Outfoxing Fox News
July 14, 2004
From Wonkette:

Fox News Memos: The Whole Batch
After the jump are about 30 memos from Fox News chief John Moody, released
to journalists by the makers of the anti-Fox documentary "Outfoxed" to
support their claim that Fox bends the rules and twists the news. And boy
howdy, do they. There's actually something kind of refreshing and admirable
about just how blatant Moody's directives a

Into Fallujah: It's called Operation Vigilant Resolve and it began Monday
morning (NY time) with the US and Iraqi military surrounding Fallujah. We
will cover this hour by hour today, explaining repeatedly why it is
happening. It won't be long before some people start to decry the use of
"excessive force." We won't be among that group. . . More than 600 US
military dead, attacks on the UN headquarters last year, assassination of
Irai officials who work with the coalition, the deaths of Spanish troops
last fall, the outrage in Fallujah: whatever happens, it is richly deserved.
Such rock-ribbed partisanship may rub media critics the wrong way, but give
Moody credit for one thing -- at least he has his priorities straight:
The President and the PM of Canada meet today and will make remarks at
midday. Take the remarks, even if Jacko is singing on top of a truck with no
pants on at the time.

Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's Ware on Journalism [Outfoxed.org]

2003-05-09, John Moody

From: John Moody
Date: 5/9/2003

We'll have to devote some time to the tornadoes, simply out of respect to
the magnitude of damage they did. Fortunately there were no known deaths
from last night's touch downs. But a lot of people have no homes.

Let's spend a good deal of time on the battle over judicial nominations,
which the President will address this morning. Nominees who both sides admit
are qualified are being held up because of their POSSIBLE, not demonstrated,
views on one issue -- abortion. This should be a trademark issue for FNC
today and in the days to come.

We'll take the Rumsfeld Franks briefing, as we did in the days before Franks
opened his office in Baghdad.

At the UN, Catherine Herridge will follow the US sponsored resolution
calling for the lifting of sanctions against Iraq. Not surprisingly, we're
facing resistance from our erstwhile European buddies, the French and
Germans.

2003-05-22, John Moody

Wednesday 4:08 PM

Failing Health

From Political Animal:

HEALTHCARE....

Courtesy of Kieran Healy, the chart on the right shows relative spending on
healthcare among a bunch of advanced capitalist economies. Basically it
shows that the United States has (a) much less public involvement in
healthcare than the other countries and (b) much higher healthcare costs.

[view graph]

My contribution to this debate is the big red arrow pointing to the United
States, just in case you miss it way up there in the corner. Note that the
chart doesn't really demonstrate any special trend, but it does show that
conservatives who insist that national healthcare systems are nothing more
than vast boondoggles that inevitably produce huge amounts of waste and
higher costs just isn't looking at the evidence. As near as I can tell,
France has a better healthcare system than the United States on practically
every measure, and does it at half the cost


Wednesday 12:13 PM

Sharp As A Bowling Ball

From TalkingPointsMemo:

Alack ... Karl Rove must be off his game.

As this site notes, the lawyer representing President Bush in the Plame
case, James E. Sharp, is also defending Ken Lay in the Enron Götterdämmerung
case.

Admittedly, it probably doesn't presage a joint defense. But the optics
leave a bit to be desired, no?

Wednesday 11:54 AM

They Can Fight, But They Can't Vote
July 13, 2004

From Intel Dump:

They can fight, but they may not be able to vote

USA Today reports today on a disturbing issue that I noted back during the
California recall election last fall -- a sizable number of U.S. citizens
are deployed overseas in a combat zone now, and there are inadequate
measures in place to ensure their votes get counted. The crux of the problem
is that most absentee voting systems do not take into account the mail
delays of combat deployment, thus ballots are late to soldiers and later
still to the polls. This is compounded by the fact that many soldiers don't
register for absentee ballots before deployment, and that it's often too
late to do so once the sample ballot comes in the mail. Plus, as USA Today
reports, there are some other issues as well:

*A $22 million pilot program to develop an Internet voting system for
Americans deployed overseas was scrapped after the Pentagon concluded it
would be vulnerable to hackers intent on tampering with elections.

*The Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of
Congress formerly known as the General Accounting Office, found that the
system used to collect and deliver mail in Iraq, including absentee ballots,
suffers from long delays and other problems.

*The Pentagon's inspector general found that a Defense Department program
to ease voting by Americans overseas, including deployed troops, continues
to be given low priority by field commanders. Surprise visits to 10 foreign
sites found seven programs ineffective and three only partially effective.
Nearly three of every five troops surveyed said they did not know their
voting assistance officer.

*A Pentagon agency charged with helping servicemembers and other Americans
abroad vote is more than two months late in providing information for a
report by the Election Assistance Commission on how states are doing and how
they can improve. "I would like to have seen it out much earlier," says Paul
DeGregorio, a member of the commission, which was created to help solve
voting problems.
The conventional wisdom used to be that the military votes Republican, and
thus, you'd expect the GOP to be all over this problem. But as Ben
Wallace-Wells discusses in this Washington Monthly article, I'm not so sure
that's still the case. Today's military is very diverse, especially in its
enlisted ranks, and minority voters tend to vote Democrat. I would say,
based on my experience, that the officer corps is more conservative than
society at large. But I think that the war in Iraq and the conduct of the
war on terrorism generally may make a lot of military officers (not to
mention enlisted personnel) question their commitment to the GOP. So, it's
not clear how these military voter issues will affect the outcome of the
election. I think much will depend on micro-variations, such as the ability
of troops from a specific state (e.g. Ohio) to get their votes in to be
counted.

Of course, we shouldn't just be concerned with electoral outcomes here. We
ought to be concerned about our fighting men and women getting their votes
counted -- that matters more than the outcome itself. It would truly be
perverse to send our military to fight overseas, ostensibly to install
democracy in Iraq, but to deny them their basic democratic right to vote at
home. I don't think for a moment that anyone is intentionally denying the
military's right to vote here. But I do think this is disenfranchisement by
dereliction -- or at the very least by negligence. And that's just
inexcusable. Our soldiers deserve better, and I think it's outrageous that
we haven't seen more action on this front from DOJ's voting rights section
or from the Pentagon.
Tuesday 12:22 PM

G-Mail Nation

From GigaLaw:

The U.S. Court of Appeals decision on intercepting e-mail, U.S. v.
Councilman (53-page PDF), has received a lot of attention. The decision
affirmed the dismissal of one count under the Wiretap Act against the vice
president of a company that copied certain incoming e-mail messages to the
company's e-mail account holders.

Seeking to reassure e-mail users fearful that their accounts could now be
monitored, The New York Times wrote: "Because most major Internet providers
have explicit policies against reading their customers' e-mail messages, the
ruling would seem to have little effect on most people."

I wanted to see whether this was really true, so I went looking for these
"explicit policies" at the big three ISPs in the United States -- AOL, MSN
and EarthLink -- and I have my doubts. I didn't go through the sign-up
process for new subscribers (which, I admit, may offer additional policies),
but what I found in the ISPs' readily available terms of use and privacy
policies is unsettling:

MSN: MSN's Website Terms of Use and Notices (see graphic) states: "To the
maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Microsoft may monitor your
e-mail, or other electronic communications and may disclose such information
in the event it has a good faith reason to believe it is necessary for
purposes of ensuring your compliance with this Agreement, and protecting the
rights, property, and interests of the Microsoft Parties or any customer of
a Microsoft Party." (emphasis added).

AOL: AOL's Agreement to Rules of User Conduct states: "America Online
generally does not pre-screen, monitor, or edit the content posted by users
of communications services, chat rooms, message boards, newsgroups, software
libraries, or other interactive services that may be available on or through
this site." (emphasis added).

EarthLink: EarthLink's Internet Service Agreement states: "EarthLink has
no obligation to monitor the Services, but may do so and disclose
information regarding use of the Services for any reason if EarthLink, in
its sole discretion, believes that it is reasonable to do so..." (emphasis
added).
Under these policies, customers of the big three ISPs should not have any
confidence that their e-mail accounts are entirely private. These policies
certainly don't forbid the ISPs from monitoring e-mail; indeed, the policies
seem to do just the opposite: They expressly permit the ISPs to do.

If I'm missing something, or if anyone is aware of other policies from MSN,
AOL or EarthLink that indeed prohibit the ISPs from reading their customers'
e-mail, please post your comments in the GigaLaw.com Discussion Forum thread
on this topic.

Tuesday 11:50 AM

Ex Post Blasto
July 12, 2004

From ElectionLawBlog:

Election Law and Terrorism

Thoughts on Postponement of the Election for President in the Event of a
Terrorist Strike

A number of blog readers (some with alarm) have sent me a link to this
Newsweek report , which begins: "American counter-terrorism officials,
citing what they call 'alarming' intelligence about a possible Qaeda strike
inside the United States this fall, are reviewing a proposal that could
allow for the postponement of the November presidential election in the
event of such an attack, NEWSWEEK has learned."

Far from seeing this as some conspiracy to keep George Bush in power (as
some blog readers have suggested to me), I think this is a good prudential
step to take. A presidential election can be disrupted in a number of ways,
and having voting take place on different dates across the country presents
some serious fairness problems (you may recall this issue arose after the
some called for a revote following the use of the notorious butterfly ballot
in Palm Beach, Fla. last election).

As with all election law controversies, better to have rules set up in
advance, so that no one can jockey for partisan advantage in the case of a
hole in the rules after (part) of the election has taken place.

By the way, John Fortier and Norm Ornstein will have an article on
presidential elections and terrorism (with a host of sensible suggestions
for reform) in the October issue of the Election Law Journal.

UPDATE: Jack Balkin here notes some important issues regarding the
respective roles of Congress, the executive branch, and the states in
rescheduling an election in the event of a national emergency.


Monday 3:03 PM

Coalition Of The Backing Out

From Informed Comment:

The hostage crises continued, with a Filipino hostage in particular danger.
The Philippines will not renew its troop commitment beyond August.

The gradual peeling away of the Coalition of the willing in Iraq has been
little reported because it is happening piecemeal. But after the Spanish
left several of the Central American contingents did as well, and the
Norwegians are gone, too. It would be interesting to tally up the number of
countries that left or are leaving Iraq May-September this summer. The
hostage taking probably is not responsible, but the poor security situation
explains both the hostage taking and the reluctance of small peace keeping
countries to remain involved.

Junichiro Koizumi of Japan appears to have been punished by the Japanese
electorate for his strong pro-Bush stance on Iraq. He won't be forced to
resign after a poor showing in Sunday's Senate elections, but he has been
weakened and humiliated.

Bush's Iraq war may be the biggest setback for the international Right in
decades.


Monday 10:28 AM

Zarqawi Not Al Qaeda
July 09, 2004

From Informed Comment:

Zarqawi not Al Qaeda: Comment by David Wright

David Wright, a former Defense Department analyst and former Army Reserve
strategic intelligence analyst has sent the following letter to the
Washington Post and shares it here as a guest commentary:

In some of your reporting (but happily not all) you refer to Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi as "a top Al Qaeda operative", etc.

There is no evidence that Zarqawi, a Jordanian operating in Iraq, has ever
been an Al Qaeda member - although Cheney and a few others in the Bush
administration continue to try to paint him that way, apparently for
political reasons.

Zarqawi is a dangerous, highly effective militant Islamist. His tactical
and strategic abilities have been behind perhaps 50% or more of the most
effective attacks against the U.S. and Coalition forces (and the UN, Red
Cross and peaceful Iraqis) over the past year. Zarqawi makes common cause
with Osama Bin Laden (UBL) and Al Qaeda in some respects.

So far, however, there does not appear to be any evidence whatsoever that
Zarqawi has received ANY money, personnel, direction, or support of any
nature from UBL or Al Qaeda...

[more]

Friday 12:17 PM

4000 Scientists Confront Bush Administration
July 08, 2004

From Chris Mooney:

The Union of Concerned Scientists, Parte Deux

So here's the news I was telling you about. I'm in the middle of listening
to a phone-in press conference by the Union of Concerned Scientists, in
which the group has announced that more than four thousand of scientists
have now signed their February statement on scientific integrity--including
48 Nobel Laureates. The group also just released a new report (available
here) showing that the Bush administration has blithely continued to do what
it was originally accused of: Egregiously politicizing science.

The new case studies highlighted at the press conference have all been
previously covered on this blog. They concern membership on the President's
Council on Bioethics, the Pacific salmon issue (in which the Bush
administration proposed counting hatchery fish for Endangered Species Act
purposes), and the administration's refusal to appoint top scientists to
advise the NIH's Fogarty International Center. UCS got leading scientists to
discuss each issue on the recent conference call: Janet Rowley, a
President's Council on Bioethics member and renowned cell biologist at the
University of Chicago; Robert Paine, a zoologist at the University of
Washington who's served as a previous head of the Ecological Society of
America and is a salmon recovery expert; and Dr. Gerald T. Keusch, who until
recently served as director of NIH's Fogarty International Center.

In a subsequent post, I will describe what these scientists have to say. But
for now, start reading the report.....

http://www.ucsusa.org/global_environ...fm?pageID=1449