Aww, the Palin biography for kids has been postponed indefinitely, so I came up with my own covers. More here; add your own covers/titles in comments, and it's also an open thread.

It's the weekend! This one goes out to my buddies Matt and C.B. who unleashed their boy 'Iggy' upon the world today. Congrats guys!

(Daniel Schorr - one of the cornerstones of CBS News in the 1950's and 60's)

Most people listening to NPR the last twenty years have come to know the name Daniel Schorr as the commentator who gave sage advice and observations of an increasingly shrinking world. But if you grew up in the 1950's and 60's, Schorr was the correspondent who had first hand knowledge of the Cold War, was the first to do a live on-air interview with Nikita Khruschev and who ran afoul of Richard Nixon's White House during the Watergate era.

Schorr, like all the correspondents during that great age of reporting at CBS News, was the cool observer who reported and never spun, sought answers and shared a vast amount of knowledge. His was one of the many voices that came to be trusted in times of uncertainty.

And it was during the Cold War that Schorr had some of his greatest moments. In 1962, when tensions between the West and the Soviet Union were at their highest, Daniel Schorr reported on the newly constructed Berlin Wall, taking a crew to East Berlin in search of answers.

The result was the CBS Reports documentary Berlin: Wall of Shame, which aired on January 4, 1962. A vivid picture of just how bad relations had become between East and West.

It is doubtful we'll see or hear his kind again anytime soon. It is a tragedy that no heir apparent is on the horizon to take his place. More tragic that CBS News has become a lifeless shell of its former self. It is probably the time his words of calm and his keen observations are the most needed.

But all we can do at the moment is be reminded and perhaps strive.

RIP - Daniel Schorr.

Rachel got treated to a Keith Olbermann style attack by Bill-O where he went after her for this segment that she ran on Fox and their hackery after the Shirley Sherrod debacle that their network was more than happy to promote with their usual race baiting and with happily promoting Breitbart's crap whether it be ACORN or Van Jones. As she called them out for they had the gall to flip-flop on a day later on the Sherrod attacks and start attacking the White House for reacting to their fear mongering instead. Here’s how Bill O’Reilly responded.

Maddow: It's not new. It's not even actually interesting about this scandal. Fox does what Fox does...

O’Reilly: Which is kick your network’s butt every single night madam. And you have to be kidding with this fake ACORN scandal stuff. Unbelievable... do you live in this country?

Rachel responded about as politely as you would expect from her and pointed out to Mr. My-Ratings-Are-Bigger-Than-Yours-Are O’Reilly that even if her mother, her girlfriend and anyone who forgot to change the channel are the only ones out there watching her, that doesn’t mean that he’s right. She also pointed out that our entertainment media has a whole lot more viewers than any of the shows that call themselves "news".

As Rachel noted though, that's not what really matters about what O'Reilly said.

Maddow: Because when you got all "I'll kick your network's butt" and madam on me, you weren't really trying to tout your network's ratings. You were trying to take the attention off me saying that your network continually crusades on flagrantly bogus stories designed to make white Americans fear black Americans, which Fox News most certainly does for a political purpose, even if it upends the lives of individuals like Shirley Sherrod, even if if frays the fabric of a nation and even if it makes the American dream more of a dream and less of a promise.

You can insult us all you want about television ratings Mr. O'Reilly and you'll be right that yours are bigger for now and maybe forever. You are the undisputed champion.

But even if no one watches us all except for my mom and my girlfriend and the people who forgot to turn off the T.V. after Keith, you are still wrong on what really matters and that would be the facts, your highness.

Somehow I doubt that O'Reilly and his enormous ego will be responding to this segment from Rachel but you never know. If he does I'm sure he'll take as much of it out of context as possible.

Now that the firestorm over Shirley Sherrod's firing is beginning to die down, it's worth looking at the specific statements Andrew Breitbart made on national cable TV to justify himself before the full video was released.

His appearance on John King USA on July 20th had a very revealing moment in it, one that's worth looking at in depth.

Every time Breitbart opens his mouth a lie flies out. Beginning at the beginning, and remember, this was before the full tape was released.

BREITBART: It has to -- this tape is about the NAACP. Its race (ph) on debt is about nondiscrimination and when Shirley Sherrod is talking there in which she expresses a discriminatory attitude towards white people, the audience responds with applaud -- with applause and the NAACP agrees with me and it rebuked her and the audience. So the entire conversation about race right now in this country is because the NAACP brought up without evidence, again, and including the false narrative that the "n" word was hurled at three black congressmen, this is asserting that the NAACP condoned racism and was caught on video. And the more video that we've seen that we haven't even offered, there's even more racism on these tapes. This is deeply problematic.

KING: I'm happy to look at those tapes, and I promise I will look at those tapes if you post them, but I want to come back to another -- you say context is everything. We believe facts are important, too --

(CROSSTALK)

BREITBART: If that -- if it is the case and it can be shown to me that the incident that she's talking about was done many years ago and not in her current context, but as a reporter you tell me how you confirmed that the incident that she's talking about was 24 years ago? You tell me as a reporter how CNN put on a person today who purported to be the farmer's wife?

What did you do to find out whether or not that was the actual farmer's wife? I mean there -- if you're going to accuse me of a falsehood, tell me where you've confirmed that this incident happened 24 years ago. This is Shirley Sherrod trying to save her job when her problem is with Vilsack (ph) and the USDA and the NAACP, both which have rebuked her and forced her to leave her position.

KING: I think she has legitimate questions as do we for Secretary Vilsack (ph), the NAACP, the Agriculture Department and perhaps even the Obama White House. But did you reach out to her when you posted this to ask her -- I have this tape. I think it shows what I -- what you believe to be damning conduct or questionable conduct. Did you reach out to her and say what incident are you talking about? When did this happen?

Now, when King starts pressing, Breitbart starts squirming.

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Ann Coulter sticks up for her good buddy Andrew Dimbart while appearing on Sean Hannity's show last night:

"The whole key to this story is that Andrew Breitbart was set up. He was sent a tape that, as we now know, was massively out of context. It did look like this woman was saying something racist. When she first said it was taken out of context . . . we've heard that before from politicians telling racist jokes. This is the first time in world history it was literally taken out of context.

"It was a lovely speech. Of course the White House reacted that way -- of course you reacted the way you did. Anyone would have. I think Breitbart ought to reveal his source, because he was set up. This was a fraud. The person who sent the edited tape has to know what the full speech said, and whomever sent only that segment to Andrew Breitbart is the one who should apologize to Shirley Sherrod.

Now, think about that. Remember what happened to Dan Rather and 60 Minutes after they used documents that may have been forged as a basis for a story about George Bush's National Guard non-service?

Apparently the Big Hollywood principle is to run the most sensational thing you can find without even questioning its veracity. This is particularly interesting that Big Dim also ran this without identifying the person who supplied it, making it even less likely that the source stood behind the video. Why were they anonymous, anyway?

Because Dimbulb knew the story was a fact-free hatchet job. After all, that's the kind of thing he likes best.

John and I have been wandering the halls at Netroots Nation here in Vegas this week, having a blast hanging out with our blogospheric friends. But we also led one of the conference's first panels yesterday morning, titled "Right Wing Populism and the Tea Parties".

It also featured our friend Adele Stan of AlterNet and the amazing Hugh Jackson of the Las Vegas Gleaner. Of course, I'm a little biased, but I thought the ensuing discussion was very good, the room was pretty full and the questions very thoughtful.

Turns out that some folks from rightward publications were there too. Susan Davis of the Wall Street Journal's Washington Wire was there and filed a pretty balanced story.

However, I noticed that she also truncated not only the title of our book, Over the Cliff -- she omitted the subtitle, How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane, though that in fact was a significant theme of the panel as well -- she also truncated the quote from me as well:

“After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent,” said liberal blogger David Neiwert. “The right never gives up.”

“The answer to the tea party is to activate the populist wing of the progressive movement,” he said. “We need to seize on [the public’s frustration] ourselves and channel it to our movement.”

What I actually said in full was this:

"After the 2008 election we were all celebrating, but we also became complacent. But having studied the right for many years, I can tell you: They never, ever, give up. They are relentless. Even after their ideology has been completely discredited by eight years of conservative rule, even after they have driven the country into an economic abyss, they keep going -- even if it means going insane in the process."

Oh well.

And then there was Chris Moody of the Daily Caller, who couldn't take the time to talk to any of us afterward, and wrote an even more distorted account headlined "Liberals warn: Don’t write off the Tea Party (even if they’re crazy)".

You'll note, if you read the piece, that Moody omits my explanation for why we call the Right "insane," namely this, which I said:

"We say that they've gone insane a little bit facetiously, but really, we say it because they believe things -- lots of things -- that are provably untrue. And that really is a kind of insanity. It's why we sometimes just say these people are nuts."

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Anderson Cooper needs to stick to oil spills and hurricanes because when it comes to political commentary he's as lame as the Fox journalists. There's only one story to be told when it comes to the Shirley Sherrod fiasco: Andrew Breitbart lied. That's all. Andrew. Breitbart. lied.

But this is what journalism is today. There is no one with enough of a moral compass to just come out and say that in the media. This is why, by the way, Robert Gibbs and the Obama Administration won't say it either. I'll get to that toward the end of this post, but first let's have a look at Anderson Cooper's Invented America.

COOPER: But we begin with a political storm that nearly destroyed Shirley Sherrod. President Obama spoke with her on the phone today. And we will speak to her in a moment about that conversation.

But first the blogger who slammed Shirley Sherrod, we're "Keeping Them Honest." He is the only actor in this dismal drama that has not apologized to Ms. Sherrod. And, in fact, he says he is the victim and that the Obama administration and mainstream media are out to destroy him.

He told Politico today -- quote -- "I am public enemy number one or two to the Democratic Party, the progressive movement and the Obama administration based upon the successes my journalism has had."

Now, calling what Mr. Breitbart does journalism is hard for those of us who actually check and try to be fair. I'm certainly not perfect, and have made mistakes, and have apologized for them. But journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about the truth.

Up to this point, I'm right there with him. Yes, journalism shouldn't be about left and right. It should be about truth. And facts. And full telling of the truth and facts. If Anderson Cooper had stopped here, I'd be applauding. Andrew Breitbart wouldn't know the truth if it reared up and breathed hot fire in his face.

But this is not what journalists do. We don't live in an age where they actually call it what it is and move on to the next story. No, instead they have to create that false "balance", or equivalence that just doesn't exist.

The single reason that Robert Gibbs and other Obama administration officials, including the President himself, will not call out Fox News and Breitbart is because of stupid assertions like the ones Cooper is about to make. If Gibbs had pointed out that the entire story was the product of a lie manufactured by Andrew Breitbart for attention and giggles, the narrative would have shifted to "Mean President Obama Whines and Picks on Andrew Breitbart".

The administration would have been painted as "petty", "blaming", "ducking the issue". It would have just obfuscated the truth of the matter, which is simple, and which I will repeat a few more times: Andrew Breitbart lied.

What Mr. Breitbart does and what others on the left and the right do may very well be what journalism has become, but it isn't certainly not what it should be. Mr. Breitbart also Politico -- quote -- "The desire here is to make it about me and not the Democratic establishment and the NAACP vs. the Tea Party."

That's been Mr. Breitbart's excuse since it was revealed that his video was not what he said it was. He claims this was never about Shirley Sherrod. In fact, he said to Sean Hannity -- quote -- "I could care less about Shirley Sherrod, to be honest with you."

That is the one thing he has said that is indisputable. He does not care about Shirley Sherrod, doesn't care about making false allegations against her or ruining her career. Andrew Breitbart has his ideology. He believes he is right. And in his mind that justifies any action he takes.

I'm still good with it through this point, even. Cooper has clearly named the villain in the plot and called it non-journalism, which it is. He could have even said Andrew Breitbart just lied, but we all know that would be too good to be true. His next segment is where he falls off the edge of the planet into Outer Journo space:

And that's how ideologues think on the left and on the right. Post a video clip that's misleading? No problem if it helps you make your argument, if it helps boost visitors to your Web site. Make false claims about a person? Why not, if it gets you more Web traffic?

That is where we are today. Andrew Breitbart is conservative. But, as I said, there are liberals online and on TV who do the exact same things. They cherry-pick the facts that prove their arguments, not the facts that reveal the truth.

Oh, really? If you know of any liberal blogger who has intentionally edited a video clip to mislead and cause entire organizations serving poor folks to crumble, post a comment with a link, please. Anderson Cooper's equivalence sounds oh, so lofty until you sit down and ask yourself where exactly are these misleading video clips posted from the left that destroy people?

Where are they? Where is the left saying that an entire organization on the right loaded up voter registrations with bogus Republicans? I've only seen proven allegations with a criminal record to back them up.

Where ARE those lefty videos? Please, show them to me.

Of course, you can't. Because there are none. Huffington Post, which is probably the closest thing to Breitbart's sites, has nothing like that video. This site doesn't. Daily Kos? FireDogLake? I don't see any there. So please, tell me where are these videos?

Of course, Anderson doesn't stop with that. He invokes one of the 'reasonable right' (and I use the term guardedly) to back his assertions.

David Frum, a conservative, said on this program last night the problem is not liberalism or conservatism. It's factionalism, seeing the world through your own limited political lens and never admitting when you have made a mistake, never admitting the other side may be right some of the time, never doing anything that damages your faction.

Funny, I've been known to hammer on those to the left of me about hammering on our own, because they are all too willing sometimes to flog OUR side at the expense of the bigger picture, in my opinion. Whether I hammer or not, there's always someone in the liberal blogosphere willing to take OUR side to task without regard to what the rotten Right might be up to. So again, I'd really like to see the evidence of that. Show us. Quit saying it and show me the goods.

It's a game for people like Mr. Breitbart and others. They don't go out into the field and meet the people they're supposedly reporting on. They don't go out and challenge their assumptions. They stay behind a desk and see the world as black or white, left or right. And it's a lot more complex than that.

Actually, Anderson, here's a news flash for you. I've met Andrew Breitbart and he doesn't sit behind a desk all day. He sits in a bottle a lot, though. Why not call him what he is? A bully, an idealogue, a liar and a likely lush.

This isn't a question of "both sides do it." What Breitbart did, by his own admission, was use a government employee as a weapon to stir racial tension. The fact that it worked at first is another issue entirely. He lied to get a reaction. Andrew Breitbart lied. Repeat after me: Andrew Breitbart lied.

Where I come from, that's dishonest antagonism. Not journalism.

From the ACLU series, Justice Denied

And as if we haven't already destroyed this man's life, it just gets worse:

On Monday, the Pentagon announced that two prisoners had been released from Guantánamo. Abd al-Nisr Mohammed Khantumani, a 50-year old Syrian (also known as Abdul Nasir al-Tumani) was given a new home in Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony off the West African coast, while Abdul Aziz Naji, a 35-year old Algerian, was repatriated to Algeria.

(T)he focus must be on the legal maneuvering that led to the repatriation of Abdul Aziz Naji, because, for the first time in Guantánamo’s history, a prisoner has been sent home against his will, even though Doris Tennant, one of his lawyers, told the Washington Post two weeks ago that he was “adamantly opposed to going back.” At the weekend, another of his lawyers, Ellen Lubell, told the Miami Herald that Naji “fears extremists will try to recruit him — associating him with Guantánamo — and will torture or kill him if he resists.” She added, “He has nothing against the Algerian government, but he fears that the government will be unable to protect him from Algerian extremists.” In a press release, the Center for Constitutional Rights explained that Naji “fled various forms of persecution in Algeria many years ago, including having been attacked by an extremist.” CCR also sounded a note of caution about how the Algerian government will receive Naji, stating, “we are deeply concerned that he will disappear into secret detention.”

These are valid concerns, as Algeria has a poor human rights record. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations (PDF, pp. 108-9) regularly express concerns about the use of torture in Algeria, and in its 2009 report on human rights in Algeria, the US State Department noted, “Local human rights lawyers maintained that torture continued to occur in detention facilities, most often against those arrested on ‘security grounds.’”

In contrast, an Obama administration official, speaking anonymously, told the Washington Post two weeks ago, “We take some care in evaluating countries for repatriation. In the case of Algeria, there is an established track record and we have given that a lot of weight. The Algerians have handled this pretty well: You don’t have recidivism and you don’t have torture.” This was a bold statement to make, in light of the allegations made by NGOs and the UN, and concerns about torture or other ill-treatment were not diminished by a response to the news of Naji’s repatriation in Monday’s Washington Post, in which it was noted that “The government said that Algeria has provided diplomatic assurances that Naji would not be mistreated, assurances that administration officials say are credible because 10 other detainees have been returned to Algeria without incident.” The problems with this statement concern the “diplomatic assurances,” and the claim that 10 men have been repatriated “without incident.” On the “diplomatic assurances,” Human Rights Watch explained in a press release that its own research “has shown that diplomatic assurances provided by receiving countries, which are legally unenforceable, do not provide an effective safeguard against torture and ill-treatment,” and, on the status of the 10 men returned, although there have been no allegations of torture, there has been very little information at all about the conditions in which they have been held, and what has emerged publicly is not reassuring, as it reveals both prolonged pre-trial detention, and calls for punitive sentences from the prosecutors.

As much as it hurts me to say this, the Bush administration was far more humane on the issue of repatriating Guantanamo detainees back to areas where they might be tortured--known as "non-refoulement", as evidenced by the care they took with the Uighurs. Ironic, considering the callousness with which they treated them while in detention.

The long history of the authorities grappling with the “non-refoulement” obligation at Guantánamo began with the Uighurs, 22 Muslims from China’s oppressed Xinjiang province, who were mostly seized in Pakistan in December 2001 after crossing from Afghanistan, where they had been living in a run-down settlement in the Tora Bora mountains, thwarted in their attempts to travel to Turkey or Europe in search of work, or nursing futile hopes of rising up against their only enemy, the Chinese government.

With the Uighurs, the Bush administration recognized its “non-refoulement” obligation, refusing to return them to China, and finding new homes for five of the men in Albania in 2006. When the Obama administration inherited the problem of the remaining 17 men, who had, in the meantime, won their habeas corpus petitions, it found new homes for 12 of them in Bermuda, Palau and Switzerland, although five still remain at Guantánamo, and, last spring, the administration turned down a plan by White House Counsel Greg Craig to bring some of the men to live in the US, which would have done more in the long run to defuse scaremongering about Guantánamo than any other gesture.

The issue of closing Guantanamo, a promise which many liberals relied on Obama fulfilling shortly after taking office has been unquestionably a minefield of legal and ethical considerations. It's just another black mark on the Obama presidency.

There are some moments on TV that should just be sent to the cutting room floor before they ever hit the screen. This is one of them.

Elisabeth Hasselbeck proves that she doesn't listen, she doesn't think, and she's as much of a troll as Breitbart when she wants to be.

This is a classic example of what I keep ranting about. There's no issue here, and anyone with half a brain knows it. But Hasselbeck concern trolls over the Hatch Act (inapplicable to the speech and group Sherrod was speaking to) as if it is the NEXT HORRIBLE RACIST THING.

Transcript:

HASSELBECK: There's another bit from your speech that's actually raising a second wave of controversy.

[from clip, SHERROD:]I haven't seen such a mean-spirited people as i've seen lately over this issue of health care. now we endured 8 years of the Bushes and we didn't do the stuff these Republicans are doing because you have a black President.

HASSELBECK: So what about that epiphany, where is that epiphany where it's not about color and it's not about race. What do you then say?

SHERROD: You know, why is it that there's such opposition to something that's so important to poor people. Again, I'm coming at it from the angle of poor people. Poor people need health care!

[applause]

HASSELBECK: And i hear you because I listened to your entire speech and I read the entire transcript but when someone listens to that they're thinking 'yeah, well all of a sudden it's back to black and white, why did we have to get there' .

And then is it also because being a civil servant are you not allowed to have such a partisan opinion? I thought --

[crosstalk]

-- I thought that was not okay.

SHERROD: Poor white people need health care too. You know, so I wasn't talking about health care for just black people. I'm talking about health care for poor people. I know what happens to folks who don't get a chance to go to doctors. I know what's happening to hospitals and their emergency rooms with all of the load of dealing with the person after it's too late.

WENTWORTH: It's too bad, and I know we're going to come back and talk with you again, but it's too bad everything has to immediately take the road of racism. It's poverty. Poverty.

GOLDBERG: Hang on a second -- this is going to be great. you won't forget it.

[break]

After the break and re-intro, Hasselbeck gets another chance at the well of the Concern Trolls:

HASSELBECK: You know, we had just shown a clip where the tail end of it you say "we endured 8 years of the Bushes and we didn't do the stuff the Republicans are doing because we have a black President." Second part of my question: Doesn't the Hatch Act prohibit civil servants from making partisan and political statements? SO isn't that reason enough to look into okay, is this something even legal going on?

Wow, isn't it really nice of Elisabeth Hasselbeck to be concerned that Shirley Sherrod might have violated the Hatch Act? And it certainly plays well to the Fox/Breitbart crowd out there who loves the "scary black person doing illegal and racist things" trope. Only, Elisabeth really didn't know what she was talking about, because the Hatch Act does not rob government employees of their First Amendment rights. It simply limits political activity while they are ON DUTY. Here's all you ever wanted to know about the Hatch Act from the Office of Special Counsel.

And once again, Shirley Sherrod puts Hasselbeck right back in her place:

SHERROD: You know, maybe the Hatch Act would have been meant only for me, because I don't know any government official who was gagged, especially during the Bush administration.

[applause]

BEHAR: You know, I want to support what Shirley said before, which is that during the Bush administration you had tax cuts for the wealthiest and he did not -- that whole adminiistration did not give a damn about poor people and everybody knows it. That's why Obama was elected in the first place.

[crosstalk]

-- and even now, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment insurance but they're okay with tax cuts to the wealthy --

[crosstalk]]

Let me finish. So now you have Obama in office, and he does give a damn about black people

HASSELBECK: Black/white or rich/poor? Which is it?

BEHAR: A lot of people are poor because they were black --

[crosstalk]]

HASSELBECK We're supposed to be postracial here --

[crosstalk]

GOLDBERG: There is no postracial yet. this was a media idea that sounded great, that sounded wonderful, but the truth is that these issues, these questions of race have never come up this way before because there has never been a black president before, so people are now trying to figure out how they feel, how they deal how they talk. this is a new world for us.

WENTWORTH: Obama has a very fine line to walk. I mean, can you imagine being the first black president having to deal with all these issues?