Via email from FAIR
7/3/08

Democratic candidate Barack Obama's June 19 announcement that he would not accept public financing in the presidential race prompted a media furor. Obama's "flip-flop" (Hardball, 6/20/08; USA Today, 6/25/08) was used by many corporate journalists as an opportunity to undermine Obama's reformist image.

"Obama's money move lifts expediency over principle," a USA Today (6/20/08) headline declared. The Associated Press's Liz Sidoti (6/19/08), in an article headlined "Barack Obama Chose Winning Over His Word," wrote that "the first-term Illinois senator tarnished his carefully honed image as a different kind of politician - one who means what he says and says what he means - while undercutting his call for a new kind of politics."

Amy Goodman
King Features Syndicate
Posted July 3, 2008 at alternet.org

What should progressives do about Obama's move to the center?

I was on a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado this week when Newsweek's Jonathan Alter asked me, "Is Obama a sellout?" The question isn't whether he is a sellout or not -- it's about what demands are made by grass-roots social movements of those who would represent them. The question is, who are these candidates responding to, answering to?

Richard Nixon's campaign strategy was to run in the primaries to the right, then move to the center in the general election. Bill Clinton's strategy was called "triangulation," navigating to a political "Third Way" to please moderates and undecided voters. This past week, Barack Obama has made some signal policy changes that suggest he might be doing something similar. Will it work for him?

Ian Sample
The Guardian/UK
Wednesday July 2, 2008

Endangered species may become extinct 100 times faster than previously thought, scientists warned today, in a bleak re-assessment of the threat to global biodiversity.

Writing in the journal Nature, leading ecologists claim that methods used to predict when species will die out are seriously flawed, and dramatically underestimate the speed at which some plants and animals will be wiped out.

The findings suggest that animals such as the western gorilla, the Sumatran tiger and the Malayan sun bear, the smallest of the bear family, may become extinct much sooner than conservationists feared.

Ecologists Brett Melbourne at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Alan Hastings at the University of California, Davis, said conservation organisations should use updated extinction models to urgently re-evaluate the risks to wildlife.

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
The Guardian
Thursday July 3, 2008

An Indiana teacher who used a much lauded bestseller, The Freedom Writers Diary, to try to inspire under-performing high-school students has been suspended from her job without pay for 18 months.

The effective book ban by the school authorities in Perry Township has outraged teachers and education reformers.

The Writers Diary, a series of true stories written by inner-city teenagers, was put together by a teacher, Erin Gruwell, and has been celebrated as a model for transforming young lives. It was made into a film with Hilary Swank last year.

Ali Gharib
Interpress Service
July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON, Jul 2 (IPS) - Palestinian activist and former university professor Sami Al-Arian was arraigned Monday in U.S. federal court on two counts of criminal contempt for his refusal to testify in a grand jury investigation of a Northern Virginia Muslim think-tank.

The indictment is the latest episode of a long, Kafka-esque process that has violated nearly every tenet of Al-Arian's plea agreement following the end of his first trial in 2005, and kept Al-Arian in prison for over five years.

"The government has made a complete mockery of the plea agreement," Al-Arian's attorney, Jonathon Turley, told IPS. "Dr. Al-Arian has received zero benefit from his plea agreement."

Supporters of Al-Arian cited the charges as an attempt by an overzealous Justice Department prosecutor to keep Al-Arian behind bars indefinitely despite an inability to secure a jury conviction. There is no maximum penalty for criminal contempt.

Steven Thomma
McClatchy Newspapers
July 2, 2008

WASHINGTON — Just in time for the Fourth of July holiday weekend comes that great American tradition, flip-flops. No, not the kind you wear to the pool. The kind you hear in the presidential campaign.

Barack Obama flips on campaign financing — rejecting public funds and the limits that go with them — and on protecting telecommunications companies that helped spy on Americans. He used to oppose that, now he favors it.

John McCain has flopped on immigration — he's emphasizing tough border enforcement first now — and tax cuts. He used to oppose them as irresponsible and now favors making them permanent.

Yet for all the screaming that these and other flip-flops have inspired about hypocrisy, it's nothing new.

Woodrow Wilson flipped on going to war. Franklin Roosevelt flopped on balancing the budget. Ronald Reagan flipped on abortion. The elder George Bush flopped on raising taxes.

In fact, it happens so often, it's hard to keep score.

Allison H. Fine, Personal Democracy Forum
Posted July 3, 2008 at alternet.org

Historians will undoubtedly consider our current era of voting machines the technological equivalent of the 8-track tape machine.

Doll inspectors squinting helplessly at hanging chads was the lasting image from the federal election of 2000. We were shocked and frustrated by the fragility and archaic infrastructure of our election system. If only we could replace those dastardly little squares of paper with something better, something modern, electronic and foolproof, then all would be well in America.

Editorial
The New York Times
July 3, 2008

Unless Congress closes a gaping hole in the law against war profiteering, companies ripping off taxpayers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may never be fully prosecuted. This is because the latest conflicts are not declared wars.

The anti-fraud law dating to World War II allows prosecution of contractors up to three years after a war ends. But this statute of limitations was omitted from the resolutions authorizing military force in Iraq and Afghanistan, which carried no formal war declaration.

Investigators say that current war fraud runs into untold billions, including faulty ammunition and vehicles and not-so-bullet-proof vests. Investigative officials and the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction have testified that they’re hampered by the ongoing conflicts and need more time to catch contract thieves after they end.

Now Hear This Newsletter
July 3, 2008

Two issues that could have major repercussions for consumers are now floating around the executive offices of the Federal Communications Commission headquarters.

The first is a proposal recently drafted by the wireless telephone industry involving those maddening early termination fees consumers are forced to pay if they decide to change carriers before the end of their long-term service contracts.

A few weeks ago Verizon Wireless approached FCC Chairman Kevin Martin with a plan to make certain changes in the way the industry imposes the fees – such as some pro-rating of the fees over the life of the contract and moving back deadlines for new customers to cancel their service without penalty.

via email from FAIR
7/2/08

Dramatically misleading accounts of comments made by retired general Wesley Clark concerning Republican nominee John McCain have dominated corporate media campaign coverage for days.

Clark's statement on CBS's Face the Nation (6/29/08) that "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president" has been distorted and taken dramatically out of context. Media have portrayed Clark's comment as an attack on McCain's military record, with some journalists even likening it to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign to smear John Kerry's service record (FAIR Media Advisory, 8/30/04).

Clark's comment was made after Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer asked the former general about his previous statement that McCain was "untested and untried." In his response, Clark declared:

"I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands of millions of others in the armed forces as a prisoner of war."