Ed, technical difficulties have prevented me from continuing to engage you as I would have liked; so at this point let me just reiterate that it doesn't matter how Cokie votes. What matters is what she says on the air; and while she may or may not "carry a brief" for the Gop, she, like so many others in the corporate media, spends most of her time repeating the Gop talking points she no doubt picks up from her equally mediocre inside the beltway associates. The notion that she counts as a voice for the Dem & Lib team because her parents were Southern Dems is silly; and on the major issue of our times she has stood with Bush-Cheney despite their failure to catch bin-Laden or crush al-Qaeda.

I believe one reason Bush-Cheney have gotten away (so far) with their atrocious crimes against the Republic is that old establishment media types like Cokie and George Will see Bush Jr. and Cheney among the same trappings of office that in a far different time once surrounded real presidents like FDR and JFK. Thus people like Cokie, from their inherited postiions inside the Beltway, have a harder time seeing the damage done to the Republic by this "unitary executive" than we who outsiders who do not share in the reflected glow.

Two perhaps final points.

In your attempt (mostly successful) to hijack this discussion of Faux and make it about NPR, you make a big deal out of NPR's partial public funding. Yet you ignore the fact that We the People own the scarce broadcast airwaves and cable channels which Faux uses to propagandize for one party. There is no counterbalancing Dem party channel.

Similarly, Salon has previously reported that Rush Limbaugh's fact-challenged Gop radio show is broadcast to U..S. military forces overseas, including all those in Iraq. There is no counterbalancing broadcast of Air America or of any of other "llberals" (real or imagined). That is a far more serious partisan misuse of public dollars than anything regarding NPR.

Ed, the original point of the article is that the token in-house Dems on Faux News are weak and/or conservative. They are there to show that even rational Dems are leery of the kook fringe left; and if Cokie Roberts is in fact a Dem (which is something you don't know, and I would have a very hard time believing) it merely proves the author's point. That with people like her and Joe Lieberman speaking for Dems, who needs Gops?

The U.S. corporate media allows two types of voices: right-wing cool-aid drinkers who love Bush-Cheney, and conservative Dems who support Bush-Cheney. Liberals need not apply; and with 70% of Americans now agreeing with liberals that the Bush-Cheney Crusade For Christ is a total disaster, that's created a real paradox, in which the media not only fails to represent liberals, but fails to represent America. We need truth, not propaganda.

Remember, conservatives don't travel outside the Yoo-nited States. Bless their hearts, they really don't know that respecting foreign cultures sometimes requires women to wear scarves. They've never heard of "when in Rome" because they've never been to Rome. These are people who take the White House tour in tank tops and flip flops.

Victoria L, I thought of you this past week when CNN ran a story about a farang being sentenced to 10 years for defacing an image of the revered Thai king. I've heard Turks take a similarly dim view of disrespect to Attaturk, the father of modern Turkey. So is it wrong for Westerners to "submit to" their customs, or must only Islam be dissed?

This just in: Sen. John Edwards has declined to participate in a debate among Democratic candidates to be hosted by Faux News. Bravo, Sen. Edwards! May others follow your lead.

"We believe there's just no reason for Democrats to give Fox a platform to advance the right-wing agenda while pretending they're objective," said his deputy campaign manager.

A TV program on the crash -- probably PBS, possibly Frontline -- focused on what happened inside the KLM cockpit. They depicted the impatient Capt. van Zanten attempting to take off some moments earlier but being stopped by his first officer. However, when the Dutch captain pushed forward a second time, the first officer, deferring to the military-style hierarchy on which his job depended, kept quiet.

This is a problem throughout corporate America, given the feudal-like power of CEO's. American bosses tend to believe that it is better to be strong and decisive than it is to be right; and of course we are seeing the tragic results of this attitude now in Iraq. The few junior officers who speak out tend to find themselves unemployed in mid-life, while the majority who keep quiet are promoted and rewarded -- except in those rare cases when the whole ship goes down, as with Enron and Arthur Andersen. In which instances it is merely the livelihood of tens or hundreds of thousands of families that are lost.

The atrociousness of ABC's "journalism" notwithstanding, it should have been obvious to even the most casual observer at the time that the list of targets -- Daschle, CBS, etc. -- indicates the work of domestic neo-fascists. By the way, who's responsible for finding the culprit(s)? The U.S. Justice Department, led by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? Good thing HIS shop has managed to remain above the partisan politics used by Bush-Cheney to wreck the competency of so many other parts of the federal government.