AP's John Solomon publishes ANOTHER misleading hit piece on Harry Reid

Okay, this one is truly outrageous coming from anyone working for an "independent" news organization like AP. The Associated Press is a c3 non-profit - in my view, they are entering very interesting legal territory in terms of their non-political non-profit status.

AP's Solomon just published a story stating in the first sentence:

Reversing course, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid's office acknowledged Wednesday night he misstated the ethics rules governing his acceptance of free boxing tickets and has decided to avoid taking such gifts in the future.

Any reader who speaks a lick of English is clearly going to understand Solomon's sentence as saying that Harry Reid claimed the Senate ethics rules said it was okay for him to accept the boxing tickets, and now Reid realizes the ethics rules say he cannot accept such tickets.

The problem? That's a flat out lie - Reid never said any such thing. Of course, in the way that only AP can do, they bury the "real" explanation of what they mean towards the end of the story so you'll walk away thinking something totally different than the truth.

Reid misstated the Senate ethics rules alright. He unintentionally painted the rules as MORE restrictive than they actually are. But you won't find that out until the end of the story.

In a nutshell, the ethics rules say a Senator can take something of value from a state agency (in this case, Reid accepted access to 3 boxing matches from a state of Nevada government agency - there weren't any "tickets"). Reid misspoke in saying that you had to be the Senator from the state in question to accept the "something of value." I.e., McCain of Arizona couldn't accept something from the state of Nevada, or so Reid thought. In fact, Reid today informs us that ANY Senator can accept something of value from ANY state's agency - i.e., it's okay for Arizona's John McCain to get boxing access from the state of the Nevada.

This isn't a small point. Harry Reid mistakenly claimed that the Senate ethics rules were MORE stringent in this area than they really are. And he wasn't refering to how the rules covered him - which is what AP claims - he was refering to how they covered John McCain. Harry Reid was absolutely correct in how he stated the Senate ethics rules' application to him, and he has not changed his position on that. The AP outright lied, or is one of the sloppiest publications on the planet, in their description of this issue in their lead (which is often the only thing people read).

To Reid's credit, he's said tonight that if it's going to create any appearance of impropriety, he'll pay for such boxing access in the future. And good for him. But for AP to paint this as though the Reid was wrong and the Senate ethics rules say he was wrong - and that's exactly what AP implies in its lead - is itself flat out wrong, and unethical, and frankly smacks of politics. And if the AP wants to have a partisan agenda, then they should change their tax status, or maybe someone should do it for them.

Here is the statement from Reid's office tonight about the issue:

"Senate ethics rules specifically permit any senator to accept something of valuefrom a state agency. Senator Reid misspoke when he said the rule applies only tosenators who represent the state agency. It was therefore entirely permissible forSenator Reid -- a Senator from Nevada -- to have attended a major Nevada sportingevent as a guest of Nevada officials. But in light of questions that have beenraised about the practice, Senator Reid will not accept these kinds of credentialsin the future in order to avoid even the faintest appearance of impropriety. Senator Reid will continue to fight for his federal boxing bill and otherlegislation that will benefit Nevada and the nation."

Read More......

Santorum is 23% behind Casey in PA Senate race

Holy cow. Read More......

Another reason we [heart] Atrios

"The willingness to send others off to die for a misguided war because you wet your pants after 9/11 is called 'cowardice' not courage." - Atrios

Read More......

Former chair of the Kansas Republican party switches, becomes a Democrat

Pretty "red" state to have this high level a defection. Anybody up on Kansas politics, like to tell us more about this?

The former chairman of the Kansas Republican Party jumped ship in a big way Tuesday, switching his affiliation to Democrat amid speculation that he would become Gov. Kathleen Sebelius' running mate.

Read More......

New Politics TV is Up. Today's topic: Haditha and more

Check out today's broadcast here. Read More......

Batwoman is a lesbian

Not kidding. The new Batwoman in DC Comics is going to be gay. Falwell is going to have a fit. Read More......

Republicans running for Alabama Supreme Court embrace Segregationist legal arguments, will ignore US Supreme Court if they don't like a decision

Sure, why not? Screw the Supreme Court. Screw the Constitution. Screw the rule of law. It's only the entire basis of our system of governance in America. So what if it's now in vogue in Republican and religious right circles to renounce America's entire system of checks and balances, our entire system of government.

Feel-good Republicans don't do things because they're legal, they do 'em because they feel good. In fact, what these Republicans and the religious are proposing sounds an awful lot like sedition and a call to civil war.

And thus democracies perish. Read More......

More errors found in Associated Press hatchet job story on Harry Reid

Sucks to be you.

(Additional background here.) Read More......

U.S. troops in Iraq kill pregnant woman racing to hospital to give birth

It's over. Read More......

Iran: How bad logic became bad policy

NOTE FROM JOHN: AJ is our newest addition to AMERICAblog. He's a former Department of Defense intelligence officer whose duties included covering Iraq.
--------------

Since we talked Iraq last week, and Iran is back in vogue this week – apparently we're in the "Iran phase" of the immigrants-gays-Iran SCARY rotation – let's look at why the administration seems to be seriously entertaining the notion of some kind of armed conflict with Iran.

Administration policies and tactics regarding Iran are increasingly focused on brinkmanship, which they're happy with because, to them, it's both good policy and good politics. I think the Bush administration honestly believes that Iran's leadership is both irrational and expansionist – the Hitler analogies fly fast and furious on the religious and neocon right – and the only thing one can do with such people, the conservative talking point goes, is confront them. Concurrently, all this talk of war with Iran takes the focus off of Iraq and makes people believe there's another imminent boogeyman out there (The Scary!). And scaring the public, the administration believes, is always a good strategy for helping Republican electoral prospects this fall.

But the Bushies have a warped view of the international political implications of the Iran situation, which is leading to grievous political (and potentially military) missteps. One of the many mistakes they are making is one of the same critical errors they made with Iraq: forgetting that all politics is local. Iranian leaders will always be more focused on their own population than on their region or the U.S. - nationalistic rallying cries are beneficial to oppressive regimes. But, if they can get something that benefits them, some acceptable settlement, they will back off.

The Bush administration perspective, however, is that it's yucky to negotiate with Evildoers. Although I don't disagree with that general sentiment, sometimes talking to people you don't like is necessary to achieving greater interests. Shocking, I know.

The leaders of Iran are sending out all sorts of signals that they are interested in negotiating, but no nation, especially a prideful, honor-based one, can come forward hat in hand. International diplomacy is usually a subtle game, so it's hard for me to imagine how many discreet signals were sent before Iran resorted to rambling open letters and publicly revealing a slowdown in uranium enrichment to try to bring the U.S. to the negotiating table.

Iran is a genuine danger, both to regional stability and potentially to American interests. Even though Iran's religious leadership has said it doesn't want a nuclear arsenal, historically Iran isn't a particularly trustworthy nation. But the fact that this is a genuine international problem makes it even more important that skillful diplomacy – rather than ideological posturing and saber-rattling – be used, or at least attempted.

This kind of situation is where one hopes that smart, capable people can work something out - whether a secret deal, face-saving compromise, or whatever (good luck disaffected State Department careerists!). But for the True Believers, I imagine the idea of compromise with Iran is anathema, so it's up to the reality-based community to call bullshit when necessary... which is going to be often. Read More......

NYT: Ned Lamont's challenge to Lieberman "should be taken seriously"

I really think there's a danger of Lieberman bolting the Democratic party AFTER he's elected. It's just my gut, but I think Bush has already spoken to him about taking Rumsfeld's job at Defense. And Lieberman told him to wait until after the primary, or the election. Lieberman loses the primary or the general election, he takes the job. But what's even more troublesome is what happens if Lieberman wins the election, then takes the job anyway?

There has to be a reason Lieberman has been sucking up so badly to Bush over the war. To say, today, that the war is going well and still was a good idea, you'd have to be either insane or angling for something. And I don't think Lieberman is insane.

He should be forced to state categorically that he will never bolt the Democratic party and he will never accept a job offer from George Bush, or people shouldn't even give his candidacy the time of day.

Anyway, great NYT article on Lamont. Read More......

GOP doing MORE tax cuts next week, worth $1 trillion over ten years

Hey, what a better way to divert the nation's attention from war crimes than to cut taxes AGAIN and plunge us further into debt.

These "credit card Republicans" need to go. Read More......

Scathing editorial on Santorum in the Pittsburgh paper

Pittsburg Post-Gazette:

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward."

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn't live here anymore...

Read More......

South Dakota abortion ban repeal now on ballot

A funny thing is happening on the right wing's campaign to overturn Roe v. Wade using the South Dakota abortion ban. Led by the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families, the people of South Dakota are intervening. They have collected enough signatures to get a measure on the ballot to repeal the ban:

An abortion rights group Tuesday submitted more than twice the number of the signatures needed to hold a statewide vote in November on whether to repeal South Dakota's ban on abortion.

The Legislature earlier this year passed the strictest abortion law in the nation, banning all abortions except those necessary to save a woman's life. The law, scheduled to take effect July 1, makes no exceptions for rape or incest.

The measure was aimed at sparking a court fight that supporters hope will lead to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established the right to an abortion.

Great work. Now the campaign begins.

A couple months ago, I saw the sponsor of the SD ban, Roger Hunt, on CNN. He maintained that his law would overturn Roe. He's calculating that by the time the case got to the Supreme Court, there would be another new Bush appointee on the Court:

CROWLEY: Roger Hunt has always believed abortion is wrong. And South Dakota has a long history of antiabortion legislation. What gives this particular bill its juice is a reconstituted, more conservative U.S. Supreme Court, and one liberal member Justice John Paul Stevens about to celebrate his 86th birthday.

HUNT: So that means President Bush is probably going to have the opportunity in the next two to three years to appoint a third nominee to the United States Supreme Court..

These guys think long term. They have an agenda. Their agenda affects the privacy of all Americans, not just on choice. That's the tip of the iceberg.

SD can stop them in their tracks. Read More......

Dissecting the Haditha cover-up

The New York Times has a front page article about the cover-up of the Haditha massacre:

A military investigator uncovered evidence in February and March that contradicted repeated claims by marines that Iraqi civilians killed in Haditha last November were victims of a roadside bomb, according to a senior military official in Iraq.

Among the pieces of evidence that conflicted with the marines' story were death certificates that showed all the Iraqi victims had gunshot wounds, mostly to the head and chest, the official said.

The investigation, which was led by Col. Gregory Watt, an Army officer in Baghdad, also raised questions about whether the marines followed established rules for identifying hostile threats when they assaulted houses near the site of a bomb attack, which killed a fellow marine.

The three-week inquiry was the first official investigation into an episode that was first uncovered by Time magazine in January and that American military officials now say appears to have been an unprovoked attack by the marines that killed 24 Iraqi civilians. The results of Colonel Watt's investigation, which began on Feb. 14, have not previously been disclosed.

They don't beat up John Murtha in the Times article. They actually get to one of the key aspects of the scandal: the cover-up.

And for all those who think Murtha is somehow "politicizing" this issue because he's not covering it up, check out this quote:

"This was a small number of Marines who fired directly on civilians and killed them," said Representative John Kline, a Minnesota Republican and former Marine who was briefed two weeks ago by Marine Corps officials. "This is going to be an ugly story."

Read More......

Wednesday Morning Open Thread

Yesterday, Congressman Murtha did several interviews on CNN about the Haditha massacre. Both John and I were struck by the combative tone from Paula Zahn and, we hear, Anderson Cooper (both of whom we actually like, and have been quite fair on a number of issues in the past).

For some reason, both anchors seemed to adopt the GOP talking points to make Murtha the story all about Murtha's credibility. Murtha handled it very well, of course. The guy is a pro -- and he knows of what he speaks (and clearly has amazing sources). But how did CNN decide that Murtha was the controversy -- and not either the actual massacre or the massive cover-up?
As Murtha himself noted, repeatedly, we wouldn't even be talking about this story, and there would be no investigation, if Murtha hadn't been so outspoken about it.

Classic example of the media missing the story. They wanted a controversy about the messenger instead of exploring further what he was bringing them. And what he was bringing them were war crimes.

With that, what else is going on? Besides Katie's last day? Read More......

Images of Mugabe's destruction now available

Amnesty International has published satellite photos of Porta Farm, a poor community of 30,000 outside of Harare, which was removed from the map last year as part of Mugabe's effort to squash dissent and disperse strong pockets of opposition. Like Pol Pot, Mugabe engaged in a broad program to break apart urban areas and relocated citizens to the country where resources were already limited. The photos of the devastated area are shocking.

Just a few days ago, a high ranking member of the Mbeki team governing South Africa launched into an offensive on the West/rich countries, blaming them for overlooking the positives that the continent had to offer and then whined about the brain drain. (Hint: if the environment is there, people will stay and work. I have heard the same story in France for years.) I agree that all too often stories in the Western media are exaggerated but this new story is precisely why foreign investors are nervous about Africa. When the economic powerhouse of South Africa sits on its hands and does nothing when its neighbor is wiping communities off of the map, what do you expect?

Take a stand for mankind and against insanity and perhaps foreign perceptions will be different. Otherwise, just accept the results of the environment that you created. Read More......

May has been bloodiest month for British troops in Iraq

Remember when the British-controlled areas were the calm regions? Considering the movement of additional US troops into the country, Iraq appears to be going backwards. How will Blair spin the increased UK death toll? Read More......