Category: Media

Media, Politics

Marathon Man: Does Paul Ryan Play Fast and Loose with the Facts?

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

In an article for Huffington Post, Miles Mogulescu wrote the following about Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan:

He comes off like a Midwest choir boy who grew up busing tables and just wants to help unemployed 20-year-olds get jobs and move out of their parents’ house. This ‘aw shucks’ act may play well among heartland voters who could swing the election.

But Ryan lies like a hooker telling her john that she loves him. And given a media that tends to cover the horse race rather than the substance, there’s a good chance he could lie his way all the way to the vice presidency.

Mogulescu—among others—has written and spoken about the number of inaccuracies and untruths included in the speech that Paul Ryan gave at the Republican National Convention last week.

Sally Kohn of Fox News wrote:

…to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention to facts, Ryan’s speech was an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech. On this measure, while it was Romney who ran the Olympics, Ryan earned the gold.

The good news is that the Romney-Ryan campaign has likely created dozens of new jobs among the legions of additional fact checkers that media outlets are rushing to hire to sift through the mountain of cow dung that flowed from Ryan’s mouth. Said fact checkers have already condemned certain arguments that Ryan still irresponsibly repeated.

Continue reading “Marathon Man: Does Paul Ryan Play Fast and Loose with the Facts?” →

International, Media, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

Smackdown Irish Style: Audio of Irish President Giving a Tea Party Pundit a Piece of His Mind Goes Viral

Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Guest Blogger

According to Huffington Post, the following 2010 interview that Michael D. Higgins, the current president of Ireland, did with Boston conservative radio talk show host Michael Graham went viral recently.

Continue reading “Smackdown Irish Style: Audio of Irish President Giving a Tea Party Pundit a Piece of His Mind Goes Viral” →

Congress, Constitutional Law, International, Justice, Media, Military, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

Lest We Forget

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

The issues discussed on this blog are wide-ranging even though at base we are all about upholding the Constitution and ensuring civil liberties. The disputed election of a President began this millennium in controversy, underlined by a horrific terrorist attack and the prosecution of two unnecessary wars. These wars have lasted longer than any other American war save for the Viet Nam debacle. They have resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of civilians, more than eight thousand of our troops, tens of thousands of soldiers with crippling injuries and unprecedented suicide rates among both active and inactive members of our armed forces. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on these adventures in the imperialistic pursuit of empire and no end is in sight, although our complicit corporate media has ceased to find interest in coverage of the continuing devastation.

As we know the linchpin for these phony wars was the attack on 9/11 by a team of Saudi Arabians purportedly working for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. However, the blueprint for this endless quest for America Hegemony was made public in 1997 with the publishing of the manifesto for the Project for the New American Century (PNAC). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century . This conceptualization laid out plans for a putative American Empire and its’ signatories prominently included those who would become part of the administration of George W. Bush. A list of those signatories will continue after the page break, with the most prominent in bold links. Continue reading “Lest We Forget” →

Bizarre, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Society, Torts

Shielding The Crown Jewels: British Royal Family Blocks Publication of Randy Harry Photos in England While Hundreds of Millions See Them On The Internet

Prince Harry’s latest drunken escapade is now laid out for hundreds of millions to see in all of his naked glory . . . except for people in England. The Royal family moved quickly to effectively bar British newspapers from publishing the photos under the English libel laws, which I have criticized in the past as both draconian and restrictive of free speech. Now the Sun is bucking the effective order from the palace and now running the photos. In the meantime, millions of Brits were able to see the photos barred in newspapers but simply turning on their computers.

Continue reading “Shielding The Crown Jewels: British Royal Family Blocks Publication of Randy Harry Photos in England While Hundreds of Millions See Them On The Internet” →

Bizarre, Constitutional Law, Courts, Media, Politics, Society, Supreme Court

Breyer Who? Two Thirds of Americans Cannot Name A Single Sitting Justice

They may be Supreme but they are also apparently Supremely forgettable. Two-thirds of Americans polled cannot name a single sitting Supreme Court justice. Of the relatively few who can remember a name it is that of the Chief Justice John Roberts. The least well known is Justice Stephen Breyer. Only one percent could remember them all.

Continue reading “Breyer Who? Two Thirds of Americans Cannot Name A Single Sitting Justice” →

Bizarre, Congress, Media, Politics, Society

Aborted Campaign: Missouri GOP Senatorial Candidate Says ‘Legitimate Rape” Rarely Causes Pregnancies

Rep. Todd Akin had no sooner won Missouri’s GOP Senate primary this month than he seemed eager to hand over the election to incumbent Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill. Akin instantly became a national sensation with a shocking statement about how “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy.

Continue reading “Aborted Campaign: Missouri GOP Senatorial Candidate Says ‘Legitimate Rape” Rarely Causes Pregnancies” →

Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society

Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence

by Gene Howington, Guest Blogger

“Silence is argument carried out by other means.” – Che Guevara

“Hello darkness, my old friend,
I’ve come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.”
– “The Sound of Silence”, by Simon & Garfunkel, lyrics by Paul Simon

“Darkness isn’t the opposite of light, it is simply its absence.” – Terry Pratchett

“In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.” – Henry David Thoreau

Just as darkness is the absence of light, silence is an absence. We’ve considered the word and the image as propaganda up to this point, so let us pause to consider their antithesis as a form of propaganda. The phrase “[t]he only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” is often attributed to 18th Century Irish born English statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke, although what he actually wrote in Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents was that “when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” Regardless of the apocryphal attribution, the quote goes right to the heart of the issue of silence being a form of propaganda. Like most tactics of propaganda, silence has multiple forms and uses.  Let us examine some of these variations on a theme.

Continue reading “Propaganda 104 Supplemental: The Sound of Silence” →

Academia, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Society, Things That Tick Me Off, Uncategorized

The Pretense of Punditry

Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger

When I was young I would religiously watch the Sunday morning news shows, especially NBC’s Meet the Press. Beginning in 1947, MTP is the longest running show in television history. While the other networks had comparable shows, clearly MTP with its longevity was seen as the show of record.

“The show’s format consists of an extended one-on-one interview with the host and is sometimes followed by a roundtable discussion or one-on-two interview with figures in adversarial positions, either Congress members from opposite sides of the aisle or political commentators. The show expanded to 60 minutes starting with the September 20, 1992 broadcast” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meet_the_Press#Moderators

Face the Nation, premiering in 1954 is considered to be the other Sunday morning News show of record. FTN’s format is:

“The moderator interviews newsmakers on the latest issues and delivers a short topical commentary at the end of the broadcast. The program broadcasts from Washington, D.C. Guests include government leaders, politicians, and international figures in the news. CBS News correspondents and other contributors engage the guests in a roundtable discussion focusing on current topics.”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Face_the_Nation

What all of these shows have in common is that they are repeatedly populated by the same people, whether politicians, journalists, economists or political operators. This link gives the background of the truth of Sunday morning “journalism”. http://mediamatters.org/search/index?qstring=Sunday+Morning+Talk+Shows&x=9&y=6  The casts rarely change and in all but the rarest of cases these guests make up what could be called our nation’s “Pundit Class”. They are seen as the “Serious People”, who lead America’s national debate on vital issues. I’ve been a “political junkie” since the age of ten. For many years I was misled into believing that these “Serious People” were really my intellectual betters when it came to public affairs and that political discussion must only exist within the ground rules of debate established by our “Pundit Class”. Beginning with the murder of JFK and in the ensuing disillusionment of the Sixties I’ve come to see that not only is this  “Pundit Class” inherently corrupt, but only a rare few can barely be called intellectually informative. This group is in reality the paid propagandists of the elite 1% that rule this country and their main task is to limit the scope of our national debate.

In the last two weeks one of the most heard and most esteemed members of the Pundit Class, Fareed Zakaria, has been suspended from Time Magazine and CNN due to the discovery of plagiarism in one of his columns. Zacharia is also a Yale University Trustee and there is talk that his removal from that august position is under consideration. I’ve never particularly cared for Mr. Zakaria, but I was surprised by his plagiarism, more so by the fact he admitted it so readily and so abjectly. An article in the Huffington Post provided an explanation of Mr. Zakaria’s actions with a surprising explanation that I hadn’t expected and yet one that in retrospect makes perfect sense. Continue reading “The Pretense of Punditry” →

Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Media, Religion, Society, Supreme Court

Federal Court Rules In Favor Of Sister Wives Lawsuit; Denies Second Motion To Dismiss

Just an hour ago, Judge Clark Waddoups handed down an opinion denying the second motion to dismiss filed by the government. Despite predictions that the motion would succeed, Judge Waddoups has now set the case for final arguments on the merits and rejected the claims of the government that the case is now moot after it announced that it would not prosecute the Brown family.

Continue reading “Federal Court Rules In Favor Of Sister Wives Lawsuit; Denies Second Motion To Dismiss” →

International, Media, Politics

Could Ecuador Just Mail Assange Home?

As I discussed today on NPR’s Here and Now, the standoff between England and Ecuador is likely to grow worse after the latter country granted asylum to Julian Assange. While the government has threatened to strip the embassy of diplomatic status and grab Assange, it is in my view an empty threat. However, is there a way for Ecuador to get Assange out of the country?

Continue reading “Could Ecuador Just Mail Assange Home?” →

Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Media, Politics, Religion

Russian Judge Sentences Pussy Riot Members For Two Years For 40 Seconds of “Hooliganism”

The head of the Russian Orthodox Church has called Vladimir Putin and his return to power “a miracle of God.” Orthodox priests try to kiss Putin’s hand like a demigod when he visits religious sites. Well that “miracle” continued today as prosecutors secured a conviction of three members of the provocative punk band Pussy Riot guilty of hooliganism for a forty second protest in a Russian church protesting the alliance of Putin and the Church. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 23; Maria Alekhina, 24; and Yekaterina Samutsevich, 29, faced a maximum seven years in prison and Putin government sought three years in jail. They got two years. That is one years for every twenty seconds of protest in Putin’s New Russia.

Continue reading “Russian Judge Sentences Pussy Riot Members For Two Years For 40 Seconds of “Hooliganism”” →

Criminal law, Free Speech, International, Media, Politics, Society

Assange Granted Asylum As Britain Threatens A Raid On Ecuadoran Embassy

Ecuador granted asylum to Julian Assange today, an act that will further escalate the conflict between Britain and Ecuador.  As I discussed on BBC last night, there are some common legal misunderstandings about the status of an embassy, but as a practical matter Assange should be beyond the reach of the English.  While the government has threatened to strip the embassy of diplomatic status and grad Assange, it is in my view an empty threat. However, Assange is not likely to see Ecuador any time soon since he can be arrested trying to leave the country.

Continue reading “Assange Granted Asylum As Britain Threatens A Raid On Ecuadoran Embassy” →

Media, Politics

Palin: Biden Drags Down The Ticket And Should Be Dumped

For those who feel that this campaign still lacks sufficient irony and breathtaking hubris, Sarah Palin came to the rescue yesterday. After Biden’s “back in chains” attack on Romney, Palin came forth to offer her sage advice. Palin explained that Joe Biden may be simply too controversial and unpredictable as a Vice Presidential candidate and should be dumped. That’s right, Sarah Palin said that without a hint of humor or self-conscious unease. It is at uncomfortably moments like this that Sheldon Cooper says “Bazinga.”

Continue reading “Palin: Biden Drags Down The Ticket And Should Be Dumped” →

Constitutional Law, Free Speech, Media, Politics

Court Rules Facebook “Friending” Not Protected Speech Under First Amendment

There is a troubling free speech case in Virginia where a sheriff’s deputy, Daniel Ray Carter Jr., and five other employees were fired for “liking” his boss’ opponent on Facebook. We have been following the growing trend of public employees from teachers to police officers and others being fired for communications or associations in their private lives. In this case, U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson rejected the claim that friending someone is an act of free speech — a view that would by extension move a wide range of speech outside the protection of the first amendment. The decision is found in Bland v. Johnson, 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 57530 (E.D. Va. 2012).

Continue reading “Court Rules Facebook “Friending” Not Protected Speech Under First Amendment” →