Jon Stewart exposes the lunacy of the so called ‘ground zero mosque’ controversy and admits that once Charleton Heston, NRA president, was right and Jon was wrong and speculates that Fox News is a terrorist command center

Stephen smacks down the latest guffaw, faux pas, stupidly bad reporting at Fox News regarding trained monkey terrorists. (You can’t make this stuff up)

David H Brooks, just another defense department scammer screwing over our troops and supplying faulty body armor.

A recent editorial blunders over the topic of fusion voting while attempting to marginalize third parties. Fusion voting is used in many states and is employed to great success in New York. Fusion voting allows an independent party like Working Families to define or narrow down campaign issues that address matters of specific concern… like unions, or health care, or education.

A third party can than endorse a candidate that most closely aligns with their viewpoint. At election time, voters may check the Democrat box, for example, or the Working Families box for a candidate. This allows a candidate to know how many votes they received solely because of their position on the third party’s concerns and how hard to work in the legislature to retain those votes for future elections.

The World editorial misses the point regarding the Independent Party of Oregon and calls fusion voting a ‘quirk’ and assumes it is supposed to help win elections.

…the IPO is making headlines because of a legal quirk that lets a candidate represent more than one party. Among the candidates with dual labels this year is state Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay. (Should we say, ‘D/I-Coos Bay”?)

The big question is how much a dual label will help anyone win a general election. Probably not much. The IPO can’t exert real influence until it acts like a party, which means adopting shared principles and common goals. To do so, however, would alienate members who want to be truly independent.

That’s the underlying problem of all so-called ‘independent” parties. People can be independent, or they can participate in party politics. They can’t rationally do both.

What in the world does the Independent Party see in Arne Roblan? Or the Dems, for that matter?

Michael Scherer does an excellent job of dissecting toture advocate Mark Thiessenattack on Wikileaks. Scherer looks back at history, namely the release of the Pentagon Papers that helped turn the war. The Pentagon Papers showed that more than one president deliberately mislead the country about the war in Vietnam and almost 70,000 US troops died as a result.

Supreme Court’s opinion in New York Times Co. v. United States, the so-called Pentagon Papers case from 1971.

Concurring in that case, Justice Potter Stewart observed, “In the absence of governmental checks and balances present in other areas of our national life, the only effective restraint upon executive policy and power in the area of national defense and international affairs may lie in an enlightened citizenry — in an informed and critical public opinion which alone can here protect the values of democratic government.. . . . Without an informed and free press, there cannot be an enlightened people.”

The article also quotes from Justices Hugo Black and William Brennan

[W]e are asked to hold that, despite the First Amendment’s emphatic command, the Executive Branch, the Congress, and the Judiciary can make laws enjoining publication of current news and abridging freedom of the press in the name of “national security.” The Government does not even attempt to rely on any act of Congress. Instead, it makes the bold and dangerously far-reaching contention that the courts should take it upon themselves to “make” a law abridging freedom of the press in the name of equity, presidential power and national security, even when the representatives of the people in Congress have adhered to the command of the First Amendment and refused to make such a law. To find that the President has “inherent power” to halt the publication of news by resort to the courts would wipe out the First Amendment and destroy the fundamental liberty and security of the very people the Government hopes to make “secure.” No one can read the history of the adoption of the First Amendment without being convinced beyond any doubt that it was injunctions like those sought here that Madison and his collaborators intended to outlaw in this Nation for all time. The word “security” is a broad, vague generality whose contours should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law embodied in the First Amendment. The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.

A government that lies to its people betrays everything a soldier hopes to be fighting for, everything. Long live Wikileaks and all independent media because without it we have no democracy at all.

First Amendment at Work in Lakeside,OR

Lightly edited version of original published Page 1 in the Coast Lake News, Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Last Wednesday, Coast Lake News Reported on City Hall’s passage of an Ordinance which handed any ‘designated enforcement official or designee’ the ‘Right of Entry’ upon private property and more than tripled the fines to $750 per violation per day.

We spelled out the secretive measures taken by the Council in the passage of this Ordinance, including lack of proper notice to the public, leaving it off of the Council’s meeting agenda, referring to it only by number and later by title and the lack of any discussion.

Mayor Pro Tem Rod Schilling voted for it as did Councilors Elaine Armstrong, Chrysta Swift,  Clark Anderson, Marjorie Kellison, and Mack Eubanks.  Rudy Sherych was absent.

In our story, we printed a section of the ordinance that clearly seemed to violate the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That subsection 1.16.111 of Ordinance 10-269 is listed under the boldfaced title “Right to Entry” and reads: “Any designated enforcement official or designee is authorized to enter upon any property or premises to ascertain whether the provisions of the municipal code or applicable state codes are being obeyed, and to make any examinations and surveys as may be necessary in the performance of their enforcement duties. These may include the taking of photographs, samples, or other physical evidence. All inspections, entries, examinations and surveys shall be done in a reasonable manner. If an owner, occupant or agent refuses permission to enter or inspect, the enforcement official my seek an administrative inspection warrant pursuant to the procedures provided for in Sections (blank space) of this code. The enforcement official will take reasonable steps to notify the property owner or legal occupant of the need to enter upon the property. If the enforcement official determines in his or her discretion that entry is necessary without notification or that notification is not practical, then the owner or legal occupant shall be notified as soon as reasonably possible after the inspection.”

As might be expected, Lakeside residents reacted with everything from astonishment to anger. No Trespassing signs have proliferated around the City — a disconcerting sight for a destination location that depends upon tourism dollars to boost the local economy. This Ordinance was passed just shortly after City Hall began enforcing a ban on RV sleeping in residential areas — a move that is widely seen by residents as harmful to tourism.

No Trespassing Signs Sprout Up Around Lakeside, OR

Despite our printing of the actual wording of the Ordinance, Mayor Pro Tem
Rod Schilling claims in a “Public Message” posted on a local blog that, “Misinformation is being disseminated both in print and verbally regarding Lakeside’s hazard abatement ordinance,” although he neglected to say what the misinformation consisted of.

We stand by our story. One of the reasons that we took pains to print the actual wording and specifically quote the Fourth Amendment and the relevant Oregon Revised Statutes is so that our readers could see for themselves how we came to draw the conclusions we did.

Contrary to what the ordinance specifically says, Schilling writes, “The ordinance does not give any city (sic) the right to violate any citizen’s property rights.”

But, in addition to the section cited above, section 1.16.030 entitled “General enforcement authority” clearly reads, “The city manager, the city attorney, chief of police or their designated enforcement officials have the authority and powers necessary to gain compliance with the provisions of the municipal code and applicable state codes. These powers include the power to issue notices of violation and citations, inspect public and private property and use whatever judicial and administrative remedies are available under the municipal code or applicable state laws.”

In his message, Schilling goes on to call our reporting a “campaign” whose motivation “is not entirely clear at this time.”

Coast Lake News is fine with Schilling’s characterization of our reporting as a campaign. We campaign for ‘open and transparent ‘ government. We believe our motivation for reporting what goes on at City Hall has been clear since the establishment of this newspaper — to accurately report the news and to hold City officials accountable for their actions and decisions.

We have repeatedly offered the Mayor Pro Tem unedited space to answer questions and/or address the public. He has consistently maintained that he cannot take advantage of our offer because, he says, the Coast Lake News ” is not a real newspaper.”

As part of Schilling’s efforts to spin the meaning of the Ordinance, he asks folks to read a response by City Attorney Frederick J. Carleton (also posted on the local blog) given after Schilling contacted him. But, Carleton’s response directly contradicts the rights claimed in the Ordinance which has already been passed.

Carleton writes, “No one on behalf of the city is entering or plans to enter any property, and if that were to be done, it would only be done with court approval, and it would be a very extraordinary situation.”

This sounds very comforting, except, the Ordinance which has the effect of City Law clearly states: “Any designated enforcement official or designee is authorized to enter upon any property or premises….”

Perhaps Carleton recognized this, because he ends his letter to Schilling by saying, “Since these ordinances have been called into question, again, we are reviewing that and we will be back to you very soon.” That was the second time in his short response  that he says his office will be reviewing the ordinance.

Meanwhile, copies are available for review at City Hall for anyone who would like to read the entire Ordinance, which is scheduled to become effective August 7th.

Read the excellent transcript here

I have sat behind this desk for seven years and pushed back at these counterfeit journalists, as a man might stand at the shore and try to push back the tide. I have been branded an ideologue and a profiteer and a mirror of image of that which I assail. I have said it in every way I could think of, and been told I have been over-the-top because I have mocked and shouted and repeated.

And today the proof lies in front of you, bleeding: the reputation of Shirley Sherrod, a woman who 24 years ago saw and overcame the vengeance in her own heart and achieved the kind of true greatness the rest of us can only hope we might express for one moment in the whole of our lives. Assassinated by Fox News! Assassinated by that scum Breitbart! Assassinated by all their meager-brained imitators on other channels and other sites, their limp fellow travelers who never asked questions first, but simply shot, and shot, and shot, and shot and laughed!
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Let me make this utterly clear: What you see on Fox News, what you read on Right Wing websites, is the utter and complete perversion of journalism, and it can have no place in a civilized society. It is words crashed together, never to inform, only to inflame. It is a political guillotine. It is the manipulation of reality to make the racist seem benevolent, and to convict the benevolent as racist — even if her words must be edited, filleted, stripped of all context, rearranged, fabricated, and falsified, to do so.