Crooks and Liars is now part of The Spotlight Project. For those who visit other progressive blogs, such as Firedoglake and MyDD, you will be familiar with this tool. For those who are not familiar with it, then let me give you a short rundown.

The Spotlight Project is designed to bridge the gap between the blogs and the media. It gives the readers of the blogs a method to share stories they feel important with the media and hopefully generate more of a national attention to the stories.

To submit a story, simply click the “Spotlight” link, and then select who in the media you want the story sent to. After that you give them a short commentary (in your own words), then submit it.

Since this is a serious tool and we want it to grow more effective, we do ask that you be polite and courteous. While Crooks and Liars exposes a lot of the problems with today’s media, please do not use the tool to attack the media for their shortcomings. Instead, use the tool to highlight the problems and persuade better media coverage.

Something else we have added today is the Digg This button, located under the title of each post. Digg has rapidly become one of the internet’s largest social bookmarking sites. It provides a perfect means to help share stories you find interesting on Crooks and Liars and in turn gain more attention to the reporting done here.

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And I thought Ken Tomlinson's generally ridiculous work as Bush's chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was bad before. As it turns out, it was even worse than I realized.

State Department investigators have found that the head of the agency overseeing most government broadcasts to foreign countries has used his office to run a "horse racing operation" and that he improperly put a friend on the payroll, according to a summary of a report made public on Tuesday by a Democratic lawmaker.

The report said that the official, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, had repeatedly used government employees to perform personal errands and that he billed the government for more days of work than the rules permit.

This is actually the second instance of Tomlinson getting caught breaking the law. Last November, we learned that he violated the Federal Broadcasting Act, which prohibits the use of "political tests" in employment.

And what's worse, he's still the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, an independent government commission that oversees the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Free Liberty, and Radio Sawa and its sister TV network, Alhurra — making Tomlinson a key person in America's international diplomacy.

Where does the White House find these guys?

TMV has more...

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

Last week, Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Fla.) raised a few eyebrows by insisting that voters had to elect Christians to avoid "legislating sin," calling the constitutional separation of church and state a "lie," and arguing that God did not intend for the United States to be "a nation of secular laws."

Since then she backed away from the first two points, but struggled a bit to explain the third.

Asked whether the U.S. should be a secular country, Harris said: "I think that our laws, I mean, I look at how the law originated, even from Moses, the 10 Commandments. And I don't believe, that uh . . . That's how all of our laws originated in the United States, period. I think that's the basis of our rule of law."

Now, I don't mean to pick on Harris — my annoyance with her candidacy is quickly turning to pity — but this argument comes up from time to time. Usually it's phrased a little more articulately, but particularly among far-right conservatives, the notion that our laws "originated" from the Ten Commandments is very popular. And very wrong.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

Gleen Greenwald was on the Alan Colmes show yesterday and got into a rather hefty debate with former deputy undersecretary of defense (under Bush 41), Jed Babbin

Download | play (mp3) Download | play (mp3)

Babbin gets really nasty and says on the air that Glenn has "no god damn idea what he's talking about". Babbin tries to say that FISA "does not cover foreign intelligence gathering", which is funny since it is called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Of course Babbin tries a typical neo-con tactic of yelling and screaming over someone when they are talking, but it fails.

Babbin tries to use the argument that he is a lawyer, but I have heard children give better arguments defending the actions of someone.

(h/t Mike)

Alex Koppelman reports the encouraging news.

Somewhere, Keith Olbermann is sticking pins in a Bill O'Reilly voodoo doll: Fox News' ratings, TVNewser reports, are down since August of last year. Like, way down. Like down 28 percent in primetime among all viewers, down 20 percent in primetime in the "money demo" (viewers aged 25-54) and down 7 percent in daytime viewership overall. In fact, the only place Fox is up is during the day, when they managed a ratings increase of just 2 percent, and even then only in the money demo.

And lest you think this is an industry-wide trend, consider this: over the same time period, CNN and MSNBC are up. CNN's up 35 percent during the day -- 46 percent in the money demo -- and up 21 percent in primetime overall, 25 percent in the money demo. MSNBC's ratings increases aren't quite as impressive -- up 6 percent in primetime overall, 8 percent in the money demo, and up 36 percent in the money demo during the day, 26 percent overall.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

(Originally posted 9/02/05)

Ted Koppel interviewed Michael Brown, head of FEMA on Nightline. He had no interest in the spin, and began at least five questions with “With all due respect Mr Brown, but…”

Download | play - WMP Download | play -QT

Ted: We’ve been reporting on the crisis at the Convention Center for a lot longer than just today, but you say that you only heard about it today?”

AmericaBlog has more on the interview and some transcripts…

Koppel: I've heard you say during the course of a number of interviews that you found out about the convention center today. Don't you guys watch television? Don't you guys listen to the radio? Our reporters have been reporting on it for more than just today.

Brown of FEMA: We learned about (the convention center) FACTUALLY today that that's what existed.

He's been doing the talk show circuit since he has apologized and says that he really feels bad about reciting BushCo's talking points on all the shows during Hurricane Katrina while people were suffering. This is what he said on Hardball:

BROWN: The lie was that we were working as a team and that everything was working smoothly. And how we could go out, and I beat myself up almost daily for allowing this to have happened, to sit there and go on television and talk about how things are working well, when you know they are not behind the scenes, is just wrong.

O‘DONNELL: So let me get this clear. Someone in the White House was telling you to lie?

BROWN: Well, yes. They give you the talking points. Whenever you go out to do any interviews they always have the talking points. Here‘s what the message for today is and here‘s how we are going to spin everything. That‘s just the way Washington, D.C. works and that‘s just wrong.

Well, you'll see some of his work when I post the video of those performances and you be the judge. We have short memories and while we are a forgiving people at heart--his behavior back then was reprehensible. If you take him at his word then instead of telling the truth and possibly quitting--he chose to lie. And it shows how low this administration will go at trying to deceive our country in a time of crisis. This administration isn't the only one culpable for the disaster, but it certainly was a big part of it--and they had people lie to cover their shortcomings.

Is Frist really a doctor?

A little more 1970's rock with "All Right Now"

Wikipedia: Most remarkable about the birth of Free was the young age of the band members who first came together to rehearse at the Nag's Head pub in Battersea, London, on April 19, 1968. Bass player Andy Fraser (born August 7, 1952), was only 15 years old while lead singer Paul Rodgers (born December 17, 1949), lead guitarist Paul Kossoff (September 14, 1950 - March 19, 1976), and drummer Simon Kirke (born July 28, 1949), were also still teenagers