Politics

I guess if Ari had to rebel, being a Republican is better than being on drugs, but not by much.

— Alan Fleischer, Ari Fleischer’s father, in The Advocate

(via Tom Tomorrow)

Hi, Pot? This is the Kettle. You’re black.

(via Daily Kos)

This is just disgusting — the New York Times has an article exposing CBS’ attempt to buy Pvt. Lynch through TV movies, books…and an MTV special event concert.

MTV Networks, the letter went on, was offering a news special, a chance for Private Lynch and her friends to be the co-hosts of an hourlong music video program on MTV2, and even a special edition of its hit program “Total Request Live” in her honor. “This special would include a concert performance in Palestine, West Va., by a current star act such as Ashanti, and perhaps Ja Rule,” the proposal said.

(via Bob Harris)

About the same number of people who think it’s an advantage to be a woman in America would eat a rat on live TV. Clearly, we’ve got some work to do on the whole gender-equality thing.

— Bob Harris, in this TMW post about recent poll results that, among other things, show that a third of Americans believe that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that 22% actually believe that Iraq used WMDs during the war.

It’s probably still unlikely to happen, but as more and more information surfaces about just how much ‘misinformation’ was presented as fact by Bush et al in order to justify our attack of Iraq, more and more people are talking seriously about the possibility of impeachment.

This is explosive stuff. And considering that the war’s number one cheerleader — Bill Kristol — is now admitting Bush made “misstatements”, it looks as though the whole WMD issue could very well be an albatross hung around Bush’s 2004 re-election effort.

It seems to me that impeachment isn’t unrealistic to at least consider, at this point. As has been quoted here before: Bush lied. People died.

In a very interesting “mea culpa” article, ABC News’ political column The Note lists a huge amount of stories that should get more recognition, but for one reason or another, don’t get major coverage.

With all those reporters covering politics and government in Washington and around the country, you would think that the press would be watching the powerful on behalf of the people pretty persistently.

But you would be wrong.

On any given day, owing to tight budgets, the evasiveness of those we cover, and the generally (sorry ? ) lazy nature of some reporters, way too much of what gets covered in politics and government are the spoon-fed public events that the communications staffs want covered.

Even “enterprise” and investigative stories tend these days to come not from innovative shoe-leather work, but rather are generated (and often thoroughly researched by) interest groups, political actors, and other non-journalists who want to see a story come out.

…for every newsworthy evasive action we learn about (because the press gets tipped off or stumbles into something or finds something through hard work), there are literally thousands that never come to light.

With the president headed off to sell Medicare reform in Chicago (and, we bet, suck up to Mayor Daley big time), and the Senate poised to announce today a plan for dealing with what Democrats still see as a ticking time bomb for the president — the intelligence questions surrounding the missing weapons of mass destruction — the questions of hide-and-seek and American political journalism are front and center for us today.

So, we offer you several outstandingly illustrative examples.

~~The article doesn’t have a permalink yet — it will next week, but there’s no telling if I’ll remember to come back and re-link it.~~

[Update:]{.underline} Here’s the permalink. For future reference, though, the title is “W’s WMDs Aren’t the Only Things Missing”, published on June 11, 2003.

(via Lambert)

(Shamelessly snagging this post from Bob Harris at This Modern World, as nothing more needs to be said.)

Our Attorney General wants to make terrorist attacks against military bases or nuclear plants a capital offense.

Obviously. Nothing deters a suicide bomber quite like the death penalty.

The full article is even scarier, though. Ashcroft is calling for a widening of the Patriot Act.