PBS President took on this very question in her speech defending the role of PBS at National Press Club last week. It was broadcast on C-Span over the weekend. This is here answer:

"Do we still need PBS in a media landscape of hundreds of choices" and "is PBS still an independent media service, free from the influence of funders or politics?"

The answers are "Yes" and "Yes". More than ever.

In a media environment where everyone seems to be selling something and everything is for sale, our non commercial model is more important than ever

In a time where ownership of media consolidating into bigger businesses with fewer owners, our national/local model with autonomous, community based media institutions more important than ever.

And in a time when media seems increasingly partisan and the public's trust of it lower, our independence and diversity of perspectives is more needed than ever.

She addresses the funding issue:

But to keep sesame street open and Elmo happy and Oscar less grouchy and PBS and stations able to pursue a very innovative agenda for the future, we are going to need to find new resources. And it is that challenge, far more than any political machinations or personal conflicts, which is the greatest challenge to public television in America today.

To give you a frame of reference of how other countries pay for their own public broadcasters, in the UK British citizen pay an annual $200 license on their televisions to support the BBC.

In Japan, it's $240 per household.

In America, we pay $1 per person, per year for public television.

All together, federal dollars account for about 15% of the funding for the public television system. The rest comes from significant support from foundations, corporations and "viewers like you."

If it is just 15%, you may ask, can't you find that money somewhere else? The answer is no, because it's not just the money, it's the principle here:

A democracy needs a public broadcasting service and public money invested in it…just like public money goes to public parks when there are plenty of private ones…and even with bookstores on every corner, we still need public libraries, supported by public funds.

Her speech and her argument for the continuance of PBS and it's role in a healthy democracy are very compelling. Read the whole thing. It's well worth your time.

Posted by andrew at 03:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While most Americans are traveling, camping, having backyard barbeques and drinking themselves into a three day slumber on Memorial Day Weekend, a small but enthusiastic group of belly dancers have been meeting in Northern California for the past 32 years to celebrate their art form and compete for the crown of "Belly Dancer of the Year".

I had been hearing about "The Pageant" for years. It's an occupational hazard of dating a belly dancer. There are two things that will happen to you if you are lucky enough to date a dancer. The first is that you will have lots of incredible sex. The second is that you will see lots of belly dancing. Lots and lots of belly dancing. A tremendous amount of belly dancing.

I can't tell you how many festivals, restaurants and private parties I've been to since I met Jennifer back in 2001. I've seen hundreds of dancers. We broke up a long time ago and yet I still find myself dragged to this stuff. I enjoy it, in general, but sometimes it gets a little much, as would anything. I thought Belly Dancer of Year would be the apotheosis of this overexposure, but I was totally wrong. I was mesmerized.

I had sort of vested interest, since I was conscripted to design the program for the event. I put tons of work into the damn thing and was looking forward to seeing it printed. But the printer totally fucked up the job and when I saw the programs yesterday I wanted to kill. When you put so much work into something and somebody else fucks it up, it's tough to deal with. The pictures were all printed way to dark. Somehow the title font was printed in black so you couldn't see part of it. The program cover was printed at a slight angle so there was some of the white paper visible above the picture. Because the internal pages were printed so dark, it was hard to read the text. From my perspective it completely sucked so when people came up to me to compliment the program I really had to hold my tongue. I was embarrassed. I didn't want to take credit for something that looked that bad. That said, the promoter of the pageant, Leea Azizz, was beside herself with joy about it, so who am I to complain? Next year we'll find a printer that understands the concept of "proofing".

I got over it and settled in to watch the competition. Rather than find myself bored out of my mind as I expected (there were 21 performances in the solo category alone), I was consumed with taking pictures of these incredible dancers. So many of them were so good, I don't know how the judges are going to separate the top 5 or so. They managed to whittle down the field to 10 finalists who are dancing this afternoon. There were some surprises, but for the most part, the dancers I thought were best made it through.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to take pictures in a dark theater without a flash. The challenge really comes from finding a compromise between sharpness and dynamism. You want the shots to be as crisp and in-focus as possible. But you don't want to totally freeze the action because you'll lose any sense of movement. Therin lies the trouble.

The dancers are almost constantly in motion, so if you want to capture the movement of a veil during a spin, invariably, because the dancer is also moving, the whole composition will be out of focus. So you really have to concentrate on those moments when the head of the dancer is still and everything else is flying all over the place. It's a challenge.

Because it's so dark, I have to shoot at the widest possible aperture (f2.8 in this case). The result is that the depth of field is incredibly shallow and therefore so is the margin of error. If you focus on anything, like a veil or a sword, that is a little closer or further from the face of the dancer, she (or he, but mostly she) will be out focus enough to ruin the shot. It's a very delicate operation.

You have to find the right balance between shutter speed, film speed and white balance that gives you the best results. What makes it tougher is you can't just find one combo that works because each dancer, with variations in skin tone and costume brightness, is completely different. I don't know if I found the perfect settings, but I tried. You can see the results here. I spent a few hours culling through the shots, deleting most of the bad ones and posting them on Flickr.

I'm headed back today for the finals. Honestly, I'm surprised how much I'm looking forward to it.

Posted by andrew at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Belly Dancer of the Year Pageant is happening this weekend and I was asked by my ex-girlfriend to do some pro bono work and design the program and a few promo materials. I've never really done anything like this. I've made some websites here and there and designed a couple of posters, invitations and CD labels at work, but nothing as serious or as visible as this program.

I had last year's program to work off. It was pretty dull and amatuerish. I wanted to give it a little more umph and make the whole thing look a little more professional. No typos. Solid typography. (You can click on the image to see what the real printed type actually looks like). If you want to get an idea of how simplistic the design around the Pageant normally is, just check out their website, something I might lend my skills to next year.

Once we decided that we were going with an Art Deco look, it was really a matter of just finding the right pictures to go with the program. Shoshana who won last year's competition was going to be on the cover and I identified this pic and the one I wanted to use because it was so dynamic.

The only problem was that for some reason we weren't able to get full reolution images. I don't know why. Some communication problem with the photogrpaher. Anyway, the photos ended up being a little pixelated because I had to stretch them to 300 dpi for the printer. That's the really the only issue I had with this project. Otherwise I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Esepcially since I'm not a graphic designer and have absolutely no training whatsoever.

You can see all the parts of the program here. I'm curious to know what you think.

Posted by andrew at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you look closely (or at the original shot), you can see a reflection of me taking this shot in Fil's left eye. Pretty cool. This pic and a whole lot more posted on Flickr.

Posted by andrew at 08:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

How is it even conceivably possible that George Bush, Tom DeLay and the rest of the "Culture of Life" crowd can denounce stem cell research at the same time that we, and by we I mean America, are systematically torturing detainees at Gitmo, Bagram and who knows where else and "creating a network of supplicant nations to 'sub-contract' illegal detention and mistreatment" all in the name of freedom?

The prevailing conventions used to be that politics stopped at the water's edge. Now apparently the "Culture of Life" has taken it's place along our shores.

Posted by andrew at 11:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Guantanamo Guards Accused of Mistreating Koran

Newly Released FBI Documents Detail Allegations
By Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 25, 2005; 4:54 PM

Nearly a dozen detainees at the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba told FBI interrogators that guards had mistreated copies of the Koran, including one who said in 2002 that guards "flushed a Koran in the toilet," according to new FBI documents released today.

The summaries of FBI interviews, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of an ongoing lawsuit, also include allegations that the Koran was kicked, thrown to the floor and withheld as punishment and that guards mocked Muslim prisoners during prayers.

The release of the new FBI documents comes in the wake of an international uproar over a now-retracted story by Newsweek magazine, which reported that an internal military report had confirmed that a Koran was flushed down a toilet. The retracted story has been linked by the Bush administration to deadly riots overseas.

Nearly all of the hundreds of pages of documents consist of FBI summaries of detainee interrogations, and therefore do not generally provide corroboration of the allegations. At least two detainees also conceded that they had not personally witnessed mistreatment of the Koran but had heard about incidents from other inmates, the records show.

But the records, many of which were heavily edited by the government, further underscore the widespread nature of allegations related to the Koran and Islam among detainees at Guantanamo. Red Cross investigators in 2002 and 2003 documented what they considered reliable allegations of Koran mistreatment at the facility, and some detainees have made similar allegations through their attorneys.

A Defense Department spokesman was not immediately available for comment today. Pentagon officials have said previously that detainee allegations about the Koran have not been considered credible, although authorities have launched an internal review in the wake of the Newsweek controversy.

Amrit Singh, an ACLU attorney, said in a press release that "the United States' own documents show that it has known of numerous allegations of Koran desecration for a significant period of time."

"The failure to address these allegations in a timely manner raises grave questions regarding the extent to which such desecration was authorized by high-ranking U.S. officials in the first place," Singh said.

The new documents include other allegations of questionable treatment at Guantanamo, including two reports of beatings by guards and a report that a female guard told a prisoner she was menstruating and then "wiped blood from her body on his face and head."

The latter incident, which would be considered highly offensive to a Muslim man, is similar to a claim made by Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees there. The government has said two female interrogators have been reprimanded, including one for smearing fake menstrual blood on a captive.

Following the reports of Koran mistreatment by the Red Cross and others, the Pentagon issued rules in January 2003 governing the handling of the book and forbidding its placement on the floor, near a toilet or in other "dirty/wet areas."

I don't suppose Scott McClellan and the right wing pundits will issuing an apology to Newsweek and the world journalism community.

Posted by andrew at 06:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

President Bush has a classic Michael Kinsley moment (in which a political figure commits a gaffe by telling the truth) today at one of those Social Security bamboozle stops:

I like the idea of somebody saying, here's your asset and you can leave it to whomever you want. And the more people are able to do that in our society, the better off society is. See, I think government ought to promote an ownership society. We ought to encourage more people to own their own home, encourage entrepreneurs to be able to take risk and own their own business -- and in this case, encourage Americans from all walks of life, if they so choose, to manage their own retirement account. And I say, manage it -- you know it's your money; you're going to have some choices to make when it comes to a personal savings account. You can't take it to the lottery, by the way. You notice I've been stressing conservative mix of bonds and stocks, because we want this account to grow and be a part of a modern safety net for you in your retirement. And so there will be some guidelines.

And I can predict to you that it works because a lot of other people have watched their money grow in the same kind of accounts, including people who work for the federal government. See, we have got in Washington what's called a Thrift Savings Plan. And members of the United States Senate, for example, can choose, if they so desire, to set aside some of their own money in a personal savings account, a voluntary personal savings account. And a lot of people like it.

I think -- I was doing one of these events with Senator McCain, who told me that his rate of return on his money was, like, 7 percent over the last 20 years. That's a lot better than the 1.8 percent we now get for you in the Social Security system. And so my attitude about this issue on thrift savings plans when I speak to members of the Congress is pretty simple -- if the idea of taking some of your own money and setting it aside in a conservative mix of bonds and stocks is good enough for you, Mr. Senator, it is good enough for workers all across the United States of America. (Applause.) You'll be happy to hear Senator McCain agrees with me, because he's seen his money grow.

Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)

I guess he hasn't realized yet that inclusive personal accounts are a non-starter and that his entire agenda on Social Security is pretty much dead in the water. You also have to love that line recieved applause, as if a town meeting comprising an actual representative sampling of Americans instead of hand-picked party hacks would applaud a president who's approval ratings are sinking faster than the Titanic who's coming out for catapulting propaganda.

Posted by andrew at 05:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

John Nichols over at The Nation has a great post about a battle that is brewing over the role of journalism with the future of the country hanging in the balance. He frames the debate as a fight between the Bill Moyers and Rush Limbaugh schools of journalistic thought.

The former White House aide [Moyers], newspaper publisher, author and documentary filmmaker committed the cardinal sin of the contemporary moment: he practiced the craft of journalism as the authors of the "freedom of the press" protection in the Bill of Rights intended -- without fear or favor, unbought and unbossed, and in the service of the public interest rather than the private demands of the economically and politically powerful. Such trangressions are punished as severely in George W. Bush's America as they were in the America that was ruled by another, equally regal George 230 years ago. And just as King George III had henchmen who attacked the rebels against his rule, so the contemporary King George has his Tories. Chief among them is Limbaugh, the bombastic radio personality whose microphone is always at the ready for a denunciation of those who dare suggest that the emperor has no clothes.

No one polices the discourse more aggressively than Limbaugh.

So when word got out that Moyers was telling the American people that they should expect more from their media than a slurry of celebrity gossip and propaganda, there was hell to pay.

Typically, Limbaugh did not attack the substance of Moyers's remarks. Rather, the viscount of viciousness devoted a substantial portion of his nationally-syndicated radio program Thursday to claiming that Moyers had come "unhinged" and that, "The things coming out of his mouth today are literally insane." The most self-absorbed personality in America media -- who regularly declares that he's got "talent on loan from God" and says, "I'm doing what I was born to do. That's host. You're doing what you were born to do. That's listen." -- even went so far as to suggest that Moyers had a messiah complex.

So agitated was Limbaugh that he attacked another speaker at the media-reform conference, Newspaper Guild President Linda Foley -- in Limbaugh parlance, "this Linda Foley babe" -- for expressing concern about the killing of journalists in Iraq. And, for good measure, he closed off his rant by claiming that the millions of Americans who are demanding a more civic and democratic media are "off their rockers" and dismissing the notion of reforming the media as "an oxymoron.

The whole post is worth your time. Here's the final tidbit, in case you're not inclined to click through:

The difference between Limbaugh and Moyers is as profound as the difference between FOX and PBS. One man plays by the "rules of the game," the other sticks to principle. One man defends a corrupt status quo, the other seeks to expose it. One is a master propagandist, the other wants to break the stranglehold of "The Big Lie." One fears the damage done by the practice of journalism, the other knows that great journalism is the essential element in the making of great nations. One is a Tory who serves his King George, the other is a rebel against the throne.

It is not a fair fight. On one side are Limbaugh and his Tories, with all of their economic and political might. On the other are Moyers and his media reformers, with only the truth -- and the echo of Tom Paine crying across the centuries: "O Ye that love mankind! Ye that dares oppose not only the tyranny but the tyrant, stand forth!"

Posted by andrew at 04:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Bill Maher is a traitor. That is if you take anything Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AK) says seriously. Bachus is up in arms over a Maher sketch on his HBO show Real Time in which Maher points out the Army missed its recruiting goal by 42 percent in April.

"More people joined the Michael Jackson fan club," Maher said. "We've done picked all the low-lying Lynndie England fruit, and now we need warm bodies." See, Senator Bachus, that's something called "comedy."

Bachus clearly doesn't see the humor:

"To characterize the men and women currently serving and risking their lives in Afghanistan and Iraq as low lying fruit is reprehensible," said Congressman Bachus (conveniently forgetting that Maher was a) a comedian and b) the army has been using unethical practices to recruit ineligible Americans into the service because the all-volunteer is splitting the seems because of Iraq.

The Congressman continues:

"I think it borders on treason. In treason, one definition is to undermine the effort or national security of our country. I don't want (Maher) prosecuted. I want him off the air."

Did Maher undermine the "effort or national security of our country? I don't recall Bill Maher taking the country to war on false pretenses. Maybe Rep. Bachus needs to focus some of obviously pent up anger in the direction of the White House. Whatever you think of that, clearly Maher has not heeded the call of the administration for citizens to censor what they say and do.

Maher responds on Ariana Huffington's "The Blog" in typical scathing fashion:

First, I had never heard of Congressman Bachus before this. Now lots of people have heard of him. You're welcome, Congressman, glad I could help get your Q rating up.

By the way, are we sure he's really a Congressman? Maybe he's just a guy with a fax machine. You know how fact checking goes these days.

I could go on and on, but this is too ridiculous, so I'll just say this: I'm not a congressman, I'm a comedian. There's nothing I can really do to help or hurt our troops (although anyone who's watched my shows or read my books in the last twelve years knows I'm a pretty ardent supporter of the military).

But a congressman, there's someone who can actually DO SOMETHING to help our troops. In fact, a case could be made that it's a lot more treasonous for someone in his position to be wasting his time yelling at a comedian. Shouldn't he be training his outrage at such problems as troops not having enough armor? Wouldn't that ACTUALLY support our troops more? And citizens of this country who claim to support our troops should write this man and tell him GET BACK TO WORK! DO SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO SOLDIERS IN IRAQ!

And by the way, these "comments" were part of a longer, scripted comedy piece in the modest proposal tradition. I can see why administration supporters would want to deflect attention away from the gist of the piece, which was this: now that we can't meet our recruiting goals, maybe it's the people who were so gung ho for this war to begin with who should step up and go fight it. But of course it's always easier to distract people.

Finally, I would direct the Congressman to chapter 3 of my book "When You Ride Alone, You Ride with bin Laden." The accompanying poster shows a soldier, a cop, a fireman, and a teacher, and says, "We Say They're Our Heroes...But We Pay Them Like Chumps."

Maybe that's something else he could look into when he gets done with me.

Posted by andrew at 03:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am huge consumer of PBS. I'm a member of the local PBS station in the Bay Area KQED. I listen to NPR like a fiend. I get most of my TV news from Jim Lehrer. I feel that it's a great service to America, especially now at time when media polarization is such a problem and become so extreme.

However there is a move that's been in the works for a few years by the Bush administration to covertly turn PBS television into another spoke on the wheel of the Republican Noise Machine. Ken Auletta has written a New Yorker expose called Big Bird Flies Right about how conservatives, who once tried to crush the Corporation for Public Broadcasting under the Nixon and Reagan administrations and through the Gingrich "Contract on America", have now embraced PBS as yet another conduit for their message.

Conservatives have long pounded their phony "liberal bias" hammer on the PBS door. Basically they found out that Americans actually love PBS and according to a Corporation for Public Broadcasting survey, "the majority of the U.S. adult population does not believe that the news and information programming on public broadcasting is biased." So when politicians seriously threaten public funding of the CPB, they are often tossed out of office. But conservatives wanted to control the public airwaves so they have changed their tactics from siege from without to an insurgency from within.

Bill Moyers, who helped craft the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967 when he was an advisor to the Johnson administration, and has long been part of the PBS programming is gone, replaced by the conservative voice of CNN's Crossfire talking head Tucker Carlson and Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Paul Gigot. Both of these pundits have loud megaphones in their regular jobs, reaching a far greater audience then they ever will through PBS. This flies in the face of the PBS mission to serve the underserved. That aside, PBS has no counterparts for these two shows on the progressive side of the political spectrum. Nothing.

These changes have come under the auspices of CPB chairman Kenneth Tomlinson. Now Tomlinson was appointed to the job by Clinton and did a very fine job of maintaining PBS's balance with objectivity as you might expect from someone with his journalism background. That is until Bush came along. Tomlinson just happens to be really good friends with Karl Rove, and Karl is not going to let something like the public trust get in the way of wallpapering the media landscape with the conservative agenda.

Tomlinson has appointed two "ombudsmen" to oversee programming at PBS. Why there needs to be two is a matter of debate, but it clearly undermines the tradition of a single impartial observer that most ombudsmen represent. But the two appointees, Ken Bode and William Schulz, are hardly impartial. Bode, a former NBC and CNN reporter, most recently worked as a columnist for the Indianapolis Star, where readers often wrote angry letters deriding him as a liberal, though he endorsed a Republican last year for governor of Indiana. While Bode alone would make a decent ombudsman, alongside Schulz, an avowed conservative and former editor at Reader's Digest, they represent a tag team joke whose mission can only be to ensure that PBS toes a right wing line.

This is hardly Tomlinson's most egregious indiscretion. Recently Reps. David Obey (D-WI), and John Dingel (D-MI), asked the CPB's inspector general to investigate whether Tomlinson overstepped the law by secretly hiring a consultant, at a cost of $10,000, to monitor the weekly PBS news program "Now With Bill Moyers" for liberal bias. The Democrats want a determination of whether Tomlinson violated the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which "prohibits interference by Federal officials over the content and distribution of public programming" and the application of political litmus tests in hiring decisions. Interestingly, Tomlison has refused to reveal the results of his secret investigation, which I suspect, don't support his case that NOW was in fact biased one way or the other.

For his part, Moyers, who retired from NOW after staying on to cover post 9/11 issues, has blasted Tomlinson, accusing him of trying to silence journalists who ask tough questions, saying, "That's because the one thing they loathe more than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth."

In the midst of these battles, Media Matters founder David Brock, right wing journalistic hitman turned progressive media watchdog, has launched a campaign for conservatives to keep their mitts off PBS. It's amazing to me that the same guy that unleashed the faux "Troopegate" story that directly to the Special Investigor and to the impeachment of Bill Clinton is now a crusader on the left for accuracy in media, but there it is. You can read all about his conversion from the dark side in Blinded by the Right.

So if you care at all about PBS, NPR or public broadcasting in general, you take action, call you station and write your congress people.

Posted by andrew at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Focus on the Family Action Chairman Dr. James C. Dobson today issued the following statement, upon the announcement by members of the U.S. Senate that a "compromise" had been reached on the filibuster issue:

"This Senate agreement represents a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans and a great victory for united Democrats. Only three of President Bush's nominees will be given the courtesy of an up-or-down vote, and it's business as usual for all the rest. The rules that blocked conservative nominees remain in effect, and nothing of significance has changed. Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Antonin Scalia, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist would never have served on the U. S. Supreme Court if this agreement had been in place during their confirmations. The unconstitutional filibuster survives in the arsenal of Senate liberals.

"We are grateful to Majority Leader Frist for courageously fighting to defend the vital principle of basic fairness. That principle has now gone down to defeat. We share the disappointment, outrage and sense of abandonment felt by millions of conservative Americans who helped put Republicans in power last November. I am certain that these voters will remember both Democrats and Republicans who betrayed their trust."

If the wingers are this mad, I suppose it's a win for the good guys. I've also heard that, according to the compromise, of the 3 nominees that will pass cloture (Owen, Brown & Myers) and have up or down votes, one will be voted down. I'm guessing it's going to be Brown because she's the most egregious ultraconservative activist and would otherwis be headed to the influential 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in DC, but we'll see.

I'm not totally happy with the outcome here, but that's the nature of compromise. What I am happy about is that the center held on this explosive issue. I'm curious what will come of it, whether or not these 14 Senators, moderate Republicans and Democrats, are going to be able to stick together and control the debate in the Senate. If they can, it will be an amazing feat, keeping extremism on both sides at bay, something great for the country.

The problem is that the psycho wing of the Republican party is already calling for the scalps of John McCain(AZ), Mike DeWine(OH) and Lindsey Graham(SC). The "base" of the party feels betrayed. Radical cleric Dobson has even gone after Trent Lott. I wonder how long these divisive attacks can continue before the party splinters. Hopefully not too long.

Posted by andrew at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Pulizter Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg of Killing Fields fame sounds off on the sorry state of the modern American Fourth Estate. Here's the meat of his point:

Almost without noticing, the press began losing its memory about its crucial adversary role. At America's beginning, the founding fathers, in establishing the fundamentals of this democracy, said a free press was necessary as one of the country's checks and balances. That explains John Peter Zenger and Thomas Paine and the First Amendment.

As amnesia about our history spread, the major news companies began making deals with the government. In 1991, you may recall, they agreed to accept the Pentagon's ground rules for covering the first Gulf war. The rules decreed that reporters had to be accompanied at all times by military babysitters who would not only select the story sites but pre-interview soldiers at those sites to avoid any lapses into truth telling. And that was how America, on television and in print, was handed its first major sanitized war. Another landmark. (The father of the current president was in the Oval Office then. Dick Cheney was the Pentagon chief.)

Journalists used to come largely from the "outsider" precincts of our culture. They were children of immigrants and working people, raised simply, not prone to cozying up to power or accommodating power. That's because the press was supposed to be a watchdog on power on behalf of the public. That has changed-not completely, but it has changed. At times now, too many reporters seem to be channeling Dickens's Oliver Twist, with their bowls outstretched toward their government minders, asking: "Please, sir, may I have some more gruel?"

Posted by andrew at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm listening now to a press conference with Harry Reid about a compromise that has been reached by Senate moderates to subvert the will of the conservative majority and allow several judges to receive up or down votes (and most likely be confirmed) while maintaining the right of the minority to filibuster future nominees. This is great news. It's great news for everyone except a small minority of intractable extremists led by majority leader Bill Frist.

The big question is what this will do to any future Supreme Court nomination battles which certainly are forthcoming. I think this battle is going to happen all over again, but who knows. Chances are this just delyed the fight for another day over more important judicial decisions. It might pave the way for a more moderate nominee. Probably wishful thinking.

Bill Frist is now talking on the floor of the Senate talking more crap about his constant refrain of "up or down" vote. It looks like Owen, Prior and Brown, some of the most egregious of the nominees and few others that were previously turned down by the Senate and were resubmitted by President Bush are going to see the floor of the Senate. Henry Saad will not. William Myers will not. Frist does not want to give up, but he's beholden to the Christian right for his presidential aspirations, so even though moderate Republicans have undermined his leadership with the compromise, he still needs to carry the fight to appease his rabid paymasters. It's really disgusting when he or any other senator on either side of the aisle is so blatantly in the pocket of one interest group or another.

Frist, of course, is now asserting his right to exercise what he calls the "Constitutional Option" at any time in the future. Great. It's too bad Frist is leaving the Senate after this term ends because I'd love to see him face the possibility of being the Majority Leader with a Democratic President and having to defend his "Up or Down" mantra.

Posted by andrew at 05:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

First it was then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer post 9/11 saying in a press briefing that people "need to watch what they say, watch what they do." Then we had a high school kid in Kentucky arrested for writing a story of fiction about a high school attacked by zombies. Now once again, we have a member of the current administration warning people to watch their tongues. This time it's SecDef Donald Rumsfeld who in reponse the Newsweek story about the Koran flushing said, "People are dead, and that's unfortunate. People need to be very careful about what they say just as people need to be careful about what they do."

Am I the only one who finds these activities and this sort of rhetoric ominous? Nevermind that the head of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers told reporters at the Pentagon May 12 that he has been told that the Jalalabad, Afghanistan, rioting was related more to the ongoing political reconciliation process in Afghanistan than anything else. That would require a modicum of respect for the truth.

It appears to me that these statements and the ideology that belies them combined with the undermining of the traditional media and the current Republican judical power grab that is occurring in the Senate at the behest of the White House and the religous right is a very toxic brew for democracy.

Posted by andrew at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Media watching is a frightening hobby these days. You can listen to NPR, read the New York Times, US World Report or any of the other media outlets that place value on objectivity (although this is becoming less and less frequent) and listen to AM talk radio, watch FOX News and read the Weekly Standard which ignore objectivity in favor of a hat tip to something called "balance" (well not in the case of the rabid foaming mouths on the AM dial or the Weekly Standard, really) and come away thinking these people are not living in the same the world let alone the same country.

The right has been beating the media over the head with charges of "Liberal Bias" since the early 1970s. In order to counter these claims major media outlets like the New York Times have, in order to provide "balance", offered places on their editorial pages to prominent conservatives like William Safire and David Brooks. The conservative media has not responded in kind. In the meantime the right wing, financed with the deep pockets of ideologues like Richard Mellon Scaife and batshit nutjobs like the Reverend Sun Yung Moon have build a network of thinktanks (think Heritage Foundation) and ultraconservative media outlets like the The Washington Times which constantly pump conservative messages and spin. There are media outlets and progressive thinktanks on the left, but nothing even close to their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum.

This wouldn't necessarily be a problem except for the fact that is has become far easier people on both sides to tune in to media outlets that constantly reinforce their political viewpoint. There is no longer a common understanding of events that we had back when objectivity was the law of journalism and media was much more limited. These days people can, and do, get their news solely from Rush Limbaugh or even John Stewart. They can surf blogs all day that act as an echo chamber for opinions that may or may not be based in fact but that constantly reassure them that their ideas are correct while demonizing anyone who thinks differently.

And it's only going to get worse because of this increasing polarization of the media combined with the persistent attack on the main stream media that the right has been engaged in since the Nixon administration and is now being carried on quite visibly by the current administration with their attack on Newsweek. The result of all this is that a certain segment of the population will only believe news from Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity et al and will discount anything that the MSM reports, if they even hear it all. It's very scary. I don't see it reversing, but getting much, much worse. As long small percentage of ideologues in this country have enough money to support right wing mouthpieces indefinitely and as long as they spew their misinformation to a population of overzealous undereducated Americans, the situation will not only persist, but spiral out of control.

Posted by andrew at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There are two editorials in the NYT today about addicitions of the United States and their political ramifications. Paul Krugman writes about our addiction to low interest loans from China and how they affect the US economy while Tom Friedman takes on our addiction to Middle East Oil vis a vis the riots in Afghanistan and the administration's response. Both are worth a read.

Here's what Krugman writes in the
The Chinese Connection:

Over the last few years China, for its own reasons, has acted as an enabler both of U.S. fiscal irresponsibility and of a return to Nasdaq-style speculative mania, this time in the housing market. Now the U.S. government is finally admitting that there's a problem - but it's asserting that the problem is China's, not ours.

And there's no sign that anyone in the administration has faced up to an unpleasant reality: the U.S. economy has become dependent on low-interest loans from China and other foreign governments, and it's likely to have major problems when those loans are no longer forthcoming.

Here's what I think will happen if and when China changes its currency policy, and those cheap loans are no longer available. U.S. interest rates will rise; the housing bubble will probably burst; construction employment and consumer spending will both fall; falling home prices may lead to a wave of bankruptcies. And we'll suddenly wonder why anyone thought financing the budget deficit was easy.

Suddenly I feel pretty good about not owning a house (not really). But how far off is the scenario that Krugman lays out? Who knows. Might happen tomorrow. Might happen in three years. Might never happen. But truly we should not allow ourselves to fall into a this kind of economic morass where our options are limited and our economic security is in the hands of another country.

Krugman concludes:

We've developed an addiction to Chinese dollar purchases, and will suffer painful withdrawal symptoms when they come to an end.

I'm not saying we should try to maintain the status quo. Addictions must be broken, and the sooner the better. After all, one of these days China will stop buying dollars of its own accord. And the housing bubble will eventually burst whatever we do. Besides, in the long run, ending our dependence on foreign dollar purchases will give us a healthier economy. In particular, a rise in the yuan and other Asian currencies will eventually make U.S. manufacturing, which has lost three million jobs since 2000, more competitive.

But the negative effects of a change in Chinese currency policy will probably be immediate, while the positive effects may take years to materialize. And as far as I can tell, nobody in a position of power is thinking about how we'll deal with the consequences if China actually gives in to U.S. demands, and lets the yuan rise.

In The Best P.R.: Straight Talk, Tom Friedman takes on the administration's reaction to the Newsweek Koran flushing story. Here he posits how the president should have responded to the story and the riots.

Instead of sending Mr. McClellan out to flog Newsweek, President Bush should have said: "Let me say first to all Muslims that desecrating anyone's holy book is utterly wrong. These allegations will be investigated, and any such behavior will be punished. That is how we Americans intend to look in the mirror. But we think the Arab-Muslim world must also look in the mirror when it comes to how it has been behaving toward an even worse crime than the desecration of God's words, and that is the desecration of God's creations. In reaction to an unsubstantiated Newsweek story, Muslims killed 16 other Muslims in Afghanistan in rioting, and no one has raised a peep - as if it were a totally logical reaction. That is wrong.

"In Iraq, where Shiite, Kurdish and Sunni Muslims are struggling to build a pluralistic new order, other Muslims, claiming to act in the name of Allah, are indiscriminately butchering people, without a word of condemnation coming from Muslim spiritual or political leaders. I don't understand a concept of the sacred that says a book is more sacred than a human life. A holy book, whether the Bible or the Koran, is only holy to the extent that it shapes human life and behavior.

"Look, Newsweek may have violated journalistic rules, but what jihadist terrorists are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan - blowing up innocent Muslims struggling to build an alternative society to dictatorship - surely destroys the Koran. They are the real enemies of Islam because they are depriving Muslims of a better future. From what I know of Islam, it teaches that you show reverence to God by showing reverence for his creations, not just his words. Why don't your spiritual leaders say that? I am asking, because I want to know."

Friedman is right, however for this president to utter these or similar words would require leadership, something the current commander in chief is sorely bereft of.

Friedman concludes:

The greatest respect we can show to Arabs and Muslims - and the best way to help Muslim progressives win the war of ideas - is to take them seriously and stop gazing at our own navels. That means demanding that they answer for their lies, hypocrisy and profane behavior, just as much as we must answer for ours.

Hopefully more journalists and opinion analysts will take up this call for accountability on all sides.

Posted by andrew at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is just despicable, plain and simple. Sort of makes flushing a Koran down the toilet seem like child's play.

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates' Deaths

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar's face.

"Come on, drink!" the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. "Drink!"

At the interrogators' behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

"Leave him up," one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

Posted by andrew at 10:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I finally got rid of the Movable Type plugin, MT-Approval, that forced readers to preview all comments before posting them. The plugin blocks bots from spamming the hell out of anyone's blog and on that account it worked gangbusters. But it was a pain in the ass. I'm using something now called MT-Blacklist that maintains a database of known spammers and prevents them from posting comments. I don't know if this will make any difference to how people use the site, the change should be relatively transparent, but I thought I'd let you know anyhow.

Posted by andrew at 09:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This pic and a whole lot more posted on Flickr.

Posted by andrew at 08:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the last few months I've been catching Mak drinking out of the sink, the toilet and even the track that the shower sits in. Every time, I think, fuck I must be out of water. I grab him, go to the fridge, pull out the Brita jug and head to the cat's water bowl. It's almost always full. It's full because I keep it full. I put Mak down in front of their bowl, but he doesn't drink. I hold him there so he understands he's in front of a clean bowl of water, but he just quirms away. How did I get this fakakta cat in my life?

Posted by andrew at 08:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I've been watching the goings on the Senate floor on C-Span. It's really instructive.

On the one side, you have the Democrats arguing to keep to the filibuster because it not only protects minority rights but also maintains the delicate balance of powers by not turning the Senate into a rubber stamp for the Executive when the Executive and the Legislature are of the same party.

On the other side, you have the Republicans who are speciously arguing that the filibuster has never been used to block judges (it has. see Abe Fortas) and that what they are attempting to (i.e. the "Nuclear Option" has constitutional precedent, which, of course, it does not. (by the way, it's amazing to me how Senators can flat out lie on the floor of the Senate - John Kyl of Arizona just said that he wasn't concerned when Democrats said that the filibuster is something they might want to reserve for a future when they are in the minority and there is a Democratic president and he said it wasn't an issue because they, the Republicans, didn't even think of the filibuster as a tool at their exposal, conveniently forgetting Abe Fortas and Richard Paez. Amazing.)

It's on the point on getting boring listening to Senators on both sides bloviate all day. There were the incredible statements of Rick Santorum equating what the Democrats are doing, by preventing this powergrab to the actions of Adolph Hitler after he occupied Paris which will raise some eyebrows in the left wing blogs but will be ignored by the media in general. But that was the only really exciting moment of the day.

I've been waiting to hear from Hagel or McCain or Snowe or Collins or one of the handful of moderate Republicans Senators who might speak out against this unprecedented power grab, but I have so far been disappointed. I bet the squeeze is being put on them so tight by K street lobbyist and the Majority Leader that when this whole thing is over McCain et al will be able to join the Vienna Boy's Choir.

Posted by andrew at 03:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I listen to Alabama Senator and Judical Committe member Jeff Sessions debate the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown, a member of the California Supreme Court and a Bush nominee to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in DC, I'm reading an article by conservative Norman J. Ornstein published on the conservative American Enterprise Instirute website that puts forth a very persuasive argument against employing the "Nuclear Option".

These Five Senators Know Better Than to Go Nuclear. Don't They?

By Norman J. Ornstein
Posted: Wednesday, May 4, 2005

The fate of the Senate now rests in the hands of a handful of Republicans who have been great figures of the Senate, custodians of its traditions and its essence. They will soon come to a crossroads on the "nuclear" option and the filibuster.

A few are uncommitted on the question; others are presumed to be aligned with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.). All, I believe, know better, and each will be judged by history on their choice in this matter. They include Dick Lugar of Indiana, Ted Stevens of Alaska, John Warner of Virginia, Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

In 1976 and 1977, I served on the staff of a Senate select committee charged with reorganizing the Senate's committee system. Following the customary practice, the 12 Senators on the panel were evenly divided between the two parties. The assignment was the fifth or sixth committee for each of the members, ensuring that few of the 12 spent any time at all on the panel's work. But one who did was Domenici, then a freshman.

One late evening as we worked, I turned to Domenici and asked him why he was spending so many hours on a thankless task like ours. After all, his constituents would never notice, and any changes we recommended for committee numbers and jurisdictions were likely to be opposed vigorously by the committee chairmen and other power-brokers. He replied that service in the Senate was the highest honor he could receive, and he was determined to leave the place a better institution than when he arrived.

Through most of his 32 years in the body, Domenici has fulfilled that promise of being an institutionalist. But now comes the real test.

The Senate is on the verge of meltdown over the nuclear option, an unprecedented step that would shatter 200 years of precedent over rules changes and open up a Pandora's box of problems in the years ahead. The shaky bipartisanship that holds the Senate together--in a way that is virtually absent in the House--could be erased. Major policy problems could be caught up in the conflict. The Senate itself would never be the same.

Let us put aside for now the puerile arguments over whether judicial filibusters are unprecedented: They clearly, flatly, are not. Instead, let's look at the means used to achieve the goal of altering Senate procedures to block filibusters on judicial nominations.

Without getting into the parliamentary minutiae--the options are dizzying, including whether points of order are "nested"--one reality is clear. To get to a point where the Senate decides by majority that judicial filibusters are dilatory and/or unconstitutional, the Senate will have to do something it has never done before.

Richard Beth of the Congressional Research Service, in a detailed report on the options for changing Senate procedures, refers to it with typical understatement as "an extraordinary proceeding at variance with established procedure."

To make this happen, the Senate will have to get around the clear rules and precedents, set and regularly reaffirmed over 200 years, that allow debate on questions of constitutional interpretation--debate which itself can be filibustered. It will have to do this in a peremptory fashion, ignoring or overruling the Parliamentarian. And it will establish, beyond question, a new precedent. Namely, that whatever the Senate rules say--regardless of the view held since the Senate's beginnings that it is a continuing body with continuing rules and precedents--they can be ignored or reversed at any given moment on the whim of the current majority.

There have been times in the past when Senate leaders and presidents have been frustrated by inaction in the Senate and have contemplated action like this. Each time, the leaders and presidents drew back from the precipice. They knew that the short-term gain of breaking minority obstruction would come at the price of enormous long-term damage--turning a deliberative process into something akin to government by the Queen of Hearts in "Alice in Wonderland."

Rule XXII is clear about extended debate and cloture requirements, both for changing Senate rules (two-thirds required) and any other action by the Senate, nominations or legislation (60 Senators required). Ignored in this argument has been Senate Rule XXXI, which makes clear that there is neither guarantee nor expectation that nominations made by the president get an up-or-down vote, or indeed any action at all.

It reads: "Nominations neither confirmed nor rejected during the session at which they are made shall not be acted upon at any succeeding session without being again made to the Senate by the President; and if the Senate shall adjourn or take a recess for more than thirty days, all nominations pending and not finally acted upon at the time of taking such adjournment or recess shall be returned by the Secretary to the President, and shall not again be considered unless they shall again be made to the Senate by the President."

By invoking their self-described nuclear option without changing the rules, a Senate majority will effectively erase them. A new precedent will be in order--one making it easy and tempting to erase future filibusters on executive nominations and bills. Make no mistake about that.

The precedent set--a majority ignoring its own rules to override longstanding practice in one area--would almost inexorably make the Senate a mirror image of the House, moving the American system several steps closer to a plebiscitary model of government, and the Senate closer to the unfortunate House model of a cesspool of partisan rancor.

I know that Lugar, Stevens, Cochran, Warner and Domenici know better. (I know that Orrin Hatch (Utah), Bob Bennett (Utah), Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) and Elizabeth Dole (N.C.) know better as well, but they are lost causes.) I also know that any of these five can withstand the heat that would come if they bucked their party leaders on this issue. Pete, remember what you said to me in 1977. Leave the Senate a better place. Please.

Norman J. Ornstein is a resident scholar at AEI.

Posted by andrew at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by andrew at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you're at all worried about this country, if you're concerned about the undermining of the media, if you're concerned about the right wing religious takeover of our instituions, and especailly if you're concerned about the future of our independenat judiciary you'll be paying attention to what's playing out on the floor of the Sentate (which you can watch on C-SPAN 2).

Unless you've been living in a cave you'll know about the battle over a few extreme judges that has been brewing in the Senate in the last five years. I'm not going to rehash all the details but if you want a good timeline of events, you can find it here.

The basic deal is this. President Bush has nominated something more than 200 judges to the federal bench, both to the circuit courts and the appellate courts. 95% of his nominations have been approved. A handful who have been earmarked as extreme, 7 or 10 depending on who you ask, have been blocked by the minority Democrats using the threat of a filibuster, which is their right.

However, the right wing doesn't want any of its judges blocked. They want a complete and total victory. Therefore they have been talking up what Senator Trent Lott of Mississippi had long ago dubbed the "Nuclear Option." It is called the Nuclear Option because it so explosive that it is going to rip through and destroy the comity of the Senate that was created by the framers of the Constitution as a deliberative body that respected the rights of the minority.

That same Constitution gives the Senate the role of Advice and Consent on judical nominees. The document says nothing other than that, however it gives the Senate the responsibility to make it's own rules. One of those rules is that the Senate can change its rules, but to avoid power grabs like this one that is going on, must do so with a supermajority of 67 votes. The Nuclear Option would bypass the normal rules of the Senate. The Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee who is the ring leader of this morass is going to ask Dick Cheney, in his role as the President of the Senate, to rule on the constitutionality of the filibuster. Cheney is going to deem the filibuster unconstitutional. The Senate will then vote to accept or deny Cheney's position which requires only a simple majority. This vote will change over 200 years of Senate tradition that has granted the filibuster to the minority in order to prevent exactly what is going on now, packing the court with clearly partisan and unnacceptable jurists who serve on the bench for life. For life. Forever.

I don't know what's going to happen here. I do know that the 44 Democratic Senators and Jim Jeffords, indenpendent from Vermont will vote together in a bloc. Therefore there only needs to be 6 Republican Senators to jump the aisle and vote with the Democrats to retain the filibuster. GOP Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, John McCain of Arizona, Olympia Snowe of Maine, John Warner of Virginia and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island have either said they oppose changing the rules or have declined to promise to support the change. A few others like Dick Lugar of Indiana and Pat Roberts of Kansas are on the record about dangerous this move is and how uncomfortable they are with it.

In the end I don't believe it will pass, but it will serve it's purpose, empowering Bill Frist in the eyes of the religious right as he seeks the GOP nomination in 2008.

Posted by andrew at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A letter to White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan from Congressman John Conyers:

Mr. Scott McClellan
Press Secretary
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. McClellan:

I write to express my profound disappointment and outrage about comments you made about a matter involving Newsweek magazine, which smacks of political exploitation of the deaths of innocent and a shameless attempt to intimidate reporters from critically investigating your Administration's actions. Your comments are contradicted by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and stand in stark contrast with your actions involving the "Downing Street Memo." I urge you and your counterpart at the Pentagon to immediately retract the comments made yesterday, and - at long last - provide a full accounting of the Administration's actions in the lead up to the Iraq war.

As you are aware, a May 9th Newsweek report indicated that interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba flushed the Koran down a toilet as part of an interrogation. Newsweek has since retracted the story. However, as the magazine was reevaluating information received from its sources, it appears you opted to exploit the situation for partisan political gain by falsely laying blame on Newsweek for recent deaths in Afghanistan.

Specifically, at 11:23am yesterday, you declared in a public statement: "his report has had serious consequences. It has caused damage to the image of the United States abroad. It has -- people have lost their lives. It has certainly caused damage to the credibility of the media, as well, and Newsweek, itself." The Pentagon spokesman, Larry DiRita, made similar comments. Referring to Newsweek's source, he said "People are dead because of what this son of a bitch said." The clear implication of these statements is that the Newsweek report had caused a loss of life in Muslim nations, presumably referring to the recent riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

First, this attempt to tie riots to the Newsweek article stands in stark contrast to the assessment of your own senior military officials. On May 12th, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Of Staff had reported on his consultations with the Senior Commander in Afghanistan about whether there was a causal relationship between the Newsweek story and the riots thusly: "[h]e thought it was not at all tied to the article in the magazine." The only conclusion that can be reasonably drawn is that, in contrast to career military officers, political operatives sought to score cheap political points by spreading falsehoods about Newsweek. The appropriate course of action is clear: you and Mr. DiRita should immediately retract your exploitative comments.

Second, there is - of course - a sad irony in this White House claiming that someone else's errors or misjudgments led to the loss of innocent lives. Over 1,600 Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have lost their lives in the Iraq war, a war which your Administration justified by falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. To date, your Administration has consistently blocked Congressional inquiries into whether such claims were the result of intentional manipulation of intelligence or, as you assert, a mere "failure."

Moreover, your loquacious response to this matter stands in stark contrast to your response to a recently released classified memo comprising the minutes of a July 22 meeting of British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet which calls into question the credibility of assertions made by your Administration in its drive to war. Among other things the memo indicates that Administration officials were working to ensure that "the intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy," implying that intelligence was deliberately manipulated to prop up the case for war. The memo also indicates, contrary to contemporaneous statements to the American people and the Congress that the President had already "made up his mind to take military action." When asked about this memo, you claimed that you "don't know about the specific memo" - two and one half weeks after its release and ten days after receiving a letter detailing its contents from 89 Members of Congress (which has still not been answered).

Third, the public deserves to know what precisely the White House is asserting with respect to the mistreatment of the Koran by interrogators: are such reports categorically false or are they, in the words of one publication, "manifold?" For example, a May 1st New York Times report indicated that a Koran was thrown into a pile and stepped on at the Guantanamo detention facility and "[a] former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans." The incident where a Koran was allegedly thrown in a toilet was also recounted by a former detainee in a March 26, 2003 article in the Washington Post, and corroborated by another detainee in a August 4, 2003 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights. The question is: are you categorically denying that the mistreatment of the Koran occurred, or are you simply denying the Newsweek report is accurate on hyper technical grounds?

Mr. McClellan, the American people have grown tired of the venomous partisanship and lack of candor on the part of this Administration. When taken to task for wrongdoing, a pattern has emerged of this Administration viciously attacking its accusers. The cornerstone of our democracy is an open and accountable government, and the American people deserve answers - not distractions -- today.

Sincerely,