feels."

--Arkhangel

Bureaucratic Nightmare: Shirin Ebadi Book Squelched by US Government

Bureaucratic Nightmare: Shirin Ebadi Book Squelched by US Government



Shirin Ebadi is one of my personal heroines. I was flabbergasted to read the guest editorial at Juan Cole's Informed Comment today. It was written by William Fisher,who has managed economic development programs in the Middle East for the US State Department and the US Agency for International Development, and served in the international affairs area in the Kennedy administration.

Mr. Fisher claims that Iranian human rights activist/Nobel Prize winner Shirin Ebadi and her literary agent are suing the U.S. Treasury Department - and the Treasury Department obviously hasn’t yet told our State Department. Due to US governmental bureaucracy, a virtual "tipping of the hat" to Iranian law is being allowed to squelch the publication of Mme. Ebadi's new book in the United States. The Treasury Department has ruled it illegal “to enhance the value of anything created in Iran without permission” -- including books. As current laws stand, if Mme. Ebadi's literary agent were to help prepare the manuscript to Mme. Ebadi's new book for an American audience, both she and Mme. Ebadi would be subject to punishment -- 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for an individual or $1 million for a publishing house.

William Fisher says:

"Publication of the Ebadi book in the US would be perfectly OK with Treasury if the book were already published in Iran. But the Catch-22 here is that the ayatollahs have already foreclosed this option.

And now an anachronistic US law is having the same effect."

UPDATE: The WSJ reports that a lawyer for Mme. Ebadi has said that new regulations have been written for Treasury which "might be sufficient to end the lawsuit".

*Thanks to Jaded Reality for pointing this out to me.

The Reindeer Shoe by Billy Jones

The Reindeer Shoe
A Christmas Story For All




How would you like to read a Christmas story that will warm your heart and put you in the spirit of this holiday season?


I suggest that you read The Reindeer Shoe by Billy Jones, also known as Billy the Blogging Poet.


It begins with Billy's foreward, an interesting history of what we know today as the Christmas celebration. Then begins his magical tale, a new classic for all to enjoy- regardless of our age.





Billy is mentioned at Jay Rosen's Press Think today for his involvement with the Greensboro101 blogging community. Ed Cone is also given the honor he's due for his efforts in knitting the community together. The people in Greensboro have such talent - and such heart! I wonder - is it something in the drinking water? Whatever it is, it makes you wish you were there.