O’Reilly Rips Columbia’s Invitation
To Ahmadinejad As ‘Revolting,’ But Admits He Invited Him Too

post from Think Progress on 25 September 2007 03:00:00 PM. © Think Progress

Last night, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly criticized Columbia University’s decision to invite Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak on campus. O’Reilly, who spent much of last week railing against Columbia’s invitation, called the event “revolting” and singled out Columbia University President Lee Bollinger as being “hypocritical beyond belief” for his invitation.

But moments later, O’Reilly revealed that he had also offered an invitation to Ahmadinejad to appear on his own show. In response to a viewer email asking why he didn’t invite the Iranian President on his show, O’Reilly said:

We actually did invite him, sir, but he knows the no spin zone when he sees one. Ahmadinejad doesn’t answer questions; he bloviates. But I’d love to tell him that face to face. And I would.

Watch it:

O’Reilly has maintained that his objection to Ahmadinejad’s speech does not stem from fear of an open exchange of ideas, but rather of giving him a high-profile platform:

REED WERNER: Well, I would like to know what are you afraid of by him coming.
O’REILLY: I don’t think we’re afraid of anything, but we don’t want to - I don’t think anybody’s afraid of anything, but we don’t want to give status and credibility.

O’Reilly appears to acknowledge that speaking at Columbia lends status and credibility to a speaker, while appearing on his own show does not.

(HT: Newshounds)

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/25/oreilly-ahmadinejad/

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The Challenge Of Free Speech

post from Open Left - Front Page on 25 September 2007 02:59:49 PM. © Open Left - Front Page

Brandon Hammer is a Sophomore at Columbia University and a member of the Roosevelt Institution, a[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/OpenLeft-FrontPage/~3/161206765/showDiary.do

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Iran Becoming Turkey's Best Ally on the Border

post from IraqSlogger.com on 25 September 2007 02:57:48 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

"The implicit message of the anonymous sources is that Iran is doing more to assist Turkey in its fight against the Kurdish rebels than either Iraq or the United States." Turkish officials reportedly plan to present a list of suggestions for Iraqi action against the PKK during Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani's two day visit to Ankara this week.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/4448

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A Tale of Two Militias

post from IraqSlogger.com on 25 September 2007 02:57:17 PM. © IraqSlogger.com

Two new fighting forces have appeared on the scene in southwestern Baghdad, a development which has captured the attention of locals, but which has not yet registered on the radar screens of the Western press.

Read The Full Article:
http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/4449

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Nader planning to run ... as a Democrat

post from Daily Kos on 25 September 2007 02:57:03 PM. © Daily Kos

Political Wire:

The "Ralph Nader Democratic Caucus Campaign Draft Committee" is seeking campaign workers in Iowa and New Hampshire, according to advertisements placed on Craigslist.

If he wants to run as a Democrat, then I welcome him with open arms! Maybe he can join a debate and explain how he feels about having his gigantic ego cost us an Al Gore presidency and paving the ground for every Republican disaster and excess the past seven years.

But really, if his ego must be satiated with another quixotic presidential run, better he do it as a Democrat than as a spoiler in the general.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/161174284/0020

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Extremely Generous

post from Eschaton on 25 September 2007 02:48:00 PM. © Eschaton

I just learned on NPR that "until recently" GM employees had health care benefits which were "extremely generous" because... get this... you could include your wife and children essentially for free.

Ah, those crazy times decades ago when salaried employees got health care for their families and apparently America was a much wealthier nation.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/bRuz/~3/161192560/2007_09_23_archive.html

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Countdowns Worst Person In The World: Big Fat
Fraud Rush Limbaugh

post from Crooks and Liars on 25 September 2007 02:47:47 PM. © Crooks and Liars

Disgraced Republican Senator David Vitter gets the bronze on the Worst Person In The World segment on Monday night’s Countdown. BillO steps down from his usual perch to take the silver and comedian Rush Limbaugh gets the gold for his faux outrage over Move On’s Petraeus ad after using the phrase himself going [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/09/25/countdowns-worst-person-in-the-world-big
-fat-fraud-rush-limbaugh/

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MD-04: Support Donna Edwards over lying Wynn

post from Daily Kos on 25 September 2007 02:35:27 PM. © Daily Kos

It's been a tough couple of weeks to be a reform Democrat. With the double-whammy of bad Democrats and too many Republicans have shown, it's clear that getting anything substantive done in Congress is next-to-impossible.

That's why it's important in the coming cycles to look beyond just targeting Republicans, to sending a message to bad Democrats. The benefits are obvious -- you either defeat the bad incumbent, you scare that person into better representing his or her district (like Ellen Tauscher and Jane Harman), or, worst case, they give you the finger and you lather, rinse, and repeat (like Joe Lieberman and Henry Cuellar).

Thus far, this cycle, we have two primary challenges in our Blue Majority stable -- Mark Pera in IL-03 and the incredible Donna Edwards in MD-04, who today got the Democracy for America endorsement.

Earlier today the political organization founded by Howard Dean, Democracy for America, endorsed Donna Edwards for Maryland’s 4th Congressional district.

Donna Edwards ran against Rep. Al Wynn in the 2006 Democratic Primary, where she came within 3,000 votes of unseating the conservative Democrat. This year is shaping up to be just as contentious for the two candidates. With Democracy for America getting involved in the race, it appears that this year’s Primary is garnering national attention.

“This is not the first time the organization has involved itself in Democratic Primary contests. Democracy for America is supporting the more consistently progressive candidate in this election,” said Jim Dean, brother of Howard Dean, and currently the Chair of Democracy for America.

“Donna Edwards is a true progressive. Al Wynn has been trying to turn around his pro-war position ever since his near-loss in 2006. But Democracy for America members are not looking for Donna Edwards ‘lite’; they support the real Donna Edwards,” Dean said.

Donna Edwards enjoys the enthusiastic support of activists from Democracy for Maryland and received the endorsement of the local group Democracy for Montgomery County. Both are local groups modeled after the national organization. Edwards’ strong support among local grassroots activists along with her consistent progressive stance on issues such as the Iraq War attracted the attention of the national DFA organization.

Meanwhile, while Donna is getting endorsements, Al Wynn is trying to rewrite his terrible record as Stoller just caught him doing:

Aside from beating up Donna Edwards volunteers, spreading nasty rumors, and playing around with voting machines, one of Al Wynn's consistent models of operating last cycle was to simply lie about endorsements and rely on the low information environment by the local press. I think it's happening again. There was a story in Roll call about Al Wynn complaining that the League of Conservation voters is endorsing his opponent, Donna Edwards. The accusation is that Donna was involved in the foundation world, and LCV was a grantee of the foundation she ran. But the real story seems hidden in plain sight. Here's Wynn:
"As you know, in this Congress I was elected Chair of the Environment and Hazardous Materials Subcommittee, and based on the 96 rating I received from the League of Conservation Voters during the prior Congress and my strong record on environmental matters, I feel that I deserve to receive an endorsement from the League," he wrote.
I checked out Progressive Punch, and there are a whole lot of bad votes on the environment from Wynn, the most prominent one being the Bush Energy Bill. Obviously he's taken money from the nuclear industry and everyone else in the energy world. So then I checked out the LCV scorecard from 2006 [PDF], and Wynn scored a 77. Am I missing something? Or did Wynn just out and out lie about his score to Roll Call reporter John McArdle?

Stoller emailed the LCV for confirmation, and got this in return:

Matt, Rep. Wynn continues to get the facts wrong. He has an 85 lifetime, 77 in the 109th Congress which includes support for the 2005 energy bill, one of the most anti-environmental pieces of legislation to pass the House in the last 20 years and a 92 in 2006, none of which are 96 as you correctly point out. More to the point, in all his years in Congress he as not been an environmental leader, while Donna has been a citizen leader on the environment for the past 30 plus years.

I guess you can't teach an old dog new tricks, like "being an able representative for your district" and "not lying about your record". This is the reason that Al Wynn almost lost in 2006 despite a short 3-4 month campaign by Edwards, and it's why she's still gathering steam a year later.

-----------

This week is the end of the quarter, thus we're running the obligatory fundraiser. We're aiming for 500 contributions by the end of the week. We started the effort yesterday at 1,832. We're at 1,969, so we're looking for 363 more.

On the web:
Donna Edwards for Congress
Blue Majority ActBlue Page

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/161163203/171

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White House prepares ‘phonetic guide’
for Bush.

As President Bush spoke to the United Nation’s General Assembly this morning, “a marked-up draft of the president’s speech popped up on the U.N.’s website” that included “phonetic spellings of some names and countries, and the cellphone numbers for Bush speechwriters.” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino got annoyed when a reporter asked “if the president has trouble pronouncing some country’s names,” calling it an “offensive question” before saying, “it was taken down and there’s nothing more to say about it.” Blake Hounshell has some of the phonetic guides over at Foreign Policy:

• Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan]
• Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]
• Harare [hah-RAR-ray]
• Mugabe [moo-GAH-bee]
• Sarkozy [sar-KO-zee]
• Caracas [kah-RAH-kus]

Read The Full Article:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/25/white-house-prepares-phonetic-guide-for-bush/

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Instahoglets September 25th, 2007

By the way, anyone using these links who then leaves comments at the respective blogs, please mention how you got there (via Newshoggers).
And for anyone who comes to Newhoggers and comments, let us know how you get here, too.

WhirledView--wades through Blackwater?s State Dept. briefings and finds some interesting items floating in the murk.

Total Information Awareness?women?s non-lib in Iraq (and don?t forget to click through to Inside Iraq by Sahar.)

Osterely Times?kel dissects Ahmadinejad?s performance like it was an Alien face-hugger and separates the intellectually interesting bits from the icky stuff.

The Glittering Eye--has a link to a sampler of ?best Afghani and Iraqi blogs.?

The Galloping Beaver?has found an H.L.Mencken quote that will make you coffee-spit. Save it as a family heirloom.

Kiko?s House?Shaun finds some weird stuff at the bottom of the Garden State and it?s quite encouraging (and just plain interesting).

Read The Full Article:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/09/instahoglets-september-25th-2007.html