Propaganda

...but it also has blogs, posts, and threads. Al Franken explains this to Lanny Davis.
(picture from here) I'm fortunate enough to own one of the Koerner originals from 1942, so I thought I would post this. We used to form real coalitions when we conducted foreign policy. Sigh.
Doesn't this define the phrase "photo-op"? (This is almost as ridiculous as the "China Box" photo op). Update: Michael Tomasky has more.
(from here) ...we're just distorting the history of 9/11. It will help us get in good with the Bush Administration!
In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes: Good God, and they're sending a copy of the film and a letter to 100,000 American high school teachers written by - who? - the REPUBLICAN chair of the 9/11 Commission. Not the Democrat and the Republican, just the Republican. And a Republican whose son is running for the US Senate seat in New Jersey - oh yeah, no conflict…
One of the more frustrating thing about a lot of mainstream media coverage of science topics like evolution or global warming is that there is a pathological need to report both sides as equal, even though the data and evidence overwhelmingly support one side. It would appear that commentary on the legal profession is not immune from this either. Glenn Greenwald writes: This [Washington Post]Editorial, with all of its condescension and self-important open-mindedness to administration law-breaking, illustrates a common character flaw among our political and journalistic elites. In their…
I'm swamped with work, but I wanted to draw your attention to a few posts by Brad DeLong about the media coverage of the Iraq War. There are two very good comments about Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks' explanation for why the media wasn't more critical of the war progress when they had sufficient information to write about the problems (here and here). DeLong summarizes Ricks' mea culpa: He assigns blame to congress because without the aircover provided by senators asking touch questions at hearings, Tom Ricks found that his editors at the Washington Post would not let him write the…
I'm swamped with work, and I plan on linking to this post from the old site, so I've resurrected this from the archives of the Mad Biologist. I go away for a meeting and vacation, and the most important court case regarding evolution in a decade is decided. Of course, I liked the outcome, so maybe I should go on vacation more often... Anyway, there's no point in rehashing the Dover decision: it was exceptionally well-written. An added advantage is that it was written by a laywer (obviously). Since our political system is chock full o'lawyers, having a laywer restate the arguments…