Frontline: Cheney's Law

This is a very interesting Frontline piece about Cheney's efforts and the efforts of the administration to give more power to the Executive branch, to the point where congress has no decisive power in a time of war.

Watch it here.

Pathetic Punditry

Bill O’Reilly

Popular right-wing pundit, Bill O’Reilly, has come under an awful lot of fire recently for comments made about a Harlem restaurant.

Quoted:

“I couldn't get over the fact that there was no difference between Sylvia's restaurant and any other restaurant in New York City. I mean, it was exactly the same, even though it's run by blacks, primarily black patronship. It was the same, and that's really what this society's all about now here in the USA. There's no difference……

There wasn't one person in Sylvia's who was screaming, 'M-Fer,' " I think you know what that probably means, " 'I want more iced tea.' You know, I mean, everybody was -- it was like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb in the sense of people were sitting there, and they were ordering and having fun. And there wasn't any kind of craziness at all.”

Now I can understand that the remarks made were not intentionally racist and I’m not calling him such, but frankly the fact that he was surprised that black people weren’t going around yelling “(Place swear-word here), get me more iced tea.” is a little ridiculous.

The remarks should have never been made on the air, that’s a given. But after making such statements he refused to take responsibility and apologize, instead he chose to attack organizations like Media Matter for America saying that they took his statements out of context and that it was a personal attack.

Rush Limbaugh

Unlike the above, this is in no way understandable or excusable.

LIMBAUGH: There's a lot more than that that they don't understand. They can't even -- if -- the next guy that calls here, I'm gonna ask him: Why should we pull -- what is the imperative for pulling out? What's in it for the United States to pull out? They can't -- I don't think they have an answer for that other than, "Well, we just gotta bring the troops home."

CALLER 2: Yeah, and, you know what --

LIMBAUGH: "Save the -- keep the troops safe" or whatever. I -- it's not possible, intellectually, to follow these people.

CALLER 2: No, it's not, and what's really funny is, they never talk to real soldiers. They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media.

LIMBAUGH: The phony soldiers.

CALLER 2: The phony soldiers. If you talk to a real soldier, they are proud to serve. They want to be over in Iraq. They understand their sacrifice, and they're willing to sacrifice for their country.

Those who are serving the country but don’t support the war because they’d rather live in peace, are NOT phony soldiers.

Your own record is hardly reputable. You never took a draft physical; instead you informed the military of a physically disqualifying condition, either a football knee injury or a pilonidal cyst (either one, his story keeps changing).