Even NPR has failed at reporting this story correctly: they've aired a quote in their headline news from Senator Kyl, I believe, spouting the same talking point about the 93 fired prosecutors under Clinton, and he adds some to the number. This quote is disinformation and when NPR relays it to the public without context, they legitimize the lie. I have seen this again and again, where NPR's news top of the hour does he said/he said as if their was absolute parity between truth and untruth.

I watched the photo op of Sadam's statue being toppled, and the square was not empty. There were many dozens of Iraqis there. But the event itself was empty. It was accomplished, slowly, awardly, by American soldiers, not the citizens, and people looked on fearfully. On CNN, the running commentary made it sound as momentous as D-Day. The war was being sold as what it was not--even to people watching and seeing the phoniness with their own eyes. It was a disgraceful moment for American news, with far too many more to come. The lead-up to the illegal and immoral war had been agonizingly dishonest and hyped; here was a symbol of what was to come.

Wow! I had no idea that Joan was working so hard to undermine the war. I guess she's the one who sent too few troops with too little body army. And she's the one who disbanded Saddam's army and let their weapons disappear into the populace at large. And she's the one running both the Sunni and Shia militias (hey, she's multi-tasking anyway as an editor). And of course she's the one who ignored the experts inside and outside the administration, and also the U.N., to launch a war that violated international law. Mighty powerful woman, that Joan.

Jona, you couldn't resist, could you? Even in a laudatory pece, you had to make fat jokes:

"Was Gore really eating a low-fat sandwich in a San Francisco subway station, or a Subway restaurant? Either way, there's another punch line if Gore loses weight to make a run: Gore as Jared! (And was Shrum joining that chorus by calling Gore "a very large global figure"? Ouch. So much to think about.)"

Yes, you do point out that this is how he will be pilloried among the other approaches, but you join in yourself. It's shameful and beneath you. This is the kind of cheap trick I expect from burbling, bungling Chris Matthews.

How about a moratorium, Joan? Do you really want to sound like catty, vicious Maureen Dowd when she puts people like Howard Dean's wife in her sights?

Sorry, Joan. The discourse about Gore has been so infected by smarmy bashing, even when the writers seem to be praising him, it was easy to mistake what you wrote as slipping into the same groove. I have re-read it, though, and the sandwich transition is not clear. Had I been editing your piece, I would have suggested something else. :-)

We need a return to muckraking. In the same way that David Graham Phillips exposed massive corruption in the Senate in articles later collected as The Treason of the Senate, we need an unrelenting journalist to focus on media corruption, on the ways in which these pundits are far too cozy with the administration through friendships, socializing, having spouses work on people's campaigns, etc. It's time to do more than just inveigh against their cupidity and arrogance--it needs to be exposed, pundit by pundit, talk show by talk show. I'd like to start with Norah O'Donnell and begin with how and when she first started using the Republican talking point: legislate, don't investigate.

"Facts don't do what I want them to."

It's difficult to tell from the blurry photo linked from Joan's blog, but I doubt that Jesus is depicted with anatomic correctness since he'll likely be shown as uncircumcised.

Since when does a film have to be "mean" to be homophobic? You might want to have somebody read your review aloud to you--then you might see that you've described a movie that is indeed "exactly" homophobic. Are you afraid that saying so will incite the crowd that bashes anyone they think is PC? Or don't you trust your own observations, as they're recorded in this review?

Call me paranoid, but Dean signed the death warrant for his campaign when he said--in a high-profile venue--that communications companies should be broken up because there was too great a concentration of power. I date the turn in his news coverage from positive/curious to hostile and diminishing from that fateful interview with Chris Matthews. Dean publicly declared himself a dangerous man, and had to be taken down.

The bitter irony of all this is that if 9/11 had happened on Clinton's watch, the Republican solons would have fought him at every step of the way down from Republic to monarchy/authoritarian state. They would have been quoting the Constitution and the Founding Fathers ad nauseum, holding rallies to save our Republic, and whipping up a frenzy on talk radio. What's among the many sad aspects of the degradation of our freedoms is that it's being pushed forward by politicians who don't really believe it's necessary, but want more power for their party and President. And these hollow men have been assisted by quisling or cowardly Democrats and an MSM unable to grasp what's happening, and determined to sideline major voices that offer a different narrative, like Robert Byrd's. the Constitution has been gutted, and we are unlikely to ever recover.