Sometimes the Huffer jams up (but Salon jams more often), but when it loads, I scan the left column and the middle column. The right column is usually where the stupid gossip stories are.

When I see a story I might like to read, I right click and open it in a new tab. I do this for 5, 6 stories or writers I like, and then I read them one at a time. This saves a lot of time from having to click on a story, click back, click on a story...etc. I use this method on Salon and TPM or any site where it's cluttered.

Right click will change your world.

we'll have a left wing media and a right wing media - with no real news in between.

Good post, thanks for the linky. I have been lobbing doggie kibble bombs at my tv lately because of the excessive air time given--on shows where I expect to hear about politics--to that sad, self-loathing singer.

Cocktail hag

Froomkin's neatly wiped the WaPoo off his shoe

Heh heh, I like that. :)

Let's hope that HuffPo never turns into HuffPoo.

I wish for the best - but I doubt this relationship will last 2 years.

Froomkin and HuffPo are complete opposites. Either Froomkin will buckle (so often the case - an 'independent' thinker DOES eventually give in (think $'s) - start spouting the party line, no matter how goofy it is) or Huffington will censor him to death.

I was really sad to see he sold out to Huffington. That website and those 'people' are death to truth and progress.

[Off-topic again - but in line with what I hope will be a broadening, far beyond the imperial presidency, of Froomkin's 'beat' at the HuffingtonPost. We desperately need journalism's help to revive our Constitutional Congress (so as to displace the current, unauthorized de facto Parliament).]

Remember when Russ Feingold immediately held a Judiciary subcommittee hearing about 'preventive detention' after Obama's two-faced National Archives speech broaching the subject? Remember the letter of concern Feingold recently wrote to Obama?

Well, one of the people Russ Feingold is up against in his laudable effort to derail this dreadful, unAmerican policy is the powerful - also capable, secretive, and PR-savvy (and thus formidable) - Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, a "Democrat" long privy to most of the "state" secrets Senate leadership is privy to.

The ACLU targets the right actor in their overview of the Armed Services Committee hearing today that apparently focused (the committee website is not responding) on implementing Obama's 'preventive detention' scheme:

WASHINGTON – The Senate Armed Services Committee will hold a hearing today [7/7] on the proposed continuation of the controversial Guantánamo military commissions system. The chairman of the committee, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), has inserted language related to military commissions into the current Senate draft of the Defense Authorization bill and President Obama has recently declared his intention to revive the fatally flawed commissions after suspending them by executive order his first day in office.

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union is scheduled to testify on military commissions at a separate hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Wednesday morning.

[...]

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled the first version of the Bush administration's military commissions illegal [the "Detainee Treatment Act"]. President Obama, as a candidate, took the position that the second and current version of the military commissions, as implemented through the Military Commissions Act, should be rejected, but he is now pushing Congress to help revive these proceedings with certain changes.

While both the president's proposal and the new legislation passed by the Senate Armed Services Committee would bar evidence obtained through torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, they would still allow for the admission of other "coerced evidence." That means that forced confessions and hearsay evidence that would be barred from every U.S. courtroom and court-martial would still be admissible. By contrast, the Constitution, the Federal Rules of Evidence used in federal criminal courts, and rules for military courts-martial prohibit all evidence obtained by coercion.

[...]

Under our criminal justice system, the government already has sufficient tools at its disposal to prosecute terrorism suspects, including a wide array of criminal laws that even prohibit activities that are often only remotely related to terrorism. Civilian and military courts are perfectly capable of dealing with classified evidence and protecting national security while also providing fundamental rights. The United States has successfully prosecuted more than 200 defendants in international terrorism cases in federal courts for crimes committed both before and after 9/11. By comparison, only three terrorism suspects were successfully prosecuted in the military commissions system at Guantánamo.

[...]

"Under the new legislation, involuntary confessions forced out of witnesses at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and other torture sites could be used to convict people. Due process cannot exist when we allow hearsay and coerced evidence in our courtrooms, and justice cannot exist without due process.

- ACLU

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/general/40233prs20090707.html

Carl Levin, we should recall, worked hand-in-glove with Lindsey Graham and John Warner to "fix" the Military Commissions Act (into certifiably-unConstitutional condition) in the second effort Congress made to circumvent the Supreme Court at the Bush White House's bidding, in an effort to deny the most basic right of habeas corpus (judicial review of confinement) to our captives. The years-long delay in resurrecting that basic right, via the Supreme Court, has meant that all the other rights dependent upon it - such as basic humane conditions of confinement, worthy of those we grant our domestic animals by law - have yet to be enforced in court.

Levin is obviously eager to continue the gross injustice of his game of amending the Constitution without amendment (when Muslims or Arabs are the target), under President Obama (even adopting his preferred language before his pro forma hearing on the matter).

It's really something watching open and egregious violators of the law of war [when or where, since 2001, have we treated our captives according to minimal Common Article 3 standards of the Geneva Conventions, and what independent body has certified that we have come into compliance under Obama?] piously scheming to punish others we allege - without offering proof to any neutral decision-maker - to be likewise violating the law of war, as we occupy their lands with overwhelming military superiority.

Our captives are, evidently to a man - in both Afghanistan and Iraq - not classified as "Prisoners of War" for the duration of this armed conflict - with that status's attendant good treatment and zero tolerance for attempts to coerce information from captives via "harsh interrogation." If we have yet to 'find' a foreign Prisoner of War after years of roaming at will in foreign lands, I submit that we ought to stop pretending that we are fighting any sort of genuine "war," except one of resource extraction by force abetted by a cover story of transferred racist hostility for a group of human beings whom it's still "politically correct" in America to hate.

These impervious, imperious incumbents have zero respect for the voices of the American people, unencumbered by serious campaign cash as we are. The only people who have a short-term prayer of stopping them [or Harry Reid's idol-worship of the presidency] are wealthy donors, or members of their own legislative body who finally decide to rock the boat in that hollowed-out, former debating chamber known as the U.S. Senate, where democracy's voice has long since died out in the dark silence of backroom deals.