Eliot Spitzer: Spending Money on Prosecuting Pot Is Ridiculous

Former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer says he not only supports medical marijuana, but thinks we should replace marijuana prohibition with legalization.

February 24, 2012

Former New York governor and attorney general Eliot Spitzer says he not only supports medical marijuana, but thinks we should replace marijuana prohibition with legalization.  Speaking on Friday night on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher," Spitzer said: "To spend prosecutorial resources on pot is ridiculous...I'd be in favor of legalized pot. Legalizing pot is the right way to go."

Check out the entire marijuana discussion by Maher's panel of guests, starting at 4:22 in to this clip:

Ep. 238: February 17, 2012 - Overtime

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Fox News Shamelessly Smears Group That Exposed Network's Sordid History

Media Matters' new book has been met by shameless propaganda by Fox news.

February 23, 2012

A new book from Media Matters is being released this week that chronicles the history of Fox News, explaining how a small group of wealthy, politically connected partisans conspired to build a pseudo-news network with the intent of advancing the right-wing agenda of the Republican Party.

The Fox Effect: How Roger Ailes Turned a Network into a Propaganda Machine, was written by David Brock and Ari Rabin-Havt (and others) of Media Matters. It begins by looking back at the early career of Fox News CEO Roger Ailes and his role as a media consultant for Republican politicians, including former president Richard Nixon. From the start, Ailes was a brash, creative proponent of the power of television to influence a mass audience. He guided the media-challenged Nixon through a treacherous new era of news and political PR, and his experiences formed the basis for what would become his life’s grand achievement: a “news” network devoted to a political party, its candidates, and its platform.

When Ailes partnered with international newspaper mogul Rupert Murdoch to launch a new 24-hour cable news channel, he was given an unprecedented measure of control to shape the network’s business and ideology. The Fox Effect examines the underpinnings of the philosophy that Ailes brought to the venture. His earliest observations exhibit an appreciation for the tabloid-style sensationalism that would become a hallmark of Fox’s reporting. Ailes summed it up in an interview in 1988 as something he called his “orchestra pit theory” of politics:

“If you have two guys on stage and one guy says ‘I have a solution to the Middle East problem,’ and the other guy falls into the orchestra pit, who do you think is going to be on the evening news?”

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The Rise of the Warrior Corporation: Win or Lose on the Battlefield, Big Business Always Comes Out on Top

Photo Credit: AFP

There are few clear winners in modern American warfare -- except, that is, defense corporations.

February 23, 2012

In the American mind, if Apple made weapons, they would undoubtedly be drones, those remotely piloted planes getting such great press here.  They have generally been greeted as if they were the sleekest of iPhones armed with missiles.

When the first American drone assassins burst onto the global stage early in the last decade, they caught most of us by surprise, especially because they seemed to come out of nowhere or from some wild sci-fi novel.  Ever since, they've been touted in the media as the shiniest presents under the American Christmas tree of war, the perfect weapons to solve our problems when it comes to evildoers lurking in the global badlands.

And can you blame Americans for their love affair with the drone?  Who wouldn’t be wowed by the most technologically advanced, futuristic, no-pain-all-gain weapon around?  READ MORE

Republicans Block the Vote: How Voter-ID Laws Suppress Registration Drives and Block Democratic Votes

There is no real reason for voter-ID laws. Simply stated, voter-ID bills become laws because Republican legislators pass and Republican governors sign them.

February 26, 2012

The following piece appears in the current issue of the Washington Spectator. For more great stories, check out their site. 

In 2005, Mark “Thor” Hearne, a lawyer who had worked for the Bush-Cheney political campaign, founded the American Center for Voting Rights.

The center produced one 72-page report: “Vote Fraud, Intimidation, & Suppression in the 2004 Presidential Election,” which was submitted to a House committee chaired by Ohio Congressman Bob Ney (who would later do time for his role in the Jack Abramoff scandal).

The report included no documented account of any individual impersonating another at a polling place. Yet it recommended that “[s]tates should adopt legislation requiring government-issued photo ID at the polls and for any voter seeking to vote by mail or by absentee ballot.” The center soon closed its doors, or more precisely its private postal mail-drop, and Hearne returned to private practice.

What Hearne was selling had a longer shelf life than his voting rights center. Wall Street Journal columnist John Fund and Heritage Foundation Fellow Hans von Spakovsky began promoting photo-ID laws as an essential line of defense against election fraud. Republican state party officers began writing voter-ID planks into their platforms. And in 2009, the American Legislative Council drafted the model legislation that Republican legislators would use a template for their bills. (ALEC is a Republican outfit that receives more than 98 percent of its funding from corporate lobbyists.)  READ MORE

The Story the Oscar-Nominated "War Horse" Doesn't Tell

The First World War is suddenly everywhere in pop culture, from "War Horse" to "Downton Abbey" but why do all the portrayals miss the people who fought for peace?

February 26, 2012

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Well in advance of the 2014 centennial of the beginning of “the war to end all wars,” the First World War is suddenly everywhere in our lives. Stephen Spielberg’s War Horse opened on 2,376 movie screens and has collected six Oscar nominations, while the hugely successful play it’s based on is still packing in the crowds in New York and a second production is being readied to tour the country.

In addition, the must-watch TV soap opera of the last two months, Downton Abbey, has just concluded its season on an unexpected kiss.  In seven episodes, its upstairs-downstairs world of forbidden love and dynastic troubles took American viewers from mid-war, 1916, beyond the Armistice, with the venerable Abbey itself turned into a convalescent hospital for wounded troops. Other dramas about the 1914-1918 war are on the way, among them an HBO-BBC miniseries based on Ford Madox Ford’s Parade’s End quartet of novels, and a TV adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s novel Birdsong from an NBC-backed production company.

In truth, there’s nothing new in this.  Filmmakers and novelists have long been fascinated by the way the optimistic, sunlit, pre-1914 Europe of emperors in plumed helmets and hussars on parade so quickly turned into a mass slaughterhouse on an unprecedented scale. And there are good reasons to look at the First World War carefully and closely.    READ MORE

How to Remove Your Google Search History Before Google's New Privacy Policy Takes Effect

[UPDATE 2/22/2012] It is important to note that disabling Web History in your Google account will not prevent Google from gathering and storing this information and using it for internal purposes. More information at the end of this post.

On March 1st, Google will implement its new, unified privacy policy, which will affect data Google has collected on you prior to March 1st as well as data it collects on you in the future. Until now, your Google Web History (your Google searches and sites visited) was cordoned off from Google's other products. This protection was especially important because search data can reveal particularly sensitive information about you, including facts about your location, interests, age, sexual orientation, religion, health concerns, and more. If you want to keep Google from combining your Web History with the data they have gathered about you in their other products, such as YouTube or Google Plus, you may want to remove all items from your Web History and stop your Web History from being recorded in the future.

Here's how you can do that:
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Bush's medals

Where's the ANG22???

Ahh, the beauty of participatory journalism. The initial post has been vetted and proofed by thousands. The errors have now been stripped out. See the updates below to see the changes in the post.)
Interesting analysis in this DU thread, which notes that Bush may not have gotten medals given to Texas Air National Guard members for essentially just showing up -- the Texas Faithful Service Medal, awarded for completing "five years of honorable service during which the person has shown fidelity to duty, efficient service, and great loyalty to the state."

According to his ANG22 (The Air National Guard discharge papers), [Bush] received NO Texas National Guard Medals. This means he did not faithfully execute his duty for five years in the TANG. Furthermore, in the following photograph he wears two Air Force ribbons, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award, and the Small Arms Expert Marksmanship Ribbon :

Neither of which show up on this line of his ARG22:

 

Assuming Bush was wearing authorized awards, here is a comparison of Kerry and Bush's awards records: 

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