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NBC's Brian Williams says the lasting legacy of Hurricane Katrina for journalists may be the end of an unusual four-year period of deference to people in power. There were so many angry, even incredulous, questions put to Bush administration officials about the response to Katrina that the Salon Web site compiled a "Reporters Gone Wild" video clip. Tim Russert, Anderson Cooper, Ted Koppel and Shepard Smith were among the stars. The mute button seemingly in place since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has been turned off. "By dint of the fact that our country was hit we've offered a preponderance...

A Tampa Tribune investigation has found previous ethical lapses in the work of Brad Smith, a former Tampa Tribune reporter who fabricated parts of a story in April.

‘We cannot allow it to be said by history that the difference between those who lived and those who died in the great storm and flood of 2005 was nothing more than poverty, age or skin color.” - Representative Elijah Cummings It’s painfully difficult for me to wrap my mind around images of Americans lying dead by the score, their corpses being eaten by rats and dogs. As a brave new America trudges forward into the 21 st Century armed with a new set of national priorities, there’s something acutely unnatural about this disaster. First of all, it didn’t have...

School Buses Claim: Photograph shows school buses caught in a flooded New Orleans parking lot. Status: True.

UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 7 - A week before world leaders gather here to set a course for combating global poverty, a United Nations report released on Wednesday names the United States and Japan as among "the least generous donors" and says American and European trade policies are hypocritical and contribute to impoverishing African farmers. The report also highlights shortcomings in developing countries. It notes that India's and China's progress in reducing the easily preventable deaths of children has slowed even as their economic growth has surged. India has 2.5 million deaths of children a year, while China is second, with...

September 2, 2005 -- Who is jamming communications in New Orleans? Ham radio operators are reporting that communications in and around New Orleans are being jammed. In addition, perplexed ham radio operators who were enlisted by the Federal government in 911 are not being used for hurricane Katrina Federal relief efforts. There is some misinformation circulating on the web that the jamming is the result of solar flares. Ham radio operators report that the flares are not the source of the communications jamming. If anyone at the National Security Agency is aware of the source of the jamming, from direction...

HURRICANE Katrina was a horrific natural disaster. To America's Angry Left it was yet another occasion to score political points against President George W. Bush. In the same spirit of opportunism that animated looters who stole television sets, Bush's political foes frantically sought to blame the devastation on him. A measure of the anti-Bush Left's derangement is that it blames him for bad weather. "Complacency will no longer suffice, especially if experts are right in warning that global warming may increase the intensity of future hurricanes," The New York Times editorialised on Thursday. "But since this administration won't acknowledge that...

Rush transcript of NPR's Neil Conan, speaking by phone with Cindy Sheehan: NC: Very nice of you to be with us today. CS: [cheerfully] Oh, thank youuu! NC: I know that you were, uh, out in California last week because your mother was ill. How’s she doing? CS: Um, she’s doing better. They’re trying to keep her from having another stroke. And if she doesn’t have another stroke, she should be able to recover. NC: That’s good news. Now, tell us, a little bit about your son, Casey. CS: My son Casey was an amazing human being. He was gentle,...

New Democrat Talking PointsNote: here's the inside joke regarding "Kennings"... Source The Apology http://www.dailyegyptian.com/fall05/index.html It was a heart-rending story--a blonde waif, her mother dead, entrusted to the care of a family friend while her father fought with the 101st Airborne in Iraq. The youngster was intelligent, friendly and engaging, and developed close bonds with many of the newsroom staff. Then a week ago came the news that her father had been killed in Iraq. Every war casualty leaves a trail of pain, but the story of a 10-year-old girl losing her only parent to the war is particularly poignant, and...

CHARLOTTE, North Carolina, August 26, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new study has revealed that unborn babies cry within the womb. Ultrasound videos taken of infants within the womb revealed 28-week-old babies crying in response to a noise stimulus. Scientists played a 90-decibel noise to the unborn child, roughly the equivalent of a tummy rumbling, and recorded the effect the noise had via ultrasound. “It was strikingly like an infant crying,” said New Zealand pediatrician Ed Mitchell, who contributed to the US study, according to New Zealand's The Age. “Even the bottom lip quivers.” Up until now, it was known that...

"Teach your interns the role of journalists is to question power, not propagate it." That advice arrived recently from retired New York Times columnist Tom Wicker. While Mr. Wicker's words are important for my journalism students, they're a timely reminder for the Baby Boom leaders of America's newsrooms — who should have learned more than they did in the '60s, when the best and the brightest gave us Vietnam. The most influential interpreters of our public affairs are accepting, rather than expanding, a noose-tight frame the Washington political culture is enforcing to limit permissible discourse on the war in Iraq....

NEW YORK - There is nothing wrong with an unpopular opinion. Nor is there anything wrong with a subversive one, nor a crazy one. This country was founded on opinions that were deemed by the powers-that-were to be unpopular, subversive, and crazy. Dissent - even when that dissent strays from logic or humanity - is our life’s blood. But if you have one of those opinions, and you express it in public, honesty and self-respect require you to own up to it. Unless you’re Rush Limbaugh.

George W. Bush's overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American Research Group. Among all Americans, 36% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 58% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 33% approve and 62% disapprove. Among Americans registered to vote, 38% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 56% disapprove, and...

August 21, 2005 The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan By FRANK RICH CINDY SHEEHAN couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president: Aug. 6 was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing. On this Aug. 6 the president was no less determined to shrug off bad news. Though 14 marine reservists had been killed days earlier by a roadside bomb in Haditha, his national radio address that morning...

Ex-President Bill Clinton said Monday that he had to assure world leaders that there was nothing seriously wrong with America after the Congress impeached him in 1998. "During that time, a lot of world leaders would ask, 'What is going on? Is this serious?'" he told New York magazine. "I kept assuring them that nothing bad had happened to America," he recalled, "but that we periodically went through spasms." Interviewed while traveling in Africa, the ex-president claimed, "Africans saw [my impeachment] for exactly what it was: an abuse of power." "They got it here," he insisted. The magazine noted that...

The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford (Day 10); Misses and Miracles -- a message from Cindy Sheehan, Crawford, TX We still have so many great things happening at Camp Casey. In spite of all the smears and lies, people are still coming. The most amazing thing today was learning that Camp Caseys are opening and spreading all over the country. They have been set up in Boston, Portland, Seattle, and elsewhere. If you can't make it to Camp Casey, set up your own version. Camp Caseys are amazing places full of love and hope. I am so gratified that the movement...

The decision by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America to pull an incendiary ad attacking President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court has produced a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party and a return to a nagging question: Has the opposition lost its nerve? ....some choice pieces: "Republicans don't mind running an ad that's entirely false, but Democrats have never learned, and I'm not sure many of them want to learn, how to play that kind of politics," said Robert Shrum, an adviser to several Democratic presidential campaigns. NARAL had to pull the ad, he said, because...

<p>The photo Cindy Sheehan did not want the world to see: President Bush plants a consoling kiss on the cheek of grieving antiwar protester Cindy Sheehan last year at Fort Lewis, Washington.</p> <p>Mrs. Sheehan is staging a protest vigil in Crawford, Texas demanding a second meeting with President Bush to demand an explanation for why her son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, was killed in Iraq a year ago April.</p>

Group Authoring Fatwa Has Links to Bin Laden Ally By Sherrie Gossett July 29, 2005 (CNSNews.com) - Thursday's religious edict condemning terrorism was authored and issued by the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Muslim jurists who interpret Islamic law. The edict was signed by 18 council scholars. The Fiqh Council of North America traces its origins to the early 1960s and the Religious Affairs Committee of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) of the United States and Canada, according to the council's website. This Religious Affairs Committee evolved into the Fiqh Committee of the Islamic Society of North...

In a July 17 story, Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen of the Washington Post had to admit, in recapping White House statements about the Valerie Plame case, that White House spokesman Scott McClellan was usually careful to disavow involvement "in any illegal leak, though his public statements clearly left an impression of a White House aloof to the affair." This is the key to understanding White House statements about the case and the reported White House role. If you read the transcripts of McClellan's briefings, it is clear that McClellan had denied a White House role in a criminal disclosure...