Kim Pearson's blog

US Copyright Office Debuts Online Registration

2008-07-01T20:25:55-05:00

If you live in the United States, protecting your creative output just became easier. Today, the US Copyright Office unveiled a new online system, eCO, for registering copyrights. Users can fill out a registration application, pay the registration fee, and upload copies of the work being registered. A Powerpoint tutorial, tip sheet (.pdf) and list of frequently asked questions are available to help newcomers through the process.

Attorney Carolyn Wright, whose practice serves photographers, ticks off the benefits of the new system over the old paper and snail mail process. They include a reduced processing fee ($35 vs. $45) and faster processing time.

BeSpacific posted about the technology that makes the new system possible:

Each Form CO is imprinted with 2-D barcodes that are scanned to
automatically transfer the information contained in the form into an
eCO service request record.

Scrivener's Error offers a few caveats, including the fact that eCO does not support the Safari browser and requires some adjustments to work with Firefox 2.0. More details on the system's browser requirements are available on the eCO FAQ page.

Of course, this streamlined registration system doesn't eliminate the most contentious issues regarding copyright, such as the difficulties creative professionals can run into when their work has been stolen, or appropriated by a powerful entity such as a corporation. On the latter point, Molly Klein offers a report on a recent panel discussion hosted at the Ann Arbor [Michigan] District Library on Digital Culture and Internet Rights. The panelists included music legend Gilberto Gil, who talked about the fact that he was forced to cede rights to his record label at the start of his recording career more than 50 years ago. Gil fought a lengthy battle to regain his publishing rights, and has since released his music under a Creative Commons license.

Louisiana's New Science Education Law Sparks New Debate Over Intelligent Design

2008-06-30T00:08:48-05:00

Last week, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal signed a bill (.pdf) that will alllow science teachers to introduce "supplemental materials" on contentious subjects such as evolution and global warming. While supporters cheer the new law as a victory fo academic freedom, critics see it as a pretext for allowing teachers to bring their religious beliefs into classrooms. And, given the rumors that Jindal is under consideration as a running mate for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, folks way beyond the Bayou are paying attention.

The Discovery Institute, a non-profit organization that advances broad claims about the flawed legacy of Charles Darwin and his intellectual heirs, argues that the new law " ensur[es] the state’s teachers their right to teach the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution." While the bill cleared the state's legislature with little opposition, calls for a veto came from advocates for science education including the Governor's former college genetics professor.

The law's wording, which stipulates that the law is not to be construed as supporting or rejecting any religious doctrine. Observers say the wording is intended to ensure that this new law will avoid the fate suffered by an earlier Louisiana statute requiring the teaching of the theory of intelligent design alongside the theory of evolution. The US Supreme Court declared that statute unconstitutional in 1987, in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard. In 2005, a Federal judge declared that the teaching of intelligent design violated the constitutional separation between church and state.

The law's passage set off alarm bells across the blogosphere. A post on the law from Simon and Isabelle at Theory of Knowledge declared the law's passage was a new outbreak of anti-evolution "disease." American Nonsense argues that the new law is not only a dishonest attempt to enshrine creationism in the science curriculum it is an assault on academic excellence.

Meanwhile, Reasonable in Kansas contends that Jindal is really catering to his socially conservative political based, noting that he also endorsed legistlation authorizing chemical castration for child rapists.

Some poltical observers say that if Jindal really does have national political ambitions, the strong social conservatism reflected in this and other positions he has taken could make it difficult to expand his political base. Writing for Beliefnet's Crunchy Con blog, Erin wonders:

Supposing that the McCain campaign really was considering Jindal for the
vice presidency, would this help or hurt Jindal's chances?

What do you think?

What Can the World Do About Zimbabwe?

2008-06-24T23:03:18-05:00

This week, Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai should be facing off in a runoff ballot intended to determine who will be that country's president for the next five years. Instead, because of widespread violence against his supporters, Tsvangirai is holed up in the Dutch embassy, asking the United Nations and other international bodies to send armed peacekeepers to force a new election.

The Mugabe government has announced that it will hold the election anyway. The United Nations has issued a statement condemning the violence. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has echoed the need for international action, saying this week that the government of Zimbabwe "cannot be considered legitimate" in the absence of real run-off. But what really can and should be done to stop Zimbabwe's escalating political, social and economic crises?

Those crises have been in the making for a long time, to be sure. In a 2006 interview with me for the Online Journalism Review, constitutional law professor Adrien Wing describe the tragic results of Mugabe's decision to stay in power since leading the nation to independence in 1980:

I was involved in that movement to help get Zimbabwe independence
when it was Rhodesia, and we were all very hopeful that Robert Mugabe,
the head of one of the movements, ZANU was going to be a great leader,
a great socialist. Well, he's been in power since 1980, right? So he's
basically a president for life and he's turned into a very repressive
person, who doesn't believe in freedom of speech, who imprisons people
all the time, terrorizes people, throws journalists in jail, believes
homosexuality is a sin, et cetera, and arrests people who exhibit any
talk about homosexuality. And so there you have a kind of classic
example of someone who started out, what many people thought he would
be good, thought he would be in favor of human rights and freedom of
speech, especially since he had been victimized by the British, by the
white Rhodesians in the liberation struggle.

On the other hand,
Nelson Mandela, who spent all those years in jail, he became the first
president of a democratic South Africa and he only stayed in one term,
one five year term, and he was a very conciliatory individual, where he
did not retaliate militarily against those who had been in favor of
Apartheid. And so that whole culture, legal culture we call it, that
developed in South Africa under his leadership was totally different
from the legal culture that developed in Zimbabwe under 30 years almost
of dictatorship by Robert Mugabe.

Under Mugabe's regime, inflation has escalated beyond calculation, institutions are crumbling, and the notion of the rule of law has taken on a sinister ring as military authorities are generally held to be responsible for the widespread murder and torture of opposition supporters. The Association of Concerned African Scholars argues that other African nations have a duty to act:

Will there be any interventions from South Africa, from SADC, from
the African Union, the United Nations, or any combination of these? By
doing nothing, the regional powers are only prolonging the suffering of
the Zimbabwean people and exposing the brave opposition politicians and
their activists to a one-sided war, a David and Goliath struggle....

Writing in the Washington Post, Gayle Smith highlights a strategy that would have African nations applying diplomatic pressure and a peacekeeping force to push Mugabe to resign, combined with financial incentives to aid the country's economic recovery.

Some bloggers feel strongly that the US should not lead the international response to the crisis. However, Dr. Dawg says that a post-Mugabe government will fail unless Western governments finally make good on unfulfilled promises to support land reform. BannedinDC is sympathetic, but insists that the crisis is not America's problem.

Meanwhile, Olivia reports that Mugabe's latest commercial, which paints Tsvangirai as a puppet of the US and Britain, is available on YouTube. A leading member of Tsvangirai's party, Movement for Democratic Change, has his own YouTube channel.

Writing from Uganda, BlogHer community member KaiteyKat sees little cause for optimism:

It is all too easy to revert to cynicism here. Especially when it comes to Mugabe and Zimbabwe, who this week said, "only God" could remove him from office.

Obama compromise on FISA worries some supporters

2008-06-22T22:40:01-05:00

Last week, the US House of Representatives passed a "compromise" version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that gives the President additional authority to conduct surveillance on American citizens while providing immunity to telecommunications companies that have cooperated with previous Bush administration warrantless surveillance efforts. The bill goes to the Senate for a vote this week. Sen. Barack Obama shocked some of his supporters Friday by announcing his intention to vote for it, although he has promised to try to kill the telecom immunity provision.

FISA, which was originally enacted in 1978, provides special confidential courts that law enforcement officials can use to get warrants to conduct surveillance related to national security matters. After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration erected a warrantless surveillance program as part of its Global War on Terrror. When the New York Times exposed the program in 2005, the Bush administration argued that the existing law impeded law enforcement officials' efforts to combat terrorism. After a federal judge ruled the Administration's program unconstitutional, Congress passed a new version of the FISA law that made the Administration's program legal. The "compromise" legislation now before the Senate would extend the government's surveillance powers after the current law expires in August.

Blogger Marcy Wheeler said that Obama's statement was a reponse to an open letter she wrote to to the presumptive Democratic nominee detailing the ways in which the proposed law is both unnecessary and unconstitutional:

The "political branches" are attempting to limit court review of wiretaps on Americans to a procedural review in three ways:

The Court can only certify that the current Attorney General
has claimed the warrantless wiretap program was legal; it cannot assess
the representations to the telecoms, nor review the legality of the
underlying program.

The Court can only approve the procedures planned in a given
wiretap program, it cannot review whether the actual program is legal.

The Court can only review proposed minimization procedures intended
to protect US persons' data; it cannot review whether the
Administration is actually following its own minimization procedures.

Wheeler found Obama's response that he would support the new bill unsatisfying to say the least.

Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings is more concerned that readers understand why FISA is so important:

If the FISA "compromise" passes, it will mean that a President just needs to authorize some program, and say that he thinks it is legal, and telecoms cannot be sued for going along with it, even if it violates the law.
Given a President who claims to believe, as Bush does, that whatever he
wants to do is legal so long as it is an exercise of his War Powers,
this is a recipe for disaster.

Digby is also sounding the alarm :

The FISA controversy is just one more example of this assault on the
constitution.

Amanda Simon at the ACLU blog dismisses the propsed law in no uncertain terms:

So, House Majority Leader
Steny Hoyer
announced his precious FISA
deal today and I’m sure it
will not come as great
shock to this general audience that we at the ACLU think it’s
crap. And by “crap” I mean unconstitutional.

The editors of the New York Times were hoping that Sen. Obama would reject the bill, just at he had voted down an earlier version of the law, the Protect America Act:

The bill is not a compromise. The final details are being worked out,
but all indications are that many of its provisions are both
unnecessary and a threat to the Bill of Rights.

Village Voice columnist Nat Hentoff recently opined that the next President of the US needs to make the protection of America's civil liberties a high priority in order to save our democracy:

The next president, to restore the Constitution and shred the Bush
legacy of shadow law—and, in the process, repair our deeply scarred
reputation in the world—must begin to root out the inner machinery of
Bush's parallel government.

Outrage and a call to conscience in the wake of R. Kelly's acquittal

2008-06-17T17:53:16-05:00

I'll be honest; I've been looking at singer R. Kelly cross-eyed for a long time, as much as I like such songs as "Step in the Name of Love" and I believe I Can Fly." I was always put off by his relationship with the late singer Aaliyah, with whom he had a bogus "marriage" in 1994, when she was 15. So I was not among those who cheered last Friday's verdict clearing Kelly of child pornography charges related to a videotape that allegedly showed Kelly having sex with a 13-year-old girl. According to news reports, some jurors said that they did not buy the Kelly defense team argument that he was not the man in the tape, but they could not be certain whether the female in the tape was the 13-year-old in question. The tape is about a decade old, and the young woman who was Kelly's alleged sex partner did not testify.

For bloggers and one very irate group of black men, the fact that Kelly's career has been barely affected by the trial and related controversy reflects a disregard for the lives of black girls and women. For example, here's Arlene Jones:

We seem to be in some sort of trance when we can justify a grown man
not only having sex with a child but recording it as well. It also says
a lot about all those who went out of their way to buy a copy of the
tape or scoured the internet to see it there.

Brittany Jackson grew up on Kelly's music, and believes she has seen its malign influence first hand:

[W]hen we’d walk down school hallways, we’d see boys
grabbing girls’ butts or saying something sexual. I think a lot of the
blame goes back to Kelly because he was particularly good at mixing the
sacred with the profane.

Miss Yaminah says that the sexual abuse of teenaged girls is a much bigger problem than we like to admit:

As much as we hate to admit it, R. Kelly’s case is more common than it
is an anomaly. I think the case is shocking to people because there is
actual evidence, a graphic depiction, of how a young woman is stripped
of her innocence. But it doesn’t start with the act. It starts in the
mind. The sacred feminine is not respected in our community because it
is not understood, and unfortunately, young girls being abused and
exploited is one of the consequences.

There is a group of black men who are inclined to agree. Contributors to the book, Be A Father to Your Child (Soft Skull Press, 2008), they have launched an online petition that they are asking black males to sign as a gesture of commitment to protecting girls and women from violence and exploitation. It is reproduced below with the permission of one of its authors, Spelman College History professor William Jelani Cobb.

Statement of Black Men Against the Exploitation of Black Women

Six years have gone by since we first heard the allegations
that R. Kelly had filmed himself having sex with an underage girl.
During that time we have seen the videotape being hawked on street
corners in Black communities, as if the dehumanization of one of our
own was not at stake. We have seen entertainers rally around him and
watched his career reach new heights despite the grave possibility that
he had molested and urinated on a 13-year old girl. We saw African
Americans purchase millions of his records despite the long history of
such charges swirling around the singer. Worst of all, we have
witnessed the sad vision of Black people cheering his acquittal with a
fervor usually reserved for community heroes and shaken our heads at
the stunning lack of outrage over the verdict in the broader Black
community.

Over these years, justice has been delayed and it has been denied.
Perhaps a jury can accept R. Kelly's absurd defense and find
"reasonable doubt" despite the fact that the film was shot in his home
and featured a man who was identical to him. Perhaps they doubted that
the young woman in the courtroom was, in fact, the same person featured
in the ten year old video. But there is no doubt about this: some young
Black woman was filmed being degraded and exploited by a much older
Black man, some daughter of our community was left unprotected, and
somewhere another Black woman is being molested, abused or raped and
our callous handling of this case will make it that much more difficult
for her to come forward and be believed. And each of us is responsible
for it.

We have proudly seen the community take to the streets in defense
of Black men who have been the victims of police violence or racist
attacks, but that righteous outrage only highlights the silence
surrounding this verdict.

We believe that our judgment has been clouded by celebrity-worship;
we believe that we are a community in crisis and that our addiction to
sexism has reached such an extreme that many of us cannot even
recognize child molestation when we see it.
We recognize the absolute necessity for Black men to speak in a single,
unified voice and state something that should be absolutely obvious:
that the women of our community are full human beings, that we cannot
and will not tolerate the poisonous hatred of women that has already
damaged our families, relationships and culture.

We believe that our daughters are precious and they deserve our
protection. We believe that Black men must take responsibility for our
contributions to this terrible state of affairs and make an effort to
change our lives and our communities.

This is about more than R. Kelly's claims to innocence. It is about our survival as a community.
Until we believe that our daughters, sisters, mothers, wives and
friends are worthy of justice, until we believe that rape, domestic
violence and the casual sexism that permeates our culture are
absolutely unacceptable, until we recognize that the first priority of
any community is the protection of its young, we will remain in this
tragic dead-end.

We ask that you:

o Sign your name if you are a Black male who supports this statement:

http://www.petitiononline.com/rkelly/petition.html

o Forward this statement to your entire network and ask other Black males to sign as well

o
Make a personal pledge to never support R. Kelly again in any form or
fashion, unless he publicly apologizes for his behavior and gets help
for his long-standing sexual conduct, in his private life and in his
music

o Make a commitment in your own life to never to hit, beat,
molest, rape, or exploit Black females in any way and, if you have,
to take ownership for your behavior, seek emotional and spiritual help,
and, over time, become a voice against all forms of Black female
exploitation

o Challenge other Black males, no matter their age, class or
educational background, or status in life, if they engage in behavior
and language that is exploitative and or disrespectful to Black females
in any way. If you say nothing, you become just as guilty.

o Learn to listen to the voices, concerns, needs, criticisms,
and challenges of Black females, because they are our equals, and
because in listening we will learn a new and different kind of Black
manhood.

We support the work of scholars, activists and organizations
that are helping to redefine Black manhood in healthy ways. Additional
resources are listed below.

Books:
Who's Gonna Take the Weight, Kevin Powell

New Black Man, Mark Anthony Neal
Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot, Pearl Cleage
Traps: African American Men on Gender and Sexuality, Rudolph Byrd and Beverly Guy-Sheftall

Films:
I Am A Man: Black Masculinity in America, by Byron Hurt

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, by Byron Hurt
NO! The Rape Documentary, by Aishah Simmons

Organizations
The 2025 Campaign: www.2025bmb.org
Men Stopping Violence: www.menstoppingviolence.org

Bloggers show power and organizational muscle with AP boycott

2008-06-16T12:15:30-05:00

In a stunning demonstration of the power shift between traditional and mainstream press, the Associated Press announced that it will develop new policies for fair use of its content by non-members after bloggers responded to a takedown notice to one blogger with a boycott that spread like wildfire over the weekend.

Here's how it happened. On June 10, AP sent a takedown request to Rogers Cadenhead, editor of the Drudge Retort alleging that Cadenhead's links to seven AP stories constituted copyright infringement. Cadenhead explains:

An AP attorney filed six Digital Millenium Copyright Act takedown requests this week demanding the removal of blog entries and another for a user comment.

The Retort is a community site comparable in function to Digg, Reddit and Mixx. The 8,500 users of the site contribute blog entries of their own authorship and links to interesting news articles on the web, which appear immediately on the site. None of the six entries challenged by AP, which include two that I posted myself, contains the full text of an AP story or anything close to it. They reproduce short excerpts of the articles -- ranging in length from 33 to 79 words -- and five of the six have a user-created headline.

Liza Sabater at Culturekitchen tells what happened next:

Rogers sent an email to mailing list in which about 150 of the top progressive and liberal in the country. Some of us commented to Rogers' plight with both replies to his email and a blog post. One of the people in the list, Cernig of Newshogger, exasperated wrote back that it was time to boycott them. That prompted Richard Kastelein of Atlantic Free Press to create a website, unAssociated Press, that would be the focus of the boycott along with buttons and banners to spread the news on all our sites.

What's more remarkable is that boycott participants run the gamut from heavily-frequented sites such as Jeff Jarvis' Buzzmachine and Tech Crunch to a host of sites of varied political persuasions and traffic stats.

In today's New York Times, AP execs admitted they had been "heavy-handed" and said they would be meeting with representatives of the Media Bloggers Association to set fair use guidelines for bloggers. The "fair use" doctrine allows the appropriation of small portions of a copyrighted work for such purposes as review and comment. One of the challenges of the current digital age is that definitions of fair use have become increasingly murky and contested. MBA is a non-partisan organization that descibes its mission as "promoting, protecting and educating its members. It has negotiated access for bloggers unaffilated with news organizations to venues such as the federal courts and presidential debates.

But Cernig at NewsHogg says the AP's mea culpa is really just "spin:"

[N]othing has actually changed on the ground - the ridiculous DMCA takedowns for excerpts of 40 to 70 words that began the whole affair are still in force.

Libby at The Impolitic thinks this whole mess has hurt AP more than it hurts bloggers:

Frankly, I think content quality has already improved with people sourcing from the smaller services that write better stories. For myself, I'm going to be avoiding AP from now on, even if they do back off.

One of the ironies of this entire dispute is that AP is a cooperative that pools and shares content by members, in addition to the content it generates for its subscribers. In other words, even though it was created when the telegraph was the high-tech means of news distribution, it functions in ways that are analogous to sites such as Drudge Retort and even group blog sites such as BlogHer. Not only that, but in the 19th century, the AP fought it's own version of the net neutrality battle -- it had to fight Western Union for the right to have its own telegraph wires. Now, as AP sees its business model threatened by the rise of social media, it is flailing to find ways of ensuring its survival.

Culture critics such as Liza Sabater and Henry Jenkins are absolutely right that that the appropriation and recontextualizing essential to today's remix culture have always existed, it's also true that until now, those who provided the means of production of that art have, until now, had the ability to control the commercial use of their intellectual product. It will take a while before we really understand the full implications of this moment, but the dance between the AP and the bloggers who have taken them on could point the way to the future.

Read much news about Iraq lately? That's the problem.

2008-06-10T23:41:03-05:00

Thanks to a faltering US economy and a ground-breaking presidential election, the war in Iraq is no longer the nation's lead story, according to a new article in the most recent American Journalism Review. Considering that the war's $12.5 billion monthly price tag, the fragility of that nation's parliamentary democracy, and the strong differences between Senators McCain and Obama on the conduct of the war, some journalists and bloggers think we ought to be paying much closer attention.

AJR writer Sherry Riccardi described the falloff:

During the first 10 weeks of 2007, Iraq accounted for 23 percent of
the newshole fornetwork TV news. In 2008, it plummeted to 3 percent
during that period. On cable networks it fell from 24 percent to 1
percent, according to a study by the Project for Excellence in
Journalism.

A daily tracking of 65 newspapers by the Associated Press
confirms a dip in page-one play throughout the country. In September
2007, the AP found 457 Iraq-related stories (154 by the AP) on front
pages, many related to a progress report delivered to Congress by Gen.
David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq. Over the succeeding
months, that number fell to as low as 49. A spike in March 2008 was
largely due to a rash of stories keyed to the conflict's fifth
anniversary, according to AP Senior Managing Editor Mike Silverman.

The erosion in press coverage is happening at the same time that Pres. Bush is struggling to negotiate a politically-sensitive security pact with the Iraqi government over the objections of Iran. If approved, the pact would replace the UN mandate that authorized the presence of foreign troops on Iraqi soil. That mandate is due to expire at the end of this year. Taylor Marsh explains:

[Iraqi Prime Minister] Al Maliki is trying to convince Tehran that they should not be
threatened by the U.S. security agreement Bush is trying to force down
Iraq's throat. You know, that same agreement Bush is not going to
Congress with, even though it's tantamount to a treaty.

According to University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, the agreement would allow the United States to establish 58 permanent bases in Iraq, a move that critics say robs Iraq of its sovereignty. Cole also reports that the Sen. Barack Obama has insisted that proposal for dozens of permanent bases in Iraq should be subject to Congressional approval.

Activist Hannah Kurman calls the proposed agreement a "political move" by the Bush administration:

With an U.S.-Iraq security pact, Bush could declare military victory and thus justify the 2003 invasion. Since when was a permanent colonial presence considered a victory?
This SFA lacks an exit strategy! Even after projected troop withdrawals
next month, there will be over 142,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq. The
U.S. is engaged in a proxy war with Iran over who has more influence
over Iraq. And don't forget about Afghanistan.

The dearth of news coverage of Iraq's current situation is consistent with former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's criticism that journalists weren't critical enough at the beginning of the war. PHK at Whirled Views notes that McClellan's book isn't the only evidence:

One of the most scathing insider accounts of
the complicit media of which McClellan wrote comes from investigative
reporter Jeff Cohen who worked as a senior producer of Phil Donahue’s
MSNBC prime time show that MSNBC cancelled just three weeks before the
Iraq invasion even though, Cohen tells us, it was the network’s most
popular program at the time. Cohen, founder of the FAIR, the media
organization devoted to fairness and accuracy in reporting, now teaches
journalism at Ithaca College. Here are just a few of his observations:

“Trust me: too much skepticism over war claims was a punishable
offense. I and all other Donahue producers were repeatedly ordered by
top management to book panels that favored the pro-invasion side.

I watched a fellow producer get chewed out for booking a 50-50 show.

At MSNBC, I heard Scott Ritter smeared – on air and off – as a
paid mouthpiece of Saddam Hussein. After we had war skeptic and former
US Attorney Ramsey Clark on the show, we learned he was on some sort of
network blacklist.”

Why is it that Cohen’s far lengthier article – from which this snippet came - appeared only in Robert Parry’s Consortium News, not front and center Op Ed in The New York Times or The Washington Post?

Mc Clellan charged that the US waged an unnecessary war partially because the news media failed to challenge the government on its justifications for going to war. The failure to cover Iraq now may prove to have equally serious consequences in the near future.

Retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor Turns to Videogames to promote civic education

2008-06-08T22:45:18-05:00

Retired Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor announced this week that she is taking up a new career -- as a developer of videogames that promote civic engagement. In a keynote address at the Games for Change festival, O'Connor, 78, described her new project, Our Courts as an effort to use interactive media to help young people better understand our legal system and the importance of protecting an independent judiciary. Players will learn about the court system and other branches of government as they argue cases such as Morse vs. Frederick, which involved a free-speech controversy over a banner touting "Bong Hits for Jesus." The web-based game and related resources are scheduled to be available for classroom use in September, 2008, and for students in 2009.

In an introductory video on the Our Courts website, O'Connor said that she was motivated to take up the civic education project by surveys showing that young people were woefully ignorant about basic facts related to US government and political history. For example, the site says:

A recent national survey conducted by the National Constitution Center
(NCC), for example, demonstrated that more American teenagers

could name three of the Three Stooges than can name the three branches of government (59% to 41%);

know the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air than know the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (94.7% to 2.2%);

know which city has the zip code "90210" than the city in which the U.S. Constitution was written (75% to 25%);

know the star of the motion picture "Titanic" than know the Vice President of the United States (90% to 74%).

However, Elana's blog post on O'Connor's speech revealed that O'Connor is also hoping that an engaged citizenry will counter attacks on the judiciary that go beyond Constitutional bounds. Elana reports:

She then went on to tell the story of her involvement, beginning with
her disturbance with the "increasingly vitriolic attacks against the
Judiciary"--attacks she viewed and still views as holding a particular
political agenda. "I always thought that an activist judge was a judge
that got up every day and went to work," she concluded to applause and
laughter from the audience.

The erosion O'Connor sees happening to the role and power of the
judiciary branch is something she feels must be addressed in public
education above all. "Public education is the only long-term solution
for preserving an impartial judiciary and ensuring a robust democracy"
said O'Connor, and was responded to with vigorous nodding throughout
the crowd.

O'Connor, whose appointment by Pres. Ronald Reagan in 1981 made her the nation's first female Supreme Court Justice, has been sounding this warning for a while. In a 2006 speech, she charged that some efforts by politicians and conservative activists could actually push our democracy toward a dictatorship:

"Attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct
threat to our constitutional freedoms. I am against judicial reforms
driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. We must be ever-vigilant against
those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred
policies."

TChris at TalkLeft thinks Our Courts is "totally cool" adding wryly:

After kids learn how to steal cars by playing Grand Theft Auto IV, they can learn what happens after a car theft arrest by playing Our Courts.

At Huffington Post, Allison Stein Wellner wonders whether O'Connor's new initiative is born of regret over her tie-breaking vote in Bush v. Gore that stopped the Florida ballot recount in 2000 and ensured George W. Bush's ascension to the Presidency.

"Character and the Primaries of 2008:" the results might surprise you

2008-06-04T00:11:51-05:00

As the 2008 primary season ends, the news media has come in from plenty of criticism for its perceived biases and lapses in coverage of the candidates. According to some observers at BlogHer and elsewhere, the coverage of Sen. Hillary Clinton has been consistently sexist and unprofessional, while coverage of Sen. Barack Obama has been fawning and dishonest. Meanwhile, other press critics complain that Sen. John McCain has had a free ride.

However, a recently-published content analysis by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, Character and the Primaries of 2008, offers what appears to be some contradictory findings.

For the first three months of this year, PEJ found:

Coverage of Senators Obama and Clinton were almost equally positive
Coverage of Sen. McCain was more critical than that of either Democrat
Coverage of Obama became more negative after Clinton complained that Obama was being favored and appears to have become more critical in the ensuing months
The candidates' campaigns were as powerful as journalists and authors
when it came to projecting messages about the candidates and their
character

Source: Project for Excellence in Journalism

The study was based on weekly analyses of the campaign news coverage by 48 print, broadcast television, online, cable television and radio news outlets. PEJ did a similar set of studies during the 2004 campaign.

Here are some excerpts that capture the conclusions about the coverage of the candidates, in alphabetical order:

Hillary Clinton:

Clinton had the most success projecting the idea of her preparedness to
lead the country—to take the 3 A.M. phone call as her well-known ad
proclaimed. A full 38% of all character assertions spoke to this trait.
This message was much more clearly asserted than any other about
Clinton.

John McCain:

[O]ne criticism has proved particularly persistent. Claims that he is not
a reliable conservative and may alienate the conservative core of the
party accounted for fully half of all threads studied during this time
(and 88% of the all negative threads)

Barack Obama:

The most prevalent master narrative about the Illinois senator was
established early: the idea that he represents hope and change. More
than a quarter of all the assertions studied about Obama (28%)
projected this idea, What’s more, the attempts by his critics, or
skeptical journalists, to suggest that the promise of change was empty
or overblown, never got much traction in the press. Only 4% of the
assertions studied were rebuttals of the narrative that Obama
represented change.

There hasn't been a lot of blog reaction to the PEJ study, but its results got me thinking about why PEJ's data seemed at such variance with the informed opinons of so many bloggers and other media critics. One possible explanation is that many of the criticisms that I've read of news coverage focus on comments by television pundits and personalities, while the PEJ sampled a wider range of media.

They also left out such magazines as Vanity Fair, which currently has former Pres. Clinton riled over an article say that people close to him worry that his post-presidential personal and professional activities may be indiscreet. (As much as I respect its author, Todd Purdum, I thought the framing of that story was pretty strange, myself, given that the article itsef concedes that there is no evidence that Clinton has done anything wrong.)

Another possible reason is that the positive and negative narratives described in the PEJ study are not necesarily the ones that some critics think should be emphasized. For example, many critics of the news coverage of Sen. McCain care more about his ties to lobbyists than they do about whether he is a "true" conservative.

What are your thoughts about this research? Does it confirm, contradict or complicate your sense of the way the coverage of the campaign is going?

It's Pride Month -- where do the candidates stand on laws affecting GLBT Americans?

2008-06-01T21:35:10-05:00

Obviously, the 2008 presidential election will be a watershed moment for the diversity of its candidates. However, it might also be the moment when the political movement among gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people comes of age. The Democratic candidates have promised to support GLBT rights in the workplace, hate crimes laws and the repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" rules that keep GLBT members of the military in the closet. Even presumptive Republican nominee John McCain chose to appear on Ellen to explain why he opposes same-sex marriage.

Right after a post thanking voters in Puerto Rico for her victory in the island's Democratic primary, Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign blog has this message commemorating the beginning of GLBT Pride month:

As we begin Gay Pride Month, I join the LGBT community
in celebrating an historic year in which our country continues to make
progress towards the fair and equal treatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual
and transgender Americans. Still, we have so much work to do. I look
forward to working with the LGBT community to make sure that all
Americans in committed relationships have equal benefits and that
nothing stands in the way of loving couples who want to adopt children
in need. We need to expand our federal hate crimes legislation and
pass a fully-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And finally,
we need to put an end to the failed policy of Don't Ask, Don't Tell.
Courage, honor, patriotism and sacrifice – the traits that define our
men and women in uniform – have nothing to do with sexual orientation....

Sen. Barack Obama's blog has an announcement of events organized by GLBT Obama supporters, and links to interviews and statements from Obama on GLBT issues. The most interesting is an April, 2008 chat with the prominent gay magazine, The Advocate, in which Obama presented himself as a friend of the GLBT community, but said that as President, he would have to be realistic about what he could do to enact laws that many activists believe are essential to full equality. Here's part of the exchange:

[The Advocate:] I think the underlying fear of the gay community is
that if you get into office, will LGBT folks be
last on the priority list?

Obama: I guess my point
would be that the fact that I’m raising issues
accordant to the LGBT community in a general audience
rather than just treating you like a special interest
that is sort of off in its own little box -- that, I
think, is more indicative of my commitment. Because
ultimately what that shows is that I’m not
afraid to advocate on your behalf outside of church,
so to speak. It’s easy to preach to the choir; what I
think is harder is to speak to a broader audience
about why these issues are important to all
Americans....

Like Clinton, Obama supports civil unions, an end to Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and protections against employment discrimination that include transgendered workers. Obama favors the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, while Clinton would only repeal portions of it.

While McCain is presenting himself as a social conservative who opposes many of the legal protections sought by the GLBT community, he took some flak earlier this year for being willing to meet with leaders of the Log Cabin Republicans. But Pam Spaulding, blogging at Pandagon, reminded readers that McCain is no friend of gay rights:

Remember, McCain is the tool who sent a letter to [the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network] calling gays an 'intolerable risk to morale, cohesion and discipline.'

Mr. Straight Talk’s campaign also said that he has no intention of asking to “soften” the Republican party’s platform on same-sex marriage to appeal to more voters.

The Arizona senator has not denounced the over-the-top homophobia of his buddy, Patriot Pastor Rod Parsley...."

Writing for the Huffington Post, SLDN's Aubrey Sarvis predicts recent court decisions, changes in state law, and changing attitudes will force the next president's hand

[W]hat is the Pentagon doing to plan for the day when gays and
lesbians will be serving openly in the armed forces of the United
States? What will happen when a sergeant at Travis Air Force Base, for
example, takes advantage of California law and marries his boyfriend,
then returns to base and demands married couples' housing? We know what
happens today: that's the end of his Air Force career. He's discharged
under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (DADT).

That's the reality, but tomorrow's reality will be different. It's going to happen.

Still, some bloggers worried that the backlash against the California Supreme Court's decision in favor of same-sex marriage might hurt the candidates most sympathetic to GLBT rights. Katestone writes:

I’m thrilled that the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of
marriage equality in that state. I am worried that the issue will move
the Presidential candidates into fractious debates on the Republicans
domestic “axis of evil” — homosexuality, abortion, and activist
judges. If that is the case, gay men and lesbians will once again
have to hear their lives debated negatively and experience the hateful
backlash. As Gore Vidal once said, “homosexuals are the only minority
it is socially acceptable to hate.”

The New York Times reported today that McCain did not mention the
ruling yesterday. He doesn’t want to be dragged into that debate right
now but we can be assured that McCain will mention it when he feels he
needs to whip up the base. Or, he will have his spiritual adviser,
John Hagee, mention it. Over and over and over. And debate monitors,
bereft of ideas and creativity, will mention it. Obama noted the
ruling favorably and moved on. Good for him..."

Finally, at Campaign Diaries, one blogger deduces that Sen. Obama's need to pick a running mate likely to attract Republicans and independents might result in a VP who's not only opposed to GLBT rights, but also to combatting sex discrimination and protecting affirmative action:

"As conversations about McCain's and Obama's choices are picking-up, a
certain number of people from both parties are worried that their
nominee might select a running mate that is too far from the party's
base. After all, a vice-president is not only a heartbeat away from the
presidency, but he also becomes the favorite to become the party's next
candidate. While the Right is worrying about McCain choosing Charlie
Crist and Tom Ridge, the Left's worst-case scenario is even more
nightmarish..."

Murder of popular soccer star highlights problem of anti-lesbian violence

2008-05-27T20:50:35-05:00

Up until the end of April this year, if you had run into former South African footballer Eudy Simelane, chances are that you would have met a happy woman. At 31, Simelane was still involved with the sport she loved as a coach and referee. She was a lesbian in a country in which homosexuality was not only legal, it is enshrined in the Constitution. Not only that, her close-knit family accepted her sexuality, as well as her partner of two years, Sibongile Pearl Vilakazi. On top of all of that good fortune, she was about to start a promising new job with a pharmaceutical company.

Then, on April 28, she was beaten, repeatedly stabbed and reportedly gang-raped and left to die in a shallow river near her home in the Tornado section of KwaThema township. According to news reports, five young men between the ages of 18 and 24 are in custody; reportedly one was a neighbor who knew Simelane. As of May 27, the case has been put off until June 3 while legal representation is being arranged for the defendants. This issue has already delayed the case before.

More than 2,000 mourners showed up at Simelane's funeral, including a member of the South African parliament who encouraged human rights activists to continue the fight against violence. Indeed Simelane's murder has further galvanized activists trying to call attention to homophobic violence in South Africa and across the continent. In KwaThema, protestors gathered by the hundreds outside the courtroom where the initial hearings for Simelane's alleged killers were held. (Behind the Mask has a photo gallery of the demonstration.) Meanwhile, in the US, the FC Indiana women's soccer team will wear black armbands to honor Simelane's memory. Veronica Phewa, a member of the FC Indiana club, was a close friend and former teammate of Simelane.

Sokari Ekine at BlackLooks has been following the Simelane case, and she says it's part of a tragic pattern, On May 3, she wrote:

Once again another lesbian has been raped, tortured and murdered in South Africa on Monday 28th April. Sizakele Sisgasa and Salome Masooa were tortured and murdered
just 10 months ago. Since then lesbians, gays and transsexuals across
the continent - Nigeria, Uganda, Senegal and Cameroon, have been
attacked and beaten and arrested for simply living their sexuality.

After Masooa and Sisgasa were murdered last July 7 in Soweto, activists launched the 07-07-07 anti-violence campaign. Last August, Ekine commented on the connection between homophobic violence and patriarchy:

The submission of women is an essential aspect of patriarchy. Sex is
one of the tools used by men to subjugate women. Any signs of a woman
becoming financially or sexually independent becomes a threat to male
power. Whether this is an unmarried woman who is financially
independent or a lesbian who is sexually independent.

According to this article from South Africa's Mail and Guardian, violence against lesbians is growing in South Africa. One expert cited in the story said that a lesbian is murdered in the townships every three months.

The violence is part of what has made made Sky, who blogs at Lesbian, Black and African, ashamed of her country:

My heart bleeds to all my brothers and sisters and especially because
as a lesbian woman, I can relate to the discrimination they’re facing.
Discrimination in all its forms is rife in Africa. It’s time our people
realised that Human Rights are universal and indivisible and all human
kind is entitled to them regardless.

The International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission called for action on the part of the South African government, but highlighted the global dimensions of the problem:

From Joburg to Brooklyn, from Khayalestha to Kampala, Black lesbians
are unsafe in their own homes and in their own communities. This has
got to stop. We challenge the South African government to get real
about the principles of equality and non-discrimination enshrined in
the Constittion, guaranteed in the International Covenenant on Civil
and Political Rights, and clarified in the Yogyakarta Principles. We
ask the leaders of South Africa to challenge these unbridled attacks
publicly and righteously. Here and now.

I cannot help but note that Simelane's murder occured nearly five years after the stabbing death of 15-year-old Sakia Gunn, an aspiring professional athlete who died fighting off a 29-year-old attacker who had tried to drag one of her teenaged friends into his car. On June 10, filmmaker Charles Bennett Brack will screen Dreams Deferred: The Sakia Gunn Film Project as part of Newfest 2008, the New York LGBT film festival. According to a statement on the website for the film's production company, part of the reason for making the film is because, "we want our youth to have a different future."

A different future, indeed.

Media credits:

7-7-7 campaign image from BlackLooks.org

Eudy Simelane photo from SABCnews.com

Michelle Obama depicted as KKK victim...by a supporter?

2008-05-23T20:08:34-05:00

What does it tell us when an ostensible defender of Michelle Obama creates a graphic that plays on the deepest racial and sexual fault lines of the American psyche? If you saw the now-removed post at the Daily Kos that depicted Obama's critics as a KKK-robed lynch mob stringing her up, you know what I'm talking about. Not only were they stringing her up in the image, but Obama is depicted in pearl earrings and a strapless red gown that has been ripped open to expose her back -- a back that is about to be branded "Uppity Liberal" by a poker wielded by one of her tormentors. Take a look at it -- I'll wait.

There are lots of layers here. Start with perplexed disgust. BlogHer Contributing Editor Megan Smith, who first alerted us to the post and the controversy it's engendered, has some questions

How is it that someone decided this was something acceptable to post? Could it be because whoever decided to post it isn't a black woman, and possibly doesn't know or care about any black women? Is it possible they thought the message was so important that the controversy was worth it? Or did they crassly decide the controversy would stir up more hits and that was all that counted?

Megan first read about this image at What About Our Daughters? Here's part of their take:

I get the point they were trying to make, Michelle Obama is being criticized by the GOP for numerous things, but really what was going to your mind when you imagined Michelle Obama being tortured by the Klan? SECURITY CALLING SECURITY! To be clear, REPUBLICANS did not create this,a liberal "progressive" blogger created this foolishness.

Mrs. Grapevine thinks it's a case of liberal excess. Racewire thinks it's specifically a case of white liberal cluelessness (although I haven't come across any definitive identification of the race of the image's creator.)

Of course, it isn't only black women who are attacked online. Last year, when tech blogger Kathy Sierra disclosed the online harassments and threats against her, BlogHer co-founder Lisa Stone noted that misogyny is alive and well across the Internet:

I have no idea how many women have emailed and telephoned me about attacks via IM, IRC chat, message boards, email and blog comments. These attacks use language that describes detailed rape, dismemberment, profanity and indescribably sick images. The goal? Abuse and humiliation of women.

But don't miss this -- many of the African American bloggers commenting on the image say that the image frightens them. Megan described "a grapefruit-sized knot in the pit of my stomach." Others see a real and present danger in the historical ignorance reflected in the image. In an online chat with me, Spelman College history professor William Jelani Cobb commented:

No one who has an iota of understanding of the history of lynching, rape or violence in general could think that this was appropriate -- even to make an ironic point about racism.

For example, commenter msladydeborah at What About Our Daughters notes the significance of the red dress in the image:

A black woman in a red dress symbolizes the traditional belief about our sexuality. We are loose no matter what station in life we hold.

Princeton University political science professor Melissa Harris Lacewell explains why the image "terrorizes" her:

After September 11, African Americans mourned along with the rest of the country. But many black Americans also harbored a secret knowledge that this was not the first time that Americans had faced terrorism.

We remember Emmett Till’s broken body and distorted face. We remember four little girls murdered in a church basement. We remember grandmothers who dared to register to vote being visited in the dead of night by masked white men bearing torches and crosses. We remember slain leaders and know that strange fruit hung from American trees too recently to be discounted as archaic history. While the memory of racial terrorism is fresh for many, it has been completely absent from public conversations about terrorism over the past seven years.

University of Pennsylvania professor Marc Lamont Hill adds:

Although the site was attempting to critique the recent onslaught of Republican attacks, I worry that the normalization of such images will have a dangerous impact on the public imagination. The last thing we need is the normalization of images depicting the abuse of black female bodies. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe that such tactics would be used against any of the other potential First Ladies. Can you imagineBill O'Reilly talking about lynching Nancy Reagan?

It doesn't help that this image hit the blogosphere not long after a Roswell, Georgia magazine published a cover showing Sen. Obama in a rifle's cross-hairs. And Sen. Clinton's unfortunate reference to Sen. Robert Kennedy's assassination as part of her explanation for why she's staying in the race for the Democratic nomination further poisons the atmosphere in the minds of many. (BlogHer CE Erin Kotecki-Vest condemns Clinton's comments here.)

Two final layers. This image flips and merges two of the most emblematic images in our tragic racial history: the black (usually) male victim suffering unjustly at the hands of white racists, and the fragile woman (historically white) being violated by brutish (black, and often imaginary) men. In a provocative 2001 book, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White From Uncle Tom to OJ Simpson, UC Berkely professor Linda Williams argued that racial melodrama sets the terms of our debates over equality. What we may be witnessing in part, is just how poorly those terms fit our current situation.

Last thing. As I pondered the image, I thought about Sen. Obama's recent call for an end to the attacks on his wife. Bowling Green Daily News columnist Kathleen Parker derided his comments, along with his recent gaffe when he called a woman reporter "sweetie." But look at that image again, and think of another historical echo. During and after slavery and Jim Crow, black women were routinely sexually violated by white men -- and their husbands, fathers and other family members were powerless to defend them.

And indeed, in this image, Michelle Obama's husband is nowhere to be found. As I pondered the image, I could not help but be reminded of "On the Coming of John" WEB Du Bois' short story from his 1903 landmark work, The Souls of Black Folk. In his definitive biography of Du Bois, noted historian David Levering Lewis said "Of the Coming of John" described the dilemma of the black intellectual. That dilemma, essentially is that an educated black person would natuarlly assume the full privileges of citizenship. In the story, that assumption leads an educated black man to kill a white man who is trying to rape his sister. While a white man who did the same thing might have been found to have committed justifiable homicide, the protagonist in this story decides to take his own life as a lynch mob bears down on him.

In many ways, we are clearly a long way from 1903. However, it is equally clear that we are struggling to assimilate and articulate the new reality in which we find ourselves. And in moments such as these, one can be forgiven for fearing that we have not come as far as many of us would like to believe.

The US Through the Eyes of Iranian Bloggers

2008-05-21T00:13:38-05:00

With all of the attention given to Iran's potential nuclear ambitions, I wondered whether any talk about current events in the United States was filtering through the heavily-censored Iranian blogosphere. Iran ranks 166 out of 169 nations on Reporters Without Borders' 2007 Press Freedom Index, just above Turkmenistan, North Korea and Eritrea. Indeed, many of the Iranian blogs that I tried to read had either disappeared or had been neglected for years.

Cyrus Farivar, an American whose ancestry is part Iranian, recently visited Iran and is writing about the impact of the Internet there as well as three other countries. In a recent interview with Global Voices Online, Farivar described the challenges facing Iranian bloggers:

I think that blogs do have an impact on Iran, but I wonder how much
of an impact they can have now when so many blogs are filtered, and the
bandwidth is slowed. Sure, many Iranians know how to use proxies and
other tools to get around the blocks, but the simple fact that many
young Iranian thinkers and writers have had to leave since 2001, makes
me wonder who are the winners and losers in this case. The answers
aren't obvious.

,,, It's hard for cyber activists,
even those who live outside Iran, to at once speak out against the
government and feel safe in what they say, and how they say it.

By the way, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a blogger. His blogs include a response to an anti-war letter from mother of an American soldier stationed in Iraq. While his purpose is clearly propagandistic, there is ample space for comments and some of those are extremely critical of the Iranian leader.

Meanwhile, some Iranians are paying attention to US electoral progress, and they are highly critical of Sen. Barack Obama. Niki at Another Iranian Online, believes Obama has sold out to Israel and failed to show due regard for the sacrifices of the civil right movement:

I was not surprised when Obama sold Palestinians and Muslims in general
down the river, cow towing to AIPAC and fascist islamophobia. By the
way, word around town is that AIPAC head honchos have reached a private
consensus that should Obama win the nomination, they will back his
rival. For all he did, it just wasn't enough (he didn't like, you know,
threaten to obliterate Iran).

But while his betrayal of
Palestinians and Muslims was to be expected, I did not think he would
go the same lengths--indeed, even farther--with the black community in
the United States.

Editor, Myself is disappointed by the West Virginia Democratic Primary:

More than 20 percent of voters in West Virginia have acknowledged that
race has been a main factor not to vote for Sen Obama. Meaning what? In
practice, the number of people who believe so, is probably more that
this number. 30 percent? 40? or more? It is not clear....

For
Many people who have lived out of the United States, and or Americans
who have lived abroad, this seems so embarrassing, although that's
true. Americans can be proud of many things, but what has happened in
W.V, and many other cities, is not one of them....

A blogger's love letter to newspapers

2008-05-18T23:37:27-05:00

A funny thing happened on my way to help BlogHer pull off its exclusive interview in Oregon with Sen. Barack Obama -- my plane from Newark arrived in Salt Lake City too late for me to make the connecting flight. As a result, I got to spend the night in a place that was completely new for me. And when I visit a new place, I love to look at the local newspaper to supplement the impressions that I'm getting from the sights and sounds around me.

Being in Salt Lake City and reading the Salt Lake City Tribune made me aware of a blind spot that this Easterner didn't even know she had. Geography is one of five fault lines identified by the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education as a potential impediment to fair and accurate news coverage. Other fault lines include race, gender, class and generational difference. It was not until I found myself in Utah that I realized how many preconceptions I had in my head. I expected it to be heavily Mormon, white, wealthy and conservative. Salt Lake City conjured up Donnie and Marie, Sen. Harry Reid, former Gov. Mitt Romney and the Mormon Tabernacle choir. And oh yeah -- a really good basketball team. The earring worn by the very polite and helpful agent at the Delta counter should have been my first clue.

But reading the local paper really made me wish I'd had time to explore the town. I love blogs, and I love reading news online, but spending time with a great paper like the SLTrib reminded me of so much of what's special about newspapers. Since I've come home, I've also spent time reading some local blogs.

The big story on Saturday, of course, was the heartbreaker loss The lead story was the Jazz's heart-stopping three-point loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA playoffs. You can see the great writing on the web, but the huge front-page play of the story, along with the gorgeous game photos on the front page and in the sports section are best experience by holding the broadsheet in your hands.

The other story above the fold on the front page was also an eye-opener: a report from a conference at the University of Utah on research into special germs that mght neutralize mercury pollution in the Great Salt Lake. Below the fold there was a new story on the FLDS, the polygamous Texas-based sect whose children were removed because of accuations that children were being sexually abused. Online, the SLtrib's got a special section with ongoing FLDS coverage. On the web, there's also a special section on the Mormon church.

The faith section featured an amusing, but instructive column on the controversy over the Mormon practice of sending up baptismal prayers for the dead members of other faiths. I hope you don't mind if I share a bit with you:

Several weeks ago, a woman sent me a list of all the reasons I was going to hell for being a Mormon. It was a long list.

I get damned a lot. Mostly it comes from God's winged monkeys.

I get it from fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Jews, faiths
I never heard of before, and other Mormons who don't think I'm Mormon
enough.

But the lead story in that section was about an interfaith annual "Blessing of the Hands" ceremony at St. Mark's Hospital. The ceremony included a femaile episcopal priest, an imam, a Buddhist priest, an Arapaho healer and Bryce, the therapy dog.

Other stories caught my eye as well -- especially the business section, where there were stories abotu green development and the privatization of the city's wirless network infrastructure. Crime coverage wasn't nearly as prominent as I'm used to seeing back east. National news wasn't all that prominent either, and came mostly from the wires.

Overall, the paper piqued my curiosity about the town. A blog search turned up some unusual and interesting items:

The Weber County Forum accuses the Salt Lake City Republican Party of filing a "flakey"[sic] IRS complaint against the local chapter of the NAACP after an officer of that organization reportedly urged the defeat of a Utah state senator who made remarks that some have seen as racist. The local GOP chariman said that the NAACP violated IRS' rules against political activities by non-profit tax-exempt organizations.
an enraging story about a stray kitten that had been burned
Sydney thinks it's wrong for Mormons to baptize the dead of other faiths:

I hate the idea of Baptism for the Dead because it takes away the
person's rights. It's immoral. If they lived their life as a Catholic,
or a Jew, let them stay how they were. It's not up to the Mormon faith
to decide what is right for everyone else.

I'll continue to love reading my news online and scanning the blogs of people whom I trust. But there is stil nothing like a newspaper to give you a panoramic view of a community. The vicissitudes of the economy and the development of new technologies will likely hasten the collapse of many venerated old newspapers. That would be a tragic loss for those of us who are concerned with sustaining and promoting a well-informed and civically-engaged public.

Are Journalists Giving John McCain a "Free Ride?"

2008-05-13T19:23:36-05:00

According to researchers from the liberal press monitoring group, Media Matters for America, presumed Republican presidential nominee John McCain is being coddled by the Washington press corps while his Democratic rivals are scrutinized to a fare-thee-well. Their new book, Mc Cain's Free Ride offers detailed evidence arguing that for years, journalists uncritically burnished McCain's image as a "straight-talking" "maverick" leader, despite the fact that his voting record consistently supports the Bush administration.

Among the specific charges:

While McCain has touted his independence from lobbyists, authors David Brock and Paul Waldman say his campaign "has more current and former lobbyists working on his
campaign staff than any other candidate in the 2008 presidential election."
Ever since the 2000 campaign, the national press corps has played down stories reported by Arizona journalists that depict McCain as "short tempered, foul mouthed, bullying, and
unscrupulous"
Contrary to press reports about how he fights for what he believes in, McCain changed his position on immigration to appease conservative critics. (.pdf)

Predictably, there's widespread agreement with Media Matters' critique in the blogosphere, especially from Democratic-leaning bloggers. I tried to find responses to the book from McCain supporters and was unsuccessful.

Back in March, Firedoglake's Jane Hamscher gave the book a ringing endorsement, saying, "If you read one book this election season, as the saying goes, this should be it." Faith at Sen. John Kerry's blog, Kerryvision, rapped McCain's assertions that he had tried to help victims of Hurricane Katrina, despite having voted against relief measures there.

Prominent political reporters such as Tim Russert and Chris Matthews say that while it's true that Mc Cain hasn't been as closely followed by the national press as his Democratic rivals, that will change once the election campaign begins in earnest:

Indeed, weekly content analyses by the Project for Excellence in Journalism show that the press is far more focused on Sens. Obama and Clinton than on McCain.

Columnist Anne Hart says it's time for McCain's free ride to end:

Instead of praising McCain as a reformer, it's time for reporters to give us an accurate portrait of McCain.

Ask, for example, how the U.S. Iraq policy will look any different under this "reformer" than under George W. Bush?

Ask how a so-called moderate can support tax cuts that benefit the wealthy when the middle-class is being so severely squeezed?

Ask about McCain's connections with lobbyists.

Ask how McCain
can get away with declining to release his wealthy wife's tax returns
when his Democratic opponents have released jointly filed tax records
going back a minimum of seven years?

Steve Benen is skeptical that the press' tune will change even after the Democratic nominating process is over:

It’s one of the more frustrating side losses of the prolonged
Democratic fight — the media allows the Clinton-Obama confrontation to
suck up all the oxygen, leaving McCain to screw up with impunity.

Though, I have a sinking suspicion that once the Democratic race
officially, news outlets will find some other excuse to give McCain a
pass.

One the other hand, Holly Yeager cites recent stories on Mc Cain's relationships with lobbyists and his discounted flights in a jet owned by his wife's company as signs that press coverage of McCain is getting tougher.

What do you think? Is John McCain getting a free ride? If so, what would you like the press to report on about him that isn't being covered?