NY Times and Obama: Honeymoon is Over

Well, here's an odd twist I hadn't expected. The NY Times dissed the Obama campaign on the front page of the print edition for two days in a row. On Monday, June 23, it was about corn-based ethanol and Obama's deference to ethanol promoters. The next day, there was a front-pager about Obama's handlers trying to discourage campaign help from American Muslims, saying "we have a very tightly wrapped message." Yeah, I just bet they do.

This is not a sudden bashing session paid for by Hillary or motivated out of concern that coverage in the past had been weighted to open Obama worship. It's simply a recognition by the Times that Obama is a centrist, manufactured product who has some serious shortcomings. He's still a strong candidate. But Obamaniacs have got to stop putting the guy on a pedestal.

Mainstream Media: Of Course We're Whores. So What?

Like Glenn Greenwald, I was happy to see The New York Times give us a classic front-page expose in the April 20 Sunday edition, on the Pentagon stage-managing corporate and retired "military analysts" appearing on national TV networks to make precisely the points the Pentagon wanted to make. Talk about your Mighty Wurlitzer! And like Glenn Greenwald, I was waiting for some kind of reaction from CBS, Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN ... surely they couldn't sit still and pretend this story never appeared? Well, yes they could.

Thankfully, Glenn Greenwald made his frustrations known in Salon. The networks know that David Barstow was telling the straight story in his NY Times article about the depths to which they'd been used, and they didn't care to be reminded of it. As Greenwald said, news organizations never disclose when outsiders or their own cohorts accuse them of being corrupt in the newsgathering process, so we shouldn't be surprised. Nor should we be surprised about the Pentagon analyst scam. With budgets slashed in the newsroom, most TV news organizations are so used to the concept of "embedded war reporting" that they'd love to get pre-made video clips from the Pentagon and broadcast them as their own. Good old Eric Alterman of The Nation magazine has regularly been claiming that the mainstream media has sunk to such depths, its members are beneath contempt. Glenn Greenwald provided specific examples of this treachery, by showing how TV networks pretend David Barstow and The Times do not exist. Here's one instance where the steep decline of journalism should not bother anyone, as TV network news would be better off not being in existence.

But Where is Intruder?

Philip Taubman did an impressive and gargantuan front-page piece (the size rarely seen in print any more) on the troubled National Reconnaissance Office in the Nov. 11 Sunday New York Times. The bulk of the piece was on the multi-billion-dollar optical spy satellite, Future Imagery Architecture, its cancellation, and Boeing's failures. Taubman tangentially mentioned NRO's problems with Misty (a stealth signals-intelligence satellite) and SBIRS (Space-Based Infrared Surveillance) as well. But there was a big gaping hole where Intruder and IOSA (Integrated Overhead SIGINT Architecture) should be. This is all the more unusual since Boeing was the prime contractor on IOSA and Intruder, as well.
NRO's biggest federal partner in space is the National Security Agency, and the two collaborate on satellites that listen in to communications from space, using unfurlable antennas as big as three football fields. Yet it seems that every time the major media talk about spy satellites and NRO's problems, the subject of signals intelligence remains off limits. C'mon, you guys, of course it's sensitive, but IOSA/Intruder was as big a boondoggle as FIA! Is anyone (besides NSA) listening?

FISA: Trust but Verify

I had the distinct honor this past week of participating in a Colorado ACLU Fall Forum panel on electronic surveillance and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The panel featured such luninaries as Jean Dubofsky, the first woman justice on the Colorado Supreme Court (pictured), talking about the Denver Police Intelligence files; Bill Hochman, Colorado College history professor and FISA legislation expert; and Pat Huhn, Pikes Peak Community College English professor who keeps tabs on data mining.

One thing we all agreed on is that civil libertarians could reach reasonable compromises with the National Security Agency as to how domestically-located switches and routers could be used for monitoring legitimate terror networks -- provided a revamped version of the Protect America Act provided specificity. That same specificity should be applied to telecom carriers seeking indemnity from helping government agencies without obtaining warrants -- in fact, Sen. Patrick Leahy said this week he'd look at indemnity, provided no blank checks were offered. The people fighting such explicit and formal legislation are not necessarily the intelligence agencies. Instead, there is a clear majority among Republicans in Congress, a significant minority among Democrats, and far too many media pundits, who do not want the topic of signals intelligence discussed under any venue. They want us to simply trust leaders like Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell, former head of NSA. Hats off to Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, who blasted the entire editorial-page staff of The Washington Post, as well as Joe Klein from Time, for saying that we should simply amend FISA in open-ended ways and hope our leaders are honest. As Greenwald said, this kind of thinking is dangerous for democracy. As my old pal Ronald Reagan said about Soviet arms-control treaties, "Trust, but verify."

NEWS FLASH: In the October 20 edition of The New York Times, the editors gave us a long and very hard-hitting editorial blasting the Oct. 18 Senate compromise on FISA. The editorial was titled "With Democrats Like These..." and concluded by saying that the only thing worse than having a single party rule Washington prior to late 2006, was having the Democrats win both houses and still have a single party ruling Washington. You can say that again!

Gin and Chris Hitchens: Trotsky to George Bush to Harry Potter

Gin can make you do strange things, as elaborated in Stephen Merritt's wonderful song, 'Love is like a bottle of gin.' (69 Love Songs, Magnetic Fields). Ask Christopher Hitchens. He used to be the drunkard's favorite Trotskyist. In 2002, he suddenly decided he loved George Bush and neoconservatism, and became a leading spokeswhore for the Iraq invasion, still imbibing just as freely. Neocons did not return the favor, since his latest book says mean things about God. Anyway, the New York Times in its infinite wisdom (or maybe irony) chose Hitchens to review the last Harry Potter book, and the results are on the cover of the Aug. 12 New York Times Book Review.

Stay away from that Tanqueray 'n' Tonic, it'll kill ya.