DOWNLOADS: (1520)

PLAYS: (1789)

Embed

Fox's Catherine Herridge has been reporting for a couple of weeks about the White House's change of policy regarding reporters' access to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, which while problematic from a journalist's perspective has all the earmarks of a classic bureaucratic conflict with reporters.

Herridge ran an update yesterday on Fox's Live Desk with Marsha MacCallum, including a clip of a Pentagon spokesman being short with Herridge, evidently, over her persistent questions on the issue. It looks like a tempest in a teapot, but Herridge is a serious reporter and her beef has some legitimacy, especially when it comes to transparency for this White House.

The interesting part of this report, though, came immediately after Herridge's report, when MacCallum hosted our old friend Judith Miller, the woman who helped bring you that six-years-and-running disaster on wheels known as the Iraq War. Miller decided that this Pentagon spokesman was in need of upbraiding:

MacCallum: What did you think of the Pentagon response there to Catherine's question?

Miller: You know, I thought, it's very combative. Excuse me, Mr. Pentagon Spokesman, for Fox doing our job. We're supposed to be there, we're supposed to be reporting on what the Pentagon is doing to and for these prisoners, or detainees, as they prefer to be called. And if he doesn't like our going back and back to look in on those people, well, maybe we should just believe everything they put out.

I found it completely combative, unnecessarily so.

So now we're being lectured on the relationship of reporters to official sources by the woman who was the faithful stenographer of Bush's Pentagon -- particularly Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- in selling the public on the notion that there were indeed weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein. The woman who -- after the utter mendacity of her sources was revealed -- told an interviewer:

"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal."

I don't have a problem with Fox reporters pushing for transparency from the Pentagon. I do have a problem with Judith Miller telling us how we should do that.

It sure is heart-warming, after all, to see Miller get concerned about looking into the accuracy of Pentagon claims -- though it does seem rather convenient that this is a concern of hers only now, now that we have a Democratic administration.

If she had demonstrated even an ounce of this concern during the Bush years, the nation might not have been talked into an outrageous, costly, and wholly unnecessary war.

James Moore wrote the ultimate survey of Miller's journalistic miscreancy.

When I heard that "The Brady Bunch" turns 40 this Fall, I knew I couldn't bring myself to post the "Marsha Marsha Marsha," "Ow, my nose," or especially the "It's a Sunshine Day" musical number. Then I found this Jamie Foxx tribute to the theme song. Watch to the end: Jamie Foxx doing Prince doing the Brady Bunch theme? Priceless.

Open Thread below...

Shuster asked the right question of Rep. Blackburn and predictably the attacks followed. (Newsbusters) Whenever someone leaks info to right wing blogs---red flags should go up. Via Blue Texan:

Shuster's apology [re: Marsha Blackburn] may have been premature. The tiny hamlet of Bon Aqua, Tenn., is where Bohannon lived in the months immediately prior to entering the Army. The Census Bureau places his home in Blackburn's 7th Congressional District.

Media Bistro asks a good question:

Why did MSNBC rush Shuster to apologize? And, more importantly, who made him do so? Or did Shuster and MSNBC just not have the info (or didn't do the research) that Scripps dug up?

We know that Scooter Libby isn't around anymore to call NBC and complain to the Russert's of the world---so who is the new contact from the WH that's putting the heat on?

UPDATE: Oye:

FishbowlDC hears that MSNBC General Manager Dan Abrams asked David Shuster to apologize for Wednesday's Rep. Marsha Blackburn incident and even wrote the bulk of Shuster's on-air apology...read on

Maine Office of Tourism Targets Blogger

(guest blog by Taylor Marsh)

It's likely that when Lance Dutson went after the Maine Office of Tourism (MOT) he didn't know he would cause a five alarm blaze. He also didn't count on it spreading to his own front yard. It all started when the Maine blogger began reporting critically on MOT's marketing strategies and spending. The New York ad agency in charge, Warren Kremer Paino Advertising, aka WKPA, was not amused. Neither was MOT's pr rep, Nancy Marshall, who sent email's to Dutson's wife at work, as well as her boss. Then the group got really nasty. WKPA filed a seven figure lawsuit against Lance Dutson for defamation, libel, and copyright infringement. Luckily, he's attracted serious lead counsel and co-council. Oh, and did I mention that WKPA is also miffed because Dutson showed one of their ads on his blog? It also just so happened that the phone number in the ad went to a phone sex line. Oops. Big mistake for an agency to make, wouldn't you say?

It gets worse. In the complaint, Warren Kremer Paino charges that Dutson falsely claimed that WKPA was "pissing away" Maine's tourism money. They can't be this dense about the First Amendment. A Maine blogger is right to question the use of state money, especially a blogger who has a blog called "Mainewebreport." There's more from the Boston Globe, EWeek, The Wall Street Journal Law Blog.

Everyone is beginning to feel the power of blogs. But a frivolous lawsuit won't get anyone anywhere.

Check it out. A small clip
Download | play -WMP Download | play -QT

Juanita has more....

Lampson's Press release: "Tom DeLay's campaign sent out an email asking supporters to disrupt Nick Lampson's press conference this morning. At that event, a 69 year old woman says she was assaulted by one of the DeLay thugs who showed up to disrupt the event. The woman, Marsha Rovai, of Richmond has asked the Lampson campaign to help see if any of the televisions stations caught this incident on tape so she can consider filing an assault charge. Several of the women at the event complained that they were pushed and shoved by male DeLay supporters.

Email: "We would meet tomorrow morning at 9:45 am on the first floor of the parking garage attached to the Marriott. Please get folks to call our campaign office 281.XXX-XXXX and let us know they can do it-or e-mail Leonard Cash (in the cc field above) so that we can get some head count. Let's give Lampson a parting shot that wrecks his press conference."

Following up on Josh Marshall's post on Luskin and gold, I've found that Luskin also switched sides in the middle of a case he was representing. In 94-95' Luskin was working for the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) against a RICO case. Then he suddenly ( 2.1 ) In February 1995, Luskin switched sides. Luskin went from LIUNA and Arthur A. Coia’s advocate to their prosecutor under “internal reform effort.” It was as if Johnny Cochrane was allowed to take over Marsha Clark’s job and prosecute O.J. Simpson in a quasi-judicial system funded and controlled by O.J. Simpson.

Will he do the same thing to Mr. Rove?

It’s not like we didn’t see this coming.

Three weeks ago, the idea of a Brown victory was ludicrous, but by last week, Michael Graham was getting a sinking feeling that Coakley had well and truly blown it.

Several videos showing one of Coakley’s staffers behaving like a garden-variety thug shoving The Weekly Standard's John McCormack to the ground, then shoving him again and again while Coakley breezed on past popped up all over YouTube, and garnering comments such as ’Thank you Marsha [sic] for being so lame and lazy,’ and ‘We can no longer say that John McCain ran the worst campaign in the history of politics, that distinction now belongs to Marsha [sic] Coakley!’

Worse, was where Coakley was at the time – instead of being in Massachusetts and working to get out the vote, as her opponent was doing, she was in Washington DC… at a lobbyist fundraiser, taking money from corporate and pharmaceutical interests.

McCormack had asked Coakley a question on Afghanistan which she simply ignored, asking the crowd of reporters, ‘Does anyone else have a question?’ Either she didn’t have a rehearsed response for such a question or, worse, she didn’t bother formulating one, exposing both an ignorance and an arrogance on a par with Sarah Palin.

I genuinely hate to say this: Coakley so justly deserved to lose this election and the people of Massachusetts are better off without her. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

Unfortunately, they’re not better off with what they’ve now got as an alternative.

Continue reading »