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So ... what'd I miss?
Freelance journalist (and former organized-crime investigator) Greg Palast doesn't quite prove that Mexico's recent presidential election was stolen. But he makes a convincing argument that any other explanation for the way votes came in is incredibly improbable from a statistical standpoint.
The LA Times profiles Joe Francis, the creator of the "Girls Gone Wild" videos (his crew stopped here recently to film).
Entertainer or sociopath (or both)? You make the call.
Can anyone explain to me how this proposal could be constitutional, and how it could be a good idea from a practical standpoint?
Thanks.
Among the many other casualties of the current Israel-Hezbollah conflict is any effort to clean up the massive spill of fuel oil on the Lebanese coast, caused by an Israeli raid on a Lebanese power plant in July.
More than 30,000 tons of heavy fuel oil have spilled into the Mediterranean -- a spill to rival the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill on the Alaskan coast.
A bit of background, and satellite images, can be found here.
So for the first time in my 22 years in the newspaper bidness, my editors sent me yesterday to watch a movie.
It was the local premiere of Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center," a movie about two real-life cops trapped after the collapse of the twin towers before ultimately being rescued. I was there not just to see it but also to get reaction from other local folks who went (my story is here; trailers in various formats are on this page).
I'm the farthest thing from a movie reviewer, but I did have a few thoughts on it. Because they contain some spoilers, I'm sticking them below the fold.
The ConvergeSouth 2006 Web site is now launched.
Register now. Avoid the rush.
This year's event, Oct. 13-14, will include Friday-night socializing, a one-day program and then various dinners around downtown Greensboro. I'm tentatively slated to lead a session on how we can generate more citizen journalism in Greensboro (or wherever YOU live), with possible co-hosts yet to be named.
Don't miss it.
... courtesy of Fox News' John Gibson, and edited for length:
Ned Lamont = Pol Pot
But, hey, at least it's fair and balanced.
Greensboro Mayor Keith Holliday hopes to have finished by Monday his recommendations on how city government should respond to the recommendations contained in the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission's May report.
Meanwhile, if your church group, civic group or organization is holding any kind of discussion of the report and its recommendations, please e-mail me the info for inclusion in the paper and posting online.
Finally, and unrelatedly, although I have a fairly busy schedule today, I am on the lookout for some Friday Fun for you and hope to have something up shortly.
Our YourNews submission portal was temporarily disabled earlier this summer by our move to a new hosting vendor and some related technical problems. But it is back up and ready, nay, eager for your submissions, so bring 'em here.
... since I didn't get you any on Friday ...
Some jokes just write themselves:
"God has called me to go and make disciples of the youth of America. That is what I am going to do. And if you try to stop me, I am going to break your face."-- Actor Stephen Baldwin
Guess who's blogging now?
Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran. (Click on the hybrid U.S/British flag icon in the upper right corner for the English version.) And he's got an RSS feed and everything.
Now it's not like many other Iranians can blog, but this is pretty interesting.
Except he goes into all this whiny detail about his boyhood. Not so interesting.
(There's also a president's blog at www.president.ir [or, in English, www.president.ir/eng], but it reads as if written by an aide or press ecretary and describes the president's actions in the third person.)
I guess we'll see where this goes.
Or, while we're waiting, should we have a contest to see who can submit the best fake blog post for the Ahmadinejad blog?
Why, yes, I think we should ....
JR blogs here about Jason Hardin's A-1 centerpiece Sunday about euthanasia at the Guilford County Animal Shelter. The story, and particularly the accompanying photo, upset some readers.
'Twas ever thus. On April 1, 1990, I had a story published in the N&R that began like this:
The aging Boston terrier quivers as Gay Williams, dressed in a dark blue lab coat and hands swathed in latex, lifts him onto the tailgate of the Chevy pickup."You poor little pitiful thing," Williams says, trying to soothe the animal as she runs one hand over his knobby spine and ribs.
Holly Patton, also in a lab coat, picks up a syringe with one gloved hand, a bottle of sodium pentobarbital with the other, and draws the deadly drug into the syringe.
Amid a cacophony of dozens of other dogs barking in kennels nearby at the Guilford County Animal Shelter, Patton lifts the dog's right front paw and swabs its leg, dripping disinfectant all over the tailgate.
As Patton sticks the needle into the animal's leg, dark, venous blood oozes into the syringe, moving in the pale blue sodium pentobarbital like thick oil in water. She must hit a vein, or the drug will be injected uselessly into fat or muscle.
Patton's right thumb squeezes the plunger home. Almost instantly, the animal wilts, eyes still open but now unseeing. Williams caresses the terrier's head, then slides it on its side to the right side of the truck bed. Like a stick protruding from a bag of leaves, one leg points awkwardly toward the cab.
Patton, Williams and their co-workers will repeat the procedure eight more times this morning. As the dogs are laid out, another worker, Jay Browning, moves among them, feeling their rib cages for heartbeats and finding none.
When they're done, the pickup truck will take the animals to be buried in the landfill.
The last dog to die, a small, mixed-breed sheep dog, struggles so much that he must be given a nonlethal sedative injection just to calm him long enough to receive the injection that will kill him.
Patton gives him the shot, then watches as the dog convulses five times, a sixth. She lays her left hand on the animal's rib cage. Though the animal is still, she keeps her hand on it another full minute and more before turning away.
"That's it for now - until we open to the public and they start bringing more in," Patton says.
The photo isn't in our electronic archives, but if memory serves, it was of one of the dogs being injected in the back of the pickup, with previously injected dogs, now dead, visible in the background. That memory is bolstered by descriptions in some of the letters to the editor we published five days later:
There are no adjectives strong enough to express the shock I felt at seeing the picture of a dog receiving a lethal injection of sodium pentobarbital on the front page of the News & Record April 1. To say it was in poor taste would be an incredible understatement. ... I do not expect to open up my Sunday newspaper and be forced to witness the death of any other animal. You can be sure that if anything like this ever appears again, I will cancel my subscription immediately.* * * Why not just put a big, color photo on the front page with the caption: KILLING ANIMALS OF NEGLECTFUL PET OWNERS. We get the message: The editors of the News & Record obviously have no sensitivity to those of us who are disturbed about neglectful pet owners.
* * * The only possible explanation for the picture showing the dog being
euthanized was that your staff works part time for one of the tabloids and got confused as to which paper they were working for.
(The writer of the middle excerpt above also said that my story read like a horror-film script. I don't think she meant it as a compliment.)
Dying animals upset us. Needlessly dying animals upset us a lot. I understand that. I get that. When our last two cats died, in 1998 and 2004, I was a wreck for weeks, and they died of old age.
At the same time, these needless deaths happen for a reason: There are still, after decades of public education, people out there who let their animals breed without any thought of the consequences. And because that phenomenon creates issues of public health and safety, your tax dollars pay people to deal with the problem. And unfortunately, euthanasia is the best solution that they've been able to come up with when all other available solutions fall short.
Some people would rather not hear about it. And I see their point. Others (although I haven't heard from any today) would rather we focus on Lebanon/Israel/Iraq/Afghanistan/sub-Saharan Africa or wherever else today's catastrophe du jour is taking place. And I see their point, too.
But I'll tell you what else I see, at least a couple of times a year, even after 16 years: In my dreams, I see that venous canine blood mixing with the pale-blue sodium pentobarbital inside the veterinary syringe like thick oil in water.
After our last community discussion of citizen journalism, back in June, everyone seemed to want to do it again. So let's do it again. I've reserved an auditorium here for 6:30 p.m. Monday, Aug. 28.
Admission is free, although if you would, please leave a note in the comments or e-mail me to let me know you're coming so we'll have enough chairs (and maybe some snacks 'n' drinks).
What should we talk about? That's your call. I'll throw out two suggestions:
But that's food for thought, not dictation of an agenda.
So: Two weeks from tonight, 6:30 p.m. Be there.
I've been involved in some discussion at other blogs about the national media's mischaracterization of Ned Lamont, who upset three-term Sen. Joe Lieberman in Connecticut's recent Democratic primary, as a "far-left liberal." The national media also claimed that Lamont was a one-issue, out-of-Iraq candidate and said other things about him and about the campaign that people I know who actually, like, live in Connecticut told me were just flat untrue.
Lindsay Beyerstein, a blogger who would love to belong to the far left if she could only find the darned thing, reports this experience (links in original):
So, you can imagine my excitement when I heard the far left was poised to take over the Democratic party from its rumored stronghold in Meridan, Connecticut. ...I was there for two days, and [Lamont] didn't promise to nationalize a damned thing. Frankly, I don't think he's serious about banning the Bible.
Hee.
Thanks to frequent commenter Fred Gregory, I've learned that the Senate Judiciary Committee has quietly returned to the White House the nomination of William J. Haynes to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. William J. Haynes is better known in some circles as "Jim" Haynes, my freshman hall counselor at Davidson back in the day.
According to this article in the Columbia newspaper The State, Haynes' nomination never got out of committee because U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., wouldn't support it because of Haynes' role in authorizing "aggressive questioning" (i.e., torture) of detainees. With a 9-7 majority on the committee and Democrats threatening a filibuster, Republicans needed unanimity to move the nomination to the Senate floor, and although Graham publicly denies it, it would appear Graham had privately made it clear to his colleagues that that unanimity would be coming shortly after ice skating commenced in Hell.
NRO's Jon Adler says he finds Graham's opposition "less upsetting than Graham's apparent role in preventing Haynes from receiving an up-or-down vote on the Senate floor." Graham previously had called for up-or-down floor votes on all judicial nominees.
I'm guessing that it's just coincidence that Graham, along with the Senate's other GOP "renegades," Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and John McCain of Arizona, is frequently mentioned as a possible 2008 presidential contender. Graham, a former military lawyer himself, knew a great deal about the law regarding treatment of detainees, and as the State article linked above says, he didn't approve of Haynes' handling of it:
In a dramatic showdown last month, Graham grilled Haynes at his confirmation hearing, cutting him off in mid-sentence at several points. Graham highlighted contradictions between Haynes’ testimony and that of military lawyers who said Haynes ignored their strong opposition to the interrogation techniques.And Graham ridiculed Haynes’ contention that he didn’t set interrogation policies, but merely passed on the findings of Justice Department lawyers to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the White House office of legal counsel.
I may be reading too much between the lines, but it sounds to me as if Graham also thought Haynes lied during his confirmation hearing. That's a huge no-no for any nominee.
Reasonable people can disagree on a nominee's qualifications for the federal bench. And as I said when I first blogged about this case, anything is possible, particularly in wartime. but the picture of Haynes painted in that Independent Judiciary report and this article is utterly at odds with the Jim Haynes I knew a quarter-century ago.
Whether he broke the law or not, the whole thing is sad ... and the whole thing likely never would have become a controversy if the administration hadn't decided to seize on torture as a solution before actually finding a problem that it would solve.
Via Jay Rosen comes word of the first nationally organized effort at "distributed" journalism: an examination of Congressional spending "earmarks," pork-barrel spending tucked into the Labor/Health & Human Services appropriations bill.
A coalition of news organizations, nonprofits and individuals will be trying to track down the source of every one of the 1,867 earmarks in the bill -- each with an average value of $268,000.
That's a lot of pork. And that's also just one appropriations bill out of about a dozen Congress must pass every year.
Rosen has background at his blog, PressThink, here. And if you want to get involved, you can. From an Examiner editorial on the project:
Check out the earmarks for your state and then call your congressman and ask if he or she sponsored any of your state’s earmarks. If the answer is yes, ask why the congressman’s name isn’t on the earmark. If you recognize the institution designated to receive the earmarked tax dollars, call them and ask them what they intend to do with your money.Then email us at info@examiner.com with the subject line “Earmarks” and tell us what you found out. The Examiner will be asking more questions about who got the earmarks and why, so your information could be very important. You will be part of an army of citizen journalists determined to shine some much-needed light on spending decisions made behind closed doors by powerful Members of Congress.
Your grandchildren, whose national debt will be smaller as a result of this work, will thank you.
UPDATE: Because the last time I looked at a state budget in any detail, was back in the Stone (i.e., pre-computer) Age of 1991, I asked our Raleigh-bureau reporter, Mark Binker, whether this approach would work with North Carolina's budget. Here's what he said:
Lex:
I would say no for a couple reasons:
But he did have some thoughts on what else we might apply this to at the state/local level, and we're going to explore that subject in more detail.
UPDATE: Ed calls it The Boston T-1 Party, which is great except that it's not really based in Boston. I guess if it's based anywhere, it's the Examiner newspapers' D.C. bureau, but then on this medium, physicial location is so 20th-century ....
LizardBreath at the blog Unfogged, who did a stint in Samoa from 1992 to '94, answers the question:
The substantive work I did wasn't all that useful. I was teaching math and science to high school senior equivalents, and it was really kind of pointless: first, the students had been very poorly taught before I got them ...My value to the Samoan government was solely that I was free, because the US paid my salary, and they would otherwise have had to pay a Samoan teacher to do the same job. I was the equivalent of a cash payment of about $3500/year (a teacher' s salary, if I've done the math right) to the Samoan government. ...
However (emphasis in original), and this is the big kicker, while I don't know how useful PC is generally to the people we're trying to help, I'm very certain that it is incredibly, incredibly helpful to the US's image abroad. ... The US gave very little aid comparatively, but a whole lot of Volunteers, and we got the credit for everything. No one cares if you buy them an office building, but a couple of dozen twenty-somethings going to the village dances and trying to help people, even if it's totally ineffective, is spectacular PR. If I were graduating from college and wanted to do something patriotic, rather than simply charitable, joining the Peace Corps would be high on my list. (And if I were the US government, I'd be pushing PC into more Muslim countries, even loosening the safety requirements, for this very reason. ...)
Hmm. I hadn't thought about that. Interesting.
From our IT department:
"[Our hosting vendor] is experiencing technical problems that is affecting all of the sites that they host. They have assured me that their people are working on this and, of course, hope to have it solved ASAP."
Sigh.
(Updated repeatedly below.)
President Bush's warrantless domestic wiretapping program, as actual lawyers have made quite clear, is a direct criminal violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and of the Fourth Amendment. These folks also have argued pretty convincingly that the defenses raised by the administration -- that the surveillance was permitted under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq and/or the president's constitutional war-making powers -- do not hold water.
But, as resident troll jaycee is fond of saying, no court has ruled on the program's constitutionality or legality. Until now.
A federal court has struck it down -- on quite a number of grounds -- and ordered the president to end it. Right. Now.:
DETROIT (AP) -- A federal judge ruled Thursday that the government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to it.U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution.
"Plaintiffs have prevailed, and the public interest is clear, in this matter. It is the upholding of our Constitution," Taylor wrote in her 43-page opinion.
I'll have more to say on this after reading the opinion, but the short version is: This is huge. A federal court has ruled that the president of the United States is violating the Constitution and has ordered him to stop.
And although I'm not a lawyer, my understanding is that because the judge struck the program down on Constitutional grounds, any bill Congress might pass legalizing the program without addressing Fourth Amendment concerns would not survive court scrutiny.
Ben Franklin, asked after the Constitution was signed what form of government had been created for the new nation, famously answered, "A republic, if you can keep it." To Franklin, "citizen" was a job, not a title.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Constitutional Crisisville, Population: You.
UPDATE: Ruling here, permanent injunction here. Quick observation: The judge found the program violated "the Separation of Powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution, the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] and Title III."
That's a lot of violations. And the FISA violation is a felony.
UPDATE: Unsurprisingly, the government appears to be filing for an immediate stay of the injunction while the ruling is appealed. I say "unsurprisingly" because, given the stakes, I never doubted but that one side or the other would take this case all the way to the Supreme Court. The only question I have is whether the appeal will be expedited or follow the normal course.
A bit more background on the appeals process: Typically, the trial judge will grant or refuse to grant a stay depending on which choice maintains the status quo -- that is, in this case, everything else being equal, she'd be more likely to grant the stay than not because granting it would maintain the status quo. Then, if the 6th Circuit upheld her ruling, the stay would be lifted and the permanent injunction would take effect.
However, if she thinks the government has little to no chance of prevailing on appeal, she might refuse to grant a stay. That decision could in turn be appealed, and the 6th Circuit would rule one way or the other on it, before the appeal of the case itself goes forward.
Caution: The sources I've been able to find on short notice generally lay out the process as I've described it, but they don't agree in every detail. And, as always, I Am Not A Lawyer. If any real lawyer spots an error, by all means let me know.
Justice Department statement (via TPMMuckraker.com; statement not yet posted at www.justice.gov):
The Terrorist Surveillance Program is a critical tool that ensures we have in place an early warning system to detect and prevent a terrorist attack. In the ongoing conflict with al-Qaeda and its allies, the President has the primary duty under the Constitution to protect the American people. The Constitution gives the President the full authority necessary to carry out that solemn duty, and we believe the program is lawful and protects civil liberties. Because the Terrorist Surveillance Program is an essential tool for the intelligence community in the War on Terror, the Department of Justice has appealed the District Court's order. The parties have also agreed to a stay of the injunction until the District Court can hear the Department's motion for a stay pending appeal. [UPDATE: The court will hear arguments Sept. 7 on the government's motion for a stay. The permanent injunction, for now, will not be enforced at least until the judge rules, sometime after those arguments.]
Regardless of your feelings on a stay, the question of whether or not to have one now doesn't have to be litigated, so the lawyers and courts can focus on the substance of the case. That decision eliminates a possible delay in the appeal process and brings a final ruling closer, so I take that as good news. I misunderstood: Parties have agreed on a temporary stay until the judge can hear arguments on a stay Sept. 7 and then rule.
As always, Glenn Greenwald is your expert.
UPDATE: Here's another opinion on the judge's ruling, from "Publius," a lawyer who, although "sympathetic to the result," calls it "an atrocity. ... premature, unsupported, and in violation of elementary civil procedure." I've got to say his analysis is far more substantively critical than any I've read from people who are NOT sympathetic to the result.
UPDATE (8/20): Publius elaborates on his procedural concerns ... and some of his commenters suggest he's giving the government way too much benefit of the doubt. I don't know who's right, but it's an interesting discussion. Also, Greenwald elaborates on the quality of the ruling and how much (or, more appropriately, how little) it means.
David A. Passaro was a CIA contractor who was convicted yesterday of one felony-assault count and three misdemeanors in beating an Afghani detainee who later died.
Riggsveda suggests that whatever his ultimate sentence, he will have gotten off very, very lightly ... and that he was the kind of sociopath who should never be given authority over other human beings.
Jack Balkin, here.
Marty Lederman, here.
Scotusblog roundup of legal analysis and newspaper editorial opinions, here. (Scotusblog, which focuses mainly on the Supreme Court's rulings, didn't analyze the district-court ruling itself.)
A consensus is emerging among the people who actually know what they are talking about, all along the political spectrum: The judge's ruling was rushed (possibly to preclude the case's being consolidated with another in California). It was more a kitchen-sink summation than a model of analytical grace. On some issues, particularly standing and the First Amendment finding, it's kind of wobbly. Relatedly, it didn't even refer to the Supreme Court's June Hamdan ruling, which demolished the administration's legal and constitutional defenses for the program. But it got the big picture right.
UPDATE (8/21): Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University who has testified before Congress against the NSA program, concurs ... and follows that analysis to its logical conclusion:
While Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales insists that the legal authority for the program is clear and filed a notice of appeal with the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, few experts outside of the Bush administration support the program. To the contrary, federal law seems perfectly clear in prohibiting warrantless surveillance. ...The far more difficult question is the implication of Taylor's ruling. If this court is upheld or other courts follow suit, it will leave us with a most unpleasant issue that Democrats and Republicans alike have sought to avoid. Here it is: If this program is unlawful, federal law expressly makes the ordering of surveillance under the program a federal felony. That would mean that the president could be guilty of no fewer than 30 felonies in office. Moreover, it is not only illegal for a president to order such surveillance, it is illegal for other government officials to carry out such an order. ...
The question of the president's possible criminal acts has long been the pig in the parlor that polite people in Congress refused to acknowledge. ... Certainly, nobody wants to mention the "I" word, particularly not the Democrats who believe that the threat of impeachment could scare away independent voters in the November elections.
Court decisions, however, may make it increasingly difficult for members to ignore a squealing constitutional violation in their midst.
For those who favor impeachment, are you really willing to put the country through that? For those who oppose it, do you really think it's a good idea to let a president get away with willful, intentional and serial felony violations of criminal law?
The pig is in the parlor, pooping on the carpet, ladies and gentlemen, so let us have this conversation.
"When fans embrace your meme, embrace your fans."
"Snakes on a Plane" topped the box office last weekend, although it was such a weak movie-going weekend that that's not saying a lot by Hollywood standards.
But where "Snakes on a Plane" is concerned, Hollywood standards aren't the story.
This might be one of those rare films whose opening-weekend gross -- barely $15 million, which the first "Spider-Man" probably took in in one hour -- ends up being utterly irrelevant to the effect the movie has on the culture and the loyalty it engenders in fans.
That's partly because "Snakes on a Plane" is as high-concept as even Hollywood gets. ("High concept" is a Hollywood term of art meaning a movie whose theme and meaning can be made clear in one sentence.) The title told you exactly what you were going to get -- and that was so essential to the film's appeal that when discussion arose of renaming the film during production, star Samuel L. Jackson, who had asked to be cast in the movie after hearing nothing more about it than the name, threatened to walk away from the project unless the original name was kept. From the git, the film didn't even pretend to have any pretensions.
And it certainly didn't hurt that Jackson, who has been American Filmdom's Baddest Dude for more than a decade now, so quickly and publicly embraced the project. The man has cool to spare.
But the people who made this film happen also did some very smart things. Their whole approach to the pre-release part of the film's life cycle has been to engage the potential fan on every possible level. Not only did no one drop any dumb copyright-infringement lawsuits on fan sites, director David Ellis stopped by the site after premiere night to thank fans for their support. They marketed T-shirts through CafePress, a company that caters specifically to bloggers. They sponsored contests through Yahoo that led to bloggers being invited to review the movie. And on and on.
None of that showed up in the opening-weekend gross. But I bet it shows up in coming weeks ... and when the DVD is released ... and at "Rocky Horror Picture Show"-like midnight screenings for years, perhaps decades, to come.
Reminder: We'll be having an open discussion on citizen journalism starting at 6:30 p.m. Monday here at the N&R, 200 E. Market St. You'll want to come into the parking lot on the Church Street side of the building (or you can park in the metered spaces on Market, which do not require money after 6 p.m.) and enter through the glassed-in security desk just to the right of the truck-loading area. Security will direct you to the auditoriums.
If you're planning to come and haven't already let me know, please leave me a note in the comments or e-mail me so I'll know how much to get in the way of munchies, etc.
I hope to see you there.
I'm pleased to announce that Jay Rosen, a New York University professor and one of the leading thinkers on newspapers and the Internet, will be speaking here at the News & Record at 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 4. Jay encouraged us to throw this session open to area bloggers as well as N&R staffers, and I'm pleased to do so.
If you're not familiar with Jay, you can peruse his Pressthink blog here. It has become one of a very few must-read sites for those of us wrestling with how newspapers can adapt to the Web and form partnerships with their audiences. He also has begun a new project, NewAssignment.Net, which, with seed money from Craigslist.com founder Craig Newmark, will experiment with national news stories to which local bloggers will contribute reporting and expertise. (More info here.)
Jay led a well-received session at last year's ConvergeSouth, and we're particularly fortunate to get him because he says he probably won't be able to make this year's ConvergeSouth.
So come if you can. I'll have more details later on subjects, logistics and so on. We hope to see you here.
I don't care whether Pluto is a planet, an asteroid or a piece missing from my car's fuel injector. Neither do The Editors, but they don't care much more humorously than I don't care. (NSFW: language)
... about our new alien overlords.
6:30 p.m. in our auditorium.
We're at 200 E. Market St., between Davie and Church. You can park in our lot (enter on the Church Street side) and come into the building via the glassed-in entryway on the Church Street side just to the right of the truck-loading area. Security will show you to the auditorium.
Let's talk about what's happening locally, what we'd like to see happen at ConvergeSouth, or whatever else is on your mind.
Among confirmed participants will be Mike Grossman, the N&R's director of new-media content.
While a few of us discussed citizen journalism last night, Contributing Reader Richard Papier was committing some to mark the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. (Mike Grossman, our director of new-media content, posted the story and produced the slide show, and a darned good job he did, too.)
If you have never seen the documentary "9/11," you're missing something very painful. But it's also very, very good; my personal opinion is bolstered by the awards it has won -- multiple Emmys, a Peabody, a Writers Guild of America prize.
CBS plans to air the 112-minute documentary on the fifth anniversary of 9/11. There's just one problem. CBS plans to broadcast the documentary uncut ... and the American Family Association -- "America's largest Pro-Family Online Action Site!" -- is mad because the documentary includes a few curse words, which the organization characterizes as "a tremendous amount of hardcore profanity."
The American Family Association is run by the Rev. Don Wildmon, who first crossed my radar two decades ago for criticizing NBC because he thought that the parody-heavy-metal group Spinal Tap's performance of "Christmas With the Devil" on "Saturday Night Live" was a real heavy-metal performance.
Keep that example of Wildmon's razor-sharp powers of discernment in mind when his group claims, on the basis of precisely zero evidence, that:
CBS wants no limits. This is a test case for CBS to see how far they can go. If there is no out-pouring of complaints from the public, they will go further the next time. ...The goal of CBS is to be able to show whatever they want at anytime. The network wants no restraints on their programming. If they are allowed to get away with this, they will simply air even more profanity in the future.
So the AFA is asking people to e-mail the Federal Communications Commission, the network and its local affiliates (WFMY, channel 2, in the Triad) demanding that the offending words not be aired.
Here's a couple of clues, for a group that appears badly in need of some:
That's not to say that "9/11" isn't difficult viewing. Its producers were the only people to capture on video the first crash, that of American Airlines Flight 11 into the north tower. It shows, briefly, people jumping or falling from the towers, and if I recall correctly, in at least one segment you can hear, though not see, the impact of one such person.
But it's real power to move comes not from scenes of violence but from the emotions with which people recall that day, from a vantage point of just weeks or months after it happened. Their pain becomes your own.
I wouldn't wish that pain on anyone, even the AFA. But I will say this: If the AFA want to really hear "a tremendous amount of hardcore profanity," they're welcome to give me a call.
Call it citizen journalism. Call it distributed journalism. Call it a blogswarm. Call it what you will, but there's one United States senator with legislative blood on his/her hands, and a whole bunch of bloggers and blog readers, from across the country and across the political spectrum, who are trying to identify him/her.
Seems there was this bill, co-sponsored by Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn and Illinois Democrat Barack Obama, that would have let anyone with an Internet connection do some serious scrutiny on federal spending. Just one problem:
The measure had been unanimously passed in a voice vote [in July] by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and had support from heavy hitters such as Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. It was on the fast track for floor action before Congress recessed on Aug. 4 when someone put [an anonymous] hold on the measure.Now the bill is in political limbo. Under senate rules, unless the senator who placed the hold decides to lift it, the bill will not be brought up for a vote.
Who is the senator who is preventing a vote on this legislation? We don't know, but Porkbusters.org, GOPProgress.com and Josh Marshall's TPMMuckrakers.com have been trying to find out. The latter site has asked its readers to contact their senators and get them on the record as to whether they were the senator who placed the hold on the bill and is keeping a running tally of what all the groups involved are finding. (Both North Carolina senators have denied being the culprit.)
UPDATE: Looks like we have a prime suspect (though not a confirmed culprit) in Republican Ted Stevens of Alaska, godfather of the $223 million "bridge to nowhere," who might have been motivated by Coburn's (unsuccessful) attempt to kill the aforementioned boondoggle. Coburn publicly accused Stevens days ago, but because only a small local newspaper in Arkansas reported it, no one knew at first. But Stevens is only the most likely among five senators who have yet to rule themselves out as suspects.
UPDATE: Stevens 'fesses up. Finally.
So: Anybody have ideas on how we can do something like this locally?
Steve Safran, managing editor of Lost Remote, writes Perspective's obituary.
Ted Stevens has 'fessed up, but he might not have been the only senator to have put a hold on the bill that would create a searchable online database of federal spending: Democrat Robert Byrd of West Virginia also remains a suspect.
The circumstantial evidence is compelling. Byrd is the only one of 100 senators not to have publicly taken a position on the bill or at least denied having held it. Moreover, his history as one of the all-time kings of pork-barrel spending (recounted, among other places, in Brian Kelly's excellent 1992 book "Adventures in Porkland") would have made him a prime suspect from the git-go.
