Journal-Log

2006-04-06T03:59:00.000-08:00

I will not be posting at this site for a time--until further notice. Please visit my site at CynthiaAntoinette. Thank you.
Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

H5N1: 'Selling Airtime on News Channels' by K

2006-03-11T13:39:00.000-09:00

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

why are we all getting worked up on a 'potential' disease threat when millions of people are dying day in and day out from highly avoidable diseases … speaking to the people involved on all sides of the tale, speaking to other journalists who have been covering the issue, I find myself unsure of what the hell is going on. It is a conundrum as people would say. But, I do know this much, H5N1 was a very good way of selling airtime on news channels.
(Link to: PressTalk)

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

The Memory of Writing

2006-03-10T10:53:00.000-09:00

I cherish the memory of choosing writing over 'vacation.' Wrestling the Angel

These days, I have so little of my own to say. Perhaps it's due to the assignments at school with all their requirements. I don't know, but I'm trying to keep going nonetheless, posting things I have known and felt for so long.

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

A Soldier's Thoughts

2006-03-10T09:29:00.000-09:00

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

Thoughts from Zachary Scott

Zachary is a SGT in the 3rd Infantry Division, an Arabic translator in Iraq. He's due to be home soon but I thought I'd pass this link along from his blog. It begins: Something Interesting I Found in the News. He has said in past posts that he has guidelines in the service, regarding blogging. We can only guess. (Also posted at CivicConnections

Why Do We Write?

2006-03-06T08:31:00.000-09:00

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

I found an interesting web log today titled, “Wrestling the Angel.” Sometimes it’s difficult to write, specifically because it takes so long and even writers need to eat and heat their homes in the winter. Sometimes I wonder why we even do it (us crazy bloggers). It’s not as though it’s a lucrative field for ninety-nine percent of us. But still we do it. Why? Here’s one take on the subject by Alison Gresik:

“…writers write simply because they must. One blogger (unfortunately I can't remember who) recently asked people if they'd still write even if they never had the chance of publishing….”

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

What's Happened to Jill Carroll?

2006-03-01T08:06:00.000-09:00

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

AMHERST, Mass. – The deadline set by the kidnappers of freelance journalist and UMass Amherst alumna Jill Carroll passed today in Iraq without any new word on whether the group followed through on its threat to kill her.

Carroll, 28, who was on assignment for The Christian Science Monitor, was abducted Jan. 7 in Baghdad and last seen in a videotape aired Feb. 9 by Kuwaiti TV station, Al Rai TV. According to Al Rai, her kidnappers, a group calling itself the Revenge Brigades, threatened to kill the reporter if their demand for the release of all Iraqi female detainees was not met by Feb. 26.

On Sunday, Iraqi security forces reportedly conducted intensive searches for Carroll, but failed to locate her.

Read the rest at UMass Amherst News

Cynthia Antoinette~Public Interest~Civic Connections~Journal Log

What's a Blogger to Do?

2006-02-25T09:28:00.000-09:00

Cynthia Antoinette~Public-Interest~Civic-Connections~Journal-Log

The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

Bloggers?

Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.

My first response is: Oh well, see yah guys, it's been fun and all that but I don't want to have to answer for my blogs if the bear is so much bigger than me. On second thought however, I'm like: but wait a minute, I just write my opinion! And on third thought I'm like: yeah but what if they don't like you opinion because the old rules have changed.

According to the government, "“Cyber security is critical to protecting our nation's infrastructure because information systems connect so many aspects of our economy and society."

Cynthia Antoinette~Public-Interest~Civic-Connections~Journal-Log

Journalists/People Must Ask Questions!

2006-02-21T19:43:00.000-09:00

I can’t take America’s president asking America to have any more patience!

I can understand patience with Iraq difficulties but after his bid with Arabs and his refusal to let Americans ask questions (i.e. inclusive inquiries), I have to say, there’s something really wrong here. Very Wrong.

The UAE contributed or at least aided the funding of terrorists and we’re not supposed to ask questions?

We're supposed to just listen to his continuing requests for patience with? Trust? I thought you trust once but not ten times.

I swear, he sounds like the businessman posing as pastors, whom I know oh, too well.

How many times can he ask Americans not to be discouraged about setbacks? Is this a setback?

We need an investigation into who these Arabs are who are purchasing our ports!!!

In case we forot, the People still have the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances under the third article of the Bill of Rights.

Related Links Explosive Detonating...and

I Guess I'm Just a Gossip Blogger These Days

2006-02-20T17:22:00.000-09:00

Are blogs really dead? I mean, I don’t get much going on with my blogs but I am still a student and I don’t really know if I want to keep doing this. I guess I’m sort of just playing right now. So here’s a few thoughts on Robert Niles comments Feb. 17 on the mainstream media’s opinion of blogs and online publishing.

Because, although I have worked as a beat reporter and news correspondent at several community print papers, these days I tend to be more a gossip blogger than anything else. I don’t really know about all the ads and the money to be made but just now, I’m just getting my whistle wet and don’t even want any comments on my blogs.

Previously, I had other blogs and had to take them down due to unwanted comments and I’ve changed the way I do it as I experiment with my own tendencies as a writer and nothing else, just now. But the writer at Online Journalism Review gets into the topic of money and a topic that has also caused me to consider income elsewhere. So, it’s worth pointing out.

Butterworth repeats the common criticism that "blogging" is not a viable business.

"Blogging will no doubt always have a place as an underground medium in closed societies; but for those in the west trying to blog their way into viable businesses, the economics are daunting," Butterworth writes.

"After talking to various people in the new media world, it’s possible to estimate an income of $1,000 to $2,000 a month in ad revenue from a typical blog getting 10,000 visitors a day and playing to a national audience with a popular topic such as politics," he continues.

Yes, the economics are daunting -- just as they are in the offline publishing business. (Ask anyone who's started up a magazine lately.) Most new publishing ventures will fail to become economically viable. But political/gossip blogging is just one publishing model to make money publishing online .

Speaking from personal experience, Butterworth's numbers are quite low. An informative website well-targeted to its niche (and, by the way, politics is a lousy niche for making money outside an election year), easily can pull in two to three times that, with the same number of visitors. Sure, that's nothing to a multibillion-dollar corporation. But how many journalists would love to leave behind the hassle of their corporate bosses for a salary of $70,000 a year?

The trick, of course, is targeting. Web publishing, at this moment, does not follow the traditional newsroom publishing business model. At this point, this is a field for individual entrepreneurs, who can elicit and manage tips from readers, building a low-cost "virtual newsroom" to gather and publish information to audiences who have not found their need for news met by increasingly generalist mainstream media.

Successful web businesses target well-defined niches and construct their coverage, publishing systems and page design to communicate that focus both to human readers and to the automated agents that drive readers and advertisers to websites.

Butterworth closes with a depressing vision of blogging as "instant obsolescence." But what is more obscure, a Web document that can be found by billions through Google or Archive.org, or a newspaper article or academic journal that persists only in a paid archive, accessed by a shrinking audience of researchers?

One can make the argument that access in an archive of terrabytes provides little hope for recognition. That's true. Welcome to the new marketplace of ideas. Unlike the old marketplace of monopolistic newspapers and a handful of national magazines, publication no longer provides a guarantee of public visibility. You've got to compete with every single post you write.

This is no "virtual tomb," as Butterworth writes. It's more like a vibrant nursery, where all individuals can have the chance to plant a few seeds, to grow public discourse. And, yes, make money doing it, too. Link to: OJR

Non-Fiction Writer Betty Friedan Affected Women's Lives Forever

2006-02-06T16:30:00.000-09:00

There are two compelling memorials to the author of the Women’s Movement, Betty Friedan, who died on her 85th birthday Feb. 4. And yet, I was asked to read comments on polls about younger women and their disconnect to any memory of what their grandmothers and great grandmothers fought so hard for and why women should stay home and stop murdering their babies. On political forums, men call Friedan a skank and claim that NOW, “glorified by the liberal media as representing the women of America……….don’t think so (sic).” But I am a woman and I know that hateful men are not in short supply in the 21st Century. What wasn’t addressed by the first commentator was in the link “Bill from Granby” provided (first link above) was the growing concern in young women about violence against women. It seems that men are angrier than ever. And I have to say, the angry men always seem to be Republican. (Note when I went back to check the thread, the post by “excranwelbo” had been deleted, deemed inappropriate. Apparently, he was mistaken about how Americans feel and what Americans think regarding women’s issues.

Women can’t let men’s anger get the best of them. It’s not good for anyone. In the Monitor’s View, commentary by The Christian Science Monitor, they quote Futurist Alvin Toffler on Frienan’s 1964 bestseller, The Feminine Mystique. It "pulled the trigger on history” The Monitor adds their own commentary: “It sparked a new women’s movement that radically changed modern society. But even as a trigger, that movement represented a continuum—one of expanding individual liberty.” (All I can say is Amen!)

And of views that represent women, the Monitor refers to Friedan’s contribution to women’s liberty and, too, the women that went before her. They point to the way women stepped up to work during World War II, when their were day cares conveniently located next to the factories women worked at until the “vocational day in the sun faded after the Allied victory.”

I find it interesting that no one was complaining so much about women filling the boots of men at war in contrast to the supposed damage day care unleashes on children in the 21st Century. You’d think that women are torturing their children now, years later. If women need to work now or can't bear to be dependent on the control a man can wield if he’s the only one who is making money in the family, what's the difference. Perhaps it's a difference in values between men and women. War is valued and a woman's personal liberty is not? Still? Of course there are variables and each family makes their own decisions and each woman makes her own decisions and she has every single solitary right to stay home and make her occupation the caretaker. But it’s not the only option anymore but the shunning, or worse, by some groups against women who need to or want to work is merely a reflection of lingering misogyny in our culture. Eighteen million “women stepped into jobs vacated by men gone to war,” states The Monitor. But in addition to the women’s suffragists, the women’s temperance movement is added.

Entwined with the suffragists was the women's temperance movement -protest against the widespread domestic violence wrought by alcohol abuse. Interestingly, after a backlash to her work, Friedan also found herself having to defend the home. The movement made a mistake in putting down the role of housewife and mother. "Our failure was our blind spot about the family," Friedan later wrote.

But can she be blamed for that blind spot? Friedan's earthshaking book, built on a survey done for her 15-year Smith College reunion, showed middle-class, educated women feeling imprisoned in their home lives. They told this freelance writer, who graduated with honors, about a "problem that had no name" - a problem of "feeling incomplete" which they then tried to fix with tranquilizers, redecorating, or more children. Friedan found that women of that time who did not conform to the traditional stereotype were happier.

Although revolutionary for her time, Friedan was a "moderate" feminist, who believed men should be allies, not enemies. Her interest in furthering the freedom to develop as a person carried into her later years when she addressed issues facing seniors. The aged, she observed in 1993, are talked about with the same "patronizing, 'compassionate' denial of their personhood" as were women.

This past weekend, the nation also mourned Coretta Scott King's passing. That's a reminder that the fight for individual liberty is a broad and deep one - with a history, and a future. Link to The Monitor's View, The Christian Science Monitor

In a New York Times article, Margalit Fox says more about Friedan’s life and work and her own experience with domestic abuse, including her husbands denial. Sure, Friedan could have been lying about being bruised and covering it up with makeup, but I remember when it was my own mother’s practice to, before she and my father went to church with the brood. So, call me prejudiced. Following, are rearranged excerpts from the story, including criticism that Friedan received. For a fuller picture, clink on the link at the end of the blockquote:

Mr. Friedan, who died in December, repeatedly denied the accusations. In an interview with Time magazine in 2000, shortly after the memoir's publication, he called Ms. Friedan's account a "complete fabrication." He added: "I am the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting by a reckless driver savagely aiming at the whole male gender." A brilliant student who graduated summa cum laude from Smith College in 1942, Ms. Friedan trained as a psychologist but never pursued a career in the field. When she wrote "The Feminine Mystique," she was a suburban housewife and mother who supplemented her husband's income by writing freelance articles for women's magazines.

Drawing on history, psychology, sociology and economics, as well as on interviews she conducted with women across the country, Ms. Friedan charted a gradual metamorphosis of the American woman from the independent, career-minded New Woman of the 1920's and 30's into the vacant, aproned housewife of the postwar years.

The portrait she painted was chilling. For a typical woman of the 1950's, even a college-educated one, life centered almost exclusively on chores and children. She cooked and baked and bandaged and chauffeured and laundered and sewed. She did the mopping and the marketing and took her husband's gray flannel suit to the cleaners. She was happy to keep his dinner warm till he came wearily home from downtown.

The life she led, if educators, psychologists and the mass media were to be believed, was the fulfillment of every women's most ardent dream. Yet she was unaccountably tired, impatient with the children, craving something that neither marital sex nor extramarital affairs could satisfy. Her thoughts sometimes turned to suicide. She consulted a spate of doctors and psychiatrists, who prescribed charity work, bowling and bridge. If those failed, there were always tranquilizers to get her through her busy day.

A Nebraska housewife with a Ph.D. in anthropology whom Ms. Friedan interviewed told her:

"A film made of any typical morning in my house would look like an old Marx Brothers comedy. I wash the dishes, rush the older children off to school, dash out in the yard to cultivate the chrysanthemums, run back in to make a phone call about a committee meeting, help the youngest child build a blockhouse, spend fifteen minutes skimming the newspapers so I can be well-informed, then scamper down to the washing machines where my thrice-weekly laundry includes enough clothes to keep a primitive village going for an entire year. By noon I'm ready for a padded cell. Very little of what I've done has been really necessary or important. Outside pressures lash me though the day. Yet I look upon myself as one of the more relaxed housewives in the neighborhood."

Though Ms. Friedan was not generally considered a lyrical stylist, "The Feminine Mystique," read today, is as mesmerizing as it was more than four decades ago:

"Gradually, without seeing it clearly for quite a while, I came to realize that something is very wrong with the way American women are trying to live their lives today," Ms. Friedan wrote in the opening line of the preface. "I sensed it first as a question mark in my own life, as a wife and mother of three small children, half-guiltily, and therefore half-heartedly, almost in spite of myself, using my abilities and education in work that took me away from home." [Excerpt From 'The Feminine Mystique']

Betty Friedan "one of the chief architects of the women's liberation movement of the late 1960's and afterward, a sweeping social upheaval that harked back to the suffrage campaigns of the turn of the century and would be called feminism's second wave."

Though in later years, some feminists dismissed Ms. Friedan's work as outmoded, a great many aspects of modern life that seem routine today — from unisex Help Wanted ads to women in politics, medicine, the clergy and the military — are the direct result of the hard-won advances she helped women attain.

With its impassioned yet clear-eyed analysis of the issues that affected women's lives in the decades after World War II — including enforced domesticity, limited career prospects and, as chronicled in later editions, the campaign for legalized abortion — "The Feminine Mystique" [by Betty Friedan] is widely regarded as one of the most influential nonfiction books of the 20th century. Published by W. W. Norton & Company, the book had sold more than three million copies by the year 2000 and has been translated into many languages.
Link to: New York Times Here

In conclusion, there is plenty of evidence in culture and politics today that points to proof that not all men have warmed up to the idea of a woman's liberty, but there is also proof that men have evolved and I'm lucky to tell you that I've found one after a longtime looking.

Related Women's Issues Links:
Feminist.com: Women's Top Worry is Domestic Violence
ABC News Online: Abortion pill poll result 'absolute nonsense'
No Fair, RightEqualsMight

What is News?

2006-02-03T18:39:00.000-09:00

I don’t understand why, if so many people in America think President Bush misleads the American people, Americans can look away. Contrast that with Clinton’s lie about his sex life and the urgent call for impeachment. Where are American values? Is it really damaging to America if a president lies about his infidelity? More so than a president who lies about our war, which has cost more than 2,000 American soldiers and has ominous potential for long-term damage to our American way of life? Have we become so complacent and apathetic as to view our leaders as some sort of god that we adhere to some sort of rampant blind faith?

It’s not that I sympathize with terrorists who blow up people in markets (I certainly do not!), but we must recognize that since America invaded Iraq (the war in Afghanistan was well underway to deal with the 9/11 mastermind but Osama bin Laden isn’t on the president’s radar screen) terrorists are in Iraq in numbers that were unheard of before the pre-empted invasion. Eric Alterman discusses (link above) how Americans and newsmen and women cared more about Clinton’s blowjobs than they care about getting some answers from the Bush administration. It declares that they prefer koffee-klatch-style journalism as opposed to the type of watchdog reporting they displayed regarding Clinton’s sexual indiscretion. What gives here?

Prayers from Around the World for Jill Carroll

2006-01-31T08:00:00.000-09:00

Below is an excerpt of just a few of the letters to the Christian Science Monitor from around the world in support of Jill Carroll, the 1999 UMass graduate and freelance reporter in Iraq. Jill was kidnapped Jan. 7.

From Allan Enwiyah's family
I am a part of the extended family of Allan, the interpreter killed when Jill was kidnapped. I pray every day that Jill will return home safely. May God bless her and give her and her wonderful family strength. Charlotte Carley, Bolingbrook, Ill., USA

Exposing the plight of freedom-loving Iraqis
Jill Carroll symbolizes the conviction to convey unembellished reality with the sincere intent to bring to light the plight of freedom-loving Iraqis. My prayer is that she should not be made part of the strife. Suresh Kalkunte, Baghdad, Iraq

'There is a spirit in man'
While discussing Jill Carroll's kidnapping with a friend, I decided to pray about this situation using the quote: "There is a spirit in man: and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding (Job 32:8)." We are praying to know that this "spirit" of goodness and love will shine in the hearts of her captors and re-awaken the compassion, love, and understanding in their hearts that will guide them to release her unharmed. We send our love and support to Jill and to her family. God is blessing you all. Linda Sylva, Los Gatos, Calif., USA

May peace be upon you
To Jill and the Carroll family: You continue to be in my prayers. Jill's compassion for the Iraqi people is evident in her writing. I pray that God will open the hearts of her captors. They must know by now that Jill's writing will educate the world as to the plight of the Iraqi people. She is a sister worthy of their protection. I wish you all God's strength and blessings as you wait for the news of Jill's release. Assalaamu Alaikum (May peace be upon you) Dorie Griggs, Roswell, Ga., USA

Blessing so many
Just a few words to say to you, Jill. Your shining example of courage, joy, and integrity have blessed so many through this experience. I pray that you feel the love being poured out to you, and that your captors realize their mistake and release you very soon. God bless you. Joan Fernandez, Ballwin, Mo., USA

It began with Jill's compassion
To Jill and her family,
Jill has inspired my prayers for mankind. I am feeling more than ever that Love is the only power there really is, and I feel a growing confidence that this will be proved in Jill's release. A blessing for the whole world is in the works, and it began with Jill's compassion. May you feel the comfort and power of Love today. Nancy Humphrey Case, Hyde Park, Vt., USA

Outpouring of love and peace from all over the world
Dearest Jill, Our love and prayers are with you. We have had you on our minds constantly since we heard of your kidnapping. It is apparent from the outpouring of love and peace from all over the world that your work and light have impacted many. You are our daughter, everyone's daughter. May the peace of god be with you and sustain you until you are safe. May your captors see the god in you and in themselves and set you free. Soon! Richard & Janet Plumb, Norton, Mass., USA

Her passion for the region an inspiration
Had the pleasure and honor to get to know Jill in Cairo last summer while I was there studying Arabic. I can only confirm what a warm, outgoing and unassuming person she is. Her passion for the region, its people and their stories is an inspiration, and to think of her in this situation is heart-wrenching. Thank you, Jill, for your work and for the inspiration and knowledge you've given others. My prayers are for you, Jill, and for your family and friends. I pray that the day may come soon when we can meet again at Cafe Hurriyya, visit with old friends, laugh, and welcome the strength that good memories can have over the bad. Please stay safe. Mark Voss, Tucson, Ariz., USA

Never shy away from truth
Dear Ms. Carroll: I have great faith that you will eventually be released and be able to continue the fine reporting that has characterized your career to date. Journalists of your calibre and courage are rare. All persons, regardless of religious or political persuasion, benefit from your efforts at revealing truth through your integrity. To your family, I say that you and Ms. Carroll are in my prayers. Through faith you will find the strength you need to come through this ordeal. To her captors, I say that Ms. Carroll, and all other journalists of high ethical standards are exactly the type of people who are needed to illuminate the world about the realities of Iraq today. Your release of Ms. Carroll will allow her to continue to reveal to the world your struggles, hopes and aspirations. You could wish for no finer journalist than she and she will ensure that the truth will be reported. The newspaper she writes for is held in very high regard for its journalistic integrity and its commitment to objective analysis. The paper, as well as Ms. Carroll, will never shy away from the truth in the face of an oppresive and/or coercive government in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world. Erik Sunde, Houston, Tex., USA

Update on Jill Carroll and Other News People

2006-01-30T12:50:00.000-09:00

Actually, there is no update. When I Googled “Update on Jill Carroll” and “Jill Carroll Update,” all I found is this post nine hours ago that said 39 foreigners have been killed and 250 taken captive in Iraq since the invasion in 2003.
Bob Woodruff and his cameraman, Doug Vogt, have both suffered head injuries recently and broken bones but their body armor apparently saved them. Woodruff is the new co-anchor of World News Tonight, according to Forbes.com.

Jill Carroll, a freelance reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, was kidnapped by gunmen Jan. 7. She was among 250 foreigners who had been taken captive in the country since the U.S. invasion; at least 39 of those foreigners were killed.

The most visible among the U.S. TV reporters was David Bloom of NBC News, who died from an apparent blood clot while traveling south of Baghdad on April 6, 2003.

The Blooms and Woodruffs were known to be close friends, and when NBC News executives had to tell Bloom's widow that her husband had died, they made sure Woodruff's wife, Lee, was there to offer support.

Woodruff spent three days in Israel last week reporting on the Palestinian elections, and was to have been in Iraq through the State of the Union address on Tuesday, according to ABC.

ABC News' Jim Sciutto, who is covering the war in Iraq, said of Vogt: "He's the cameraman we all request when we go to the field because he's so good, a fantastic eye. He's won so many awards for ABC."

On CBS' "Face the Nation" Sunday, anchor Bob Schieffer abandoned his commentary to wish Woodruff and Vogt well. "It just hit us all like a lightning bolt because we've all been there," he later told The Associated Press.

NBC "Nightly News" anchor Brian Williams said he had been in touch with Woodruff's family and is praying for the families of both men. "There is no way to cover the story in Iraq without exposure to danger," he said.

Jill Carroll--The Best Journalistic Tradition

2006-01-27T14:55:00.000-09:00

I just had to pass this along to anyone who’s interested in journalists in Iraq. Recently, I lead a presentation/discussion in an online journalism course called, War Reporting. As noted in my personal profile, I completed an online journalism course at the University of Massachusetts. Currently, I am a junior in the Journalism undergraduate program there. Jill Carroll was a graduate of the same program and the journalism department sent a story to its students about Jill. She is a freelance reporter in Iraq and was abducted Jan. 7. Her work represents traditional ethical standards in journalism.

"Our Jill" was the headline on a recent editorial in the Jordan Times pleading for the release of the paper's former reporter Jill Carroll, who was kidnapped in Iraq on Jan. 7. But before she was their Jill, she was ours.

Jill graduated from the University of Massachusetts Journalism program in 1999. She told me on the first day of her first class with me that she wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I explained to her that those positions went to long-time reporters on large newspapers who had paid their dues covering zoning board meetings. I didn't know at the time that she wasn't listening to me.

After graduation, Jill worked briefly for the Wall Street Journal, then moved to Jordan where she worked for the Times while she studied Arabic and the culture of the Middle East. She has covered the war from Baghdad from its beginning as a free-lancer, writing for many publications including the Christian Science Monitor.

In the best journalistic tradition, Jill covers the war not from her hotel in the Green Zone and armored cars, but from the streets. She moves through Baghdad wearing traditional Arab dress, blending in, speaking to Iraqis in their own language and giving voice to their stories.

Jill wrote recently in American Journalism Review that she went to the Middle East on her own because she would rather have jumped off a cliff than cover zoning meetings. She prepared herself in depth to tell the most difficult story of our time, and despite the growing danger that she chronicled, she stayed with it for the love of that story and of the Iraqi people.

For those who wonder why Jill was in such a dangerous place when she didn't have to be, the answer lies in her commitment to honest, compassionate journalism and her understanding of its significance in the world. If reporters like Jill were not in Iraq, we Americans would know only what the government wants us to know. And that is not enough when a war is being fought in our name.

Jill talked about journalism as a noble calling in the last paper she wrote for me in Journalism Ethics, for which she had interviewed a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer. "At the end of the interview, I got up and danced around my kitchen," she wrote. "Journalists are not afraid to ask tough questions or risk themselves to get out the information people have a right to know. I believe reporters are humble crusaders with hearts of gold, mouths of sailors, and pens full of unstoppable ink."

My comment in longhand at the end of her essay reads: "This paper is so great that now I'm going to jump up and dance around MY kitchen."

She'd developed that respect for journalism in part through her hard work as a UMass Daily Collegian reporter covering student government. Her reporting described some raucous meetings in detail, and those present were not always happy with her coverage.

In her last Collegian column before she graduated, Jill wrote that some students had come to the newsroom at 11 p.m. one night, surrounded her as she worked at her computer and demanded that she change her story, which included some of that critical description. She refused. The next day, she wrote, those students removed most of the Collegians from campus.

This was Jill's message to them: "You wasted your time. No one even reads my stories because I have the most boring beat at the paper." She wrote that some people at student government meetings had been drunk, "but in all fairness, you have to either be drunk, or a Collegian reporter, to make it through those three hours of torture every Wednesday night."

In Baghdad, Jill didn't have to cover student government or zoning boards. She wrote about Iraqi families who had lost their homes. She wrote about Iraqi children trying to learn in damaged and desolate schools.

Last April, Jill wrote a beautiful tribute to an American woman who had been killed as she worked to get accurate counts of civilian casualties in Baghdad. Marla Ruzicka, a friend of Jill's who like her was 28 years old, died when she was caught between a suicide bomber and a military convoy.

"The only thing we can say now is at least she died doing what she wanted, doing what she really, really believed in," Jill wrote in the Monitor. "If she were still here, she'd be most worried now about her driver's family and who will take care of all the other Iraqi families she was working with. She would point out, this happens to Iraqis every day and no one notices or even cares." DAILY HAMPSHIRE GAZETTE [ Originally published on: Tuesday, January 24, 2006 ]
'Our Jill' fulfills ideals of journalism By Karen List
Read the rest, republished in Editor&Publisher>

According to the story and other commentary I gained through the class presentation, Jill was doing what she wanted to do, what she believed in, and though there were those who were not always happy with what she saw and what she heard, and therefore wrote, Jill appears to fulfill a journalists role in the traditional sense.

Jill Carroll's Reports on the War in Iraq

2006-01-17T16:10:00.000-09:00

Freelance Middle East Journalist and War Reporter Jill Carroll, 28, felt comfortable in Iraq, according to the Washington Post (WP). Carroll has reported for Jordanian, Italian and American news organizations, including WP, Christian Science Monitor (CSM), a Boston-based daily, according to the story titled, "In Ambush Lasting Second, U.S. Reporter in Iraq Becomes Hostage."

An Associated Press (AP) article in the Jan. 9 edition of the Boston Herald said Carroll’s sister, Kathryn, kept a blog titled, Lady of Arabia, about her sister’s experiences in the Middle East. It has since been reported that the blog has been shut down but is unconfirmed, however. One of Kathryn’s last posts said: “Jill finally sent some photos and these are great! Be sure to notice the blast walls to Jill’s left by the xmas tree. At least we know there’s some protection there!” A Google search for Lady of Arabia can not be found.

Reporting from the Middle East since October 2002, Carroll is an “’established journalist’ experienced in the Middle East,” according to CSM. ‘In recent months, the Monitor has tapped into her professionalism, energy, and fair reporting on the Iraqi scene,’ with a ‘drive to gather direct and accurate views from political leaders…” according to the CSM statement in the Washington Post.

“Monitor Editor Richard Bergenheim said in the statement: ‘Jill’s ability to help others understand the issues facing all groups in Iraq has been invaluable,” according to the Jan. 10 report by Reporter Ellen Knickmeyer.

Knickmeyer said Carroll, “unlike most Western reporters in Baghdad, spoke Arabic well enough to easily talk to ordinary Iraqi people and interview Iraq officials. She had picked up the language while working as a business reporter in Jordan and…had renewed a plea to her Iraqi interpreter and driver to speak only Arabic to her as they traveled so she could improve her fluency, collegues said,” and had a fine-tuned understanding of Iraq.

“In this poorly understood region, where so much is at stake, important stories are lost everyday because the foreign press corps doesn’t speak Arabic. Journalism is a public service and readers are best-served if I and the people I am writing about speak the same language,” said Carroll in a scholarship application.

According to the Washington Post Foreign Service Correspondent, Carroll wore jeans and T-shirts and red-framed glasses but wore black and Iraqi women headscarves when driving about in unarmored vehicles in Iraq--without the bodyguards and security cars other reporters use.

CSM carries extensive overseas coverage and said it is not a religious publication, despite its name. In an April 26 story by Carroll and Dan Murphy, she quotes Psalm 91. The story is about a driver named Samson who delivers daily supplies for the US military base to Baghdad International Airport on a “four-lane, six mile stretch of road leading from central Baghdad to the country’s main airport,” and is one of the most dangerous stretches of highway in Iraq, if not the world. It functions as a critical supply line into and out of the country, traversed daily by US military convoys as well as Iraqi and foreign businessmen, journalists and aid workers…a vital strip of concrete, which takes only minutes to travel [but] still so difficult to protect.”

In the story titled, “Toughest Commute in Iraq? The six miles to the airport,” Carroll said in spite of copious checkpoints, terrorists believe it to be a “’target rich’ route that is the heart of military and contractor supply routes, and they continue to challenge every security measure devised.”

With her co-reporter, Carroll cites a recent ambush and suicide car bombing on the main road killing five foreign contractors because “all aircraft come only for Americans,” said Samson, according to Carroll. “Everyone working for the Americans must be killed, this is what they think.”

US diplomats don’t take the road, “which is a direct link to the US headquarters in the secured Green Zone,” they fly by helicopter, said Carroll. So, Samson prays Psalm 91, “A thousand shall fall at they side, and ten thousand at they right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee,” and this is Carroll and Murphy’s lead in the story from Baghdad for the Christian Science Monitor.

Clients are advised to wear protective covering and “avoid private security details “‘like the plague,’” said Carroll. “These convoys are the biggest targets on the road, he says. But for high-profile clients…it’s still better for them to ride in armored cars, because the assumption is they’re already being targeted.

Many Iraqis who aren’t going to the airport have to traverse part of the road to get around Baghdad. ‘If I have people with me and we take the airport road the passengers start praying from the entrance until the end and after we take an exit from the road they say ‘hamdulillah alsalameh’ says taxi driver Radee Taha, using the Arabic expression used after someone has returned safely from a trip.” Carroll cites the Killing of Taha’s brother who was shot not by terrorists on this road, but by jittery soldiers and security details, saying they, too, “pose a hazard” there.

Of war reporting, Carroll writes in the American Journalism Review (AJR) that she’d “rather jump off a cliff than cover one more zoning board meeting and just when one of the biggest stories in years is developing in Iraq, those foreign correspondent aspirations seem ever further out of reach.”

Carroll said that there was “only one way out” of this predicament was to “pull up the stakes, clean out that savings account and get on a plane to Baghdad. It may sound like lunacy, but that’s precisely what dozens of journalists have done. The result is a motley group of freelance reporters taking up residence in Baghdad’s seediest hotels—including a former brothel—and churning out stories on shoestring budgets in a country the Committee to protect Journalists ranked the most dangerous in the world for journalists.”

In another story titled, “America’s Waning Clout in Iraq,” Carroll and co-reporter Murphy, discussed risks to creating a “stable US-friendly Iraq.” On January 5, CSM published the account subtitled, In 2006, the US is expected to cut troops and spending, leaving it with less sway in Iraq There, Carroll cites analysts who propose America’s need to reach out to the Sunnis, the “erstwhile enemies.”

“When Iraq’s government is formed…it will be inheriting a country with massive problems and less money to address them than its predecessor,” said Carroll in the Baghdad/Cairo report.

“But the US has little currency with Sunni Arabs and few levers left to pry concessions from the Shiite Arabs,” she said. Referring to a need to broaden the support, Carroll outlines a need to communicate with a larger assemblage of politicians and Iraqi people. Carroll said White House Press Secretary Scott McClelland “refused to confirm” this account, which quotes influential Iraqi diplomats on American failures in Iraq.

Another AP story in Editor and Publisher said of Carroll: “
In April, she found and reported about a 27-member Iraqi family whose home was destroyed by a car bomb. The youngest, a 3-year-old, was left paralyzed from the waist down. Monitor readers were touched and sent donations. Carroll returned months later for a visit.”

Psychological Operations, News and Lies

2005-12-27T15:04:00.000-09:00

Americans don't want half-truths spun in Iraq. If journalists are paid to promote party line information -- we ought to do a better job at teaching them the difference between psychological warfare and news. Some argue Osama bin Laden (OBL) was spending millions to get his views in the news. That does not bode well for many Americans who oppose OBL's tactics. (see related post) In wartime, there is need for psychological operations but then there's a line when you try to call it news. America can't promote a democratic society if we violate constitutional principles at every turn. The dictionary defines propaganda as party line half-truths. That means that information is disseminated as news but is really psychological warfare. That's the lie. It's psychological operations and it's not news.

Lines Between Journalism and Public Relations

2005-12-26T14:24:00.000-09:00

This is becoming rather disturbing. What are reporters doing? What are opinion columnists doing? Are they being bought off? Are the American people paying the real price? The admission that Jack Abramoff paid two columnists is disturbing. "There is nothing unethical about taking money from someone and writing an article," said Peter Ferrara, Institute for Policy Innovation. According to Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, Ferrara “has acknowledged taking payments years ago from a half-dozen lobbyists, including Abramoff. Two of his papers, the Washington Times and Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, have now dropped him.” Public relations is not journalism. I understand there’s a fine line between public relations and journalism but there’s a line nonetheless! And it’s a definitive line. And readers do disagree. If writers produce articles for a company, politician, PR firm, lobbyist et al, they must disclose that it’s a public relations piece, press release and it is unethical to pretend it’s anything else. It’s that simple.

Views on the Day after Iraqis Vote

2005-12-16T12:40:00.000-09:00

“’We don’t want car bombs, we want security,’” said nine-year-old Ali, according to a front-page story titled, “Freedom From Fear Lifts Sunnis,” New York Times. “A new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning for Sunnis to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq,” was the mood yesterday in Iraq as millions voted. “’Happy days,’ said a 52-year-old government official, Salim Saleh. And in a more thoughtful mode added, “Iraqis aren’t used to democracy we have to learn it. A government that works in the interests of Iraq and the Iraqi people, regardless of ethnicity or sect. That would be democracy,” he said according to the Dec. 16 story.

Aside it is a story by Dexter Filkins describing “a day remarkable for its calm,” as millions vote in the beleaguered country. “The day was strikingly peaceful, even in areas normally beset by violence,” according to the Dec. 16 report.

But there’s a lot of respondents to the stories that don’t feel like everything is hunky-dory at New York Times Readers Opinion. There they still argue that President Bush misled America into a war using fixed intelligence and one respondent screennamed dollarbear posted a video clip from ThinkProgress web log. With an active discussion panel here, posters discuss and argue about Bush’s intentions and integrity on the decision to go to war in Iraq based on information he did or didn’t have:

"On day that the United States invaded Iraq, President Bush said that we were doing so “reluctantly” but that “our purpose was clear” — to get rid of Saddam’s “weapons of mass murder.” (Note: Bush did not say “purposes.” According to Bush, there was only one purpose.)

"Yesterday on Brit Hume, he said he would have invaded even if he knew there were no weapons of mass destruction. Would have been nice if he’d mentioned this earlier.

"Full Transcript:
12/14/05:
BUSH: I said I made the right decision. Knowing what I know today, I would have still made that decision.
HUME: So, if you had had this — if the weapons had been out of the equation because the intelligence did not conclude that he had them, it was still the right call?
BUSH: Absolutely.

3/19/03:
"Our nation enters this conflict reluctantly — yet, our purpose is sure. The people of the United States and our friends and allies will not live at the mercy of an outlaw regime that threatens the peace with weapons of mass murder."

Meanwhile, a respondent screennamed ezeflyer0 posts a Dec. 15 commentary by Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, Canada, pointing to the Bush administration’s attempt to keep Americans scared. The Muslim caliphate and its attempt at worldwide Islamic rule is discounted as a Bush administration scheme. An excerpt:

”George W. Bush talks about "a totalitarian Islamic empire that reaches from Indonesia to Spain. Exaggerating the power of the enemy is a standard war tactic (used against Saddam Hussein by both George H.W. Bush in the 1991 Gulf War and by George W. Bush in 2003). But this caliphate business takes the cake. One can laugh it off but for its possible long-term consequences."

Another Leaked Memo? Official Secrets Act

2005-11-24T22:00:00.000-09:00

British papers will be prosecuted if they publish another leaked memo, according to Christian Science Monitor (CSM). The Times of London allegedly has a memo with details of a planned bombing of Al Jazeera, an Arab satellite TV channel based in Qatar. Bush said it’s outlandish, according to the report by Tom Regan. “Editors were threatened with prosecution under the Official Secrets Act, according to another report by Rosemary Bennett and Tim Reid, Times Online. And of all places, ChinaDaily, posts a brief submission and photo of an al-Jazeera TV staffer during a related protest. The Daily Mirror reported that Bush spoke with Blair on April 16, 2004, about targeting the station’s headquarters, according to ChinaDaily. “The five-page memo - stamped ‘Top Secret’ - records a threat by Bush to unleash ‘military action’ against the TV station, which America accuses of being a mouthpiece for anti-US sentiments,” said Kevin Maquire, Mirror.co.uk. “Following the Mirror's revelations, there were calls for the transcript of the memo to be released. Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesman Sir Menzies Campbell said: ‘If true, then this underlines the desperation of the Bush administration,’” according to the Nov. 23 Mirror report.

Is Iraq Zarqawi's New Caliphate?

2005-11-13T18:47:00.000-09:00

I found a new blog today by a sergeant in Iraq. The post says so much and helps me to make some sense of what is going on as news floods the papers daily about more death and destruction than I remember in the past.

Today as I opened my morning paper with coffee and no school today, my question was: will Iraq be the base from which Zarqawi avers his religious authority, create a rule of law derived from Muhammad? Some terrorism experts believe it is probable and that Iraq could become the next Afghanistan, which appears to have voted in Jihadists and conservatives in their Sept. 18 election, according to Carlotta Gall, New York Times.

But several previous supporters of Zarqawi said Zarqawi is hurting their cause because instead of killing the occupiers (Americans) they kill Muslim women and children. To this the Sunni says they have renounced their religious and political allegiance and they deserve to die, according to the story today by Craig Whitlock, Washington Post. In this article, it says the Iraqi’s will never quit. As we would have never quit as the Red Coats marched into the New Worlde.

Peggy Noonan Misuses Katrina!

2005-09-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

Katrina is not this administration’s “indisputable domestic black eye”! Iraq is! Katrina is merely the manifestation of the ineptitude of this administration or America in general – on our own soil – where we feel it in a more tangible way!

And in this way, Peggy Noonan (although I like Wall Street Journal a lot) is doing exactly what she charges the left of! She’s squeezing Katrina for all she’s worth—to make political points--but the real problem and the real symptom of this administration’s collapse is still in Iraq. Come hell or high waters!

Today, more died in one day there since the 2003 invasion! It appears, that Noonan is doing the dance well and that dance is a sordid sort of diversion that falls on the willing ears of many who do not really keep up with the state of the world!

But there she is, discussing the healing of her heart…!

If you want to talk about civil unrest, Iraq is where the administration’s failure is mounting! Iraq is where the real civil unrest is! Sure, President Bush can’t control everything. But, Bush gained control by Congress in the fated October Resolution. And that was to direct Iraq away from terrorism and towards democracy! But, Iraq is in collapse!

On Katrina, Noonan asserts (in relation to Katrina): “you move your troops. You impose and sustain order. You protect life and property. Then you leave. That’s what the government is for. It’s what Republicans are for.”!

So great, do it! Just do it! Or are they impotent in Iraq!?

In Peter S. Canellos’s commentary he said the public doesn’t need anyone to tell them what went wrong with Katrina and Bush’s response and Katrina is merely a symptom of the problem.

(As I looked up the article that came to my doorstep this morning in print version, I found this one that claimed 20 more lives. )

Quite frankly, they’re dropping off like flies in Iraq! Did anyone even notice the c. 100 who were killed in a stampede of panic in Iraq during the heights of Katrina news?

America's Breakdown Exposed!

2005-09-11T14:28:00.000-08:00

Apparently, we have a horribly ineffectual government.

According to American Prospect Online America should be “the occasion for a thoroughgoing discussion of how America has combated terrorism in the last four years. And on that front, even the disaster Bush has created in Iraq takes a back seat to one overwhelming fact: By the time night falls on September 11, Osama bin Laden will have been at large for 1,461 days.”

Is Osama Winning?

According to Mark Danner, "grotesque as it is to say, the spectacle of 9/11 was meant to serve, among other things, as a recruiting poster for jihad"!

Meanwhile, America is failing her own but then there’s some reprieve of the devastation of incompetence and breakdown in America’s governing officials in the wake of the Katrina disaster! While others show some compassion and common sense.

All the while, energy issues abound in the wake of the war on terrorism and the Katrina storm!

What in the world is the greatest country on earth to do? Let's see what Ann Coulter has to say! Never mind, she's so totallly out to lunch on the Kennedy private parts II thang.

America in Shambles!

2005-09-06T17:43:00.000-08:00

I just need to remember these things about Katrina from the New York Times. This is a September 4th article about the mess in New Orleans. What is wrong with America?

Following are notable excerpts from my favorite newspaper!

September 4, 2005

A Delicate Balance Is Undone in a Flash, and a Battered City Waits
By PETER APPLEBOME, CHRISTOPHER DREW, JERE LONGMAN and ANDREW REVKIN

NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 3 - They waited, and they waited, and then they waited some more in the 90-degree heat, as many as 5,000 people huddled at a highway underpass on Interstate 10, waiting for buses that never arrived to take them away from the storm they could not escape.

Babies cried. The sick huddled in the shade in wheelchairs or rested on cots. Dawn Ray, 40, was in tears, looking after an autistic niece who had soiled herself and her son who is blind and has cerebral palsy. A few others, less patient, simply started walking west with nowhere to go, like a man pushing a bike in one hand and pulling a shopping cart in another. But most just waited with resigned patience - sad, angry, incredulous, scared, exhausted, people who seemed as discarded as the bottles of water and food containers that littered the ground.

"Disease, germs," one woman, Claudette Paul, said, covering her mouth with a cloth, her voice smoldering with anger. "We need help. We don't live like this in America."

...

This week, bit by bit, that delicate balance came completely undone. Water took over earth when levees broke, putting 80 percent of the city under water. The mix of fatalism and bravado that allowed the city's biggest fear - a killer hurricane - to become the marquee drink of Bourbon Street gave way to terror and despair and horrifying spasms of looting and violence. New Orleans became unrecognizable not just physically, but psychologically as well. Faced with a disaster of biblical proportions, everything fell apart, and government was either overmatched or slow to the task.

The flood-control apparatus, which government officials and scientists had long said was inadequate, gave way, but federal engineers did not even realize that a major breach had occurred until the next morning, when citizens began reporting rising flows on Web logs. The city's evacuation plan worked, except for the thousands who were too poor or disabled to find their own way out of the city before the storm. The radios and cellphones that officials and police officers use to communicate failed, erasing any remaining semblance of authority in a city beset by chaos and crime. And finally, a full federal response came only after the dialogue between local and federal officials devolved into anger.

Just two months ago, further evidence emerged that the city and its levees were sinking, increasing the risk of a catastrophic flood, even as federal money to protect the city was being cut afresh. As flood waters rose on Tuesday, Senator Mary L. Landrieu tried to impress upon colleagues in Washington that this was America's tsunami, but she said that the more she pleaded, the more she felt she was not being heard. Most local officials who were supposed to be running the city eventually left, mainly because they could not communicate with the outside world, whose help they desperately needed. It took four days for National Guard troops to arrive to restore order as looting and lawlessness spiraled out of control.

Mayor C. Ray Nagin said federal aid began flowing after he spoke by telephone to President Bush and told him bluntly: "Man, this is a mess, and I am not getting the resources I need. I need help, and if I don't get the help I need this city is going to blow up and this is going to be a national disgrace."

New Orleans, Flannery O'Connor once wrote, is a place where the devil's existence is freely recognized.

But not this devil. Not the devil of bloated bodies floating in muddy waters washing lazily over submerged pickups and campers, of corpses being eaten by rats as they decomposed on city streets, of people dying in wheelchairs outside the convention center as friends poured water over their heads to try to keep them alive.

Not the devil who left Bill and Gail Orris sitting exhausted, dazed after escaping through the hole they poked through the roof of their home in nearby Chalmette, while their 20-year-old daughter, Lennie, unable to walk and mentally disabled, sucked her thumb and jerked spasmodically back and forth in her wheelchair in the hot sun.

Not the devil who left Catherine Weiss, at 75, apologizing profusely for not having her teeth with her - she had left in a hurry, after all, when the water filled her house like a bathtub - and panicked about what had happened to her nephew, Michael Phillippello, who collapsed as a boat ferried them across the river to safety.

Not the man on talk radio, stranded in his house but begging people not to try to come back to see what they had left behind.

"It's like the five stages of accepting death," he said. "First, I was thinking if I had enough ice to save the good shrimp and tilapia, then it's whether I can save the house, now it's about my life. If I had two AK's I'd feel safe here. As it is, someone could pop me off, and I could end up bloated, no one would check for bullet holes, and I'd just end up in some potter's field. You can feel human life kind of receding like the waters."

...

"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," said Mayor Nagin, who urged people on Saturday to leave town and then gave an evacuation order on Sunday, when it looked as if a Category 5 storm, with winds as high as 175 miles an hour, could be headed for New Orleans. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."

Many of the 1.3 million people in the metropolitan area did that. But, as always, many did not. This surprised exactly no one. In a 2003 Louisiana State University poll, 31 percent of New Orleans residents said they would stay in the city even if a Category 4 hurricane struck.

Many stayed because they felt they had no choice.

The survey found that those who said they would stay tended be poor, less educated, disabled, older, childless or isolated, or had lived in the city for a long period. Twenty-eight percent of the population of New Orleans lives below the poverty line, compared with 9 percent nationwide, according to census figures. Twenty-four percent of its adults are disabled, compared with 19 percent nationwide. An estimated 50,000 households in New Orleans do not have cars.

And there was another bit of bad timing: the hurricane came at the end of the month, when those depending on public assistance are waiting for their next checks, typically mailed on the first of every month.

"They wouldn't have had any money to evacuate," said Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell.

...

But Chester Wilmot, an L.S.U. civil engineering professor who studies evacuation plans, said the city successfully improvised. He said witnesses described seeing city buses shuttle residents to the Superdome before Hurricane Katrina struck.

"What I've heard is that there were buses, but they weren't very well utilized," Professor Wilmot said. "They literally carried very few people."

...

"What you're going to find is that everyone who wanted to get out, got out," said Professor Wolshon. "Except for the people who didn't have access to transportation."

But many other stayed because they wanted to stay. Because their friends were staying. Because they were worried about looters if they left. Because they felt they could protect their property by staying home. They stayed because they had elderly parents who were going to stay, because they thought they knew which parts of the city flooded and which did not. Or because they always had.

"Hard-headed, honey," said Mrs. Weiss, when asked why she rode out the storm in the same brick home where she has stayed for storms for 41 years. "From now on, I'm leaving for a tropical storm."

...

Thriving on Bluff

And why not? For generations - centuries, really - this city had thrived in part on the poker-hand bluff, its sheer allure masking its starker realities.

Eighteenth-century accounts sent back to France as the first settlers carved into the Mississippi silt focused on the fanciful, not the real, said Craig E. Colten, a geographer at L.S.U. and the author of a new book on the city, "An Unnatural Metropolis."

Few entrepreneurs seeking to sell the idea of building a town on this swampy island mention that as they dug into the earth, they came upon recently buried tree trunks - a sign that they were standing on land laid down by epic floods.

And as the city grew, wedged between the Mississippi River and the broad, shallow Lake Pontchartrain, so too did efforts to ring it with earthen levees. But the very expansion of the city contributed to the rising flood risk, Dr. Colten said. As swampier spots were drained, the drying soil compressed, causing reclaimed land to sink ever more.

In the 20th century, more land was drained as the city's legendary system of pump stations and purging canals spread. But that made it sink all that much faster.

Hurricanes feeding on warmth from the gulf rumbled by most summers. Some potent ones smashed other Gulf Coast towns, like Galveston, Tex., in 1900, and storms in 1947 and 1965, struck New Orleans directly, but with survivable intensity. Hurricane Betsy, in September 1965, finally spurred a federal hurricane protection plan for Lake Pontchartrain and vicinity.

But the system that emerged was a compromise from the start, cut back by competing Army Corps of Engineer projects, by pressure from local communities that had to pay part of the tab, and by the tendency to focus more on current costs than on future risks.

Officials settled on a system of levees sufficient to protect against another Hurricane Betsy - roughly akin to what is now called a Category 3 storm, the kind that statistics estimate might strike New Orleans once in 200 years.

...

In 2004, with insufficient money to close contracts with the companies doing the work, Alfred Naomi, a senior district project manager, told the local East Jefferson Levee Authority, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune: "The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement."

This year, the New Orleans district was hit by a $71.2 million cut. Without more federal money, the district reported in May, the raising of various levees and other "pressing needs" would not be met. In June, at a meeting of emergency planners and hurricane experts, Roy Dokka, an L.S.U. engineer who has spent much of his career refining measurements of elevations around the gulf, presented findings that parts of the coast and New Orleans were sinking 2 to 50 times faster than earlier estimates.

Many spots were two to four feet lower than anyone thought, recalled Stephen Baig, a National Hurricane Center meteorologist, a chilling hint that calculations of the flood potential of particular storms, and the vulnerability of levees, might be significantly underestimated.

"For levee heights, and for our models," Dr. Baig recalled, "that could mean the difference between overtopping and not overtopping."

On Monday, there was nothing dramatic when the levee failed, no sound of an explosion or a crash. At midday, as the storm was blowing out of the city, the Web site of The Times-Picayune quoted residents near the 17th Street canal saying that after experiencing only minor flooding from the storm, suddenly the water in their yards was rising from what seemed to be a breach in the canal. One man said later that afternoon that the water was rising one brick on his house every 20 minutes.

By 4:20 p.m. on Monday, the Web site reported that the water had already rolled through the nearby Lakeview neighborhood and on down to the center of the city. By then, the water in Lakeview had reached the second stories of many houses. The berms along Lake Pontchartrain had held. The problem was in canals that had been built to carry water pumped from city drains out to the lake. But on Monday, with the lake rising, the flow in the canals reversed.

A surge, probably 10 feet above normal, flowed in from the lake, rising until it began cascading over the top of the sleek, butter-colored walls that stood between the east side of the 17th Street Canal and the city's Bucktown neighborhood.

Greg Breerwood, a deputy district engineer for the Corps, said it appeared that as the weight of the water pressed on the high part of the wall, the water pouring over the top hit the ground on the other side and ate away at the soil supporting its base.

A section of the wall pushed in and the rush of water turned that breach into a gash as broad as a football field is long. The lake and below-sea-level city were becoming one body of water.

"We heard about the flood wall failing," Mr. Breerwood said. "Then we realized there was an open corridor to the city."

A Reluctance to Leave

Once the levee broke, most long-time New Orleanians knew that the city could unravel quickly, with nothing to stop the lake from pouring into neighborhoods that were still dry and surging across a huge city park and into downtown.

Ms. Landrieu, a Democrat who grew up in New Orleans, whose father, Moon Landrieu, had been mayor, whose brother, Mitch, is currently Louisiana's lieutenant governor, was at the federal and state command center in Baton Rouge when the first warnings about the break flashed on Monday afternoon.

Ms. Landrieu knew how reluctant people could be to leave. This was the first time her own father had ever left during a hurricane. She said in an interview that she knew instantly that thousands who thought they had survived the storm would now be trapped in their houses, racing the rising floodwaters to their second floors, or to their attics or rooftops.

But she and other local officials suddenly faced a new problem: convincing federal officials that just one break in one canal with such a mundane name could bring on a cataclysm.

"I have been with Michael Brown since the minute he landed in this center," Ms. Landrieu said Friday in Baton Rouge, referring to the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, "and I have been telling him from the moment he arrived about the urgency of the situation."

But, she said, "I just have to tell you that he had a difficult time understanding the enormity of the task before us."

Natalie Rule, a spokeswoman for FEMA, disputed Ms. Landrieu's account. "There was no doubt in our minds that a Category 3, 4 or 5 headed for New Orleans was going to be dangerous," Ms. Rule said. She said agency officials told state and local leaders: "We will be there for you. You just go for it. We've got your back."

But if they did, no one knew it. And as the flood-control system broke down, so soon did everything else.

There was no immediate announcement that the levee had been breeched or what it meant, but different people realized at different times that maybe the bullet had not been dodged, after all. The prestorm evacuation, as chaotic as it seemed to anyone stuck on the road, was still part of a plan. Now , a whole new ad hoc stage began.
...

"The tourists are walking around there and as soon as these individuals see them, they're being preyed upon," said P. Edwin Compass III, superintendent of police. "They are beating, they are raping them in the streets."

The Flooded Ninth

Before dawn on Tuesday, Ms. Landrieu's brother, the lieutenant governor, and Sgt. Troy McConnell of the state police left Baton Rouge to assist in the rescue of flooded residents of the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Mr. Landrieu knew the city intimately. But now he was navigating the Lower Ninth Ward not by car, but by boat. The four men on board would cut the engine and float in watery silence, listening for calls for help from inside houses or attics.

People yelled from rooftops or waved shirts or rags, as if they were flags, from vents in the attic. A few wooden houses floated like buoys.

It had become so hot inside the fetid houses that some residents shivered in the cold water as they swam to the rescue boat. One woman was so heavy and immobile that 12 men were needed to lift her off a gurney.

They must have rescued 100 people, but by the end of the day the mood began to change to one of irritated impatience. "By dusk, people were getting agitated and upset," Sergeant McConnell said. "They had been in those houses for two days with nothing to eat or drink."

...

Chermaine Daniels, 49, had left her flooded one-story house in the Ninth Ward on Tuesday morning, gashing her ankle on a fence as she struggled to swim to a neighbor's two-story house. Later that day, Ms. Daniels and several others were rescued by a uniformed officer in a boat and deposited at an I-10 encampment.

"What do we do now?" she asked the boat driver.

"You're on your own," the driver replied.

An Array of Complaints

Increasingly, local officials also felt that they were on their own.

On Tuesday night, Mayor Nagin complained that while federal officials had agreed that morning that stemming the flow from the breach was the highest priority, "it didn't get done."

Ms. Landrieu said she had talked to Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee , the majority leader, on Tuesday and told him: " 'You remember when I flew over the tsunami with you? This was worse than anything we saw.' He said, 'No, you've got to be kidding.' I said, 'I know it's hard to grasp.' And he said, 'We're on it.' " Mr. Frist's office did not respond to requests for comment.

By Wednesday, with little visible response from the federal government, Ms. Landrieu said that she talked to FEMA officials. "I started to sense they were thinking I was a little overwrought, that maybe I was exaggerating a little bit," she said. When she pressed Mr. Brown on when he was going to finally get buses to pick up the people who had been trapped at the Superdome, "he just mumbled," she said.

Mayor Nagin said that he could not remember whether he spoke to President Bush on Wednesday or Thursday, but that the president acknowledged the federal government could have done more and promised to fix the situation.

...

Inside New Orleans, city officials were trying to keep some semblance of control over their city, and failing. The most basic reason was a massive breakdown of the communications system. Cellphones failed and satellite phones did not arrive for several days, according to Representative Charlie Melancon, a Democrat who represents suburban New Orleans.

Ms. Landrieu said on Wednesday: "Our communications systems are not functioning adequately; they are compromised. Not Louisiana's communications system. The United States of America. We didn't have the right communications system for 9/11. We don't have the right communications system now. By that I mean the simplest things. A police chief in a city talking to a mayor in a city wasn't happening while this was going on because their cellphones were down and their radios didn't communicate."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Felicity Barringer from New Orleans, Susan Saulny from Baton Rouge, La., and David Rohde from New York.

More Attacks on Democracy Everyday!

2005-08-30T12:35:00.000-08:00

In a post I wrote today, I note that American Legion veterans have declared war on Americans who oppose the war. They have declared war on the media too and promise to stop them “by whatever means necessary”!

This is starting to be spine-chilling!

This war is turning out to be a catalyst for the creation of an Islamic theocracy in Iraq--not democracy but a pro-Iranian state. How many times can Americans stand to be offered a different cause for sacrificing their loved ones? President Bush endorsed the Iraq constitutional draft!

Aren’t we supposed to be fighting for democracy? Wasn’t the war started because of radical Islamist’s most horrible attack on America? What is going on here? Now, if Americans oppose a theocracy in Iraq, the veterans will stop them by whatever means necessary?

Is Mainstream Media Bias?

2005-08-28T12:06:00.000-08:00

Or is it the commentary found throughout Cyberspace? On forums and web logs

This is a scathing response to Cindy Sheehan:

(for link to a pdf file, click here).

While other criticisms include comments on forums of Cindy’s like-minded people (click here) .

Another forum suggested that the media refuses to report the millions who oppose Cindy Sheehan’s protest of the war in Iraq.

However, that same day, front and center of the print version of the New York Times did report on the many people who are not protesting the war and the many people who are angry at Cindy Sheehan. It's a realistic mixup of who is protesting what! It includes vets and parents who are joining Ms. Sheehan and those who seethe when they hear her name in a report by Abby Goodnough and then another one on the same day by the Associated Press and printed in the New York Times.

Cindy Sheehan is Not One of Them!

2005-08-19T16:32:00.000-08:00

Commentary on some political forums are aggressive (and the timid need not log-on!). The political forum at Masslive.com, is no exception with its brutal-as-usual politics.

And one winger, 03grunt11 (his screen name), surprised me!

It started when nutdetector (that’s his screen name), a seemingly mechanical enthusiast who typically repeats formerly framed rhetoric that every one is bored to death of – tried his hand at creative writing. He wrote in reference to Cindy Sheehan the mother of the dead Iraq war soldier. Cindy was camping out on President Bush’s Crawford, Texas, ranch road demanding to see him -- but her mother then had a stroke and she had to pack up her sleeping bag. So nutdetector wrote a parody, as if it were a letter from Mrs. Cindy Sheehan:

“Thanks Mom, I couldn't have spent one more night using that disgusting portapotty or sleeping in that tent with all those buggy things around.

Your loving Daughter,

Cindy”

Business as usual -- in the day of a life on the Internet, and I thought not much of it. Smeared assumptions are spewed everyday as if they’re part of the food pyramid or our daily nutritional value as human beings.

The media has had a blast with this woman. She’s been sized up, sized down, turned around, inside out into any shape or form any one thinks they should fashion her into!? (Am I wrong here? No!)

But then, amazingly, another typically staunch right-winger chimed in. 03grunt11 said:

“I just can’t read these anymore without commenting. No matter how you feel about [Mrs. Sheehan] or her politics or her political ties, [Cindy Sheehan] lost her son and now her mother had a stroke. Couldn't you cut this woman just a little slack here and show just a small amount of human compassion? I don't agree with her either but dayem guys show some respect for another human being. Please!!

His buddy, the one named nutdetector, who is always pretty loyal, turned around and said:

“You know grunt, Respect cuts both ways. This woman got more publicity than she could ever possibly dream of. She was set up like a bowling pin by Moore and the other leftist panty-waists. Well, when you desire to become a public figure, you live with the consequences.”

But 03grunt11 didn’t back down. Although he admitted his difficulty when he said:

“I find myself in a very hard position, defending a war protestor. But here I am. First I wonder how has she disrespected you Nut. I agree she’s being played like a tuba in a Sousa's band. But wouldn't it make more sense to go after those doing the deed. Secondly (and here’s the respect part), knowing that her son volunteered to serve, out of respect for him and his service I will not in any way attack, insult, or demean his family, including his mother, no matter what their political views. There are many fights and arguments to get involved in. I would rather pick the ones I find worthy. This mother is not one of them.”

Ahh! Real Americans!

Christian Science Monitor Seems to See More

2005-08-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

“Today, some of the not-so-silent minority worried about the war include military veterans and their families,” according to Christian Science Monitor. “Jan Barry, a founder of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, says that when his group posted a statement of opposition to the Iraq war on a website shortly before the conflict started, it was signed by some 4,000 vets and family members, many of whom were retired. What surprised him, though, was the number of second and third generation military who signed up - including many World War II vets.”

“Activists say the grumbling about the war extends to some in the active-duty ranks. Even though there is no draft today, they note that the war has stretched on long enough, and has involved enough multiple deployments of many older National Guard and Reserve troops with family and work responsibilities back home, that misgivings are surfacing.”

"’We don't have a 'conscription draft,' as we say, but we have an economic draft [recruiters increasingly targeting poorer high school students], a backdoor draft with the National Guard and Reserves [who now make up more than 40 percent of US troops in Iraq], with the stop-loss program and the calling up of the Individual Ready Reserves," says Steve Morse of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, which offers counseling on a "GI Hotline" at 13 locations around the country...”

“…About a dozen military families have arrived to lend a hand in the Sheehan protest. They come from Alabama, California, Georgia, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas - and most have lost a loved one.

"We are here for all the soldiers who don't have a voice anymore," says Sergio Torres, whose son Army Sgt. Daniel Torres was killed in February when a roadside bomb hit his unarmored Humvee.”

And from another story there is an excerpt by Jerry Lanson: “It was the first day of spring, the second anniversary of the Iraq war, the fourth day of the NCAA tournament. At the liberal church I was attending near Boston this Palm Sunday, the minister mentioned the tough winter that had dumped 108 inches of snow on the area. He said not a word about the 1,524 American soldiers killed in Iraq, at last count.

“As I listened, a guest participant in the choir, he talked of the hope and rebirth that comes with spring and of the pleasure of watching college playoff basketball, with its teamwork, fraternity, and enthusiasm. He never did mention the war that slogs on thousands of miles away.”

And CivicConnections blogs why some are not Republicans anymore because of the current Evangelical ramrod of that party, suggesting it is political strategists that led Mr. Bush to the White House and not the Holy Spirit of Jesus Christ!:

“I looked back as I walked away—while making fearful supplication to God—remembering Paul’s admonition to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Believers were still, as always, conspiring God’s revenge on the evildoers, Democrats and people of other faiths or Christians who weren’t considered real Christians (i.e.: not “Us”)! We meditated on their blights, including in our curses, how much we loved “Them.” But our abhorrence was more commanding than our words.

“However, it was not ‘well with my soul.’”

Is Cindy Sheehan the Face of an Anti-war Movement?

2005-08-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

The Christian Science Monitor is said to be one of the most non-bias publications but you won’t find any science in it, according to a former professor, during my online journalism studies.

In their story titled, Antiwar Sentiment Gets Champion, Staff Writers Brad Knickerbocker and Kris Axtman take an objective look at what’s really going on there. They said: “her crusade comes at a time when doubts about US engagement [in Iraq] are clearly growing.”

At Creative Writer’s Group, the creative writer takes a look at it with more partiality in "Now they Sic the Swift Boats on Cindy Sheehan," blogging that it's a "funny thing, no one thought the GOP was using her while she was in her first stages of grief: Denial. At that time, President Bush felt no qualms about speaking to the mother of a dead soldier. Conservative commentators felt it was within their rights to publish her boot-lickin' bush-praisin' swooning!

"But now, Mrs. Sheehan has awakened to her nightmare. She has new information about potential manipulation of intelligence by his administration.”

Also at Creative Writer’s Group in a blog titled, Mrs. Sheehan’s Enemy is Latent Political Deceit!, Morning Star notes that “it’s a dangerous culture that attacks an inconsolable mother for lamenting—over politics of deceit!”

Then there's bloggers like Right Makes Right. There, the Marine said it would be nice to be called a Warrior King in a heated comment thread. He writes: “First and foremost, this woman is spitting on the memory of her own son. He was in the service because he wanted to be- and I can assure you that he was proud of being a military man and proud of his mission. His death only becomes meaningless when we back home choose to NOT honor his mission and his sacrifice. If it mattered to him, then it damn well should matter to all of us back here in Protected Land.”

Meanwhile, Michelle Malkin takes on what might look more like a cat fight! In her commentary titled, UNCONFIRMED REPORT: PATRICK SHEEHAN HAS FILED FOR DIVORCE, she seems to be going after Mrs. Sheehan’s personal troubles to support her pro-war sentiments!

For the Record

2005-06-26T13:00:00.000-08:00

Do Bush, Bumiller Reflect the Record?
News writers Can’t Say ‘The President is Lying’! Is New York Times' Elisabeth Bumiller the GOP Hypocrite of the Week?

“’I told the Prime Minister that the American people share his democratic vision for Iraq,’ said Mr. Bush.”

Daily Howler said in their opinion piece that Elisabeth Bumiller’s a “journalistic car wreck that just keeps happening,” regarding a New York Times White House Letter. Bumiller is called Bush’s “number one shill,” in their commentary titled: Smirking Rich! Frank Rich Still Won’t Tell His Readers that Whitewater was a Fake Scandal.

Bumiller’s April 28 White House Letter, titled “Measuring the Bush Family History and the President’s Political Career, in Innings,” is a nice story about Bush wherein she notes he said he could never hit a curveball. And still, Curveball with a capital C is another story too. According to Washington Post Staff Writer Walter Pincus, “On Jan. 24, 2003, four days before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address presenting the case for war against Iraq, the National Security Council staff put out a call for new intelligence to bolster claims that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or programs…. senior intelligence officials had serious questions about 'Curveball,' the code name for an Iraqi informant who provided the key information on Hussein's alleged mobile biological facilities.”

Can the media say that the president is lying? It depends, according to a transcript at FAIR.org. Here, an audience member asks Bumiller and others: what is difference “between balanced reporting and objective reporting? And the thing that kind of sticks in my mind frequently is when President Bush on the stump would frequently pull out the "global test" that John Kerry mentioned in the debate, but he would completely twist the meaning of the whole phrase around. . . . Essentially, what I feel like was a lie that the president just stated . . . was never objectively reported on. . . . “

Bumiller later said: “…you can’t say George Bush is wrong here. There’s no way you can say that in the New York Times. So we contort ourselves up and say, “Actually,” she said: "I actually once wrote this sentence: Mr. Bush’s statement did not exactly . . . It was some completely upside down statement that was basically saying he wasn’t telling the truth…. You can’t just say the president is lying…. You can in an editorial, but I’m sorry, you can’t in a news column. Mr. Bush is lying?” “I think its much more powerful to say: 'However, the president’s statement did not reflect the record,'” said Susan Page, USA Today.

Do the American people share Bush's democratic vision for Iraq as he said, which was recorded in the Wall Street Journal?

"The rising death toll and increasingly bloody insurgency have led many Americans to question the U.S. presence in Iraq,” said PolitInfo.com. “Lawmakers from both parties have spoken of the need for a timetable to withdraw U.S. troops, an idea the Bush administration and the Iraqi government have dismissed. With polls showing that a majority of Americans do not approve of the way the president is handling Iraq, Mr. Bush is planning to speak about the situation in Iraq during a nationally televised address Tuesday. “

The president “assured Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Friday ‘there's not going to be any timetable’ for withdrawal of American forces and vowed victory over insurgents attempting to prevent establishment of a democratic government,” according to the Wall Street Journal. “I told the Prime Minister that the American people share his democratic vision for Iraq,” said Mr. Bush according to a transcript of the text of Bush and Jaafari’s East Room White House talk. So is the Wall Street Journal and AP just recording the words of the president, or are they taking sides?

And there’s freedom fries and toast! “Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones renamed French fries "freedom fries" on congressional menus, said LA Times Staff Writer Paul Richter at “Honk for the Troops, Pray For Our Heroes, below. “An original supporter of the war, he said he has lost confidence in the effort and is sponsoring legislation calling on the administration to define how, and when, it intends to bring the war to a close.”

"The strategy Mr. Bush will set out next week is twofold: stepped-up training of Iraqi forces to handle their own security, and continuing progress towards the establishment of a solid democracy,” according to Truthout.org’s latest commetary. “A new constitution is due to be drafted by 15 August. That deadline looks unlikely to be met, but US officials fear that a long delay will only play into the hands of the insurgency…."

“...As new violence ripped through Iraq, President Bush insisted yesterday [June 25] that he has a plan to defeat the insurgency that, critics say, now threatens to trap the US in a war without end, resembling the Vietnam debacle three decades ago. Mr. Bush used his weekly radio address to prepare the way for a major speech on Tuesday at the US army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in which he hopes to reverse the tide of public pessimism and disillusion on the course of the Iraq war. The speech marks the first anniversary of the return of sovereignty to an Iraqi government after the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, but it comes at a time when, at home and abroad, almost everything is going wrong for the administration.”

Meanwhile, Downing Street Memo Activists are seen as paranoid wing nuts according this story at Fair.org. While at the same time, residents' angst and self-respect emerged on Capitol Hill June 15, said Writer Leo Shane III at TruthOut.org (link at Honk for the Troops, below). Some American people are asking for "congressional hearings on the Downing Street Memo, which one mother called President Bush’s ‘Watergate.’” Some Americans are asking: “how was the president allowed to preemptively invade and occupy another country that was not an imminent threat to the United States?” Thus some records show that in fact the American people as a whole do not reflect the president's record to Prime Minister Jaafari and as recorded in the Wall Street Journal above. But he did say it according to the transcript. And the WSJ-AP report also recorded: 'The White House meeting was held against the backdrop of growing concern among Americans about an engagement that has claimed the lives of more than 1,700 American troops. Foreign policy had typically given Mr. Bush his highest scores with the public, but that has changed. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll this month found just 41% of adults supported his handling of the Iraq war, a new low.

"There have been 479 car bombs in Iraq since the handover of sovereignty on June 28, 2004, according to an Associated Press count. At least 2,174 people have been killed and 5,520 have been wounded. Continued bloodshed underscores comments from the top American commander in the Persian Gulf, who told lawmakers on Thursday that the Iraqi insurgency hasn't grown weaker over the past six months. 'I believe there are more foreign fighters coming into Iraq than there were six months ago,' Gen. John Abizaid said during a contentious Senate Armed Services Committee hearing. 'There's a lot of work to be done against the insurgency. 'The testimony undercut Vice President Dick Cheney's recent assertion that the insurgency was in its 'last throes.'" [emphasis added]

Nonetheless, Jaafari thanked the American people for “their courage and commitment against terrorism, and for democracy in our country,” according to the WSJ transcript linked above. “I see from up close what's happening in Iraq, and I know we are making steady and substantial progress, he said. “People said Saddam would not fall, and he did. They say the election would not happen, and they did. They say the constitution will not be written, but it will. And the political process, as well, and thousand tanks, including the Sunni Arabs, will further undermine the terrorists. They have joined the parliamentary committee and the government, and they will take part in the next elections.”

And back to Bush’s news ‘shill,’ at BuzzFlash.com--where they’ve chosen Elisabeth Bumiller as their GOP Hypocrite of the Week. What is the record and is it just how we say, read, comprehend the information and opinions that news writers and commentators give us? Because my understanding is that a reporter can quote so-and-so who said the president is such-and-such, but a reporter can not say that that the president is a liar but in a quote. However, a commentator in opinion articles can! Reporters can, too, report if a president is facing hearings or charges for lying to the American People. And of course they can report gatherings of Americans who are banding together to try to impeach the president. But they can't write that they think the president should be impeached, unless they're a columnist or other opinion writer.

“President Bush and Prime Min Tony Blair present united front against recently disclosed British government memo that said in July 2002 that US intelligence was being 'fixed' around policy of removing Saddam Hussein in Iraq,” said Bumiller in a Foreign Desk report at the New York Times in a story titled “Bush and Blair Deny ‘Fixed’ Iraq Reports.” And so they did deny it. So she wrote that they denied it.

And, although Bumiller’s White House Letters sometimes read like an editorial, I am under the impression that they are not editorials, commentaries, op-eds. But it’s so hard. It’s so hard to process all the information in this Information Age. I think that this is where so much confusion comes in, and this is my opinion. I tried to find a Bumiler biography on the New York Times site but to no avail and the Googled topics just didn’t do it because she is a writer of a different sort too, elsewhere. And, there really is a big difference between what one can say as a reporter, than when one is writing one's opinion, or blogging….

Readers of news reports now know what the completely upside down statements are that say he wasn’t telling the truth amid the countering records presented in the news article to see if, as Page said, "The president's statements ... reflect the record." Or not.

Because everyone has their own views about Bumiller and the president. For example, "White House reporter Elisabeth Bumiller again treats a conspiracy theory as actual news," according to Times Watch story titled "Elisabeth Bumiller, Left-Wing Conspiracy-Monger." (Is Times Watch commentary or news reporting?) On the Election 2004 Debates, Times Watch said: "Monday marks her second piece on the 'bulge,' previously a subject of debate only on the far-left side of the Internet. She writes in her White House Letter: 'In these closing weeks of the presidential campaign, the talk at an edgy White House is of polls, turnout, swing voters and polls. There are also two story lines from the presidential debates that to the exasperation of President Bush's advisers won't go away: the bubble and the bulge. The bulge -- the strange rectangular box visible between the president's shoulder blades in the first debate -- has set off so much frenzied speculation on the Internet that it has become what literary critics call an objective correlative, or an object that evokes large emotions and ideas,' according to their Oct. 18 2004 posting billed as a publication that is committed to "documenting and exposing the liberal political agenda of the New York Times."

However, hindsight reminds me that in fact the president's bulge did set off a frenzied speculation on the Internet and conspiracy theory or not, Bumiller recorded the frenzy.

Nation at Odds, Trying to Symbolize Independence?

2005-06-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

A Citizen’s Forum and the Media’s Response to 9/11 in 2005. Isn’t it Really All About New York? Or No?

”I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible…”

According to a political forum post by a war veteran, “1753 American troops have given their lives in Iraq with more dying every day.

The poster’s screen name is “fofinger;” Fofinger has four fingers and no thumb.

He writes: “I was beginning to think that Bush wasn’t going to reach his goal of 1776 [dead] for the 4th of July, but I guess I was wrong again.”

Fofinger has been posting on the political forum for a long time, although he used to try to debate some of his adversaries, he now just keeps a running log of the people who have been killed in the war that started after 9/11, responding only occasionally (below).

A New York Report in the New York Times posts a story by Patrick D. Healy where demonstrators, together with approximately 200 relatives of Sept. 11 victims, at ground zero on Monday plan to protest the museum where Gov. George E. Pataki demanded “an absolute guarantee” that they would “not mount exhibitions that could offend 9/11 families and pilgrims to a proposed memorial,” while Karl Rove carps liberals about 9/11 in another June 23 story by Healy: “…Rove came to the heart of Manhattan last night to rhapsodize about the decline of liberalism in politics, saying Democrats responded weakly to Sept. 11 and had placed American troops in greater danger by criticizing their actions.

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers," Mr. Rove, the senior political adviser to President Bush, said at a fund-raiser in Midtown for the Conservative Party of New York State….”

We must keep in mind that Rove’s comments were made at a Conservative Party of New York State fund-raiser in Midtown. Rove is –after all--the political strategist to President Bush; is he just trying to raise ire and funds? That is his job—after all!

At CivicConnections, the writer said: “President Bush has stalled in his second term sooner than anyone predicted, writes Boston Globe Columnist Scot Lehigh. He’s lost public support; the Republican Congress looks like a mutiny.” Is Rove just doing his job? According to the May 27 post: “Bush’s sputtering second term … is mired in manure.”

But more currently, in the June 23 report and regarding the International Freedom Center, Pataki said: “"We're going to have a Freedom Tower that soars 1,776 feet high, symbolizing our independence," Mr. Pataki said. As for the memorial, he said: "No one is going to turn it into something that is a negative statement about America and our belief in freedom, so long as I am governor of this state."

Still, “treading warily into the nexus of art and politics, the First Amendment and the symbolism of the twin towers site, Mr. Pataki made the demand after learning that one of the groups, the Drawing Center, has featured some politically themed and controversial artwork in its shows. A current display at its SoHo gallery, for instance, appears to make light of President Bush's description of Iraq, Iran and North Korea as the Axis of Evil,” while promising to “preserve the hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan and ensure that no one will come away feeling offended by the reborn site.”

Pataki’s plans though, which are outlined in the June 25 story, were criticized by arts groups and Democrats as a violation of free speech.

However, in the story, titled “Pataki Warns Ground Zero Cultural Groups Not to Give Offense,” Debra Burlingame said “this kind of ploy completely undermines our confidence in the governor’s ability to do the right thing or even know what the right thing is.”

Burlingame’s brother, Charles F. Burlingame III, was the hijacked American Airlines Flight 77 pilot of the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Meanwhile back at the citizens’ forum on politics at Masslive, another vet, screen-named “fairnbalancd,” responds to Fofinger’s daily posts in his usual fashion: “how about giving the tallies on how many people now vote…or how many Islamic nutcases we have killed or captured…For, maybe you and LTO can surrender together.” (LTO is the nickname for an active and outspoken political forum respondent and war protester at Masslive.com.)

Daily, there are forum expressions of America as one nation divisible—not indivisible--, as posted by Norman Ornstein and Barry McMillion. In a June 23 op-ed they said “…33 percent of House members were near-pure centrists in 1955; in 2004, just over eight percent fit that category. Thirty-nine senators were centrists in 1955, compared with nine in 2004” in their June 24 op-ed contribution to the New York Times, titled “One Nation, Divisible.

Allegiance is not only loyalty to a party line, but also commitment, adherence, faithfulness and duty--a citizen’s duty to defend America and it’s Constitutional values, according to the dictates of one’s own heart and the American right to freedom of speech, is it not?

But let’s finish up with “fofinger” and his opponents at the citizen’s political forum at Masslive. Fofinger writes to his challengers: “Things were supposed to be getting better according to the Bush administration. The Iraqi people love us, according to the Bush supporters. I say the cost is way too high. We need to leave Iraq before the death toll reaches 2000! or 3000! or 5000! When will YOU say enough American lives have been lost for the Iraqi people?

“We removed Saddam from power.....We searched for WMD's (weapons of mass destruction).......We put a government that is friendly to the people into power.....We have met our goals in Iraq.

“We are now involved in Iraq's ongoing religious civil war.....it will continue whether we are there or not. We have no business in Iraq any longer yet George W. Bush continues to jeopardize our troops by leaving them in the middle of Iraq's civil war.”

“Iraq: 1753 dead. Let's put names to the numbers shall we?: (click here for names of the dead). How about their pictures? Will that help it sink in? (click here for pictures of the dead). What is the cost in taxpayer dollars? (click here for cost of the war).

Yet, another respondent on the Masslive.com Political Forum writes in response to “fairnbalancd:” Fofinger won’t [give tallies and surrender] it would blow his argument wide open!"

(Is it really all about the politics and arguments and tallies, really?)

Fofinger said: “I couldn’t care less about the Iraqi's....I am concerned only about our troops and their involvement in this religious civil war that Bush has dumbly gotten us into. If you were any kind of an American you would be concerned too. I can't believe that you support this loss of life for the sole purpose of oil control out of that country. Oh wait...it's not the loss of your life that is at risk so that's okay right?”

Fairnbalancd responds with: “You need to care about the damage we are inflicting on the enemy...the more jihad’s we kill there, the fewer we fight over here after they sneak over the border. And for the 10,000th time, it is not a religious civil war... the Sunnis are now writing the constitution with the Shiites... the loss of life is a tragedy... as it was at Normandy, the Bulge, Tarawa, Okinawa... except in those days, there was no internet for the 1940's Fofingers to post on…”

While “SpfldGiant writes: Fofinger is still pretending to care about the troops? When all he is, is a left-wing shill?

To that “biens” said: Bush is still pretending to be a patriot. But he can pretend all he likes ‘cause we all know he’s a treasonous deserter who is mentally still AWOL.

And finally, Masslive’s “FisherCat” writes: it’s a cheap and low tactic of the left....... and has been done many times before.....yet they care so much about our troops and yet they spit on them and called then baby killers and they did not give them respect when they came home from Vietnam.

“Yet they will tell you they cared about our troops and their lives? Ask liberals how much money they have the given for the Vietnam Vets. I'm willing to bet a big "0"and they probably have not given anything to our troops during the conflict and wont after the conflict........”

What is it really all about?

Honk for the Troops, Pray For Our Heroes

2005-06-20T06:00:00.000-08:00

Is there a Need to Impeach George W. Bush?

“The provision of the Constitution giving the war-making power to Congress, was dictated, as I understand it, by the following reasons. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our Convention understood to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of the bringing this oppression upon us. But your view destroys the whole matter and places our President where kings have always stood.” – Abraham Lincoln, 1848 John C. Bonifaz, Warrior-King; The Case for Impeaching George W. Bush

CivicConnections said “The U.S. clambered to set up a correlation connecting Iraq and al-Qaida that was—without beating around the bush—not credible…” The June 19 web log said “the invasion and poor postwar planning by the Bush administration, ‘allowed the Iraqi insurgency to rage.’”

Republican Rep. Walter B. Jones renamed French fries "freedom fries" on congressional menus, said LA Times Staff Writer Paul Richter. An original supporter of the war, he said he has lost confidence in the effort and is sponsoring legislation calling on the administration to define how, and when, it intends to bring the war to a close, according to the June 19 story. “Coming from the staunch conservative, the announcement shocked many,” said Richter.

A debate is stirring in Jacksonville, N.C. – where it rambles expansively with military bases and a huge population of military retirees who proudly display signs of: “Honk for the Troops” and “Pray For Our Heroes.” Streets, homes and shops proudly wave the American flag. But many there are beginning to wonder aloud if the sons and daughters they sacrificed for the war in Iraq was in vain—an illegal war!

The 3rd District is an area with 60,000 military retirees. Camp Lejeune, N.C. is home to the Marine Corps Air Station, Cherry Point; Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, and New River Marine Corps Air Station.

Residents' angst and self-respect emerged on Capitol Hill June 15, according to TruthOut. Stars and Stripes Writer Leo Shane III said they were there to “ask for congressional hearings on the Downing Street Memo, which one mother called President Bush’s ‘Watergate.’”

BuzzFlash.com interviewed Bonifaz on his $10.95 paperback book and the case for impeaching George W. Bush; how was the president allowed to preemptively invade and occupy another country that was not an imminent threat to the United States?

BuzzFlash.com: “One of the most appalling responses when people suggest that Bush should be impeached, is that this is just payback for the Clinton impeachment….”

Bonifaz: “… if a President can be impeached for alleged charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, then a President surely should be impeached for sending this nation into an illegal war based on lies….[it is] dangerous…to rely upon one individual to tell us that we are in need of sending the nation to war based on some threat that one individual sees. This is an awesome power held by this country, with the strongest and most forceful military in the world, and we cannot send this nation into war based on one individual’s perception, no matter how right or wrong he may be. And now that this has happened, we need to stand up for the Constitution and demand accountability for all the soldiers who have died, and those who have been injured, for all those on the Iraqi side who’ve died and been injured. We need accountability here. We cannot let this question of high crimes be unanswered.

Barriers & Facility in Counter Terrorism Policy

2005-06-14T18:21:00.000-08:00

Former Navy Secretary John Lehman said National Intelligence Director John Negroponte hasn't addressed the most important recommendations for "breaking down divisions between spy agencies and ‘building a new culture,'" according to Associated Press Writer Katherine Shrader, June 13. Shrader cites Lehman criticism that “Negroponte is not heeding a top recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission to tear down barriers that divided U.S. spy agencies."

A five-year-project to break down barriers in information gathering at the Federal Bureau of Investigation would organize an antiquated paper file system, according to a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) June 13 report. Negroponte would choose a new intelligence chief to collaborate departmental changes. The intelligence chief will supervise the bureau’s counterterrorism, counterintelligence and create a new Directorate of Intelligence.

Also, a National Security division would put terrorist-related units under the direction of a new assistant attorney-general post. Counterterrorism and counterintelligence personnel and funding would come from the Justice Department’s criminal division, which deals with white-collar crimes, narcotics, et al. The Justice Department is an “’organizational throwback’ that ‘scatters intelligence expertise throughout the department and in some cases has contributed to errors that hampered intelligence gathering,’” said a March presidential commission's report cited by Staff Reporters Anne Marie Squeo and John D. Mckinnon.

Negroponte’s new Directorate of Intelligence chief would work closely with him to improve operations and communication. A reduced establishment wouldn't totally split the criminal division but they don’t want to lose its counterterrorism, counterintelligence personnel and funding to the new unit.

Counter-terrorism policy changes are discussed for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) too, as cited in another WSJ June 13 report. A DHS revamp is likely to more intently focus on immigration issues, intelligence, transportation security and risk assessment, said Staff Reporter Robert Black. An internal debate to collaborate immigration, visa guidelines throughout intelligence and overseas bureaus, and customs and antiterror inspection accountability policies under one DHS office would prune counterterror bureaucracy--making policies more efficient.

A DHS intelligence leader would report to Negroponte. The intelligence leader would coordinate diverse agencies. The 180,000 employee organization was, "cobbled together fairly quickly in 2002 from 22 federal entities...weighed down with bureaucratic layers and rife with turf warfare…[lacking] a structure for strategic thinking and policy making,” said a combined report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Heritage Foundation, two Washington think tanks cited in WSJ. Transportation Security Administration might ditch rail and road watch plans and focus more on a hole in air-cargo screening requirements. And, biological weapons and suicide bomber threat assessment priorities will be assessed more intensely, including improved policies and technologies.

DeLay Cracks Law & Order: Criminal Intent

2005-05-27T14:49:00.000-08:00

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) organized Texans for Republican Majority TRMPAC, not mentioned in guilty ruling; angry about wisecrack on fictional TV program

Dick Wolf, executive producer and creator of the fictional television program Law & Order, said: “DeLay is trying to change ‘the spotlight from his own problems to an episode of a TV show,’” according to a CNN.com report. In the recent program a police officer is investigating a federal judge murder and with no inklings on suspects, a police officer wisecracks that they should put “out an all points bulletin for ‘somebody in a Tom DeLay T-shirt.’”

DeLay is an outspoken critic of what he terms “‘activist judges,’ recently saying Congress must take steps to rein in an ‘out-of-control judiciary,’” according to the story titled DeLay Angered by ‘Law & Order’ Mention.

Violence Against Judges according CNN’s May 27 report:

"On Feb. 28, the mother and husband of federal Judge Joan Lefkow were slain by a disturbed person who once appeared in her courtroom. Lefkow has been pushing for more congressional funding to protect federal judges.

“On March 11, a judge was killed at an Atlanta courthouse.

“There was a storm of criticism against DeLay when he announced the need for Congress to more closely oversee the judiciary.

“DeLay made angry comments March 31, the day Terri Schiavo, a severely brain-damaged woman, died -- two weeks after a court ordered her feeding tube removed at the request of her husband. The congressman argued that federal courts should have intervened to save her.

“At the time, DeLay said, ‘We will look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.”"

And speaking of judges and Law & Order’s Criminal Intent.

Washington Post said District Judge Joseph H. Hart found DeLay’s Texans for Republican Majority (TRMPAC) violated state election law. DeLay is not mentioned in the decision according to the Staff Writers Sylvia Moreno and R. Jeffrey Smith. TRMPAC is a political fundraising committee and the ruling is against $684, 507 in contributions that were not reported according to state standards.

TRMPAC funding helped secure the first Republican majority in the Texas House in 130 years and then helped facilitate Republican control of the U.S. House of Representatives because the Texas House majority allowed DeLay’s associates to restack congressional districts, electing four more Republicans to the U.S. House in 2004. “Not for me. I’m not part of it,” said DeLay about implications this has for him. But attorneys for five of the defeated Texas Democratic state legislatures said the opinion grants the underpinning for future court verdicts antithetical to DeLay’s blamelessness, according to May 27 story titled Treasurer of DeLay Group Broke Texas Election Law.

The Boston Globe said too that DeLay formed the political action committee but “is not mentioned” in Hart’s ruling in which he ordered Bill Ceverha, TRMPAC treasurer, to pay $200,000 to the “five Democrats who lost state legislative races in 2002,” said Kelley Shannon, Associated Press. “The civil case is separate from a criminal investigation being conducted by the district attorney in Austin into whether the PAC funneled illegal corporate contributions to GOP candidates for the state Legislature. Three of DeLay’s top fundraisers and eight corporations were indicted last year,” according to the May 27 report.

Fourteen Cultural Emissaries or Senate Charade?

2005-05-26T19:12:00.000-08:00

Dissimilar assessments on Senators who advocate moderate political positions. Are they heroes or honor hounds?

Masslive.com’s Republican implies the recent give-and-take of 14 centrist Senators demonstrates the responsibility and authority of the Senate in its constitutional duty to take part in the president’s judicial recommendations.

Observations are that the Senate was the formation of the great concession 218 years ago because divisions during the establishment of the Constitution--then too--reached a compromise in the same spirit that these newly-coined maverick moderates reached this week.

“There is no principle that is more at the core of our federal government than the constitutional establishment of a strong series of checks and balances,” according the western Massachusetts’ May 25 editorial.

Finding the middle ground, the temperate team of 14 made way for three of President Bush’s mired judicial entrants to move to the fore straight away. At the same time the conciliatory move did not change filibuster rules and does not bar Democrats’ right to filibuster other judicial selections.

“…The compromise also seeks to get greater Senate involvement in the process of selecting judges, to return to the system of checks and balances created by our founding fathers…,,” according to the commentary: Compromise in Senate Recalls Nation’s History.

But conservatives feel betrayed and collectively intoned: “those who betrayed us will pay a political price,” writes Mike Glover, Associated Press. Conservatives are furious and leaders swear to restore rank-and-file while notifying the moderates to forget about 2008 presidential ambitions, according to a May 25 story titled, Conservatives Angered by Filibuster Deal.

Glover quotes Dr. James C. Dobson: “[the compromise is] a complete bailout and betrayal by a cabal of Republicans." Dobson is founder and chairman of Focus on the Family, a non-profit organization that produces an internationally syndicated radio program.

On the other hand, Christian Science Monitor Staff Writer Gail Russle Chaddock asserts that the 14 members have risen bravely out of America’s “red-blue” political divide and joined together not only to show its power to challenge the White House and party leaders on stem-cell research, Social Security, and judicial nominations, but concurs with the idea that they have returned the Senate to this country’s roots.

Chaddock hints that a yet undeveloped but substantial nucleus has been born in the US Congress. “Its beginnings are as dramatic as they are fragile. At the 11th hour, a bipartisan coalition—many of whom had never worked together—emerged to change the course of Senate history this week, as they challenged their leaders’ decisions to move to a bruising procedural battle over the confirmation of judicial nominees,” said Chaddock in the story titled, From Senate Strife, a Center Takes Hold.

In another story at the Christian Science Monitor titled, How Senate Fracas May Shape ’08, Staff Writer Linda Feldmann also suggests something completely different from the daunting threats of the AP story above and the Wall Street Journal opinions below with quotes from John Green among others: “The agreement on judges ‘certainly burnished [McCain’s] credentials as an independent thinker and someone who’s a problem-solver." Green is a political scientist at the University of Akron.

Here, Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist may be the one who has to worry. “’Any outcome would have caused problems for him,’ says Norman Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Eterprise Institute. If Frist had gotten what he wanted—a change in Senate rules to ban filibusters of judicial nominees—he would have received a temporary boost from the activist religious conservative wing of the Republican Party. For that constituency, placing conservative judges in the federal judiciary is a top political goal, ultimately in the name of overturning the national right to abortion, and Frist has courted that lobby heavily” quotes Feldmann in the story subtitled: “The filibuster fight may help cast midterm elections and give McCain a boost in the next presidential race.”

“But if Frist had succeeded in banning judicial filibusters, the Democrats would have retaliated, leading to a near-paralysis in the functioning of the Senate. Frist’s wider public image could have taken a hit. ‘The Senate would have been such a mess, which would have raised questions about his stewardship," said Ornstein according to Feldmann’s May 25 story.

From another angle, Connie Bruck, in this week’s The New Yorker said of McCain that he loves being an iconoclast, or a rebel, or a contrarian—it’s just so much a part of who he is, and it brings him the attention that he loves. He will be oh so boring as a team player, so he will never restrict himself to that completely.”

But Peggy Noonan takes that notion a lot further, using appellations to cast Joe Lieberman’s “band of brothers and sisters” aside and likens them more to a brood of 14 selfish, self-centered, egocentric, self-seeking throng of thespians. In Wall Street Journal’s Mr. Narcissus Goes to Washington, Noonan writes: “You’ve heard the mindless braying and fruitless arguments, but I’m here to tell you the fact, no matter what brickbats and catcalls may come my way. Lidnsey Graham defied the biases of his constituency to do what was right, not what was easy. Robert Byrd put aside personal gain to save our Republic. David Pryor ignored the counsels of hate to stand firm for our hopes and dreams. Mike DeWine protected our way of life. These men are uniters, not dividers. How do I know? Because they told me.”

In this peevish Opinion Journal sketch, subtitled: “It’s Springtime, Love is in the Air, and 14 Senators are Gazing in the Mirror,” Noonan snappily draws images of self-congratulatory self-important Senators summing it up with: “I know they’re centrists but there is nothing moderate about their self-regard.”

Noonan’s favorite paraphrase came from Lindsey Graham (or at least what she said he meant to say): “I know there will be folks ‘back home’ who will be angry, but that’s only because they’re not as sophisticated and high-minded as I am. Actually they’re rather stupid, which is why they’re not in the Senate and I am. But I have 3 1/2 years to charm them out of their narrow-minded resentments, and watch me, baby.” It’s difficult to discern what Graham actually said because Noonan offers up several prickly portions of what she knows he really meant to say while attempting to shovel off all the self-glorification.

And right with her is WSJ’s May 25 Review & Outlook declaring that the 14 centrist Senators are hardly the equivalent of the Founding Fathers as some deem them. In an atypical agreement with North Dakota’s Democrat Byron Dorgan, the deal amounts to “legislative castor oil,” and the Constitution was not saved and the Senators merely saved themselves according to the commentary titled, Senate Charade.

Finally there's a blog entry titled, Independents are Sick to Death of Partisan Racket! Sally complains on a political forum about extremists deleting her comments from a discussion board. This typically temperate poster is sick of being deleted and jibes: “what kind of sally boy would ask the moderator to delete comments about moderation?”

The CivicConnections' writer tells Sally that extremists report her moderate posts to the forum moderator because they’re terrified that an evolving moderate center of political power is emerging in Washington and they’re frightened that Bush will be forced--and presumably fail--to learn how to negotiate.

Copyright 2005 MorningStar, OnlineCriticism

Focus on the Family's James C. Dobson on Fox's Hannity & Colmes

2005-05-24T22:34:00.000-08:00

James C. Dobson, founder and chairman of the board at Focus on the Family, has been active in the drama on Supreme Court judicial nominations. He spoke on Fox's Hannity & Colmes tonight. (Transcript available May 25, 2005.)

Dobson discussed the recent compromise between Democrats and Republicans.

Author of The New Strong Willed Child, Dobson said it's a sad moment for the country because we passed up an opportunity to bring the judiciary into balance. He said he doesn't care who is confirmed, yet according to an April 21 Boston Globe article, $5 million-dollars was raised for ads to Evangelical camps of Christianity to "raise grass-roots anger."

Dobson said he doesn't have anyone in mind for the Supreme Court. What about the Justice Sunday program? [read more at Dobson Using Women for Political Booty and Filibusters are not Against People of Faith.]

Regarding Senator Trent Lott's comment, "who does Dobson think he is?" Dobson said Lott's using "school-yard tactics," and name-calling Democrats are "acting like toddlers." Sean Hannity then asked Dobson about his broadcast paralleling judges in black robes with Klu Klux Klan in white robes? Media Matters posts Dobson's quote and the audio.
[listen to audio clip] Dobson dismissed it as akin to a slip because it was a broadcast.

"This is not the end because Democrats will be what Democrats are...when judges come up Democrats will filibuster," said Dobson. Alan Colmes said 207 judges have been confirmed.