USA Next sued for $25m over AARP ad

via AmericaBlog

A $25 million four-count lawsuit was filed today in federal court in Washington, DC against right-wing front group USA Next and political consulting firm Mark Montini International for stealing an Oregon couple's wedding photo and using it without permission in a high-profile gay-bashing ad designed to drum up support for social security privatization by attacking AARP. A hearing has already been scheduled on the emergency motion for a temporary restraining order before by Judge Reggie Walton today at 3pm EST in Courtoom 5, US Court House, Washington, DC, 3d and Constitution. The hearing is open to the media.

Salon has more here

Full Press release can be seen here

Well I couldn't be happier. USA NEXT uses smear tactics on AARP, then lies about buying the photos as reported by CNN to smear the AARP. Let's see how this plays out.

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Glenn Beck seems to be irked at the people digging into his past. But then, that's because his past is truly a disgusting thing to behold. I wouldn't want people looking at it either, if mine were anything remotely like Beck's.

He ranted about it last night on his Fox News show. He thinks we should be paying more attention to his phony "scandals" than to just what kind of character we're watching implore us to seek greater moral goods (as he sees them) every night.

He's no doubt thinking of Alexander Zaitchik's impressive three part series in Salon, the first of which does indeed point out that his mother's death remains a mystery -- and that Beck's own later assertion that it was a suicide was a peculiar event.

It was an incredibly revealing series -- particularly this nugget from the second part, describing Beck's antics when he had a falling out with a former radio-show partner named Bruce Kelly, who became a competitor in the Phoenix market. Beck was known as "the king of dirty tricks," including an invasion of Kelly's wedding.

The animosity between Beck and Kelly continued to deepen. When Beck and Hattrick produced a local version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" for Halloween -- a recurring motif in Beck's life and career -- Kelly told a local reporter that the bit was a stupid rip-off of a syndicated gag. The slight outraged Beck, who got his revenge with what may rank as one of the cruelest bits in the history of morning radio. "A couple days after Kelly's wife, Terry, had a miscarriage, Beck called her live on the air and says, 'We hear you had a miscarriage,' " remembers Brad Miller, a former Y95 DJ and Clear Channel programmer. "When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right -- about he can't even have a baby."

You have to wonder if Kelly contemplated returning the favor when Beck's second daughter was born with cerebral palsy.

But then, he'd have been forced to sink to the level of Glenn Beck to have done something like that.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

A lesser-known candidate attracts a small following of dedicated supporters by the promise of being different than your usual Washington DC elected officials. Taking advantage of these supporters' talent in getting the word out over the internet, scheduling meetups of other potential supporters, raising funds and generally building up a wave of enthusiasm that carries the candidate to national prominence, that same candidate starts taking on the trappings of traditional politicians-consultants, pollsters, campaign managers from inside the Beltway-and slowly, but heartbreakingly surely, the candidate moves away from those netroots supporters that got him where he was.

Sound like anyone you know?

Well, to Lowell Feld and Nate Wilcox, authors of Netroots Rising: How A Citizen Army Of Bloggers And Online Activists Is Changing American Politics this is altogether too familiar a story. Lowell and Nate are veterans of several netroots campaigns, such as Wesley Clark, Jim Webb, Tim Kaine, and Mark Warner. Netroots Rising documents instance after instance where candidates are profoundly grateful for the support and work of the netroots only to distance himself after surrounded by those desperate not to change the status quo of the power circles.
I am hosting the Book Salon discussing Netroots Rising at Firedoglake starting now 5:00 pm Eastern/2:00 pm Pacific. Come join us and let's discuss the growing power of the netroots and how we can get our voices heard.

The fabulous Digby is hosting and moderating FireDogLake's Book Salon this afternoon with Sen. Harry Reid, discussing his latest book The Good Fight: Hard Lessons From Searchlight to Washington, beginning now at 2:00pm PDT/ 5:00pm EDT.

If you have some questions for the Senator, who has risen from his beginnings in a ramshackle cabin with no indoor plumbing in the Nevada desert to Senate Majority Leader, go on over and say hello.

For all of the misguided talk about Mike Huckabee being a "populist," his enthusiastic support for a regressive national sales tax should effectively end the discussion.

In case there's any lingering confusion about just how ridiculous this policy is, Jon Chait sets the record straight:

Basically, trying to explain why the Fairtax is a bad idea is like trying to explain why having trained elephants perform open-heart surgery on every first-grader in America is a bad idea. The whole idea is one bit of lunacy stacked upon another, so when you focus on any one element of it, you let the other side suck you into into arguments about details -- Maybe there could be benefits to preemptively fixing the hearts of six year olds! Perhaps elephants do have the potential intelligence to one day perform this task!! -- that inadvertently make the plan sound semi-credible.

If you're still not convinced, take a look at Brad DeLong's piece in Salon this week.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

George Clooney congratulates Julia Roberts in a recent tribute, but channels a much different newsmaker.

SITE UPDATE: We've been trading emails to try to make this work, and we finally have a date. Unfortunately, it's short notice, but we wanted to give you the opportunity during the holiday shopping season to pick up this fantastic book and support one of our best. So therefore, Crooks & Liars will be holding our first Book Salon TOMORROW to support Lee Jackson aka NonnyMouse's latest book, Redemption. Please join us from 12:00 noon Pacific/3:00 pm Eastern and Nonny will be here to answer your questions and discuss.

Sidney Blumenthal, Salon contributer and executive producer of "Taxi to the Dark Side" wants the Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs to do her job:

One Defense Department official, believing the administration policy on detainees and torture to be illegal and counterproductive, told me that in his and others' efforts to reverse it they approached you as a last hope. After all, you have virtually unrestricted access to the president. But he recounted that you rebuffed them, and described your attitude as dismissive.

Your complicity in the torture policy is one reason that I am writing you. Despite the futility of those inside the administration in bringing the problem to you, you still remain in place to redress it. As the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, responsible for defending America's reputation in the world, you must engage the issue that has most seriously damaged our image. Your obligation will continue so long as you hold your post. Those who care about the good name of the United States will not cease viewing you as a last resort, even if you disdain or ignore them, because they cling to the desperate hope that a nagging conscience or its sudden awakening will compel you actually to do your job.

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Joan Walsh at Salon:

Last week we told you that Salon was running two "Opus" cartoons, featuring spiritual seeker Lola Granola's stint as a "radical Islamist," that many newspapers, including the Washington Post, declined to publish. This week, Salon is running Berkeley Breathed's original, unedited version of the Lola Granola finale, and it's slightly different from the one approved for distribution to newspapers by the Washington Post Company.[..]

As I noted last week, Editor & Publisher and others reported that some newspapers had concerns about running a cartoon that might somehow be construed as insensitive to Muslims. I'd like to insert a line here about Salon's courage in running these two strips, but I didn't see anything that made me think twice about them -- except the news that others wouldn't publish them. We're proud to have Breathed as a contributor, and sad about what this episode says about newspaper publishing today.

There are basically two ways to look at the David Vitter/DC Madam story: shame (senator cheats on spouse) and hypocrisy (moralistic blowhard champions sanctity of marriage, gets caught as an adulterer). CBS News’ Brian Montopoli reports today that the mainstream media is focusing on the prior, while the blogs care about the latter.

The blogs are having a field day with that hypocrisy…. The mainstream media, however, has largely steered clear of focusing on Vitter’s past statements, opting instead to play the story relatively straight. The Washington Post, noting only about his rhetoric that Vitter is “reliable conservative vote in the Senate,” didn’t front the story, opting instead for A3. Rather, it’s the blogs and liberal sites like Salon that are jumping on the story and hammering Vitter for statements at odds with his behavior.

If you want a straight news story, then, you can stick with the traditional media. But if you want a spotlight placed on Vitter’s hypocrisy — and the rush of satisfaction that comes with experiencing schadenfreude that you can justify — you can head over to the blogs. Is it any wonder that the latter get so many clicks?

That Vitter championed “family values” is pretty much the only thing that makes this story interesting. Why would traditional reporters sidestep the obvious?

Salon.com (watch short ad for a day pass)

Plenty of Democrats do appear on Fox. In fact, John Edwards, the first of the announced presidential candidates to drop out of the Nevada debate, has appeared on the network more than 30 times, most recently in late January of this year, and Mark Mellman has appeared more than 80 times.

But Fox also has a stable of regular commentators, some under contract to the network, who pop up frequently as representatives of the Democratic or progressive viewpoint. They do not appear to know what they have gotten into. Though these Democrats tell Salon they are doing their best to reach out and sway potential voters, they often seem to be used to further a conservative political agenda, fulfilling one of several roles that ultimately just helps the network's right-of-center hosts make their arguments against liberals.

Those Fox-friendly Democrats who agreed to speak with Salon say they're doing their best to help the party, arguing that Democrats can't afford to ignore the nation's most watched cable news network. They insist that when they've appeared on Fox they've scored points for progressives and swayed some viewers. "I think there are some liberals who are extremely biased about Fox News," says Alan Colmes, the liberal half of "Hannity & Colmes," "and wish to shun it or wish to criticize any liberal who appears on Fox News. That, to me, is not a particularly liberal attitude."

[..]But if one actually watches a lot of Fox News, the in-house Democrats don't come off as effective evangelists for their party or for liberal politics in general. It sounds harsh, but think of most of the Fox Democrats, at least those who appear on the opinion shows, which take up half the network's airtime, as one of three types. They are either scary liberals, losers or enablers. Representatives of each type may score some points for Democrats when they appear on-air, but ultimately they help further Fox's larger narrative about Democrats and liberals and what they stand for.