5 U.S. soldiers die in Iraq in 2nd-deadliest attack this year
BAGHDAD — Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday afternoon in northern Iraq when explosives detonated near their vehicle, the second-deadliest attack on American soldiers this year. The attack occurred in Mosul, a city that the Iraqi government has dubbed al Qaida in Iraq’s last major stronghold, and the site of some of the biggest attacks in the country so far this year.

Car bomb targets US patrol, kills Iraqi
MOSUL, Iraq – A suicide car bomber targeted a U.S. patrol Tuesday in Mosul, killing at least one Iraqi and wounding as many as 15, the military and police said, a day after a roadside bomb killed five American soldiers in the increasingly lawless northern city.

Egypt’s Bahais score breakthrough in religious freedom case
CAIRO (AFP) – A Cairo court on Tuesday ruled to allow Egyptian Bahais to leave their religion blank on official documents, in effect restoring their access to jobs, schools and medical and financial services.
I don’t know anything about the Bahai religion, but they do build beautiful temples.  There’s one here in Chicago.

Turkey Warned Over Iranian Banks
A U.S. Treasury Department official urged Turkey on Monday to be vigilant in its financial dealings with Iran, which Washington accuses of bankrolling terror and seeking nuclear missiles.

Afghan women protest American kidnapping
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – About 500 Afghan women gathered in a rare mass protest Tuesday against the kidnapping of an American aid worker. The women, many wearing burqas, called on officials to find the captive American and urged the kidnappers to release her.

Pakistani Taliban grows bolder, taking fight to doorstep of frontier city
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Islamic militants known as the Pakistani Taliban have extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan’s frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation. Fighting over the weekend spilled into previously peaceful parts of the tribal belt that borders Afghanistan and intensified in South Waziristan, Bajour and Mohmand.

Missile kills 12 militants in Pakistan
MIRAN SHAH, Pakistan – A missile destroyed a suspected militant hideout in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, killing 12 people inside, officials said, as hundreds of students protested Pakistan’s support for the U.S.-led war on terror.

Canada threatens to pull soldiers from Afghanistan
OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canada will pull its 2,500 troops out of Afghanistan early next year unless NATO sends in significant reinforcements, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday, signaling Ottawa has lost patience with what it sees as foot-dragging by allies.

Congo factions vow peace after ceasefire violations
KINSHASA (Reuters) – Congolese Tutsi rebels and a rival Mai Mai militia group pledged on Tuesday to respect a recently-signed peace accord, a day after clashes between their fighters broke the ceasefire.

Rival tribes trade revenge attacks in Kenya
NAIVASHA, Kenya — Hundreds of Kikuyus wielding stones, sticks, machetes, and wooden planks studded with nails confronted rival tribes Monday on a main road, whooping and wailing for blood as violence from last month’s disputed election raged in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Having borne the brunt of the violence since the election, Kenya’s dominant tribe, the Kikuyu, is fighting back with ferocity.

Helicopters swoop on Kenyan mob
NAIVASHA, Kenya (Reuters) – Kenyan military helicopters swooped to break up machete-wielding mobs on Tuesday as the killing of an opposition legislator stoked bloody protests across the east African country.

UN police into Darfur refugee camp
ABOU SHOUK, Sudan – Two refugee mothers handed their babies to a U.N. police officer and squeezed in for a picture. Nearby, other officers helped women fill jugs of water.

Congress unlikely to buy Bush proposals
WASHINGTON – A Democratic Congress is poised to heed President Bush’s call to help save the economy, but may not give him much else after a State of the Union speech that recycled many of the administration’s past initiatives.

U.S. used waterboarding: ex-spy chief
The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush regime’s most explicit confirmation of the technique’s use.

Cheney has piece of house where Zarqawi died ‘on display.’ (Think Progress)
In a cover story on “how Bush decided on the surge,” the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes declared that “it’s clear the surge has been a success” and noted that Vice President Dick Cheney has a gruesome souvenir from Iraq: “The week before Camp David, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, the al Qaeda leader in Iraq, had been killed. (Cheney has a piece of the house where Zarqawi died on display at his residence.)” President Bush also has a souvenir from the war: a pistol Saddam Hussein was clutching when U.S. soldiers pulled him from his hideout in Dec. 2003.
These are VERY sick people.

CDC Suppressed Toxic Trailer Warnings
CBS News has learned that the Centers for Disease Control suppressed repeated warnings from one of its top scientists, raising questions about whether the CDC bowed to pressure from FEMA to conceal the long-term health risks of formaldehyde in the trailers it distributed to hurricane victims, CBS News reports.

Bush to seek $70 bln in partial 2009 war funding
The Bush administration will ask the U.S. Congress next week for $70 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and related operations for part of the 2009 fiscal year, the Pentagon said on Monday… Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, Congress has approved $691 billion to pay for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and such related activities as Iraq ‘reconstruction,’ the Congressional Budget Office said last week.

Senate Democrats Adding to Stimulus
Senate Democrats will move to add to a $150 billion economic stimulus package rebates for senior citizens living off Social Security and an extension of unemployment benefits, setting up a clash with the White House and House leaders who are pushing a narrower package.

Divided Senate headed toward spy bill extension
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell relented on Monday and said he would offer a short-term extension of an anti-terror surveillance law, set to expire this week, as he seeks immunity for telephone companies.
Looks like Harry Reid followed through on his promise to keep from rushing into an update of the FISA law.  Thanks, Harry! Democracy for America is one of the organizations that mounted a call-in campaign.  Please help them continue their good work.

Indicted Obama fundraiser Rezko arrested
Indicted businessman Antoin “Tony” Rezko, who has raised thousands of dollars for Barack Obama and other Illinois politicians, was arrested Monday for what federal officials described as a violation of his $2 million bond.

Texas AG: Photo ID Irrelevant for Election Fraud Prosecutions (American Constitution Society)
“Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has prosecuted 22 cases of voting or other election fraud in nearly six years, and none would have been prevented with a law requiring photo IDs at polling stations, officials from his office told state lawmakers on Friday,” according to an article in the Denton Record Chronicle.
Not to mention that 22 cases in six years doesn’t indicate a huge problem.

DA Hires Defense Attorney to Free Wrongly Convicted (American Constitution Society)
An article in the ABA Journal reports on Dallas, Texas District Attorney Craig Watkins, who has hired a defense attorney to help free those wrongly convicted. Thus far, five people have been exonerated by DNA evidence since Watkins took office a year ago.

California universal health care bill falls short
SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – A California Senate committee voted on Monday to kill a closely watched bill that would have provided health-care insurance to millions of state residents at an estimated cost of more than $14 billion.

Hollywood couple sentenced in maid ‘slave’ case
A former top Hollywood studio lawyer and his wife were on Monday sentenced by a Los Angeles judge after admitting to mistreating their Filipino maid in a case of “modern-day slavery,” a court heard. US District Judge Dale Fischer ordered James Jackson, 53, a former vice-president of legal affairs at Sony Pictures to perform 200 hours of community service for admitting a charge of alien harboring. Jackson’s wife Elizabeth, 54, was given a three-year jail term after pleading guilty to a charge of forced labor.
This is the penalty for slavery?  Three years for one and a few hours of community service for the other?

Wall St. opens higher on rate-cut hopes
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stocks opened higher on Tuesday as another interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve this week seemed likely, while data showing a higher-than-expected rise in orders of durable goods last month eased some economic worries.

Fed weighs another rate reduction
WASHINGTON – Individuals and businesses are likely to see their borrowing costs drop further as the Federal Reserve weighs another interest-rate reduction to bolster a sagging economy.

Durable goods orders jump 5.2 pct
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – New orders for long-lasting U.S.-made manufactured goods rose by a much bigger-than-expected 5.2 percent in December and a key gauge of business spending also surged, a Commerce Department report showed on Tuesday.

Countrywide CEO forfeits $37.5 million
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Countrywide Financial Corp. CEO Angelo Mozilo, under fire over the size of his potential payout from the proposed sale of his troubled mortgage company, says he is forfeiting some $37.5 million in severance pay, fees and perks he was scheduled to receive upon his retirement. Mozilo, however, will still retain retirement benefits and deferred compensation that he has already earned, Countrywide said in a statement released Monday.
He ought to forfeit everything, including all the money he made during the years when he was running the company into the ground.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Resource: The Center for American Progress debunks Bush’s many false claims in last night’s State of the Union address.

Obama Turns Away from Clinton (The Swamp, Baltimore Sun)
Obama returned to stand by his seat next to Sen. Edward Kennedy who endorsed Obama today in a widely watched event that reverberated across the political world. As Clinton approached, Kennedy made sure to make eye contact and indicated he wanted to shake her hand. Clinton leaned towards Kennedy over a row of seats and Kennedy leaned in towards her. They shook hands. Obama stood icily staring at Clinton during this, then turned his back and stepped a few feet away. Kennedy may’ve wanted to make peace with Clinton but Obama clearly wanted no part of that. As president, Obama has said he would meet with the U.S.’s enemies without precondition. But making nice with Clinton apparently is another mattter after the increasingly angry fight the two have waged, with charges and countercharges, for the Democratic presidential nomination. The sense in the press gallery was that Obama didn’t cover himself in glory. Someone even used the word “childish.” (Not this writer.) Judging by how much conversation there was about this brush off in the press gallery, Americans will be hearing a lot more about this tomorrow and in coming days.
Note to the age impaired: John Kennedy waffled on civil rights. And it wasn’t John, or even Bobby, Kennedy who got civil rights legislation passed.  It was that bare knuckler Lyndon Johnson.

A frown for Clinton
Taylor Marsh

Senator Kennedy Betrays Women by Not Standing For Hillary Clinton for President (New York Chapter of the National Organization for Women)
Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard.  Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him… We are repaid with his abandonment!  He’s picked the new guy over us.
And this is nonsense, too.

Seeing the Light in South Carolina (by Gal Beckerma, Columbia Journalism Review)
[W]hen I … read the Times’s assessment of the Democratic field, I realized that the editorial board understood something the rest of us consumers of daily media have missed, but which was obvious to me after just one Obama-in-the-flesh event: what the Illinois senator excels at is packaging himself for the press (and, consequently, the public). I imagined, seeing him speak in person for the first time, that I would hear more of a discussion of policy than I’ve heard in the coverage of his campaign. I was sure that the sound bites that his stump speech produced about unity and change may pepper his talk, but could not possibly be the sum total of his message. But, basically, they were. There was very little sense that he was standing in North Charleston talking to a specific community of people. His transcendent talk was just that, transcendent. It’s not that this didn’t have a strong effect on the people who had waited to see him. It did. But there was something slightly gimmicky about his presentation. In my notebook, I wrote twice, “How will he make change?”

Chris Matthews: Condi Rice Could Counter Obama’s “Ethnic Excitement” (by Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars)
Chris Matthews as been sticking his foot in his mouth (more so than usual) a lot this primary season and during MSNBC’s coverage of the State of the Union address tonight, he stepped in it again. Tweety made the suggestion that because Barack Obama has created an ethnic excitement in America, if he doesn’t get the nomination Condi Rice would make a great VP choice for a GOP candidate because black people might still be hopeful of putting an African American in higher government.
Because Condi engenders so much excitement.  Click through to watch the video.

Why doesn’t Bush get economic credit? (by Paul Krugman)
[Monday’s] Times asserts as fact: “Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents. Yet much to the consternation of his political advisers, he has had trouble getting credit for it, in large part because Americans were consumed by the war in Iraq.” OK, I don’t want to make too big a deal of this, but although many people say this, it’s a theory, not a fact. And the evidence suggests that this theory is wrong.
Click through for the specifics.  It’s good to see that Krugman isn’t afraid to correct errors in his own paper.

The US economy, Pravda style (by Dean Baker, writing at Comment is Free, The Guardian)
[W]e know from a recent Washington Post editorial that “everyone agrees the economy needs a government boost.” However, just eights days earlier, the lead editorial in the Post told readers that “fiscal stimulus may eventually be needed,” but warned against jumping the gun… Rather than acknowledge that the experts on whom they rely had badly misunderstood the problems facing the economy, the Post just acted as though nothing had changed… Just as the Soviet press wanted the public to trust the wisdom of the party bosses, the Post and other pillars of the elite media want the public to believe that the experts who are the insiders on the decision-making process in Washington are uniquely qualified to craft policy. Of course this is true for all areas of public policy, not just economic policy.

The Real Recession Problem: Consumers Are at the End of Their Ropes (by Robert Reich)
Perhaps the silliest part of an already silly stimulus bill is a provision giving corporations big tax deductions this year on the costs of new machinery… This tax break exemplifies the illogic of what’s called supply-side economics. If you reduce the cost of investing, so the thinking goes, you’ll get more investment. What’s left out is the demand side of the equation. Without consumers who want to buy a product, there’s no point in making it, regardless of how many tax breaks go into it. Which gets us to the real problem. Most consumers are at the end of their ropes and can’t buy more.

A history lesson: The great fiscal stimulus package … of 1929 (by Michael Kitchen, MarketWatch)
Herbert Hoover — only nine months into his presidency — assembled leaders from the public and private sectors to create an economic-stimulus package. Among the measures, Time magazine reported at the time, was a promise from Congress to offer bipartisan support for a tax-cut package… Also on the table was an assurance from the Federal Reserve that it would provide cheaper credit… Of course, there were a litany of public-works projects, plans for new corporate investments, and even a promise by Henry Ford to raise wages at his auto plants. None of this worked.

A more recent history lesson: Crashing the Subprime Party (by Nicholas Bagley, Slate, thanks to Economist’s View)
As the federal government scurries to prevent the subprime mortgage crisis from sending the economy into a deep recession, many of us are asking why it waited so long to intervene. As it turns out, the government wasn’t exactly sitting on its hands. Instead, for reasons that now appear hopelessly shortsighted, an obscure federal agency torpedoed legislation from a handful of states that would have made institutional investors far charier of buying mortgage loans that were likely to go belly-up. If the legislation had been permitted to go into effect, the crisis we now face would probably look a lot less grim. The right question, then, is not why the feds did so little. It’s why they did so much.
And why would the Bush administration enable a crash?  See Naomi Klein, below.

Why the right loves a disaster (by Naomi Klein, writing in the Los Angeles Times)
Moody’s, the credit-rating agency, claims the key to solving the United States’ economic woes is slashing spending on Social Security. The National Assn. of Manufacturers says the fix is for the federal government to adopt the organization’s wish-list of new tax cuts. For Investor’s Business Daily, it is oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, “perhaps the most important stimulus of all.”… If this kind of crisis opportunism feels familiar, it’s because it is. Over the last four years, I have been researching a little-explored area of economic history: the way that crises have paved the way for the march of the right-wing economic revolution across the globe. A crisis hits, panic spreads and the ideologues fill the breach, rapidly reengineering societies in the interests of large corporate players. It’s a maneuver I call “disaster capitalism.”
And don’t forget how the right took advantage of 9/11, and continues to do so.  It’s almost as if they had a laundry list ready, before the twin towers were even attacked.

Subprime Obama (by Max Fraser, The Nation)
As the subprime mortgage debacle drives a recession that threatens financial markets around the world, the Democratic presidential candidates are pushing plans to address the crisis. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton are pledging substantial federal resources to stabilize the mortgage market and intervene on behalf of borrowers. Barack Obama’s proposal is tepid by comparison, short on aggressive government involvement and infused with conservative rhetoric about fiscal responsibility. As he has done on domestic issues like healthcare, job creation and energy policy, Obama is staking out a position to the right of not only populist Edwards but Clinton as well.

Fair Lending a Necessary Part of Global Fair Trade
The credit crisis may be fouling up billion-dollar takeover deals, but if you’re a poor African seamstress who needs a loan for a new sewing machine, you could not ask for a better borrowing market to expand your business. Anyone with $25 to spare and an Internet connection can now become an international microfinancier through Kiva http://www.kiva.org , an organization that matches individual lenders with impoverished entrepreneurs in the developing world.
This is exactly the kind of mechanism that I’ve recommended as part of a coordinated progressive media effort.

Media Matters for America headlines

Limbaugh compared Bill Clinton to segregationist “Bull” Connor

NY Times called McCain “the maverick flyboy of the Republican Party”

Mitchell falsely suggested Giuliani “decided to skip all of the early primaries”

Wash. Post falsely claimed “three leading Democrats” in presidential race have “refus[ed] … to acknowledge the indisputable military progress” in Iraq

Fox News’ Hill: Sen. Kennedy “is” the “hate speech and the partisanship that you’ve seen in Washington”

Russert let McCain mislead on Clinton’s Iraq withdrawal proposal

CNN’s Borger on McCain’s mother: “[N]ow we know where [he] gets all the straight talk from”

USA Today editorial revived false claim that Obama “said he’d invade” Pakistan

Ariz. Republic, Fox News, WSJ repeated McCain’s defense of vote against Bush tax cuts

York asserted that SC white men who did not vote for Clinton “voted against” her

Beck said “to be consistent,” Clinton should give Obama “5 percentage points” because of affirmative action

Joe Klein on Bill Clinton in the White House: “[T]here’s a kind of, something that’s spiritually skeevy about it”

Boston Globe’s Canellos on SC primary: “[A] lot of black women voted as blacks rather than as women”

Wash. Post falsely claimed government authority “to [s]py” will “expire” on Feb. 1

Hannity exaggerated Reagan’s record on jobs, federal revenue

Old media meets empowered customers
Blogger and old-media refugee Jeff Jarvis, on a great panel [at the DLD tech conference] called “Exploding Media,” said “Media companies should stop complaining and ask themselves ‘What would Google do?’” He said today’s mandate is to help people distribute both their own creations and what they receive from professional media in their own way.

Lawmaker Seeks ‘Do-Not-Deliver’ Registry for Free Papers
Complaints about free home-delivery newspapers in Maryland have inspired State Del. Tanya Shewell to propose a “Do Not Deliver” registry that would work similarly to the “Do Not Call” registry for telemarketers. If approved, would be the first of its kind in the nation.

WT editor Solomon pooh-poohs liberal bloggers’ complaints
Media Matters claims that new Washington Times executive editor John Solomon “has been a frequent purveyor of conservative misinformation.” The former Washington Post newsman responds: “All the stories the liberal blogs have attacked have never been questioned by my own editors. They stood by them. The blogs point to no factual errors but complain that I highlighted something they didn’t care for or preferred that I would have focused on something else.”
The problem with Solomon’s articles has been that he makes outlandish assertions at the beginning of the article, and you have to read all the way down to the bottom before finding out there’s nothing to those assertions.

New York Times launches no-charge text messaging service
The Times now delivers news, features and columns from the newspaper to cell phones and mobile devices. “We intend to use every available platform to disseminate The Times’s quality news and information,” says Rob Larson, NYTimes.com product development and management veep.

Strike Driving $100 Million in Ads From TV Biz to Big Screen
MediaVest Talks With Cinema-Ad Networks Called a ‘Proactive Approach’ to Ratings Erosion

Grammys in Deal to Get Writers
Striking film and television writers agreed on Monday to allow next month’s Grammy Awards program to be written by members of the writers guild.

ABC Show Will Go on, Over Protest by Doctors
A drama’s plot links autism with childhood vaccinations.
This is wrong.  I don’t know what the answer is, since I don’t believe in censorship, but this is definitely wrong.

New Site Has Users Wager on News Stories
Nigel Eccles, a news junkie and former online betting site employee, wanted to try pursuing both interests at once. Thus was born Hubdub – a new Web site Eccles and three colleagues in Edinburgh, Scotland, assembled – where customers will bet for fun, not money, on the outcomes of real news stories.

Prison study to investigate link between junk food and violence
Some of Britain’s most challenging young prisoners are to be given food supplements in a study aimed at curbing violent behaviour. Scientists from Oxford University say the effect of nutrition on behaviour has been underestimated. They say increases in consumption of “junk” food over the past 50 years have contributed to a rise in violence.

Hitting It Off, Thanks to Algorithms of Love
As online matchmakers compete for customers using algorithms in the search for love, the battle has intrigued academic researchers who study the mating game.

Strange Creature Immune to Pain
As vulnerable as naked mole rats seem, researchers now find the hairless, bucktoothed rodents are invulnerable to the pain of acid and the sting of chili peppers. A better understanding of pain resistance in these sausage-like creatures could lead to new drugs for people with chronic pain, scientists added.
Do scientists just go around inflicting pain on animals to see if they’re immune to it or not?

Cold Meds Send 7,000 U.S. Kids to ER Each Year
Most cases due to accidental ingestion, study finds.

Polymer Gel Prevents Skin Grafts From Shrinking
ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2008) — A gel that could prevent the painful and disfiguring contractions of skin grafts used to treat burns has been developed by British scientists.

Downsized Heart Aids Bypass Surgery
ScienceDaily (Jan. 29, 2008) — An estimated one in 20 patients undergoing a common operation to boost blood supply to the heart and to ward off repeat heart attacks may do better if their surgeons also remold the heart to a near normal size, by cutting and suturing together stretched muscle and scar tissue resulting from the initial attack, according to cardiac surgeons at Johns Hopkins.

Sedentary Lifestyle Accelerates Aging
Active people biologically younger than couch potato set, British study suggests

Black Death did not kill indiscriminately, experts say
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Black Death that decimated populations in Europe and elsewhere during the middle of the 14th century may not have been a blindly indiscriminate killer, as some experts have believed. While many perfectly healthy people certainly were cut down, those already in poor health prior to the arrival of the plague were more likely to have perished, [researchers] found.

Turtle Migrates 12,774 Miles
A leatherback turtle was tracked by satellite traveling 12,774 miles (20,558 kilometers) from Indonesia to Oregon, one of the longest recorded migrations of any vertebrate animal, scientists announced in a new report on sea turtle conservation.

Satellite unlikely to pose danger to humans
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A disabled U.S. spy satellite is likely to break into small pieces when it falls to Earth within weeks, posing little danger to humans, U.S. government officials and space experts said on Monday.

Rogue Stars: The Miscreants of Our Galaxy
A young star speeding away from the Milky Way is in fact an alien visitor, astronomers have confirmed. The wayward object is one of several rogues that are giving astronomers a glimpse into the volatile nature of our galaxy and others.

Economy, Planet in Trouble: Green Energy to the Rescue?
Among the measures that can be done now is to continue to build emission free renewables while dramatically cutting back on power consumption, so that new fossil power plants don’t need to be built until carbon sequestration technology can be implemented. There needs to be some political leadership to put direction in the climate saving effort.

Russia clears way for carbon profits
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s government on Tuesday opened the door to applications from entrepreneurs and big polluters to profit from greenhouse gas emissions cuts by selling these to Western countries.

Japan aims to halve greenhouse gas with model city programme
Tokyo - Japan may need to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by more than half by 2050 without a joint international effort to fight global warming, Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Tuesday.

Nokia joins WWF Climate Savers with key energy initiatives
Espoo, Finland – Nokia has joined the WWF Climate Savers program with a pledge to build on its strong environmental record by improving energy efficiency and reducing carbon dioxide emissions across its business.

UK Food and Drink Companies Vow Water Reductions
UNITED KINGDOM, Jan. 28, 2008 — Twenty-one major food and beverage companies have agreed to review and change their water use to save resources and money.

Air France Pledges $3 Billion a Year to Cut Carbon Emissions
PARIS, Jan. 29, 2008 — In an effort to cut fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, Air France plans to spend about $2.94 billion a year on improving its fleet.

First Antarctic marine census launched
WELLINGTON, New Zealand – U.S., New Zealand and Italian marine scientists began a two-month voyage to Antarctica’s northern coast Tuesday as part of the first-ever census of Antarctic marine biodiversity, Prime Minister Helen Clark said.

Antarctic ice cores reveal Earth’s climate history
Scientists, engineers and technicians on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet have just completed the inaugural season of a multiyear effort to compile the largest and most detailed record of greenhouse gases in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Groups sue seeking documents connected to Chukchi Sea sale
Conservation groups on Monday sued the federal agency responsible for the upcoming offshore petroleum lease sale in the Chukchi Sea off Alaska’s northwest coast, claiming the federal government has not disclosed documents that could show harmful effects to polar bears and other marine mammals.

New Online Resource Gets the Skinny on Eco-Labels
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Jan. 28, 2008 — Ecolabelling.org aims to take the mystery out of the bewildering herd of green labels by studying the foundations of all types of eco-labels aimed at both consumers and corporations.

Big Food Companies Fear Pressure and Criticism from Environmental Activists
Kraft Foods Inc. uses a cream cheese byproduct to help power a New York plant. Sara Lee Corp. plans to run a New Mexico bakery using solar energy. Al Gore’s campaign against global warming is turning up the heat on the food industry. After years of taking on the oil and coal companies, environmental organizations are scrutinizing the makers of Oreos and Jimmy Dean sausages, and that’s attracting the attention of consumers and investors.

Bush mostly down in polls
In February 2001, President Bush delivered an economic address to a joint session of Congress; in subsequent years he presented his annual State of the Union address. A look at his approval rating in the Gallup Poll around the time of each speech.
_February 2001: 62 percent approval.
_January 2002: 84 percent.
_January 2003: 60 percent.
_January 2004: 53 percent.
_February 2005: 51 percent.
_January 2006: 43 percent.
_January 2007: 36 percent.
_January 2008: 32 percent.

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Humor Ink

Big blaze sweeps through Iraq’s central bank
A large fire ripped through Iraq’s central bank building in Baghdad in the early hours of Monday, causing material damage, police said. The fire erupted in three floors of the bank’s building on Rashid Road in the centre of Baghdad, a security source told the Voices of Iraq news agency.

Baghdad blast kills 3
A roadside bomb has struck a minibus in southeastern Baghdad, killing at least three passengers and wounding five, police say. The bomb apparently was meant for a police patrol but missed its target and blew up near the bus, which was carrying a coffin to a funeral, a police officer said.

Sadrists seek to end cease-fire
BAGHDAD – Influential members of Muqtada al-Sadr’s movement have urged the anti-U.S. Shiite cleric not to extend a cease-fire when it expires next month, officials said Monday, a move that could jeopardize recent security gains.

Lebanon calm again after riots kill 7
BEIRUT, Lebanon – Shiite Muslims began burying their dead on Monday, a day after seven protesters died in rioting and clashes in Beirut’s southern suburbs that were reminiscent of Lebanon’s 15-year civil war.

Israeli ‘Economic Warfare’ to Include Electricity Cuts in Gaza
Saying they were waging “economic warfare” against the Gaza Strip’s Hamas leaders, Israeli officials told the Supreme Court on Sunday that the military intends to start cutting electricity to the Palestinian territory and continue restricting fuel.

Hamas, Egypt work to reclose border
RAFAH, Egypt – Egyptian security forces and Hamas militants strung barbed wire across one of the openings in the Egypt-Gaza border Monday — a sign that a days-long breaching of the frontier may be nearing an end.

Turkey says U.S. nuclear policy strengthens Iran
U.S. ally Turkey said on Saturday Washington’s efforts to isolate Iran over its nuclear programme were undermining reformists in Tehran and bolstering Iranian influence across the Middle East. Foreign Minister Ali Babacan said the United States was failing to win broad support for tougher sanctions against Iran, and called instead for dialogue and diplomacy.

Iran to Retaliate in Case of Invasion
IRGC commander says his forces would retaliate against the US military bases in the Persian Gulf if they are involved in any possible future attack on Iran. General Mohammad Ali Jaafari, commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, told Arab language Al-Jazeera television on Saturday evening that it is Iran’s “natural right to respond” if attacked by land or air.

Top agents in secret trip to Pakistan
The top two U.S. intelligence officials made a secret visit to Pakistan in early January to seek permission from President Pervez Musharraf for greater involvement of American forces in trying to ferret out al-Qaida and other militant groups active in the tribal regions along the Afghanistan border, a senior U.S. official said.

Musharraf rejects CIA bid to hunt Taliban
President Pervez Musharraf has rejected an offer of greater American involvement in hunting down al-Qa’eda and Taliban militants in Pakistan, it has been reported.

Pakistan says its nukes are safe from terrorists
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan — The nation’s nuclear chief Saturday dismissed concerns that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons might go astray, saying that crack squads have a foolproof grip that would never allow bombs to fall into the hands of Islamic militants or rogue military officers. “Pakistan’s nuclear weapons … are absolutely safe and secure,” said Lt. Gen. Khalid Kidwai, chief of the nation’s nuclear programs.
Trust him!

Former Indonesian president Suharto laid to rest
MATESIH, Indonesia (AFP) – Former Indonesian president Suharto was laid to rest with full military honours Monday, ending a controversial chapter in the history of the nation he ruled with an iron fist for 32 years.
If there’s a hell, this guy is in it.

Queen Elizabeth must die or abdicate for Australian republic
SYDNEY (Reuters) – Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, Australia’s head-of-state, must die or abdicate before Australia can become a republic, said one of the country’s leading politicians and former head of the republican movement.
I had no idea Australia isn’t a republic.

Australia to draft homelessness action plan: PM
SYDNEY (AFP) – Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced a long-term plan to battle homelessness Sunday, saying the problem affected one in 200 Australians and was getting worse.

Transfers to resume once prisons improve: MacKay
News Defence Minister Peter MacKay said Saturday that Canadian soldiers will resume transferring prisoners to Afghan authorities, but only when Canada is confident they will not be tortured.

Chavez: Pull reserves from US
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.

Police, rioters clash in fresh Kenya violence
NAIROBI (AFP) – Police battled rioters in the west of Kenya on Monday as tribal clashes that left 130 dead over four days spread further across the country.

Two foreign doctors killed in Somalia
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Two foreign doctors and a Somali driver died Monday when their vehicle hit a land mine in the southern Somali town of Kismayo, police said. Another foreign doctor and three Somalis were injured.

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US shift seen to Pakistan, Afghanistan
WASHINGTON – In a shift with profound implications, the Bush administration is attempting to re-energize its terrorism-fighting war efforts in Afghanistan, the original target of a post-Sept. 11 offensive. The U.S. also is refocusing on Pakistan, where a regenerating al-Qaida is posing fresh threats.

President Bush to Curtail Congressional Earmarks
Jan. 28 (Bloomberg) — President George W. Bush will begin “unprecedented steps” to trim billions of dollars earmarked by lawmakers for pet projects, a White House spokesman said.
He’s got to scrape up every penny he can find for his foreign wars.

Bush presses Congress on FISA (by: Mike Allen, Politico)
The White House told Democratic congressional leaders Saturday that President Bush opposes a 30-day extension of an expiring eavesdropping law… “The president would veto a 30-day extension,” a senior administration official said… Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) called the veto threat “shamefully irresponsible” and “simply posturing in advance of Monday’s State of the Union address.” “There will be no terrorism intelligence collection gap,” Reid said. “But if there is any problem, the blame will clearly and unequivocally fall where it belongs: on President Bush and his allies in Congress.”
I want to believe, Sen. Reid, I really do.  But I just haven’t seen any evidence of Democrats fighting back, or even putting the blame where it belongs.

Mukasey: I may never say if waterboarding is torture. (Think Progress)
Earlier this week, ThinkProgress noted that two months into his tenure as Attorney General, Mike Mukasey still would not answer whether waterboarding is torture. The New York Times reports that yesterday, Mukasey hedged even more. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t answer it,” he said at a news conference. “I didn’t say that I would.” When asked about the nomination of torture advocate Steven Bradbury to the Office of Legal Counsel, Mukasey said, “Steve Bradbury is one of the finest lawyers I’ve ever met. … I want to continue working with him.”

South Carolina Supreme Court Allows 20 People Who Flunked Bar to Pass — Including Children of Powerful Attorneys (by Jonathan Turley)
In a positively mind-blowing decision, the South Carolina Supreme Court decided to allow 20 people who flunked the bar to become lawyers rather than inform one individual that he had been incorrectly told that he had passed… [T]wo of those [twenty] people were the daughters of two powerful bar members: S.C. House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Harrison, R-Richland, and longtime Circuit Judge Paul Burch of Pageland. Both men admit that they contacted court officials after learning that their daughters had flunked.
Is anyone else reminded of the 2000 election?

Obama Wins in South Carolina, Clinton Places Second
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — Illinois Senator Barack Obama won the South Carolina Democratic primary by a more than 2-to-1 margin over New York Senator Hillary Clinton, claiming a crucial victory in his race for the party’s presidential nomination.

What the Exits Say (by David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo)
Starting to get a look at the vote breakdown: Blacks made up 53% of voters, and Obama dominated, winning 82% of black men and 79% of black women. Edwards won among white men, with 43%. Hillary won white women with 44%. But Obama fared better with white men than perhaps expected. Hillary barely beat him among white men, 29% to 27%.

HUGE Turnout for the Democrats in SC tonight — surpassed GOP vote from last week by wide margin (by Joe Sudbay at AMERICAblog)
Today, Democratic turnout far surpassed the GOP’s performance. With 98% of precincts reporting, over 520,000 Democratic votes were counted.

USAT/Gallup Polls: McCain, Clinton lead in California, New York (On Politics, USA Today)
Two new USA TODAY/Gallup Polls today show John McCain and Hillary Clinton leading the Republican and Democratic fields in New York and California.

Republicans quarrel over Iraq in White House race
FORT MYERS, Florida (Reuters) – The Iraq war reclaimed the spotlight in the Republican race for the White House on Saturday as front-runner John McCain accused rival Mitt Romney of backing a set withdrawal of U.S. troops — a charge Romney angrily denied.

Texas Justice (American Constitution Society)
After a grand jury returned an indictment against [Texas Supreme Court Justice David] Medina [for arson and other crimes], the Harris County District Attorney’s office dropped the charges, claiming insufficient evidence to go to trial. The District Attorney, Chuck Rosenthal, is also under investigation for allegedly sending campaign-related, pornographic, and racist emails through his work email account as well as allegedly deleting 2,500 emails ordered released as part of a civil rights lawsuit against the county’s Sherriff’s Department.

Ballot measure would phase out rent control laws
More than 100 owners and operators of apartment buildings and mobile home parks spent nearly $2 million to put an initiative on the June 3 ballot to phase out California’s rent control laws. About 1.2 million people statewide are covered by such laws.

Gasoline prices fall below $3 a gallon
NEW YORK (Reuters) – The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the United States fell below $3 due to less demand and slightly lower oil prices, and was likely to hold steady, according to an industry analyst.

US stocks tilt lower after global selloff
NEW YORK – Wall Street looked to open lower Monday following heavy selloffs on Asian and European exchanges.

Investors seek best strategies to short credit
LONDON (Reuters) – Many investors in derivatives are now hunting the best way to go short on credit based on the expectation that corporate defaults will rise this year.

Risks in Fed’s deeper interest rate cuts
LOOKING FORWARD: Economists predict that the Federal Reserve will probably keep dropping rates for much of the year in order to boost the economy.
What will happen to retirees living primarily on interest income?

To Build Confidence, Try Better Bricks (by Robert J. Shiller is professor of economics and finance at Yale, thanks to Economist’s View)
While a temporary tax cut and interest rate cuts are good ideas, they don’t address the underlying crisis of confidence. If these measures succeed merely in making people consume more, running to the malls and making the already-negative personal saving rate even more negative, they won’t restore faith in the financial markets… It won’t be easy, but the first step would be to set up a national study commission and to pay for serious creative research on how to adapt important ideas, like deposit insurance and securities regulation, to a modern financial world.

Free trade is great – just ask Gordon Brown (by Chris in Paris at AMERICAblog)
As long as you have a political pension and benefits for life like Gordon Brown and others who talk up free trade. It’s all fine and good to talk about the evils of protectionism but you have to be able to address the valid concerns of working people who watch their jobs go overseas or pay decline rapidly… Moving in that direction over time is one thing, but the well being of families is at stake, so no need to rush overnight.

French bank accuses trader of hacking
PARIS – Societe Generale detailed Sunday how a young trader evaded all its controls to bet some $73 billion — more than the French bank’s market worth — saying he hacked computers and used other “fraudulent methods” to cover his tracks, causing billions of dollars in losses.
I’m still not buying it.  That would be an awful lot of hacking.

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Permanent link to MTA daily media news

‘Politics of unity’ won, Obama team says
“This was a great repudiation of the politics of divisiveness and an affirmation of the politics of unity,” David Axelrod, the top political strategist in Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, just told USA TODAY’s Fredreka Schouten. He was talking, of course, about Obama’s win in today’s South Carolina Democratic presidential primary.
Keep on believing.  Believe in belief.  Hope for hope.

Unity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be (by Ezra Klein, writing at the Los Angeles Times)
[H]earing all these presidential hopefuls pledge to end gridlock is a bit like having a friend promise to fix my toilet by checking under the hood of my car… There are a variety of fixes for a filibuster-happy minority. The media, for example, could start accurately reporting the cause of the gridlock, shaming the relevant senators and increasing political pressure to compromise. The voters could eject politicians who refuse to compromise, laying down an electorally enforced preference for a functioning government. The Senate majority could change the rules, essentially eliminating the filibuster. Groups such as Unity ’08 could arise and, rather than wasting everyone’s time with idle fantasies of ever more dreamy executives, could campaign against Senate rules that are undemocratic and hostile to progress. But the president can’t do this, not on his or her own. Unity means nothing in the face of obstructionism, and problems can’t be solved if legislators refuse to solve them.

Winning Large (by digby)
So, this ugly race is over and it looks like all the racial talk was overblown and overplayed. The voters, once again, made their voices heard and the politicians will have to heed them. I would hope that the media will take a little breather as well. Watching the concern trolling about Democratic racial divisiveness among people like Peggy Noonan, Joe Scarborough and Bill Bennett is enough to make me sick and should give progressives pause. As I wrote last night, I don’t think this helps Senator Obama any more than it helps Clinton.
Yes, well, good luck with that, Digby!  The media love to hate the Clintons, and they love to be in love with somebody else.

Craig Crawford: “[T]he evidence-free bias against the Clintons in the media borders on mental illness” (Media Matters)
Summary: On Morning Joe, Craig Crawford stated: “I really think the evidence-free bias against the Clintons in the media borders on mental illness.” Crawford went on to assert, “I mean, we’ve gotten into a situation where if you try to be fair to the Clintons, if you try to be objective, if you try to say, ‘Well, where’s the evidence of racism in the Clinton campaign?’ you’re accused of being a naïve shill for the Clintons.” He later added: “I really think it’s a problem.”

Is Mary Katherine Ham serious? (by John Amato at Crooks and Liars)
I’m not sure how the Reliable Sources crew let this ignorant statement by Mary Katharine Ham, blogger and managing editor of townhall.com get by. “HAM: Well, I think Clinton has a duality. You know, he’s the charming guy, he’s the nice guy, but he’s also a guy who’s prone to eruptions and some falsehoods… When he was president, he was not subjected to quite as much scrutiny, and I think he got a lot of passes, and now he’s mad he’s not getting them anymore. Was she even a little bit conscious during his presidency? Apparently not.
Click through to watch the video.

Lessons of 1992 (by Paul Krugman)
[T]hose who don’t want to nominate Hillary Clinton because they don’t want to return to the nastiness of the 1990s — a sizable group, at least in the punditocracy — are deluding themselves. Any Democrat who makes it to the White House can expect the same treatment: an unending procession of wild charges and fake scandals, dutifully given credence by major media organizations that somehow can’t bring themselves to declare the accusations unequivocally false (at least not on Page 1). The point is that while there are valid reasons one might support Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton, the desire to avoid unpleasantness isn’t one of them.

OBAMA vs. CLINTON…. (by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly)
Reader MDS thinks I’m overreacting:  “Please, I beg you, reconsider. You were the only blogger making any sense on the Obama/Clinton front, and now you’ve jumped ship, too? Trust me, I live in Chicago, I’ve met Obama, I voted for him for Senate, I think he’s great … but he’s just not up to running for president. Yes, the Clinton campaign said some stupid stuff. But no matter how much that turns you against Hillary, the way the Obama campaign has cried about it should turn you even more against Obama. Having watched him up close, I can tell you, Obama is an inspirational guy who doesn’t have a clue how to campaign. If it’s Obama vs. McCain, we’re in for six months of Swift Boating followed by four more years of a Republican in the White House.”
I think this business about Obama being a political naïf is pretty naïve.  His only political experience has been in Chicago, and his chief strategist is also Mayor Daley’s chief political advisor.

Worrying about Obama (by Dan Payne, writing in the Boston Globe)
BARACK OBAMA has a realistic chance to be the Democratic nominee for president. As the only white employee at a Detroit civil rights organization years ago, I am moved by this remarkable moment in our nation’s history. But as a media consultant to Democrats, I am worried. I want to know more about Obama. And I want to know it now, not in the fall when the Republicans and their thugs in “independent” groups start slinging the sludge.

Critics: Obama endorsements counter calls for clean government (Chicago Tribune)
There was little controversy earlier this year when Sen. Barack Obama endorsed Mayor Richard Daley over two black opponents for a sixth term, lending his star power to an inevitable rout. But Obama’s record of local endorsements — one measure of how he has used his nascent political clout — has drawn criticism from those who say it reflects his deference to Chicago’s established political order and runs counter to his public calls for clean government.

OBAMA AND THE PRESS…. (by Kevin Drum at Political Animal, the Washington Monthly)
[Howard Kurtz:] “…Some reporters say Obama seems disdainful toward journalists…” Obama has gotten pretty rapturous press coverage anyway, and Kurtz mentions later in his piece that reporters are just as susceptible to the famous Obama charisma as anyone. Still, the general election is going to be a slugfest, and it’s a bad sign if Obama’s press operation hasn’t been honed to deal with it. What’s more, it’s also peculiar: why stay aloof from a press corps that loves you? Maybe someone should try to ask him.

Obama Backers Drop Hints About Edwards (Political Wire)
“Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards will be named attorney general in an Obama administration,” according to Robert Novak. The appointment of Edwards “would please not only the union leaders supporting him for president but organized labor in general. The unions relish the prospect of an unequivocal labor partisan as the nation’s top legal officer.”
Why would the Obama campaign give this scoop, if it’s true, to Robert Novak, and not to Lynn Sweet?

Huckabee: Iraq Probably Had WMD, But ‘I Don’t Have Any Evidence’ (Think Progress)
[O]n Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace pressed Huckabee to offer evidence to support [his claim that Iraq had WMD]. “Governor, the Iraq Survey Group looked around Iraq for months after the invasion,” Wallace noted, and “could find no evidence that Saddam Hussein had an active program…Do you have any evidence of that contention?” Huckabee answered: “I don’t have any evidence… But simply saying — we didn’t find them so therefore they didn’t exist — is a bit of an overreach.”
We don’t need no stinking evidence! Click through to watch the video.

H&C: The Politics of Sex (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
It appears that Playboy Magazine commissioned a study from FOXNews’ favorite wordsmith… Luntz claimed that Democrats were more sexually adventurous, but after hearing about Craig, Vitter, Foley, Haggard and other Republican sex scandals, I’m struggling to figure out how Democrats could be. Bathrooms, e-sex, hookers & diapers, hookers and massages. I mean, where do you go from there?
Not to mention toe sucking.  Click through to watch the video.

Why Would Presidents Envy Bad Growth? (by Dean Baker)
The NYT had a piece [Sunday] on President Bush’s economic legacy. In the second sentence it tells readers that: “Mr. Bush has spent years presiding over an economic climate of growth that would be the envy of most presidents…” [But although] Bush’s growth record is better than his father’s, but it is worse than the record of every other president in the last half century. It’s not clear why they would be envious. It is also not clear what his political advisers have to complain about.
Click through for the numbers.

If You Mess Up, Be Sure to Do It In a Really Big Way (by Dean Baker)
Great piece in the NYT showing how the bosses who led Citigroup and Merrill Lynch to losses in the tens of billions of dollars are being courted for top jobs at other firms. However employment prospects are not nearly so promising for those lower down the rung, who lost their jobs due to cost-cutting.

Mythbuster: DISPELLING CONFUSION ON FOOD STAMPS, TAX REBATES, AND THE STIMULUS PACKAGE (Center on Budget and Policy Priorities)
If one of the goals of the stimulus package is to act quickly to avert a serious recession, then provisions that are both effective and fast acting ought be accorded some priority.  For these reasons, Goldman Sachs counseled on Friday that the food stamp and UI provisions have “strong policy justifications.” In addition, an analysis issued last week by Moody’s Economy.com finds that the food stamp and UI proposals would be the two most cost-effective of all stimulus options — that is, these are the measures that would produce the largest increases in economic activity per dollar of cost.

No more food stamps. You’ve eaten enough (by Andrew Leonard, Salon)
The attraction of food stamps is that … increasing their value doesn’t require goosing cumbersome IRS machinery into motion… So what’s not to like? Well, aside from Republican reluctance to boost any kind of government spending aimed at making a tangible difference in the public welfare, there is also the assertion, reiterated Friday morning by the consistently interesting and provocative Megan McArdle, whose libertarian-oriented blog is hosted at the Atlantic, that poor fat people shouldn’t be encouraged to buy more food.
Leonard goes on to explain that the obesity problem is more a result of our government’s subsidy of high-calorie, low-nutrition foods than anything else.  But we can always trust right wingers to come up with creative ways to blame the victim.

Media Matters for America headlines

Scarborough: Clinton campaign is “at war against African-Americans, and now they are at war against the Democratic Party”

MSNBC’s Scarborough falsely suggested Clinton congratulated Obama only by “paper statement”

NY Times’ Rich misrepresented Russert’s misleading archives question

Buchanan equated purported rift in minority voters to “war[s]” in South Central L.A., prisons

AT&T’s proposed filtering policy is bad news
AT&T’s CEO this week outlined the company’s proposed plans to monitor traffic over its online network.  He failed to mention that such a plan is also unethical, impractical and insane.
It’s net un-neutrality on the consumer side, instead of the provider side.

Copyright Now Extends To Cease-And-Desist Letters? (by Sean P. Aune at Mashable)
TechDirt is reporting an update to a case they first covered back in October where a lawyer tried to claim his cease-and-desist letters fell under a copyright, and thus no one could legally reprint them without his express permission… [F]rom the look of a press release put out yesterday by the lawyer in question, it seems the judge agreed the man’s claim. The publication of a letter can now result statutory damages for as much as $150,000 per occurrence plus attorneys’ fees that can average $750,000 through trial.

Scientology Writes; Gawker Rises
At Scientology’s request, several Web sites took down a video of Tom Cruise talking passionately about the church, but Gawker isn’t budging.

Leahy And Cornyn: White House Trying To ‘Eliminate’ FOIA Office (Think Progress)
On New Years Eve, facing “congressional pushback against the Bush administration’s movement to greater secrecy,” President Bush signed the OPEN Government Act, toughening the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The legislation — unanimously passed by the House and Senate — would push agencies to respond more quickly to records requests. But now, the White House is doing everything it can to neuter the law.

Washington Post Starts an Online Magazine for Blacks
Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. will be editor in chief of the online magazine, called The Root.

Hedge Fund’s Letter Explains Intentions Regarding The Times
Firebrand Partners said it would not seek to change the The New York Times Company’s ownership structure, but wanted the company to sell some assets and focus on digital publishing.

Direct-to-DVD Releases Shed Their Loser Label
Once a dumping ground for movies considered virtually unwatchable, the direct-to-DVD pipeline is becoming increasingly important to mainstream film franchises.

“Beavis” goes portable on PlayStation format
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – The Universal Media Disc, a proprietary format for Sony’s PlayStation Portable, may have failed as a movie format, but Sony’s continued attempts to portray the PSP as a multimedia device rather than a game player now find the company trying again, this time with TV shows.

Startups Rush to Pave Way for Web Video
NEW YORK (AP) – Video on the Internet has gone from being the next big thing to the current big thing. But murky YouTube videos are just the start – there’s a lot of room for improvement. A raft of startups are rushing to supply the tools to make better and more profitable video available.

Qtrax Aims to Offer IPod-Friendly Tracks
LOS ANGELES (AP) – A revamped online file-sharing service that promised to offer unlimited, free music downloads from all the major record labels hit an apparent snag Sunday after one denied it had given the service permission.

Sony Ericsson cuts deals with 10 music labels
STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Mobile phone maker Sony Ericsson said it had signed deals with 10 music labels to add content to its PlayNow service, which lets users download music via their mobile phones.

BlackBerry Servers Gain New User and Administrator Features
R.I.M. has released a new version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Server, along with a new social-networking client that ties BlackBerry into a growing array of collaboration applications.

Mobile Advertising Set To Go Big This Year? (by Sean P. Aune at Mashable)
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the Google [CEO Eric Schmidt] went against the predictions that mobile ads wouldn’t hit $1 billion in revenue until 2012. Reuters reported Schmidt as saying, “It’s the recreation of the Internet, it’s the recreation of the PC story, and it is before us — and it is very likely it will happen in the next year.”

Virus Found in Some Best Buy Digital Frames
You can add to the growing list of things you need to do to keep your computer safe — scan the digital picture frame.

Cell phone can read documents for blind
Chris Danielsen fidgets with the cell phone, holding it over a $20 bill. “Detecting orientation, processing U.S. currency image,” the phone says in a flat monotone before Danielsen snaps a photo. A few seconds later, the phone says, “Twenty dollars.” Danielsen, a spokesman for the National Federation of the Blind, is holding the next generation of computerized aids for the blind and visually impaired.

Don’t Worry, Be Moderately Happy, Research Suggests
ScienceDaily (Jan. 28, 2008) — Could the pursuit of happiness go too far?  Most self-help books on the subject offer tips on how to maximize one’s bliss, but a new study suggests that moderate happiness may be preferable to full-fledged elation.

Allergy Shots Are Effective Treatment for Symptoms
Immunotherapy works for allergic asthma, rhinitis, conjunctivitis or insect bites

Caffeine ups blood sugar level in diabetics: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Cutting down on caffeine could help people with the most common form of diabetes better control their blood sugar levels, researchers said on Monday.

Diabetes’ Health Toll Hits $174 Billion Annually
Costs have climbed 32% since 2002, study finds

Alzheimer’s Research Target May Be a Dead End
Amyloid inhibitors can’t prevent brain plaque build-up, study suggests.

Lead Linked to Aging in Older Brains
NEW YORK (AP) — Could it be that the “natural” mental decline that afflicts many older people is related to how much lead they absorbed decades before? That’s the provocative idea emerging from some recentstudies, part of a broader area of new research that suggests some pollutants can cause harm that shows up only years after someone is exposed.

Blind Fish Still Able to ‘See’
Blind cavefish whose eyes have withered away may not be so blind after all. Instead, a light-sensitive organ in their brains can detect light, research now reveals.

Thailand tree apes use song as warning
Hamburg – Humans aren’t the only big apes who use songs to impress each other. German researchers have found that gibbons in Thailand have developed an unusual way of scaring off predators – by singing to them.
Some of the folks in the American Idol tryouts could scare off predators.

Wine-carrying ship dates back 2,300 years
Marine archaeologists will begin work in June to uncover the sand-buried hull of a 2,300 year-old cargo ship thought to have been ferrying wine from the Aegean island of Chios before it sank off Cyprus’ southern coast, researchers said Thursday.

Oldest Horseshoe Crab Fossil Discovered
Two nearly complete fossil specimens discovered in Canada reveal a new genus of horseshoe crab, pushing their origins back at least 100 million years earlier than previously thought.

Dead spy satellite could hit Earth
A large U.S. spy satellite has lost power and propulsion and could hit the Earth in late February or March, government officials said Saturday.You can add to the growing list of things you need to do to keep your computer safe — scan the digital picture frame.

Giant storms erupt on Jupiter
Two giant plumes erupted recently on Jupiter, moving faster than any other Jovian feature and leaving global streaks of red cloud particles in their wake.

Dust samples prompt rethink about comets
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Samples of rock dust retrieved from a comet called Wild 2 are forcing scientists to alter they way they think about these intriguing objects that streak through our solar system… A lot of the material detected in Wild 2′s cometary dust was formed very close to the sun in the early solar system and was somehow later transported to the outer solar system, the scientists said.

Dust Strangely Vaporized by Stellar Explosion
Explosions of small stars, long thought to create stellar dust, actually sweep dust away, scientists discovered.

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Global Warming by the Numbers
Global warming is the most serious environmental threat of our time. As these facts show, affordable options are available. And America cannot afford to fall behind any more in the race to invent clean, renewable energy sources.

World Leaders Call for Global Climate Change Effort, Strengthened Public Governance
DAVOS, Switzerland, Jan. 28, 2008 — Business and foreign leaders called for strengthened public governance frameworks that will boost corporate global citizenship and fuel the fight against climate change.

Fukoda announces fund to help poor meet emission targets
Davos, Switzerland – Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukoda announced Saturday in Davos plans by Japan to launch a 10 billion dollar fund to help developing countries cut their emissions.

World’s big polluters meet in Hawaii over climate
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The world’s biggest greenhouse gas-polluting countries are sending delegates to Hawaii this week for a U.S.-hosted meeting aimed at curbing climate change without stalling economic growth.

$720 MILLION Per Day (by konopelli at My Left Wing)
For the monetary cost of just one month’s occupation of Iraq–say $25 Billion–the USofA could put a solar collector–photo-voltaic or water heating–on the roof of every home in the country, and immediately reduce non-renewable energy use by close to 40 percent. Two 55-gallon barrels, painted black, filled with water and rocks, with conduit and a pump, mounted on the roof is the simplest sort; add a simple system for recapturing the gray-water, and every home in America could be making huge strides to curtail the need for petroleum/fossil fuels. (Such systems are ubiquitous in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.)

Americans to Drink More Treated Sewage
[W]ith water supplies tightening around the country due to growing populations and drought, many communities are considering tapping their sewage treatment plants as a new source of drinking water.

Freeing Intellectual Property for the Good of the Planet (GreenBiz Radio)
With the launch of the Eco-Patent Commons earlier this week, four companies — IBM, Nokia, Pitney-Bowes and Sony — agreed to do something almost unprecedented: give up their rights to control inventions that could benefit the planet.

Wal-Mart installs solar power at store
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wal-Mart and SunPower Corp said on Monday that they have completed a 390-kilowatt solar power system installation at the retailer’s Sam’s Club warehouse store in Chino. The companies said the warehouse club is the first of seven Wal-Mart facilities in California that will receive SunPower solar power systems.

New Techniques Create Butanol, A Superior Biofuel
The fuel is butanol; it can be derived from lignocellulosic materials, which are plant biomass parts that range from woody stems and straw to agricultural residues, corn fiber and husks, all containing in large part cellulose and some lignin. Butanol is considered to be a better biofuel than ethanol because it’s less corrosive and has a higher caloric value, giving it a higher energy value. Like ethanol, butanol is being considered as an additive to gasoline.

Design Green Alliance Hopes to Boost Sustainable Furniture
OAKLAND, Calif., Jan. 28, 2008 – The newly-formed Design Green Alliance offers sustainable furniture makers and vendors sales and marketing opportunities to increase their presence in the industry.

Bush plans to open 3 million acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest to logging
More than 3 million acres in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest would be open to logging under a federal plan. Environmentalists fear that the proposal will devastate the forest. The Bush regime released Friday a management plan for the forest. The plan would leave about 3.4 million acres open to logging, road building and other development.

Bush’s moves in Alaska fail ‘red face’ test
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced a “delay” in its decision on listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act. In the meantime, the Minerals Management Service is getting set, on Feb. 6, to throw open 30 million acres of the bears’ habitat to oil and gas development.

Navy resumes sonar training off coast
The Navy has resumed sonar training off the coast of Southern California as the government and environmentalists battle in court over how the exercises affect whales and other marine mammals.

Australia to put kangaroos on the pill
Sydney – Australian scientists have come up with a contraceptive suitable for kangaroos that they claim could do away with the controversial killing of the nation’s emblem, news reports said Saturday. Koala colonies are already on the pill.

Flying robot to track whales off Australia: report
SYDNEY (AFP) – A flying robot is to join the fight to save the world’s whales by taking part in an aerial survey to count humpbacks off Australia, a report said Sunday.

Antarctica on alert for alien invaders
Aliens are landing in Antarctica. Seeds, spores, mites, lichens and mosses alien to the continent have been brought unwittingly by scientists and tourists, and could disrupt life in the icy wilderness.

Peggy Noonan: ‘George W. Bush Destroyed The Republican Party’ (by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog)
You’ll recall that Noonan was one of Ronald Reagan’s top speech writers. Just more evidence of how divided Republicans are heading into this election.
See below for a little time capsule of Noonan’s former love.

Plainspoken Eloquence (by Peggy Noonan, Opinion Journal, the Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2002)
[F]or sheer seriousness, for the depth and scope of the information imparted, the president’s State of the Union the other night was, simply, staggering… After his speech, the liberal historian Doris Kearns Goodwin said the president’s words were “galvanizing.” Chris Mathews compared him to Jack Kennedy. The New York Times said Mr. Bush has “soared to new heights.”… It really is refreshing–literally refreshing–to have a president people admire and can follow cleanly again.

Judge’s Opinion

Gadhafi son may be linked to Iraq attack
BAGHDAD – A devastating explosion in northern Iraq was spearheaded by foreign fighters under the sponsorship of Seif al-Islam Gadhafi, son of the Libyan leader, a security chief for Sunni tribesmen who rose up against al-Qaida in Iraq said Saturday.

Some Sunni Muslims won’t salute Iraq’s new flag
BAGHDAD — Officials in Iraq’s mostly Sunni Muslim Anbar province are refusing to raise Iraq’s new national flag, which the parliament approved earlier this week. “The new flag is done for a foreign agenda and we won’t raise it,” said Ali Hatem al Suleiman, a leading member of the U.S.-backed Anbar Awakening Council, “If they want to force us to raise it, we will leave the yard for them to fight al Qaida.”

Egyptian riot police battle to shut Gaza border
Egypt tried in vain to re-establish its border with Gaza as its security personnel were overwhelmed by a flood of Palestinians streaming across the frontier. At one point a phalanx of Egyptian riot police, backed up by others with attack dogs on leads, tried to stop Palestinians crossing near the centre of the Gazan town of Rafah.

6 Powers Propose New Iran Sanctions
New U.N. sanctions against Iran would require countries to ban the entry of individuals involved in the Iranian nuclear program — a step up from a previous call for vigilance over their travel, according to a document obtained Friday. The latest round of penalties would also for the first time ban trade in equipment and technology that can be used in both civilian and nuclear programs, according to elements that would form the basis of a new U.N. resolution.

American woman kidnapped in Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – Gunmen kidnapped a burqa-clad American aid worker and her driver in southern Afghanistan’s largest city early Saturday, snatching the woman from a residential neighborhood as she was on her way to work.

Taliban seize Nato supplies in Pakistan
The suspected Taliban mastermind behind Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has stolen sophisticated Nato equipment by raiding the alliance’s supply lines running through Pakistani territory… A Nato spokesman in Kabul did not rule out that material had been stolen in transit through Pakistan, but denied that any weapons or military equipment had been lost. “This may hinge on what people’s definition of ‘equipment’ is,” he said.

Ottawa stumbles over transfer of Afghan prisoners
OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Canadian government stumbled on Friday over a decision to halt soldiers from handing over Afghan detainees to local authorities, first appearing to blame the military for not telling ministers and later withdrawing the remarks.

Venezuela, allies to start new bank
CARACAS, Venezuela – Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and three of his closest allies are teaming up to create a regional development bank intended to strengthen their alliance and promote independence from U.S.-backed lenders like the World Bank.

Islamists planned attacks across Europe: report
MADRID (Reuters) – Islamist extremists were planning attacks across Europe, especially against public transport, before their arrests in Barcelona last weekend, a Spanish paper reported on Saturday, citing a would-be attacker’s testimony.

MoD blames army leadership failure for abuse of Iraqis
Serious failings in army leadership, planning and training – particularly about treating civilians in an occupied country – led to the abuse of Iraqis by British soldiers, a Ministry of Defence investigation has found.

Rogue French trader taken into custody
PARIS – A rogue trader who cost France’s Societe Generale bank more than $7 billion by making bad stock market bets was taken into custody on Saturday for questioning, judicial officials said.

Dozens dead in latest Kenya clash
NAKURU, Kenya – Sporadic gunshots rang out Saturday in this western Kenyan city as those forced from their homes by postelection violence threatened revenge. Police took 16 charred bodies to a mortuary, where onlookers sobbed.

The End Of Privacy (by Seth Cohen, Truth Dig)
Amid the controversy brewing in the Senate over Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) reform, the Bush administration appears to have changed its strategy and is devising a bold new plan that would strip away FISA protections.

John Edwards Stands Up For The Constitution In FISA Battle (by Logan Murphy at Crooks and Liars)
We’ve been waiting for one of the presidential candidates to take the lead on this issue and are pleased to see John step up for the American people. Via John Edwards’ Blog: “… It’s wrong for your government to spy on you. That’s why I’m asking you to join me today in calling on Senate Democrats to filibuster revisions to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that would give “retroactive immunity” to the giant telecom companies for their role in aiding George W. Bush’s illegal eavesdropping on American citizens.”
A cloture vote has been scheduled for Monday.  Here are some toll free numbers for Capitol Hill.  Call your senators!  Harry Reid said on Friday that if Bush doesn’t agree to extend the existing temporary law so that more amendments can be debated, “or there will be no wiretapping”.  Of course, Reid has talked tough before, and then caved.  Every single time.

Bush plan for Iraq would be a first
President Bush’s plan to forge a long-term agreement with the Iraqi government that could commit the US military to defending Iraq’s security would be the first time such a sweeping mutual defense compact has been enacted without congressional approval, according to legal specialists… “We’ve got to rein in President Bush,” [Hillary] Clinton said Monday in a South Carolina debate. “We need legislation in a hurry.”

HUD OKs diverting Katrina housing funds
The federal government on Friday approved Mississippi’s plan to divert $600 million in hurricane housing funds to a port improvement project, angering critics who say tens of thousands of people made homeless by Hurricane Katrina still need help.

New welfare rule friendlier to students
WASHINGTON – Welfare recipients who go to college can use up to a year of classwork to meet the program’s work requirements and no longer will need to have homework supervised for some of that time count as well.

House GOP’s retreat funded by lobbyists. (Think Progress)
This weekend, House Republicans are gathering at the Greenbrier resort in West Virginia to have a conversation about cutting earmarks. As GOP members gather to talk about how to cut ties with lobbyist money, Ben Pershing notes that their weekend retreat is being partly funded by lobbyists.

There’s little indication of Sen. Craig ethics probe
WASHINGTON — With just a year remaining in Larry Craig’s Senate term, there’s little indication that the Senate Ethics Committee is doing much about the Idaho Republican’s controversial arrest last summer.

Senate Looking at Endowments as Tuition Rises
The Senate Finance Committee, increasingly concerned about the rising cost of higher education, demanded detailed information on Thursday from the nation’s 136 wealthiest colleges and universities on how they raised tuition over the last decade, gave out financial aid and managed and spent their endowments.

Rep. Lewis reaches $1 million in legal fees. (Think Progress)
Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) has been under federal investigation “for his ties to defense contractor and convicted criminal Brent Wilkes and lobbyist buddy Bill Lowery” since the spring of 2006. Beginning in June 2006, Lewis has been paying heavy sums in legal fees to deal with the probe. TPMmuckraker reports today that a $62,000 payment to the law firm Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher on Dec. 12 last year put him over the $1 million mark.  9:38

Obama, Clinton face off in SC primary
Democratic presidential rivals Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton collided Saturday in a racially charged South Carolina primary, prelude to the Feb. 5 coast-to-coast competition for more than 1,600 national convention delegates.

Many South Carolina Democrats still undecided
COLUMBIA, S.C. — Polls point to a Barack Obama victory in South Carolina’s primary Saturday, but the Rev. Larry McCutcheon isn’t so sure. The pastor of Orangeburg’s Trinity United Methodist Church finds “most of the people I talk to are trying to choose” between Obama and Hillary Clinton. “Obama brings a freshness,” he said, “but people recognize Clinton’s experience.” That ambivalence echoed all through the state Friday, as Obama, Clinton and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards spent a frenetic day trying to woo votes in a state that could make or break at least one of them.

Medina (and two other Texas Supreme Court Justices) Faces Ethics Charge (by Jonathan Turley)
Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina has been accused of ethics violations in the misuse of campaign funds. The charges come at a time that Medina is dealing with a recent indictment for arson — an indictment quashed by a local prosecutor. Now Medina and Texas Supreme Court Justices Paul Green and Nathan Hecht are facing serious ethics charges.
It’s a tradition.  Alberto Gonzales served on the Texas Supreme Court.

Memo Details Objections to Command Center Site
The New York Police Department produced a detailed analysis in 1998 opposing plans by the city to locate its emergency command center at the World Trade Center, but the Giuliani administration overrode those objections. The command center later collapsed from damage in the Sept. 11 terrorist attack.

Who gets stimulated ? (by Paul Krugman)
Fast work by the people at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, who figure out who gets what from tax plans… [Y]ou’ve got a plan where around 2/3 of the outlay is likely to be ineffective. Now. I’ve been in touch with some people on the Hill, who say that the glass is best viewed as 1/3 full rather than 2/3 empty — that it’s only thanks to the Democrats that people likely to spend their rebate are getting anything at all. And they have a point: this plan will produce some stimulus, while the Bush plan would have done virtually nothing. And I suppose that it may be true that this was the best Nancy Pelosi could get. But I just can’t bring myself to celebrate.

Senators consider rebates for retirees
WASHINGTON – Retirees living off Social Security are frustrated that they won’t get tax rebate checks through a bipartisan economic stimulus package before the House. Senate Democrats Friday began efforts to include them.

US slides into dangerous 1930s ‘liquidity trap’
The United States is sliding towards a dangerous 1930s-style “liquidity trap” that cannot easily be stopped by drastic cuts in interest rates, Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz has warned. “The biggest fear is that long-term bond rates won’t come down in line with short-term rates. We’ll have the reverse of what we’ve seen in recent years, and that is what is frightening the markets,” he told the Daily Telegraph, while trudging through ice and snow in Davos.

Union membership increases for first time in 25 years. (Think Progress)
In 2007, “U.S. unions increased their share of membership among workers” for the “first time in the past quarter of a century,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) annual union membership report released today. In the past year, “unions added about 310,000 members, raising the unionized share of the workforce to 12.1 percent from 12.0 percent in 2006.”

Welfare for Wall Street, Federal Reserve-Style (by Thomas Palley, thanks to Economist’s View)
The Federal Reserve is right to play the interest rate card aggressively since the economy-wide costs of a financial meltdown are so large. But let’s not fool ourselves about Wall Street and free markets. The Fed is using its government granted power of fixing interest rates to bailout Wall Street. That is welfare, Federal Reserve-style.

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

Pecksniffian Twit (by digby)
[In 2004, a Democratic group tied to Dick Gephardt and John Kerry ran ads invoking Osama bin Laden and saying,] “Howard Dean just cannot compete with George Bush on foreign policy. It’s time for Democrats to think about that — and think about it now.”…I don’t remember any “thoughtful” members of both parties getting together and deciding it was beyond the pale. Certainly nobody suggested that it was somehow disrespectful to the delicate, high minded Howard Dean or that it would tear the party apart.
Click through for a link to the ad.

Obama takes heat for ‘independent expenditure’ ads
San Francisco — Illinois Sen. Barack Obama – who has criticized Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards for benefiting from “independent expenditure” and political action committees – is taking heat because some of the same kind of organizations are now spending money, organizing and putting up TV ads on his behalf in the Bay Area… [C]ritics say Obama is being hypocritical in denouncing Edwards’ connection with “527″ independent expenditure groups while not demanding that ones supporting him stop.

How Much Did an Accused Political Fixer Raise for Obama? (by Brian Ross at The Blotter, ABC News)
The Obama campaign says it has given away more than $85,000 in [Antoin "Tony"] Rezko-linked contributions since Rezko was indicted on federal fraud and extortion charges in the fall of 2006. An ABCNews.com review, however, has identified an additional $100,000 in contributions made to Obama from Rezko’s associates that have not been returned, including $19,500 in contributions from Rezko’s wife and employees of Rezko’s business enterprises.

Hillary On The Morning Shows: Surprised By Photo Of Her And Rezko
Hillary hits all the morning shows, gets hit with a surprise on NBC: An old photo of her and Bill next to disgraced Obama associate Tony Rezko. NBC’s Matt Lauer says that the network “received” the photo and that its date is uncertain; the same pic also popped up on Drudge this morning. Asked about it, Hillary responds: “I don’t know the man. I wouldn’t know him if he walked in the door. I don’t have a 17 year relationship with him. There’s a big difference between standing somewhere taking a picture with someone you don’t know and haven’t seen since, and having a relationship that the newspapers in Chicago have been exploring.”
Click through to watch the video.

MSNBC blames Romney whisper on microphone malfunction (The Raw Story)
The whisper that could be heard just before an answer from Mitt Romney at Thursday’s Republican debate was the result of a microphone malfunction, an MSNBC spokesman tells RAW STORY, but its source remains a mystery. Just before Romney answered a question about Ronald Reagan’s 1983 Social Security overhaul, a voice can be heard whispering, either “He raised taxes” or “not raise taxes.” The overheard musing was the result of an open microphone somewhere, but a spokesman said the whisperer has not been identified.

Florida GOP Debate: Huckabee suggests Saddam’s WMDs are in Jordan (by Nicole Belle at Crooks and Liars)
This is exactly why things that should not need to be debated anymore continue to be debated. Because no matter how many facts you place in front of Republicans, no matter how many studies are done by bipartisan panels, no matter how many White House talking points you prove are lies, they remain intractable and hold on to their false memes and then keep adding to it.
Click through to watch the video.

Romney, McCain exchange jabs in Fla.
SARASOTA, Fla. – A debate between John McCain and Mitt Romney over leadership credentials spiraled Saturday into a resume-belittling showdown as the Republican presidential race grew ever more intense ahead of Florida’s pivotal primary.

When it comes to abortion, GOP leaders are happy to phone it in (by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars)
The annual March for Life has come and gone. One of its more bizarre qualities is the way GOP presidents participate: by recorded message or telephone hook-up, but never in person… Of the pro-life Republican candidates, John McCain sent a letter, Mitt Romney issued a press release, Mike Huckabee was in Georgia, and Ron Paul (who opposes abortion rights despite his libertarianism) didn’t communicate with the crowd, though he did announce an endorsement from Norma McCorvey.

CNN’s Super Tuesday-Plus
CNN is going around the clock with political coverage in the hours leading up to and past Super Tuesday in early February.

Fox News: Bush Is ‘Really Reflecting On His Place In History,’ Trying To ‘Equate Himself’ With Lincoln (Think Progress)
Fox News reporter Bret Baier “was granted unprecedented access by George W. Bush” to put together a one hour documentary that reflects back on his presidency. The documentary will air this Sunday night. Baier previewed his documentary — “George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish” — on Fox News this afternoon. He said that what surprised him from the interview was the President’s repeated efforts to link himself to Abraham Lincoln: “… he thinks about Lincoln and the tough times that he had during the Civil War. 600,000 dead. The country essentially hated him when he was leaving office.
Click through to watch the video.

They Are One Entity (by digby)
A number of readers have written in to point out how odd it is that Bush characterizes Lincoln as being hated when he was “leaving office,” as if he doesn’t know that Lincoln had actually just been reelected in a landslide, was despised only by those in the defeated south and was well … shot. I t makes you wonder if Bush even knows the sixth grade level history of Lincoln’s term… As I wrote to one of the readers, I suspect that this whole Lincoln thing is something some sycophant told him in passing and he’s adopted it as his coping mechanism: “don’t worry Mr President, Lincoln was despised when he left office and he’s now known as America’s greatest president. You will be too!”

The Illustrated President (by Scott Horton, Harper’s, thanks to Think Progress)
George W. Bush is famous for his attachment to a painting… “When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us…” [But the painting was created] to illustrate a Western short story … about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska.
Click through to see a graphic of the painting.

Anti-Bush campaign planned
WASHINGTON – A liberal advocacy group plans to spend $8.5 million in a drive to make sure President Bush’s public approval doesn’t improve as his days in the White House come to an end. Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the failures of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the current mortgage crisis.

Students plan to protest Rove speech. (Think Progress)
Students at the prestigious prep school Choate Rosemary Hall are protesting the choice of Karl Rove as their commencement speaker. AP reports that some students “plan to walk out, while “others are trying to bring comedian Stephen Colbert to campus for an alternate speech.” The campus newspaper has also written an editorial urging the school to reject Rove.  

Rummy Resurfaces, Calls for U.S. Propaganda Agency (by Sharon Weinberger at Danger Room, Wired)
One of the many things I love about Donald Rumsfeld is that he’s totally unrepentant. Back in 2001, the Pentagon under his leadership created the controversial Office of Strategic Influence, which was closed down just a few months later after its existence became public. Rightly or wrongly, the Pentagon was accused of creating a propaganda office. Now, the former defense secretary has a bigger vision: he is advocating a “21st century agency for global communications.”

Donald Rumsfeld: Still There (by Spencer Ackerman at the Washington Independent)
[W]hen Rumsfeld tried a version of this in miniature in Iraq, his actual fix was comically stupid. The Pentagon hired the Lincoln Group to pull off a propaganda campaign designed at discrediting the insurgency… For this, the Pentagon spent more than $25 million and arguably broke the law… Whatever he says is discredited by the sheer fact that he’s the one saying it. He should be legally obligated to end of all his sentences with, “…but, on the other hand, I’m a total jackass.”

A criminal idea (James K. Galbraith, writing at Comment is Free, The Guardian)
Attacking other countries to stop them acquiring nuclear weapons repudiates a key principle of international law

Fmr Bush aide refuses to speak to students on the record. (Think Progress)
Bush’s former adviser Meghan O’Sullivan, “who played a key behind-the-scenes role in implementing Bush’s controversial Iraq policies,” canceled a speech at Indiana University on Tuesday “after the student newspaper refused to agree to demands that the public event would be off the record.” Sullivan claimed she was ill, but was later seen speaking off-the-record at a private dinner with professors and “campus leaders.”  

Media Matters for America headlines

Craig Crawford: “[T]he evidence-free bias against the Clintons in the media borders on mental illness”

NBC’s Corke repeated myth that Giuliani kept “out of all these early contests”

PolitiFact.com falsely claimed McCain opposed 2001 Bush tax cuts because they should be “balanced by spending cuts”

CNN quoted CEI policy director on “green-collar jobs” without noting group’s reported ties to energy industry

Beck called “Comrade Clinton” a “liberal fascist,” Edwards “a communist”

MSNBC’s Hall aired McCain ad attacking Romney for “chang[ing] positions” on tax cuts without noting McCain’s flip-flops on taxes, negative campaigning

Despite earlier calling it a “myth,” CNN aired Huckabee’s claim that FairTax allows workers to “get their whole paychecks”

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. falsely asserted Clinton’s “experience … includes lying under oath, and obstructing justice”

CNN’s Blitzer and Todd falsely present August 2007 Michelle Obama comment as current attack on Clintons

Dobbs falsely suggested CNN Democratic debate didn’t include “one question about illegal immigration”

UPI baselessly asserted that Obama paid “substantially lower than market value” for Rezko property

Morning Joe hosts launched misleading attacks on Obama over state Senate votes

Beck falsely claimed Dem candidates have not supported striking writers

Morning Joe panel panned Gibson’s “awful joke of an apology” after his “anti-gay tirade” about Ledger’s death

Iraq: Another journalist held by the U.S. military
Reporters Without Borders has voiced concern about the continuing detention of Rashid Majid Al-Sari, the editor of the biweekly newspaper “Al-Fatah”, who was arrested by United States troops at his Baghdad home on 18 January 2008.

Ex-HarperCollins Publisher Settles Defamation Suit
Judith Regan, the publisher who was fired from HarperCollins in late 2006, has settled her $100 million defamation lawsuit against News Corporation, Harper’s parent.

Seattle Stranger pulls negative restaurant review off website
The Stranger’s rival noticed that ads for Thomas Street Bistro appeared in the Stranger two weeks after the restaurant was panned by the paper, and the review was pulled off thestranger.com. The Stranger says the review was yanked because the restaurant was critiqued too soon, and that the bistro was given free ad space because of production errors in previous ads.

New York Press sex columnist lifted questions from Savage
New York Press editor-in-chief David Blum says his “Lip Service” columnist didn’t realize that using questions from Dan Savage’s syndicated sex column to get her column going was a breach of journalism ethics. Claudia Lonow, a Los Angeles-based TV writer, resigned after submitting one column.

Advertiser Sues Don Imus For Unscripted Comments
A book publisher that bought an ad on Imus’s show is suing the shock jock and his former bosses at CBS for insulting the book he was paid to promote.

“CBS News employees ratify WGA deal”
CBS News employees represented by the Writers Guild of America ratified their new contract agreement with the network. The WGA and CBS reached a tentative agreement Jan. 9, pending approval by the members.

Bare rear could cost ABC $1.4 million
WASHINGTON – The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD Blue.

Internet Ad Spend Will See A Tiny Bump From Summer Olympics: Analyst (Paid Content)
Internet advertising will attract only $70 million in ad spend related to the summer Olympics, out of a total $1.5 billion in expected expenditures for the Beijing event, according to Lehman Brothers analyst Doug Anmuth’s Internet Inside Weekly report (pdf only, not online). Most of that $70 million will go to NBC’s websites, while $30 million will be up for grabs by sites unrelated to the TV network.

Eisner’s Latest: A Vuguru-Putnam Production Of Robin Cook’s Upcoming Thriller: Report (Paid Content)
Michael Eisner’s …, partnering with Cyber Group Animation and Big Fantastic, will create 50 two-minute webisodes to serve as a prequel to Robin Cook’s upcoming thriller Foreign Body.  The NYP says the episodes will debut May 27, with a new ad-supported webisode airing every Monday through Friday for 10 weeks leading to an Aug. 4 finale. The book goes on sale the next day—with, Putnam hopes, an audience already hooked on the characters.