Mood:
d'ohNow Playing: LIBTARD ''CULTURE OF CORRUPTION'' ALERT
Topic: Lib Loser Stories
KENNEDY CAR CRASH COVER-UP?
Police labor union officials asked acting Chief Christopher McGaffin this afternoon to allow a Capitol Police officer to complete his investigation into an early-morning car crash involving Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), son of Sen. Ted Kennedy.
ROLL CALL reports: According to a letter sent by Officer Greg Baird, acting chairman of the USCP FOP, the wreck took place at approximately 2:45 a.m. Thursday when Kennedy's car, operating with its running lights turned off, narrowly missed colliding with a Capitol Police cruiser and smashed into a security barricade at First and C streets Southeast.
"The driver exited the vehicle and he was observed to be staggering," Baird's letter states. Officers approached the driver, who "declared to them he was a Congressman and was late to a vote. The House had adjourned nearly three hours before this incident. It was Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy from Rhode Island."
Baird wrote that Capitol Police Patrol Division units, who are trained in driving under the influence cases, were not allowed to perform basic field sobriety tests on the Congressman. Instead, two sergeants, who also responded to the accident, proceeded to confer with the Capitol Police watch commander on duty and then "ordered all of the Patrol Division Units to leave the scene and that they were taking over."
A source tells the DRUDGE REPORT: "It was apparent that the driver was intoxicated (stumbling) and claimed he was in a hurry to make a vote.
"When it became apparent who it was, instead of processing a normal DWI, the watch commander had the Patrol units clear the scene. The commander allowed other building officials drive Kennedy home."
This morning's incident comes just over two weeks after Kennedy was involved in a car accident in Rhode Island.
"I was involved in a traffic accident last night at First and C Street SE near the U.S. Capitol," Kennedy said in a written statement released by his office.
"I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident. I will fully cooperate with the Capitol Police in whatever investigation they choose to undertake."
Drudge Report Exclusive ** Kennedy Car Crash Cover-up?
Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis, an inflammation of the stomach and intestines.
Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes in Congress and took "prescribed" amounts of Phenergan and Ambien, another prescribed drug that he occasionally takes to fall asleep.
"Some time around 2:45 a.m., I drove the few blocks to the Capitol Complex believing I needed to vote," his second statement said. "Apparently, I was disoriented from the medication."
Kennedy appeared to be intoxicated when he crashed his Ford Mustang into a barrier on Capitol Hill early Thursday morning, said Louis P. Cannon, president of the Washington chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police.
USA Today ~ Associated Press ** Rep. Patrick Kennedy blames car crash on medicationKennedy's origional written statement released by his office...
Breitbart.com ~ Associated Press - Andrew Miga ** Kennedy Confirms Car Crash Near Capitol Related: Pat Kennedy's April 15th car crash...
This Blog *** Pat Kennedy fails Rhode test, Boy blunder didn't have right - or write - of way
Posted by yaahoo_2006iest
at 11:26 PM EDT
Updated: Thursday, 4 May 2006 11:31 PM EDT
spacey
Oscar-winner Dreyfuss campaigns against "shaped news"
LONDON - Richard Dreyfuss has challenged the establishment for decades and now the maverick actor and activist is taking on the mainstream media.
The Oscar-winning star says an obsession with delivering instantaneous news and images provides too little context for audiences to reflect and understand what is happening in the world.
"There is no room to pause, no room to think," Dreyfuss, who starred in films ranging from "Jaws" to "Mr Holland's Opus" told Reuters in a recent telephone interview.
"We don't build into our system of thoughts the need to explain, the media doesn't build that into its transmission of knowledge and information."
That creates what Dreyfuss calls "shaped news" -- a version of events according to how the mainstream media want audiences to see what happened, and a violation of journalism's core value of objectivity.
Citizen journalism is playing a vital part in broadening news coverage, as well as scrutinizing professional journalism, Dreyfuss said.
"Information from more than one source is good. I'm totally in favor of it, even if people send propaganda. In the aggregate you can find more truth than in one opinion."
But despite an explosion in blogs, people's views of the news is still shaped by what powerful media corporations print, broadcast and put on their Web sites, Dreyfuss, 58, said.
"Do the mainstream media ever tell their readers 'Don't believe everything we tell you?' No, they don't."
Dreyfuss said media coverage of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York was a pertinent example of how a non-stop supply of images and spot news shaped people's views.
"The falling Twin Towers -- pictures that produced anger, a lot of anger that were sent instantly around the world, they created a need to react."
"People in Kansas could see the Twin Towers fall at exactly the same instant as in Nigeria and Cairo. Such an instantaneous knowledge of a situation leads to an instantaneous reaction which creates demand for an instantaneous, reflexive response.
"The question is how do you get people to find out more, how do you get people to read not just what they are told to read."
The power of language is also an important factor in shaping the news.
"The 'war on terror' -- objection to using this term is dead. It's become part of our vocabulary, but what does it really mean? You should know more specifically what you are fighting."
Dreyfuss is eager to point out that he is not anti-technology: "I'm not in love with technology and speed but I don't want to sound like a luddite.
"We've got to be aware of the power of technology and the speed at which it allows us to transmit information.
"You have to encourage prose, analysis and detail -- otherwise people will go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without really knowing why."
Dreyfuss, who won an Oscar for his performance in "The Goodbye Girl," has pursued his passion for political and social activism since his college days.
An active opponent of the Vietnam War, he has also worked to promote solutions to the Mideast conflict, campaigned for education and, most recently, has lent his support to a campaign for the impeachment of President Bush.
He is studying civics and democracy as a senior associate member at St Antony's College at the University of Oxford.
"Civics is no longer taught in the U.S, a sign of a neurosis that is inexplicable," he said. "Not to teach civics is suicide.
"Reason, logic, civility, dissent and debate -- five ancient words that should be taught again and better, at elementary level, so that people know the difference between news and shaped news," Dreyfuss said.
Howard Dean: Karl Rove Guiltier than Osama Bin Laden
The guiltier-than-bin Laden Rove, said Dean, is "a big liability for the administration," since he "continually reminds the American people that the president wasn't truthful about firing leakers, in addition to not being truthful about a number of other things."
He pledged that if Democrats win back Congress in November, they'll launch a new round of investigations into supposed White House corruption.
"No doubt there will be investigations because there's been so much corruption in the White House and the vice president's office, even the Republican Senate president is under investigation for insider trading."
Asked whether Democrats would try to impeach President Bush, Dean told O'Donnell: "It's possible."
silly
Must be a lul in his attention meter. Didnt he say this like 3 years ago?
Hollywood star Robbins blasts US media ignorance of 'high crimes' in Iraq
Acclaimed American actor/director Tim Robbins blasted the US government's policy on terrorism -- and the US media's failure to examine it critically -- at a news conference in Athens promoting his stage version of George Orwell's "1984".
"We have right now a media that is willfully ignoring the high crimes and misdemeanours of the president of the United States," the star of Hollywood hits including "Mystic River" and "The Player" told reporters.
"Clinton lied about a blowjob, and got impeached by the media and Congress," Robbins said.
"(Bush) got us into (the Iraq) war based on lies that he knew were lies. ... His war has recruited more Al-Qaeda members than 
"This is exactly what Orwell was talking about when he spoke of thought crimes," he added.
Orwell's bleak classic, published in 1949, is based on a futuristic society in which the government, known as "
In what dimension did that happen???
Spitzer Blasts Scalia's 'Constructionist' View
Democratic candidate for governor Eliot Spitzer on Monday criticized the strict "constructionist" view of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who views the Constitution as unalterable by cultural or social trends.
"As a citizen, and as the state's lawyer, I believe in an evolving Constitution," said Spitzer, the state attorney general, at the annual Law Day ceremony at the New York Court of Appeals. "A flexible Constitution leaves room for us to consider not merely how the world once was, but how it ought to be."
The next governor will have at least two spots to fill on the seven-member court with Judge Albert Rosenblatt's term ending on Dec. 31 and Chief Judge Judith Kaye's ending next March.
Spitzer said that under the strict "constructionist" reading of the Constitution favored by Scalia and others, the "separate but equal" policy of segregation would still be allowed, there would never have been a Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights and children could still be executed for felonies.
Scalia (right) is considered one of the most conservative members of the court.
Spitzer, leading in the polls to be New York's next governor, declined to discuss what type of judge he would nominate to the state's highest court, but said he would favor someone whose Constitutional analysis jibes with his own.
Republican Gov. George Pataki will have the chance to fill one more spot on the court with Judge George Bundy Smith's term ending in September. Smith has applied to be reappointed to the bench.
Republican candidate John Faso criticized Spitzer for his comments.
"I think that it's very unfortunate that an attorney general would attack by name a sitting justice of the U.S. Supreme Court," he said. "It's one thing to question a judicial philosophy, but I think this shows a certain lack of respect for the court."
Faso said Spitzer didn't accurately characterize the judge's views.
Andrea Tantaros, spokeswoman for Republican candidate Bill Weld, called Spitzer's comments "hairsplitting obscure theories of jurisprudence." She said Weld, a former federal prosecutor, is instead "focused on creating jobs, keeping New Yorkers safe, and changing the culture in Albany."
Totalitarian tourism is nothing new. Seventy years ago, American tourists used to admire the cleanliness and orderliness of Nazi Germany. How handsome those Hitlerjugend boys and the German Girls' Leaguers looked in their clean uniforms. Look at those wonderful Autobahns. And Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Those of the opposite political stripe would visit the USSR. Things weren't so good there. Moscow University invited hundreds of American college students to study for a year there, then abruptly and without explanation cancelled classes when they arrived. So the American students spent their time hearing the lies of their Intourist handlers. Lies like, they might be surprised to see workers' children playing in the parks since in the United States only rich people's children get to do that. Lies like, they might be surprised to see such large collective farms since American farms are all small and full of stony fields.
The American students, who had sung "The Internationale" as their ship left the dock, didn't embarrass their guides with facts. It's unlikely that their grandchildren will act any different in North Korea.
The apex of totalitarian tourism wasn't Lincoln Steffens, who after his visit to the Worker's Paradise remarked, "I have seen the future and it works." Steffens was outdone by the Vice-President of the United States, Henry Wallace. He visited Kolyma in 1944 and didn't realize he was looking at the most notorious Gulag prison camp. He thought the 40,000 inhabitants of Magadan were pioneers instead of slave laborers. He said of the Communist regime, "There is nothing irreconcilable in our aims and purposes. Those who so proclaim are wittingly or unwittingly looking for war--and that, in my opinion, is criminal."
Had not FDR dumped Wallace in favor of Truman in the next election, this gullible totalitarian-tourist would have become President of the United States.
In the past Joe Kennedy and George Bernard Shaw both praised Hitler and Stalin....More Useful Idiots of the left...
HARVARD LOVES A THUG
Harvard University has a bizarre idea of how to advance the education of its grads: Instruct them to bow down to North Ko rea's paranoid dictators and show proper "respect" for the Axis of Evil.
It's the ultimate in radical Stalinist chic - the Harvard Alumni Association's $636-a-night totalitarian luxury tour of a rogue nation where thousands are deliberately starved to death.
"Demonstrations of respect for the country's late leader, Kim Il Sung, and for the current leader, Kim Jong Il, are important," instructs the Harvard Alumni Association's tour memo.
"You will be expected to bow as a gesture of respect at the statue of Kim Il Sung and at his mausoleum."
Harvard even tries to pretend that bowing down to thugs is perfectly normal - explaining that it's because "North Korea, like every country, has its own unique protocols."
Well, yes, that certainly is a charming use of euphemism to cover up an ugly and unique reality - since North Korea is not "like every country."
North Korea's "protocols" feature massive human-rights abuses, deliberate famine, concentration camps, religious persecution, gas chambers, likely genocide and trafficking in women and children.
Plus sending body snatchers to Japan and South Korea to kidnap children and force them to train North Korean spies.
Satie Yokota, the mother of a Japanese girl kidnapped in 1977 at age 13 while clutching her racket on the way home from school badminton practice, calls North Korea "enemies of humanity." Now 70, she fears she'll die before she ever sees her daughter again.
Then there's the Stalinist personality cult - when the Harvard alums bow down, they'll be joining the national worship that requires every North Korean to wear a Kim Il Sung lapel pin or else.
Not surprisingly, the Harvard alums are also instructed to carefully censor their reading matter because "certain types of literature may not be allowed into North Korea."
The reason the rooms are so expensive is that North Korea controls all costs - and is in desperate need of foreign currency. The visits effectively subsidize Kim Jong Il's rule.
The ostensible excuse for granting visas to Americans this summer is so they can see the spectacle known as the Arirang games or the Grand Mass Gymnastic and Artistic Performance.
Walter Keats, Harvard '67, whose travel agency is helping to set up the trip, gushed to USA Today that the spectacle is like seeing "Aida" at the Great Pyramids or "Turandot" in Beijing's Forbidden City.
Never mind that the athletes are really slave labor performing under extreme duress - imagine the punishment that awaits anyone who spoils the spectacle by tripping.
At High Country Passage, a tourist agency handling Harvard bookings, agent Tamara Starkes said the alums will stay in "very nice four-star hotels that are tourist-only. The locals cannot go."
High Country's chief, Chris Springer, says he's also packaging North Korea tours for Columbia, Princeton, Duke, the National Trust, MIT, and the University of California-Berkeley.
Asked if he's uncomfortable about totalitarian tourism, Springer says "it's a good question" but argues that outside visits could help open up North Korea. Maybe. But something is very wrong when Harvard - whose motto is "veritas," Latin for "truth" - feels comfortable instructing its alums to bow down to evil thugs
.
Deborah Orin, The Post's Washington bureau chief, is a Harvard grad who won't be taking this tour.
Wow, this is just like Rush Limbaugh's situtation. NOT!
It appears that two of the Baldwin brothers are having a bad week. Alec Baldwin's brother Daniel Baldwin has reportedly been arrested in Los Angeles on charges of possession of cocaine reports TMZ.
The story, broken by TMZ reports that Daniel, 45 brother to Alec, Stephen and Billy, was arrested on April 22nd, after cops received a call that a woman had been threatened at the Ocean Park Motel in Santa Monica, California.
The web site reports that it has been told that the police responded to a motel room where Baldwin and man named Buddy Winston were front and center.
Cops said they found cocaine and arrested both men. Baldwin's bail was set a $10,000
.
It may not be so bad though as sources tell TMZ that the Los Angeles County District Attorney has declined to prosecute the case and referred it to the Santa Monica City Attorney.
That means, at worst, Baldwin could be prosecuted for misdemeanor drug possession.
No comment yet from any PR folks for the actor.
More at: 
chatty
Palm Beach County prosecutors rejected an overture in 2004 from Rush Limbaugh's attorneys that would have allowed the nation's top talkshow host to enter drug rehabilitation, rather than face criminal charges for prescription drug abuse.
Prosecutors, at the time, claimed they had evidence that Limbaugh committed at least 10 felonies!
It now appears James Martz, the prosecutor who headed the investigation into Limbaugh's prescription drug use, was bluffing when he said that medical records "indicate evidence that would support in excess of 10 felony counts for violations."
Prosecutors said Limbaugh, in any deal, would have to plead guilty to doctor shopping, a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison.
[Prosecutors also suggested at the time that Limbaugh 
loud
Monday is May Day, the great communist holiday, and the illegal alien movement says it's going to stick it to you in force...
Illegals & Democrats In Your Face Again
And from California. (
This is going to be an amazing year, because we've got some of the most ludicrous, ridiculous, embarrassing, pandering behavior by politicians I have ever seen on a host of issues, from this gasoline business, to illegal immigration, to the ports deal, it's not stopping. It's only going to get worse. It's a constant barrage, daytime insult to our intelligence, and it's all made to order for the Drive-By Media. There have been a bunch of drive-bys happening here at the same time. Oh, and let's not forget this. This got people roiled today. (
Now, we hear all this talk that they're a little bit worried about a backlash. They can't possibly be worried about a backlash. All this talk that some people are worried? There might be a few them worried about a backlash, but this is in-your-face just like the first one was. "We demand to be exempt from your laws or else, and we have the power behind us because the Democrats are with us."
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
In case you haven't heard 
Well, interesting for you to say that. Try it in Mexico and see what happens. You do just that, and you are in jail. Now for some of politics of this. Here are some things that you will not see in the Drive-By Media. There's a 
So Rasmussen went out there and just did a generic poll and made up a third party candidate who had immigration border security and a fence as his number one priority, and that candidate beats the generic Republican nominee by nine points and scores practically even with the Democrat in the generic poll. So we'll see if the word of this Rasmussen poll spreads to both political parties and see, if it does, how it affects them, since they're all so poll-driven, particularly in an election year. Darren, 
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Well, it's hard to really know. I know that it's not just that. The Republican base is upset about a lot of things, and if you combine them, you have some real concern. They're upset about immigration. They are upset over the spending, of course. They're upset over a couple of other things. It's still early. And I think predicting vote turnout based on what's happening now is risky because there are going to be profound things that happen between now and November, things that will make what's happening today be forgotten. It's an election year, and whatever politicians figure out are their big problems, they'll try to fix it, somehow, some way,
like they're trying to with gasoline prices, like they're trying to with illegal immigration. They're trying to just come up with words and phrases that satisfy everybody but don't actually accomplish anything. You talk about that bill. There's an aspect of that bill that upset me more than the $15 billion because we knew that's going to happen, these guys are who they are.
Republicans in the Senate decided from the Iraq funding bill, to take 1.9 billion of it and send it to Hurricane Katrina relief. It set up an either/or situation. I'm scratching my head, folks, we can't do both? We can't do both at the same time? We're funding the war in Iraq, the war on terror. We gotta take from that in order to -- now why do that? I'll tell you why do that, because this is a bunch of Republicans trying to appeal to these mythical moderates and liberals
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Mark, 
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: And now, I only wonder, what would Theodore Roosevelt have said, and I've heard the quote and read the quote over and over, it seems like they don't want to become Americans. I would not have a problem however, I'm not saying to them give up their culture if they wanted to play first the American national anthem in English and if they wanted to play the Mexican national anthem, that's fine. That's still part of their culture.
RUSH: Yeah. Well, you hit the nail on the head here with something, Mark, and it's this. Immigration has always been a specific thing, and there's a formula, and it is this. People come here from far-away lands for whatever reasons, to seek a better life. In seeking a better life, they seek to become Americans, which means assimilating and acculturating into the great American culture. They have not come here just for jobs, to send the money home. They have come here to become Americans. The problem here is that, as these protests indicate, and as the Star-Spangled Banner indicates in Spanish and there's a number of other indications that are obvious, this aspect, this wave of illegal immigrants do not really indicate they want to become Americans. They don't want to be immigrants; they want to be legal so they can get jobs. The country is just a job market to them. It's a big distinction, because without the acculturation and the assimilation, we're just going to end up Balkanizing the society. And when they choose May 1, Soviet May Day, to go out and protest and basically shout and get in our faces and then purposely try to cause a backlash
and demand to be exempted from our laws, this is not immigration that's going on here. I think we do this a disservice by referring to it as an immigration issue. It's not that.
END TRANSCRIPT
Read the Background Material...
White House scribe asks for the remote
Reporter asks to watch CNN on Air Force One
WASHINGTON -- It wasn't the price of gasoline, Darfur or the rebuilding effort in New Orleans that preoccupied the White House press corps Thursday aboard a flight on Air Force One.
It was what channel they could watch on the White House televisions, Fox or CNN.
During a briefing led by White House spokesman Scott McClellan as President Bush was traveling to New Orleans, Louisiana, the Washington Post's Jim VandeHei asked why the White House televisions always seemed to be tuned to Fox News and if it was possible to have them tuned instead to CNN.
"It's come to my attention that there's been requests -- this is a serious question -- to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied," VandeHei told McClellan, who is soon to be replaced by former Fox anchor and self-described conservative Tony Snow.
"My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?" VandeHei asked.
McClellan said it was the first he had heard such a claim, and that it was not true.
"In fact, I've watched other channels on here," he said.
"I've never known anyone that's raised a complaint about a request from back here to watch a different channel," McClellan added.
VandeHei replied, "I'm officially raising it, and officially complaining about it.
"
McClellan then asked whether VandeHei had tried to have the change made.
"I was told -- the quote was, 'No,' when I asked for CNN," the reporter said.
McClellan asked him with whom he had spoken, but VandeHei said he did not know.
"Well, the magic people at the other end of the phone ... I was told,
'We don't watch CNN here, you can only watch Fox,'" VandeHei said.
McClellan said he found the question "quite amusing," and left to see about making the change.
Eighteen minutes after VandeHei raised the issue, McClellan had resolved it.
"We just called up. They're going to be changing it, at your all's request, to the channel that you requested, which is CNN -- from the press corps."
Fox News is popular with at least one highly placed person in the White House. According to the Web site "The Smoking Gun," whenever Vice President Dick Cheney stays in a hotel room, he requests extra lights, copies of five newspapers and the television tuned to Fox. (