Brian Setzer Orchestra
Pennsylvania 6-5000

Sunday Talk
* Meet the Press: Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT); Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT); Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY).
* Face the Nation: Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA); WH Counselor Dan Bartlett
* This Week: WH Counselor Dan Bartlett; Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL); ex-HHS Sec. Tommy Thompson (R-WI); Cal Ripken, Jr.; roundtable of Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria, ABC’s Martha Raddatz and George Will.
* Fox News Sunday: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE); FCC Chair Kevin Martin
* Late Edition: Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO); Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); WaPo’s David Ignatius; Rev. Al Sharpton; Michael Ware; roundtable of Candy Crowley, Jeff Greenfield, and Joe Johns.

TV Alerts
* Chris Matthews Show 3/31-4/1: Joe Klein, Andrea Mitchell, Andrew Sullivan, Janine Zacharia discuss “Congress sets an Iraq withdrawal deadline: After the Bush veto, what’s next? How long will Republicans stick with him? The Gonzales fallout: Another example of Bush administration incompetence and hubris?” Quotes here.
* Newsmakers (C-SPAN): Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO) on 4/1 at 10am
* Road to the WH (C-SPAN): Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) in NH on 4/1; Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS) in IA on 4/1
* 60 Minutes: Global Warming & Antartica on 4/1; Medicare Part D legislation passage (interviews with Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN)) on 4/1
* HBO comedy special on 4/1 at 9pm, with host Anderson Cooper.
* Tavis Smiley: Sen. John Kerry & Teresa Heinz Kerry on 4/5
* Letterman: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) on 4/9
* The Daily Show: reruns; Bill Bradley on 4/9; Walter Isaacson on 4/10; Halle Berry on 4/11; Richard Preston on 4/12;
* The Colbert Report: reruns; Katrina vanden Heuvel on 4/9; Colin Beavan on 4/9; Jeannette Walls on 4/10; Vali Nasr on 4/11; Dr. Richard Land on 4/12; Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) on 4/16; Elaine Pagels on 4/17; William Cohen on 4/18; ex-Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-AR) on 4/19
* Larry King celebrates 50 years in broadcasting: Bill Clinton on 4/19; Bill Maher on 4/20

(Cross-posted at Vagabond Scholar)

If there’s anything Fox News loves more than liberals, it’s black liberals, not to mention African-Americans in general. The same goes for gays, Muslims, and all God’s Children. Overall, the Fox News crew are a credit to their… profession.

Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars posted on some news from New York Times blog The Caucus on 3/29/07:

Fox News Channel is announcing today that it has cut a deal with the Congressional Black Caucus Institute to sponsor two debates, one with Democrats and another with Republicans in the 2008 presidential race.

As many of you might remember, Nevada Democrats and Majority Senate Leader Harry Reid were slammed by liberal blogs for agreeing to a Democratic debate with Fox News a few weeks ago, and backed out of the deal under pressure. Liberal activists complained that Fox News was slanted toward Republicans, would distort the debate, and should be shunned. The breakpoint occurred when Roger Ailes, head of Fox News, in a joke at an an awards dinner, poked fun at President Bush for confusing Senator Barack Obama with Osama bin Laden. (Mr. Obama later said he didn-t take offense, but many in the blogosphere did.)

As Crooks and Liars notes, the group Color for Change is not happy with this development, and has issued a statement:

“The CBC Institute’s decision is shamefully out of step with most Black voters, and we will continue to push on the CBC Institute to drop this deal.” Rucker goes on to say, “Every presidential candidate now must decide whether to legitimize Fox - a network that calls Black churches a cult, implies that Senator Barack Obama is a terrorist, and uses the solemn occasion of Coretta Scott King’s funeral to call Black leaders A-racist.’ We will be launching a petition at www.ColorofChange.org asking presidential candidates to attend the CBC Institute’s CNN debate and reject the Fox debate.”

Here’s that petiton.
(more…)

Out on the boat……. don’t care what the news is. Talk amongst yourselves.

So many “I don’t remembers” and “I don’t recalls” lately. Lying about not remembering, or truly not remembering, which is total incompetence. Why do these people have jobs? But, if you think that’s bad, Gonzales admits to being “never focused”. Oh, yeah… he’s aces! A perfect appointee from this perfect administration. VOTE REPUBLICAN, Y’ALL!

Washingtonpost.com:

Special Report
Rough Justice - The Case Against Alberto Gonzales

Gonzales Invokes the Homer Simpson Defense

You just cannot make this stuff up. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ former chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson, spends much of his Thursday deflating his former boss’ story about the eight fired U.S. Attorneys and how does the Attorney General respond? By issuing a written statement late in the day that essentially says this: Yes, Sampson may have been keeping me in the loop on the firings after all but I wasn’t really paying attention (”never focused” was the exact phrase) to what he was saying. It’s the Homer Simpson defense to the Kyle Sampson story and if this were a Little League game they would have invoked the 10-run rule by now and sent Gonzales go home to Texas to once again become a lucrative private attorney.

(Andrew Cohen)

(h/t Bat for the article)

Physically torturing someone for information is inhumanity in the extreme. Realizing that much (if not most) of the info you receive could be made up makes the whole process look pretty damn stupid. May we return to the 21st century now?

Washingtonpost.com:

Detainee Alleges Abuse in CIA Prison

Torture Coerced Confession, He Says

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, March 30 — A high-level al-Qaeda suspect who was in CIA custody for more than four years has alleged that his American captors tortured him into making false confessions about terrorist attacks in the Middle East, according to newly released Pentagon transcripts of a March 14 military tribunal hearing here.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who U.S. officials believe was involved in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa in 1998 and who allegedly organized the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000, told a panel of military officers that he was repeatedly tortured during his imprisonment and that he admitted taking part in numerous terrorism plots because of the mistreatment.

“The detainee states that he was tortured into confession and once he made a confession his captors were happy and they stopped torturing him,” Nashiri’s representative read to the tribunal, according to the transcript. “Also, the detainee states that he made up stories during the torture in order to get it to stop.”

(h/t Bat for the article)