Wednesday, May 30, 2007

The Blind Eye of Corporate News Towards Labor Issues (5:33 pm)

Journalist Nancy Cleeland explains why she’s leaving her job as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

After 10 years, hundreds of bylines and some of the best experiences of my professional life, I’m leaving the Los Angeles Times at the end of this month, along with 56 newsroom colleagues. We each have our reasons for taking the latest buyout offer from Chicago-based Tribune Company. In my case, the decision grew out of frustration with the paper’s coverage of working people and organized labor, and a sad realization that the situation won’t change anytime soon.
(…)
In the easy vernacular of modern journalism, the Times and other newspapers routinely cast business and labor as powerful competitors whose rivalries occasionally flare up in strikes and organizing campaigns. What I saw was that workers almost always lose. Eventually I left the labor beat and wrote about education and housing. Even there, however, I noted a lack of enthusiasm for anything having to do with the region’s working poor.

Why? The senior editors are not bad people. Like most journalists, they are in the business for the noblest of reasons. But in a region of increasing polarization, where six figure incomes put them in the top tier of the economy, they may not see the inequities in their own backyard.

via Joel Bleifuss

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Cheney Ordered Visitor Logs Destroyed (5:07 pm)

Pete Yost for AP reports:

A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states. The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney’s lawyer says logs for Cheney’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

Such a designation prevents the public from learning who visited the vice president.

The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence.

The newly disclosed letter about visitors to Cheney’s residence is accompanied by an 18-page Secret Service document revealing the agency’s long-standing practice has been to destroy printed daily access lists of visitors to the residence.
(…)
“The latest filings make clear that the administration has been destroying documents and entering into secret agreements in violation of the law,” said Anne Weismann, CREW’s chief counsel.

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Fitzmas Update 5/30/07 (4:52 pm)

Marcy Wheeler and Jane Hamsher have written a letter to Judge Walton, urging him to “release all of the letters sent in regards to the sentencing of Defendant Libby.” From the letter:

The government’s filing on this matter notes that some of those who wrote letters in support of Libby are “current and former public officials.” These are precisely the kinds of people who might have an interest in intervening to benefit Vice President Cheney. Moreover, they are precisely the kind of people whose actions the American people deserve to be able to scrutinize. By releasing those letters, you can allow citizens to assess whether those supporting Libby may or may not be trying to influence Vice President Cheney or other government officials implicated in the case.

Via Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly, Blue Girl at Watching Those We Chose reports that

an amicus brief was filed in Federal District Court in Washington D.C. petitioning for the public release of the pre-sentencing letters that were submitted to the court for consideration in the sentencing of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. For once, the blogs are pushing back after being singled out by Libby’s attorney for scorn and ridicule. Two of the principals from right here at Watching Those We Chose are proud and honored to be the named parties in this formal legal brief filed with the court, not just on behalf of ourselves, but more importantly, for all of the blogosphere.

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Stopping the War in Iraq (6:57 am)

Devilstower at dailykos argues that anti-war demonstrations may well be useful in helping gain the votes for legislation to stop the war. The public is now significantly predisposed to agree with protesters, and large numbers in demonstrations are likely to gain the attention of legislators who want to win reelection.

For many people, these protests are the antiwar movement. Our willingness to support, participate in, and lead such protests over the next few weeks may well be the deciding factor in whether or not Republicans decide they can no longer take the beating.

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Boehlert and Sargent Take Down Gerth (6:34 am)

Jeff Gerth has written a book about Hillary Clinton.

Eric Boehlert for Media Matters poses the question:

Isn’t former New York Times reporter Jeff Gerth writing the definitive book about Hillary Clinton sort of like Judith Miller deciding to write the definitive book about Iraq’s WMDs?

Boehlert walks down Memory Lane, and details how Jeff Gerth is an alleged reporter who has a history of being arrogant, stupid, irresponsible, biased, and horribly wrong. Nothing that Jeff Gerth says can ever be believed. If he happens to say anything truthful, it would be impossible to know, because his track record has proven him a consistent liar.

Greg Sargent at TPM has already exposed a falsehood in Gerth’s new book.

One of the key charges made by Timesmen Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta in their much-talked-about new book on Hillary’s lifelong ambitions is that way back in the early nineties, she and Bill were already plotting two terms in the White House for her, too.

But we’ve just received our copy of legendary reporter Carl Bernstein’s forthcoming book on Hillary — and his reporting appears to directly contradict this key allegation made by Gerth and Van Natta.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Intelligence Science Board Experts Say Torture Is Outmoded, Amateurish and Unreliable (8:30 pm)

Scott Shane and Mark Mazetti for the NY Times report:

As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable.

The psychologists and other specialists, commissioned by the Intelligence Science Board, make the case that more than five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration has yet to create an elite corps of interrogators trained to glean secrets from terrorism suspects.

While billions are spent each year to upgrade satellites and other high-tech spy machinery, the experts say, interrogation methods — possibly the most important source of information on groups like Al Qaeda — are a hodgepodge that date from the 1950s, or are modeled on old Soviet practices.
(…)
But some of the experts involved in the interrogation review, called “Educing Information,” say that during World War II, German and Japanese prisoners were effectively questioned without coercion.

“It far outclassed what we’ve done,” said Steven M. Kleinman, a former Air Force interrogator and trainer, who has studied the World War II program of interrogating Germans. The questioners at Fort Hunt, Va., “had graduate degrees in law and philosophy, spoke the language flawlessly,” and prepared for four to six hours for each hour of questioning, said Mr. Kleinman, who wrote two chapters for the December report.
(…)
In an April lecture, Philip D. Zelikow, the former adviser to Ms. Rice, said it was... read more

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Fitzmas Update 5/29/07 (1:19 pm)

Dan Froomkin in WaPo reports:

In Friday’s eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution “unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics.” In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby’s crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

Libby’s lies, Fitzgerald wrote, “made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions.”
(…)
The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, “was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby’s statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson’s employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President.” ([Froomkin’s] italics.)

Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: “To accept the argument that Mr. Libby’s prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President.” ([Froomkin’s] italics.)

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The Fight to Keep Abortion Safe and Legal (7:05 am)

Laura Flanders for In These Times discusses how, in the political fight for reproductive rights, on-the-ground organizing is far more effective than top-down messaging. She observes how the long-term planning and local activism by right-wing Republican opponents to safe health care for women has been effective, especially in the routine absence of competing liberal and Democratic organizations, because the national organizations are not attuned to local politics. And she calls particular attention to the fact that, notwithstanding some noteworthy legislative defeats, the right-wing legislators are still in office, continuing their crusade.