I've taken the liberty of cutting a new ad for George W. Bush's election campaign with the theme of September 11th. Though my version contains fewer flag-draped corpses than previous W election ads, I think I was able to nail the sentiment- "Lots of people died that day. That's why you should vote for me. Now, watch this drive."

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Rory O'Connor writes:

Now it becomes clear that O'Reilly is a thief as well, who stole an exclusive investigative story broken in the pages of the recently launched free daily amNewYork, and presented it as his own. The front page exclusive, which concerned a charity fund organized to reopen Lady Liberty, ran on February 2. It revealed that although the fund raised $40 million annually, officials were using the money for minor maintenance instead of the $7 million in repairs necessary to reopen the monument to the public.

Two weeks later O'Reilly's researcher, Susan Beachy, called amNewYork and asked for a copy of the article. Alex Storozynski, amNewYork editor, followed up with O'Reilly's producer Rich McCue, who told him, "We know you guys broke this story. We haven't seen it anywhere else."

To Storozynski's surprise, however, no mention was made of his newspaper when the story appeared on The O'Reilly Factor. Instead O'Reilly took credit for it himself. As Storozynski later wrote to O'Reilly, "Even the Daily News has given us credit when we break a story, and they are one of our competitors."

Also check out the article for Rory's first hand experience going on the O'Reilly show and being shit-canned at the last moment because he wouldn't take an extreme position.

WASHINGTON -- The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

Huh? Read on...

A little-known group

It met weekly in the Situation Room, the Post said, and its regular participants included senior political adviser Karl Rove; communication strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; policy advisers led by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen J. Hadley; and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

These are all political folks! How can they claim the intelligence wasn't politicized when the people working on strategy for Iraq were political aides???

You bet your sweet ass this is "Developing..."

Hrm... I'm not going to wish for his death or anything- I'm not totally evil. Just hoping he'll retire. Today.

The administration claimed that their last round of tax cuts would create 306,000 new jobs per month- they haven't come near that number yet.

This month's number is 21,000 and recent months of meager growth have all been revised downward. So, as bad as it is, it's worse than previously thought.

What the fuck have we been doing for three years? Now we're looking hard? What the fuck?

Using the deaths of thousands for a campaign ad is sick. I would expect nothing less from these people.

September 11th was this administration's most catastrophic failure. To urge people to reelect the president using images from that day is disgusting. Hopefully the irony won't be lost on the American public.

Howard Stern has been talking the last few days about a plot from within the FCC to get him off the air before election season heats up. He believes this is a scheme put together by Republican thugs who are systematically silencing critics of the president in the hopes of guaranteeing a victory in November.

The connections between George W. Bush and Clear Channel communications are well documented:

Clear Channel's Vice Chairman made GWB a millionaire.

Clear Channel has sponsored countless Pro War Rallies which were indistinguishable from Pro-Bush rallies.

Clear Channel pulled the Dixie Chicks off of all their stations and organized CD demolitions where you could bring your CDs to have them destroyed- as if the Nazi parallels weren't scary enough...

Days after Howard started criticizing the president (after years of applauding him) his show was pulled from all Clear Channel stations. This is no coincidence. Talk show hosts on Clear Channel stations report having been instructed not to criticize the president or large corporations anymore or risk being fired. Some of those who have been fired are finally coming forward.

Howard said on his show yesterday that he's resisted concluding this is whole situation was caused by Bush's thugs because on it's face it sounds like wacked-out conspiracy theory. Stuff like this just doesn't happen in a free country. The truth is, we're no longer free. This administration has a strangle hold on the largest media companies- the moment someone steps out of line Colin Powell's son will slow any paperwork at the FCC related to the company that's acting up. This is how the game is played in 2004, government control over what we see and hear. The only way to be successful is bow to the president, cover him like he's a God among men and hope your broadcast license isn't suspended if you do a story on Halliburton.

Much like September 11th was used to justify invading Iraq, the Super Bowl half time show is being used to silence any opposition to the president. Just like 9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq, Janet Jackson's boob has nothing to do with Howard Stern's suspension, it's just an excuse to kill free speech.

We all know Iraq was a mistake- it's outrageous that it took thousands upon thousands of corpses to prove that point. Now we're seeing the erosion of free speech in this country- if things continue the way they are we will have no way of knowing when we've started another unjust war. Call it paranoia if you will- Howard Stern used to think the same thing.

Money generally set aside when a new administration is voted in now is being requested by the Bush administration.

How fucking ridiculous.

The panel members, interviewed after a private meeting on Tuesday, said the commission had decided for now to reject a White House request that the interview with Mr. Bush be limited to one hour and that the questioners be only the panel's chairman and vice chairman.

The members said the commission had also decided to continue to press the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, to reconsider her refusal to testify at a public hearing. Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney are expected to be asked about how they had reacted to intelligence reports before Sept. 11, 2001, suggesting that Al Qaeda might be planning a large attack. Panel members want to ask Ms. Rice the same questions in public.

"We have held firm in saying that the conditions set by the president and vice president and Dr. Rice are not good enough," said Timothy J. Roemer, a former Indiana congressman who is one of five Democrats on the 10-member commission.

Mr. Roemer said that former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Al Gore had agreed to meet privately with the full bipartisan commission, and that Samuel R. Berger, Ms. Rice's predecessor, would testify in public.

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How can they seriously say they want to cooperate while offering a sum total of one hour of cooperation? At least they're no longer getting away with shit like this...

The first episode of his show Dennis talked about the decision not to have an audience- something along the lines of not wanting a bunch of Leno audience rejects in his studio- now they're putting in an audience because the camera guys don't laugh loud enough.

A new witness has stepped forward saying that the documents stolen by a Republican operative from a Democratic server were swiped because of lax security.

That's like acquitting a car thief because the doors were unlocked. If only all the black-hat hackers and crackers who have been swept up by the FBI in the last thirty years had thought of that defense... Oh wait, they did. It didn't wash in those cases either.

Manuel Miranda, who stands accused of the crime, is getting other Republican staffers to argue that these documents were in plain sight, as if they were left face up on someone's desk- they weren't. You had to open that folder, and once you opened that folder you had to open that document. Assuming you're a Republican staffer in a Democratic shared drive either you knew you were not supposed to be there or you are a complete moron. Miranda is doing such a good job of incriminating himself, it's hard to make that call. What's clear is that stealing documents is wrong, he stole hundreds of documents, leaked information contained in the stolen documents to top Republicans (possibly the White House) and the press, and is not sorry for the crimes he's committed.

There's no room for mercy here- they should throw the book at him. He has lost his way and he clearly no longer understands the difference between right and wrong. Presenting a witness who agrees with you that accessing the documents illegally was easy- than sending out a press release saying how this new information embarrasses your accusers? That takes a special kind of stupidity.
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Bartcop has untreatable cancer, but expects to hang around a while.