from Think Progress

In April, Think Progress noted that Fox News morning show “Fox & Friends” aired at least eight segments about a fake news story claiming a school in Maine had formed “an anti-ham A-response plan-” after a Muslim student complained of being harassed with a ham steak. After the Fox report, the school’s superintendent received threatening calls and hate mail. He’s now suing Fox News:

Lewiston School Superintendent Leon Levesque is seeking $75,000 in federal court in Portland to deter what his attorney Bernard J. Kubetz characterized as irresponsible reporting by Fox News Channel. […]

“It appears to me that Fox News acted in a grossly irresponsible way and took some information that was really not very plausible, did not do any substantial fact-checking, and put it out as hard news,” Kubetz said. […]

Fox did a brief on-air retraction, but Levesque called it unsatisfactory. A Fox News spokesman in New York said the company does not comment on pending lawsuits.

By Monika Bauerlein And Clara Jeffery

In July 2005, Mother Jones sent a writer to a deep-red district in Ohio to follow a candidate in a special House election. For the millions who had mobilized against George W. Bush, the political moment was one of profound despair. Conservative pundits were crowing about a permanent majority. Democrats needed a Joan of Arc; instead they found themselves stuck between timid and triangulating party leaders and progressives captive to academic disquisition and factional purity. Against all that, Paul Hackett was an electrifying figure. A Marine just back from Iraq, he was an unapologetic, populist Democrat who was prone to saying things such as “Bush is a chicken hawk, okay? Tough shit.” He was, in other words, very much like the progressive bloggers then coming into their own. Like Hackett, these new pamphleteers had been shaped by a lifetime of watching the disciplined, ruthless Republican message machine. Like him, they were voluble, pissed off, and itching for a fight.

In the end, Hackett didn’t deliver the upset that the bloggers who converged on his campaign’setting up their laptops in local taverns and raising almost two-thirds of his $850,000 war chest-had hoped for. But he came close enough to signal the possibility of a new kind of politics, a merger of door-knocking and digital outreach. By 2006, the blogosphere and its organizing and fundraising cohorts (MoveOn, ActBlue, et al.) were forces to be reckoned with, supporting hundreds of feisty Democrats in supposedly impossible districts, and…well, you know the rest.

read more at MOTHER JONES

from THE ONION

Report: Many U.S. Parents Outsourcing child-care overseas.

See the hilarious video here

By David Swanson
from Truthout.org

A former member of US military intelligence has decided to reveal what she knows about warrantless spying on Americans and about the fixing of intelligence in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq.

Adrienne Kinne describes an incident just prior to the invasion of Iraq in which a fax came into her office at Fort Gordon in Georgia that purported to provide information on the location of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The fax came from the Iraqi National Congress, a group opposed to Saddam Hussein and favoring an invasion. The fax contained types of information that required that it be translated and transmitted to President Bush within 15 minutes. But Kinne had been eavesdropping on two nongovernmental aid workers driving in Iraq who were panicked and trying to find safety before the bombs dropped. She focused on trying to protect them, and was reprimanded for the delay in translating the fax. She then challenged her officer in charge, Warrant Officer John Berry, on the credibility of the fax, and he told her that it was not her place or his to challenge such things. None of the other 20 or so people in the unit questioned anything, Kinne said.

Kinne dates this incident to the period just before the official invasion of Iraq, or possibly just after. She says that because the US engaged in so much bombing prior to the official invasion, she cannot recall for sure.

Prior to September 11, 2001, Kinne says, it was unacceptable to listen in on or collect information on Americans. The practice was barred by United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18. Kinne recalls an incident in 1997 in which an American’s name was mentioned, and she and her colleagues deleted every related record because they took very seriously the ban on collecting information on Americans. Kinne was serving from 1994-1998 on active duty as an Arabic linguist for military intelligence at Fort Gordon in Georgia, sending reports to and collaborating with the NSA. She served at the same station after 9/11 when she was activated as a reservist.

read more at TRUTHOUT

by Jim Swanson
Blue Herald

After perusing many websites in reaction to the commutation of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, I thought I’d give our readers a sampling of what I’ve seen.

from No Quarter:

FROM LARRY JOHNSON:

I’m shocked, shocked I tell you. President Bush making excuses for a convicted felon? How could this be? I mean the President promised that anyone who was involved in leaking the name of Valerie Plame Wilson would no longer be with his Administration. And since we now know with complete certainty that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage and Ari Fleischer spread her name around we can see that Bush has sort of kept his promise. You see, Libby, Armitage and Fleischer are no longer with the Administration. I’m sure that Karl Rove will be gone in days. Surely Bush would not break a promise?

Actually I think we will still see some more blowback from the rightwing because Bush let the conviction stand. One bright side to this–we will never have to listen seriously to any Republican argue that perjury and obstruction of justice are real crimes. My money is still on Libby getting a pardon after the 2008 elections. But that won’t keep him, Rove, and Armitage from facing the civil suit brought by Joe and Val. If that goes forward these bastards will pay a pretty penny. Small compensation for the damage they’ve done to our nation’s security.

The Next Hurrah has a statement from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s spokesperson:

“It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. … Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.”

Reaction by former Ambassador Joseph Wilson is both in transcript and by “video” at MSNBC

And we’ve been asked to flood the White House with phone calls Tuesday.

White House: 202-456-1414

“This administration is corrupt from top to
bottom. This President is corrupt to the core”.

- Joesph C. Wilson IV on hearing of “Scooter”
Libby’s sentence being commuted by President
Bush

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

WASHINGTON - President Bush commuted the sentence of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby on Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term that Bush said was excessive.

Bush’s move came hours after a federal appeals panel ruled Libby could not delay his prison term in the CIA leak case. That meant Libby was likely to have to report to prison soon and put new pressure on the president, who had been sidestepping calls by Libby’s allies to pardon the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

“I respect the jury’s verdict,” Bush said in a statement. “But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend thirty months in prison.”

Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, and Bush said his action still “leaves in place a harsh punishment for Mr. Libby.”

Libby was convicted in March of lying to authorities and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative’s identity. He was the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

Bush said of Cheney’s former aide: “The reputation he gained through his years of public service and professional work in the legal community is forever damaged. His wife and young children have also suffered immensely. He will remain on probation. The significant fines imposed by the judge will remain in effect. The consequences of his felony conviction on his former life as a lawyer, public servant, and private citizen will be long-lasting.”

My guess is they leaked the information intentionally only to deny it….but in the meantime they plant that seed of fear in the American people, while all along having their talking heads (Lieberman) telling us that only the Republicans can save us from the terrorists. Oh, and supposedly the U.S. had intel about the airport incident two weeks prior to it happened, but oddly enough, the Brits never heard anything about it from the U.S. 17 more months of this crap……….

By John O’Callaghan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday played down a report al Qaeda was planning a big attack on the United States, saying there was no credible information about an imminent threat.

As British police investigated two failed car bombs in London and a fiery attack on Glasgow’s airport by a fuel-filled vehicle, U.S. officials tightened security at transport hubs without raising the country’s overall alert level.

“We do not currently have any specific threat information that is credible about a particular attack on the United States,” Chertoff told Fox News.

ABC News, quoting a senior U.S. official, said on Sunday a secret law enforcement report prepared for the Department of Homeland Security warned that al Qaeda planned to carry out a “spectacular” attack this summer.

More at Reuters

Bwaaaahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!

WASHINGTON (AP) A federal appeals court has refused to delay the imprisonment of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who was sentenced in the CIA leak case.