Obama Administration Seized Journalists’ Private Phone Records

May 13th, 2013 | Posted by Truman in Barack Obama | Liberty | Media - (2 Comments)

The Associated Press is reporting that the Obama Administration has acknowledged seizing two months of private telephone records from at least 100 of its journalists in at least four of its centers of operations. “It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas,” the organization reports.

The Washington Post provides the following comments from the President of the Associated Press:

obama smashes press“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know.

We regard this action by the Department of Justice as a serious interference with AP’s constitutional rights to gather and report the news.”

Were search warrants filed?

Were the phone records used to retaliate against journalists on political reporting?

How can this action be reconciled with the 1st Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of the press?

What legal limits to his powers of search and seizure does Barack Obama comply with any more?

Will Congress investigate Obama?

Will Democrats excuse this use of power?

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy comments: “The burden is always on the government when they go after private information, especially information regarding the press or its confidential sources. … On the face of it, I am concerned that the government may not have met that burden. I am very troubled by these allegations and want to hear the government’s explanation.”

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Heck, Journalism Has No Mussels Left In Congress

May 1st, 2013 | Posted by The Green Man in Environment | Legislation | Media - (0 Comments)

Yesterday, in the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Joe Heck and Mark Amodei, both Republicans from Nevada, introduced H.R. 1823, legislation to ban both the importation and export of certain kinds of mussels (a category of bivalve molluscs).

My presumption is that the legislation has to do with invasive mussels, like the zebra mussel, and upon a bit of investigation, I see that I’m right. Nevada is having a problem with quagga mussels, a relative of zebra mussels. Both zebra mussels and quagga mussels are freshwater molluscs that feed by filtering fine bits of food out of the water. They’re exceptionally good at doing this, so that there isn’t much food left for competing species. The aquatic food web in places where quagga and zebra mussels begin to breed can fall apart in a fairly short period of time.

Confronting this ecological problem seems like a good idea, but I have questions about the form of action that H.R. 1823 proposes. The summary statement available from the Library of Congress says that the bill would prohibit the importation and export of zebra and quagga mussels, but my understanding is that zebra mussels and quagga mussels aren’t really imported on purpose. Rather, zebra and quagga mussels mostly spread through contamination of recreational boats that are hauled between lakes and rivers by people who get a great thrill out of burning through large amounts off fossil fuels to go skipping over the water at high speeds. Does H.R. 1823 deal with the problem of recreational boats?

quagga musselFurthermore, many large bodies of water in Nevada, like Lake Mead, are not natural ecosystems in the first place. They’re artificial reservoirs created by the blockage of rivers, and are themselves harmful to river ecosystems. Given this complicated ecological context, what kind of benchmarks does H.R. 1823 provide to measure the environmental integrity of aquatic ecosystems threatened by invasive mussels?

I can’t go to the Library of Congress to obtain answers to these questions. The Library isn’t adequately funded, and neither is the Government Printing Office, which processes all congressional legislation, so the text of H.R. 1823 is not yet online.

Traditionally, this is where journalism comes in. Reporters working in Washington D.C. are supposed to be keeping track of legislation introduced in Congress, and talking to politicians and their staffers so that Americans can be informed about the new federal laws that have been proposed.

When I search through the news that’s been written about the U.S. Congress, however, I can’t find a single article about H.R. 1823. When I search Google News, a fairly comprehensive search engine for work by journalists, for articles about “mussels” and “Heck”, I can only find the following three items:

- The Republican Journal of Knox County asks, “Who the heck knows who owns the spot you end up in?” and anticipates “a spread of lobster, steamers and mussels” for dinner in the summertime.

- The Boston Globe asks, “What the heck is a hungry working girl supposed to do for dinner?” and suggests “an ocean-scented seaweed pasta studded with mussels”.

- The Virginian-Pilot laments that Franco’s By The Bay only serves its pescatore of mussels, clams and shrimp on Fridays, but consoles itself with the knowledge customers love the Friday meals so much that they contribute substantially to the local economy: “Heck. We know we at least pay their light bill.”

If Congress won’t report on its proceedings in a timely manner, and journalists won’t write about the much of the legislative activity of Congress either, how are citizens supposed to know when they need to get involved? What is there that we, living out in the grassroots, are supposed to do when both the people on Capitol Hill and the executives put in charge of our nation’s newsrooms are inclined to clam up?

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No Terror Here

April 16th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Homeland Insecurity | Media - (4 Comments)

Here’s what the newspaper left outside my hotel door says today: Terror Returns. The newspaper says that Americans are “rattled”.

americans rattled

Is it true? Are we rattled? Are we living in terror?

Let me go check. Here’s what the lobby of my hotel looks like. No one is in terror here. They’re too busy checking their cell phones on comfy couches to be rattled.

image

What about outside? Here’s the scene on the street: Perfectly normal. No one in terror or rattled.

image

Yes, there was real terror in one part of one community in the USA. Everywhere else, terror is not to be found. Americans aren’t living in fear, really. The only people who I’ve noticed acting rattled are the corporate journalists in the newspapers and on TV. They’re rattling their cages far out of proportion to events. Why are corporate journalists working so hard to create such exaggerations of Americans’ reactions to the bombing in Boston?

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Reuters “Reports” On Civilians Killed By “NATO”

February 13th, 2013 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Media | War and Peace - (5 Comments)

This morning, Reuters is reporting on a violent incident with the headline Ten Afghan “civilians” killed in NATO airstrike.

This headline leaves me wondering what the difference between is between “civilians” and civilians. 5 of the “civilians” killed were children… or were they “children”? Were they only “killed”, rather than being killed? Did they “live” in “Afghanistan”, or did they live in Afghanistan?

Reuters might have thought to put the word “airstrike” in quotes, too. “Airstrike” is a word journalists use for a bombing by somebody they like. When a bombing is done by somebody journalists don’t approve of, their articles simply use the word “bombing”.

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No Labels Astroturf Machinery Powers Up for a 6th Round of Fake Letters

February 3rd, 2013 | Posted by Jim Cook in Ethics - (1 Comments)

“Astroturfing” is the use of various means to create the appearance of grassroots support for an organization or idea when no actual grassroots support exists. Astroturfing takes money, typically making it a tool of some elite group. Sometimes the goal is to get conformist everyday citizens to jump on a fake bandwagon for an unpopular idea, thereby creating an actual bandwagon. At other times, the goal is to erect fake “Potemkin village” evidence of a grassroots movement that doesn’t exist. That fake evidence is shown to fellow members of the political elite in order to hoodwink them into thinking that there’s popular support for an unpopular idea.

No Labels? No Shame. No Labels promotes plagiarism in its multiple letter to the editor campaigns.In each of five previous rounds of generating fake letters to the editor (1|2|3|4|5), the No Labels corporation wrote canned text in its Washington DC office, convinced followers to sign their names to the text and insert them as “locally-written” letters to the Editor, and then sent out messages trumpeting its grassroots support. A typical promotional offering was written by No Labels staffer Jack McCullough on December 12, 2012:

"LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Citizens continue to spread the word about No Labels in their local papers. 'No Labels is calling for a new understanding of leadership,' writes Joseph Candela II in the Orange County Post Sentinel. 'To solve problems, No Labels wants President Barack Obama and congressional leaders to stop the rhetoric and agree on the same set of facts, govern for the future, not the next election, put country before party and live up to the obligations of leadership and work together to solve problems,' Arnold Sherman writes in The Baltimore Sun."

Joseph Candela and Arnold Sherman didn’t write those words. A No Labels political staffer did.

This practice (repeated often over the years) suggests that No Labels’ goal is not to kick-start any actual grassroots movement, but rather to convince fellow DC Beltway insiders that a grassroots movement exists when it doesn’t.

The No Labels Astroturf machinery is being geared up yet again. In an e-mail blast sent out on February 2, 2012, No Labels co-founder Lisa Borders asks volunteers to visit a web page on which they may sign their name as “authors” of staffer-written text, then submit the text as if it were original to local newspapers. Look for the following text to appear in newspapers near you, and then look for No Labels to refer to those newspaper appearances as evidence of grassroots support:

"If your Congressman/Senator voted for No Budget, No Pay, thank them for doing so. Elected officials are often criticized for their vote -- a simple thank you goes a long way! Over the course of the last 60 years, Congress has only passed a budget resolution and the requisite appropriations bills on time for a total of four years. No Budget, No Pay is a historic and unprecedented piece of legislation -- Congress has often voted to increase their salaries but never have they acted to have their pay suspended should they fail to do their job. The No Budget, No Pay provision is only the first step -- encourage your Congressman/Senator to support more comprehensive legislation introduced in the House and the Senate a few weeks ago (H.R. 310 and S. 124). Encourage your peers to join the movement at www.NoLabels.org."

I’m writing this article for three reasons. The first reason is to document the existence of the canned text before it is published in the form of a fake grassroots “letter.” The second reason is to warn journalists at newspapers to beware of this text and think twice before letting the No Labels corporation take over the Letters to the Editor page. The third reason is to ask you to help me spread the word; the best way to stop such unethical, anti-civic behavior is to make its cost greater than its benefit.

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No Labels Calls for a New 4th Wave of Plagiarism. Will They Get Away With It?

December 14th, 2012 | Posted by Jim Cook in Economy | Ethics | Media | Politics - (0 Comments)

No Labels, a 501c4 political corporation firmly embedded in a network funded by billionaire Peter G. Peterson, is calling for Americans to commit plagiarism by submitting massive numbers of fake letters to the editor that they didn’t write. This is No Labels’ fourth call for its followers to cheat and lie. The practice, called “Astroturf” for its fake creation of the appearance of a grassroots movement, asks the Labels followers to:

1. Cut and paste corporate-written text into letters to the editor. In its appeal, No Labels supplies “talking points” to its followers and explicitly asks them to “Write a letter below using our talking points” and “incorporating this information into the template.”

2. Sign their own names as authors. “Be sure to include your name, as editors often do not consider anonymous submissions,” No Labels instructs.

3. Send these letters to multiple newspapers in their area. When I typed in my zip code, No Labels provided me a list of eleven newspapers to which I could send a fake message.

3. Tell the newspapers that they, not the No Labels corporation, wrote the letter when given a confirmation call. “Newspapers may wish to contact you via phone to confirm the contents of your letter before publication,” No Labels warns its followers.

Here’s the text of the fake-grassroots letter, actually written by a DC Beltway No Labels staffer:

" Dear [Recipient],
Our leaders in Washington have known what would happen if they didn’t solve the fiscal cliff since August of 2011. Yet we have about three weeks until we hit the deadline, and they still aren’t working together. The two parties share power of the government -- neither will be able to impose their will on the other. They must work together to solve this. If they don’t, our economy will be pushed back into recession.

No Labels is calling for a new understanding of leadership: Leaders must tell the full truth -- they need to recognize how big the problem is and agree to start with the same facts. They need to govern for the future, not the next election. They need to put the country first instead of fighting for political advantage. Our leaders need to accept the responsibility they were given: to solve problems. Lastly, the leadership of both parties needs to work together to get anything done. If you want to see real leadership in Washington, sign on at NoLabels.org.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Address]
[Your City]"

If you’re on the editorial staff of a local newspaper, be on the lookout for this letter. If this text comes across your desk or inbox, you’ll know it’s a fake. If you’re a citizen, be on the lookout too. If you see this plagiarized letter signed with the name of a fake local author in your morning paper, write your own original letter to the editor exposing the scam. Political corporations like No Labels cannot take over our civic discourse unless we let them. Don’t let them.

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Support The Fiscal Cliff Journalism Aversion Therapy Act Of 2012!

December 4th, 2012 | Posted by Peregrin Wood in Economy | Legislation | Media - (2 Comments)

I’ve had it.

I’ve seen a supposedly unbiased journalist write about the “fiscal cliff” one too many times. I can’t stand it any more, so, I’m taking action.

As of tonight, I am calling for a discontented member of the U.S. Senate or U.S. House of Representatives to resign, and, through a corrupt process of his or her choosing, to arrange for me to be appointed in the resulting empty seat. I’m looking for someone like Jesse Jackson Jr. – someone who has “bipolar disorder”, or whatever you want to call the malaise that settles in on a human being who has been in the presence of straight-faced nonsense for too long.

I promise, if appointed to Congress, to take no legislative action but to introduce the following bill, and then resign:

H.R.6582 -- American Energy Manufacturing Technical Corrections Act (Introduced in House - IH)

HR 9782 IH

112th CONGRESS

2nd Session

A bill to provide for voluntary disincentives for journalists to use the phrase 'fiscal cliff'.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the `The Fiscal Cliff Journalism Aversion Therapy Act Of 2012'.

SEC. 2. INNOVATIVE COMPONENT TECHNOLOGIES.

Section 342(f) of the Not Being A Propaganda Tool For Corporate FearMongers Act (42 U.S.C. 63139(f)) is amended--

(1) in paragraph (1), by striking `paragraphs (2) through (5)' and inserting `paragraphs (2) through (6)'; and

(2) by eliminating the phrase 'a walrus'; and

(3) by adding at the end the following new paragraph:

`(6) FISCAL CLIFF JOURNALISM AVERSION THERAPY- The White House Press Secretary shall establish a voluntary program for American journalists who agree to donate 100 dollars to Oxfam America every time they write, speak, or otherwise use in an article of journalism the phrase 'fiscal cliff'. Participants in the program shall also agree to wear large, brightly colored shoes, orange wigs and polka-dotted jumpsuits for a time no less than 24 hours.'.

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Mainstream Political Reporters Mostly Mum About Fisa Amendments Act Extension

September 13th, 2012 | Posted by jclifford in Legislation | Liberty | Media - (3 Comments)

If Big Brother stomps on your constitutional rights, but all the political reporters pretend not to hear it, does it make a sound?

Today, Politico, the Washington D.C. insider political newspaper, has no front page story about the fact that the House of Representatives voted yesterday to renew for 5 more years the FISA Amendments Act, a law that allows the federal government to grab Americans’ private, personal information from their cell phones, emails, financial transactions and use of the Internet. However, Politico does have a front page story devoted solely to the fact that Congressman Paul Ryan likes to watch television shows about people who catch catfish by jamming their hands down the throats of the giant fish.

new york times values fashion over fundamentals of democracyThe Hill, another Washington D.C. political publication that is supposed to take a serious look at legislative news from the U.S. Congress, does not have any front page story today on the passage of the FISA Amendments Act Reauthorization Act of 2012. However, the editors of The Hill did see fit to publish a full-length front-page article about how Jonathan Goldsmith, an actor who is best known for appearing in advertisements for Dos Equis beer, is hosting a fundraising party in Vermont for Barack Obama.

The New York Times doesn’t link to any story about the 5-year renewal of the FISA Amendments Act from its front page, but it does have a prominent front-page link about a trend in elite fashion design to use less black.

The Washington Post has no front page story on the passage of the FISA Amendments Act extension, but it does have a front page story examining the question of whether it’s worth going to a party if no one there takes your photograph.

It seems that the Fourth Estate has been sold to commercial developers and turned into an amusement park.

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