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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.

The truth may set you free, but not if you're a Republican and the subject is taxes. After all, 95% of American families as promised received a tax cut from the Obama stimulus package. And while three-quarters of Americans support President Obama's proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those earning over $250,000 to their Clinton-era levels, it turns out that affluent voters, too, chose Barack Obama over John McCain. Making matters worse, a Gallup poll Monday revealed that Americans' "views of income taxes among most positive since 1956."

So as their furious followers head off to their April 15th orgy of tea-bagging, the leadership of the GOP and its amen corner in the right-wing media have instead turned to tall tales on taxes.

Here, then, are 10 Republican Tax Day lies:

1. President Obama will raise taxes on small businesses.
2. The estate tax devastates small businesses and family farms.
3. 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
4. Tax cuts always increase revenue.
5. The GOP is the party of fiscal discipline.
6. Ronald Reagan was the greatest tax cutter of all time.
7. FDR caused the Great Depression, or at least made it worse.
8. Obama's cap-and-trade plan will cost each American family $3,100 a year.
9. Obama's tax proposals will undermine charitable giving.
10. The rich pay too much in taxes already.

For the details behind each of the GOP's Tax Day deceits, continue reading.

Continue reading »

I got chills reading this brief, but very truthful op-ed from Paul Krugman at the New York Times. Barack Obama's win last night was just one step into the future, lets hope Krugman's words ring loud and clear for future generations - Beware the Monsters...

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”! Read on...

It may seem outlandish to launch a campaign broadside by television ad and book flackery devoted to discrediting the respectable Vietnam War record of Senator John Kerry, who has five combat medals.  The leader of the attack, John O'Neill, a Swift boat veteran and Texas lawyer, has been a detractor of Mr. Kerry for decades, ever since the Nixon White House recruited him to rebut Mr. Kerry's criticism of Vietnam policy. And the chief donor to the Swift boat broadside is a Texas businessman, Bob Perry, who is known for giving millions to the campaigns of President Bush and other Republicans. Senator John McCain, the Vietnam hero who was smeared by one such "independent" stealth group in the 2000 campaign, has denounced the Swift Boat Veterans' attack as dishonest and dishonorable, declaring, "The Bush administration should specifically condemn the ad." So far that hasn't happened. We can only hope the senator brought the point up as he campaigned last week with Mr. Bush.