Permanent link to MTA daily media news

“All that is required is leadership.” (by Tengrain at Mock, Paper, Scissors)
Gee, Rachel, maybe you shouldn’t have been such a Hillary basher last year. She’s pushing for State Department employees to receive the same benefits for same sex partners as for married spouses. Click through to watch the video.

Dismay over Obama’s Turnabout on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ (Time)
The endorsement of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by the Administration marks the latest rightward tack by Obama. The President denounced many of George W. Bush’s national-security policies during the campaign, but in office has adopted more conservative positions, including endorsing military commissions to try purported terrorists, and declining to release a second batch of photographs depicting alleged U.S. maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. His stance on “Don’t ask, don’t tell” may be more surprising, because Obama aides have made clear the President wants the ban lifted eventually.

Obama Not Being Trotsky in Disguise: Good or Bad? (by Pareene at Gawker)
Obama’s philosophy of government is all about, in Rahm Emanuel’s phrase, “the art of the possible.”… Kevin Baker’s essay in the upcoming Harper’s, “Barack Hoover Obama” [subscription required] … addresses the inkling of dissatisfaction we have each time we hear that [Rahm] Emanuel phrase repeated: don’t you have, right now, a rather historic opportunity to redefine what the “possible” means? “… “We are back in Evan Bayh territory here, espousing a ‘pragmatism’ that is not really pragmatism at all, just surrender to the usual corporate interests. The common thread running through all of Obama’s major proposals right now is that they are labyrinthine solutions designed mainly to avoid conflict… They bear the seeds of their own defeat.”

Annals of Worshipful Mindlessness (by Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
In a story about the Obamas’ “date night” that included attendance at a Broadway play, we learn the following: “Then it was up to Broadway, where they had tickets at the Belasco Theatre for ‘Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,’ a play by August Wilson about a man coming to terms with the history of slavery. ‘I’m nervous, excited, honored,’ said Andre Holland, who plays character Jeremy Furlow, before the show. ‘It’s like in Shakespearean times, when the king would come to the show.’”…

This is part and parcel of the undue reverence and obeisance offered to the U.S. president (“the biggest standing ovation of the night”), as the ultimate representative of authority, a notably mistaken and dangerous state of affairs. Given the actual behavior of almost all U.S. presidents for the last hundred years (and longer), including the numerous wars and interventions they have instigated and the millions of innocent people they have caused to be murdered, to say nothing of their actions on the domestic front, those presidents may be entirely deserving of many responses; reverence and obeisance are decidedly not among them.
Arthur gives the quote by Evan Thomas of Newsweek that I mentioned on Monday, comparing Obama to God.

Limbaugh: Obama has “god complex,” “imposing his values” on U.S. economy and “destroying it” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

The habit of skepticism (by John Caruso at The Distant Ocean, thanks to Arthur Silber at the Power of Narrative)
[T]here’s scarcely a sentiment in Obama’s Cairo speech that wasn’t already spoken by George W. Bush.  And yet when Obama offers the same platitudes—sometimes in the exact same words—credulous liberals are seized by fits of swooning and enraptured praise just shy of glossolalia.  Obama’s speech wasn’t some epoch-defining moment of transformation from a “transcendent leader”; it was a moment of polished stagecraft from a consummate salesman for American empire and corporate capitalism.  It was the same old wine in a lovely new bottle, from someone who’s already shown us repeatedly that his words aren’t matched by his actions.  And had it been their arch-nemesis George Bush giving this speech instead of the Anointed One, they’d have had no trouble seeing that.

One can only hope that some day these people will embrace the habit of skepticism for all politicians, not just the ones on the other side, and finally and fully accept that fine words alone mean nothing at all—no matter who speaks them.

Bronstein on Obama and the press: “This guy is good. Really good. And, frankly, so far, we’re not” (SFGate.com, via Poynter Online)
“You can’t blame powerful people for wanting to play the press to peddle self-perpetuating mythology,” writes Phil Bronstein. “But you can blame the press, already suffocating under a massive pile of blame, guilt, heavy debt and sinking fortunes, for being played. Some of the time, it seems we’re even enthusiastically jumping into the pond without even being pushed. Is there an actual limit to the number of instances you can be the cover of Newsweek?”

Barack, It is time to CATCH UP (by J -SOM at Liberal Rapture)
Ted Olson is a conservative’s conservative. Listen to him on gay marriage below. Remarkable quote from the clip: “‘George W Bush’s Solicitor General is now more pro gay rights than President Barrack Obama.’ Olson: ‘Well, I hope he’ll catch up.’” From your mouth, Ted, to Barry’s ears.
Click through to watch the video.

Obama: Pay-as-you-go plan must become law (UPI)
U.S. President Barack Obama Tuesday called on Congress to live within its means by giving a pay-as-you-go plan the force of law. Reining in deficits must be done in a fiscally responsible manner, Obama said in endorsing the so-call PAYGO plan, surrounded by members of the House Blue Dogs, a group of fiscally conservative Democrats supporting the rule of offsetting spending with revenue-producing initiatives.
Do you know what that means for health care, friends? It means we’re screwed.

Blue Dog Democrats could have major role in shaping health bill (McClatchy)
President Barack Obama is moving quickly to head off opposition to major health care legislation from fiscal conservatives in Congress by vowing to follow strict rules for paying for it without further driving up the already huge deficit.

Target Landrieu, Not Limbaugh (by Chris Bowers at Open Left, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerilla)
Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu has backtracked, and no longer supports the public option… [P]rogressive organizations and media outlets need to be targeting the Landrieus of the world, not the Limbaughs. If the public option is defeated, it will be the fault of the Landrieus, and of Democratic leadership that either did not place enough pressure on her, or was ineffective in the pressure they placed. And, if that defeat happen, it will signal the end of any possibility of real progressive governance during the Democratic trifecta.
My comment: Absolutely. This business of ridiculing Limbaugh, which the DNC thought was such a good idea, won’t advance the progressive cause. Targeting Blue Dogs will.

Shorter NewsHour: Give up peasants, you have no power (by DCblogger at Corrente)
Check out this excerpt from a NewsHour report on the health care debate: “MITCH STEWART: I think having this face-to-face conversation happening across the country is something that’s never happened before. And I think our leaders in Washington are going to take note of that… BETTY ANN BOWSER: But congressional scholar Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution thinks the effort won’t have much impact on health care reform.”

No power, eh? We’ll see about that.
Flood ‘Em (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
This is an emergency. In addition to contacting your own representatives, Sen. Max Baucus and Sen. Olympia Snowe are the ones we need to back off on their plans to eviscerate the public healthcare plan. Please take the time today to call or fax.

Kennedy releases health bill — without key sections (On Politics, USA Today)
The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee released its version of the health care bill — but without addressing some key, unresolved issues, such as employer mandates and a public option. The committee will meet tomorrow and Thursday “to discuss outstanding legislative options such as the public option and employer mandate,” the press release just issued by the committee says. ”We have a unique opportunity to give the American people, at long last, the health care they need and deserve,” said Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., said in a statement. 

Democrats’ draft health bill delays GOP confrontation (McClatchy)
Democrats on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions released their health care proposal Tuesday, but left out for now the two elements Republicans dislike the most — a new government-run insurance plan and a requirement that employers provide coverage or pay a penalty.
Interesting way to put it, McClatchy. I’d have said they were too chicken to put in the tough parts.

Third Way Memo On Public Health Care Stirs Progressive Outrage (by Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post)
A health care policy statement causing an uproar among progressives was drafted by three policy analysts, one of whom has longtime connections to the health insurance industry. The paper, which surfaced on Monday, is written by the organization Third Way and rejects calls for a public health care option that would be available to anyone and would compete with private insurance on the grounds that it would be divisive and undermine broader reform goals.

The last taboo in the health care debate: The market’s FAIL (by lambert at Corrente)
Imagine the kind of world where a stenographer can write this paragraph, and the Very Serious People will nod in agreement: “But critics argue that with low administrative costs and no need to produce profits, a public plan will start with an unfair pricing advantage. They say that if a public plan is allowed to pay doctors and hospitals at levels comparable to Medicare’s, which are substantially below commercial insurance rates, it could set premiums so low it would quickly consume the market.” And you say that like it’s a bad thing! Because in health care, destroying the market is exactly what we want to do: It’s a massive FAIL, and what FAILs should die.

The pitting of doctor against doctor (by Stephen J. Bergman, a doctor and author, thanks to Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
The issue isn’t that primary-care doctors get paid less than cardiac surgeons, but that the system of healthcare rests on insurance companies and their CEOs making huge profits. No amount of cost-cutting can save enough money to support a for-profit system. The only solution is a universal, government-run healthcare system. Surveys suggest that a majority of Americans and doctors desire this. Any plan that puts private insurance in anything other than an optional, “concierge” system for the rich is just whistling past the graveyard of American healthcare.

The administrative cost for a private, for-profit health insurance system is approximately 33 percent ($300 billion annually); the administrative cost for the two government-run health systems, the Veterans Administration and Medicare, is about 3 percent. The level of satisfaction with these two nonprofit systems is high; that of for-profit is low. Why in the world should healthcare be for profit?
Why, indeed? I actually remember the days before for-profit health care. It didn’t cost nearly as much, even converted to today’s dollars.

Minority lawmakers to highlight health disparities (AP)
Black, Latino and Asian lawmakers want President Barack Obama to focus more on racial disparities reported in medical treatment as the White House works toward overhauling the nation’s health care system.

House Dems favor insurance requirement (AP)
Senior House Democrats drafting health care legislation are considering slapping an unspecified financial penalty on anyone who refuses to purchase affordable health insurance, a key committee chairman said Monday. In addition, officials said Democrats are considering a new tax on certain health insurance benefits as one of numerous options to help pay for expanding coverage to the uninsured. No details on the tax were immediately available, and no final decisions were expected until next week at the earliest.

Report: House Dems Angry With Reid For Caving To Centrists And GOP (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
There’s a choice piece of news buried way at the end of Matt Bai’s big New York Times magazine piece on the White House’s dealings with Congress on health care. To wit: House Dems are growing increasingly upset with Harry Reid for refusing to meaningfully challenge centrist Dem Senators and allegedly caving to threats of a GOP filibuster on issue after issue:

“Some House Democrats I talked to … accuse Reid and his lieutenants of repeatedly placating Republicans to avoid a filibuster, rather than taking a stand on principle now and then. Why not force centrist Democrats to vote against their party and let Republicans filibuster the agenda on national television? What would the voters think then?” A lot of folks would love an answer to this question.
Many folks have wanted the answer to that same damn question for many years now.

Obama’s summer jobs plan: work for 600,000 people (Los Angeles Times)
President Obama today promised to deliver more than 600,000 new jobs this summer with accelerated spending of some of the $787-billion economic stimulus that Congress approved at his urging earlier this year. The boost in employment will not offset the job losses of recent months — with more than 1.6 million jobs shaved from the economy since Congress approved the stimulus plan in February. Unemployment last month reached 9.4%, the highest since 1983.

Obama’s new stimulus plan same as the old (AP)
President Barack Obama is promising some exciting coming attractions for his stimulus plan. But it turns out they’re just summer reruns.

EMPIRICAL PROOF: Obama Stimulus = FAIL (by Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker)
Remember we had a graph trotted out with Obama’s economic team when they proposed their “stimulus”, and projected unemployment (and GDP!) with and without their stimulus? Well, another blogger has plotted that first graph against actual results… Employment is, in fact, everything.  It is payments on credit cards, it is payments on mortgages, it is ability to buy a new house, it is the ability to buy a car, pay for your iPhone and so on. Without employment – sustainable, high-quality, high-paying employment that provides at least a solid middle-class wage, there is no economic stability, say much less economic growth. Period.

Morris conspiracy theory: Recovery Act “designed to increase government spending and the recession was the excuse” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: Obama is redistributing money from private sector to unions, civil rights coalitions (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Banks to Repay Bailout Funds (Truthdig)
Some of the country’s major banks are prepared to pay back money they borrowed under the TARP program, but don’t get too excited. The initial repayment is expected to be a meager $50 billion, which Timothy Geithner wants to inject right back into other troubled banks. On top of which, the repaying banks will probably continue to draw financing from the Federal Reserve.

Bank bailout turns out to have been good business for U.S. (McClatchy)
When Congress passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout package last fall, critics said it’d be a money loser. But when 10 banks returned $68 billion of the money on Tuesday, President Barack Obama said the government had realized a small profit.
McClatchy, McClatchy. I really expect better of you. How can a return of $68 billion on a $700 billion loan be considered a profit?

Market reacts coolly to bank bailout repayment (AP)
Investors reacted coolly to word that 10 of the nation’s largest banks can repay $68 billion in bailout money.

TARP Watchdog: We Should Have Semi-Regular Stress Tests (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
One of the five members of the TARP Oversight Committee said on Monday that the government would be wise to run regular stress tests of the nation’s banks, even during times of relative economic prosperity. Richard Neiman, who sits on the Congressional Oversight Panel, said that while he was confident in the model and result of the first stress test on the nation’s largest banks, he thinks the stress tests are an important measure of the solvency and stability of those institutions and should be continued.

Did Hank Paulson Use TARP as a “Ruse” to Rescue Citigroup? (by bostonboomer at The Confluence)
Be sure you’re sitting down before you read this, Okay? Barry Rithholtz speculates in his forthcoming book, Bailout Nation that the entire multi-trillion dollar boondoggle was “a giant ruse, a Hank Paulson engineered scam to cover up the simple fact that CitiGroup (C) was teetering on the brink of implosion. A loan just to Citi alone would have been problematic, went this line of brilliant reasoning, so instead, we gave money to all the big banks.”
And that would explain why the banks were pressured to take the money Anything is possible in our corrupt society. Order Ritholtz’ book here.

Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses (Bloomberg)
Big banks in the U.S. say they’re on the mend. The five largest were profitable in the first quarter, rebounding from record losses for the industry in the fourth quarter. Share prices have jumped, with the KBW Bank Index doubling since March 6… The revival may be short-lived. Analysts who have examined the quarterly profits and government tests say that accounting rule changes and rosy assumptions are making the institutions look healthier than they are…

Citigroup’s $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. “The big banks’ profits were totally bogus,” says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial companies. “The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They’re all part of a major effort to put lipstick on a pig.”

Outrage — And Business as Usual (by Marie Cocco)
The Wall Street Journal reported last week that financial institutions and affiliated trade groups have spent $27.6 million lobbying to relax rules governing how they account for the value of securities they hold. Already, a loosening of accounting rule changes made in April — under pressure from sympathetic lawmakers — helped some banks through the Obama administration’s “stress tests” despite widespread assumptions that the banks are overstating their strength. The industry also is digging in — and doling out money for lobbying and campaign contributions — for a battle over how to regulate derivatives, the financial instruments traded in opaque ways that are among the core contributors to the financial crisis.

This is not an industry humbled. Not by its reliance on billions in taxpayer bailout money, not by its role in precipitating the economic crisis. “At some point the senators in this chamber will decide the bankers shouldn’t write the agenda for the United States Senate,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said as his colleagues prepared to vote against his bid for the mortgage relief provision. At some point, maybe. But not just now.

America’s socialism for the rich: Corporate welfarism (by Joseph E. Stiglitz, thanks to Economist’s View)
Rewriting the rules of the market economy – in a way that has benefited those that have caused so much pain to the entire global economy – is worse than financially costly. Most Americans view it as grossly unjust, especially after they saw the banks divert the billions intended to enable them to revive lending to payments of outsized bonuses and dividends. Tearing up the social contract is something that should not be done lightly… We need to break up the too-big-to-fail banks; there is no evidence that these behemoths deliver societal benefits that are commensurate with the costs they have imposed on others. And, if we don’t break them up, then we have to severely limit what they do. They can’t be allowed to do what they did in the past – gamble at others’ expenses.

This raises another problem with America‘s too-big-to-fail, too-big-to-be-restructured banks: they are too politically powerful. Their lobbying efforts worked well, first to deregulate, and then to have taxpayers pay for the cleanup. Their hope is that it will work once again to keep them free to do as they please, regardless of the risks for taxpayers and the economy. We cannot afford to let that happen.

Economist: Housing bubble caused Great Depression, too (McClatchy)
Nobel Prize-winning economist Vernon Smith draws some disturbing parallels between the events that led up to the Great Depression of the 1930s and the severe economic slump of today.
When will we EVER learn?

Financial Community Norms (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
Bill Easterly: “…[M]ost rules we live by in a free society are more the product of community norms than they are of formal laws…” There’s a lesson here for regulation. It’s not enough to change the rules. If the culture doesn’t change to support those rules, the rules won’t be effective. The current crisis wasn’t just because we had ineffective regulation and all we have to do now to fix things is to change the rules of the game. Attitudes must change as well… [W]e need new regulation, but the financial community also needs to establish new norms, and people who step outside of those norms must be socially ostracized in whatever sense is required in those markets. Rules and regulations are not enough by themselves, community attitudes must change as well.
Our whole wealth and celebrity adoring society needs to change. Let’s start celebrating the people who do the most to help others, rather than the people who do the most to help themselves.

Some Wall Street Interests Scale Back on Political Giving (Capital Eye)
As the economic crisis continued during the first three months of 2009, many institutions in the powerful finance, insurance and real estate sector have scaled back on contributions to lawmakers, CRP has found… For some companies in this troubled sector, contributions have fallen by many hundreds of thousands of dollars compared to the first quarter of 2005 or the first quarter of 2007.

Official: Obama wants shareholder say on exec pay (AP)
An administration official says President Barack Obama will ask Congress to give shareholders a nonbinding voice in how much corporate executives are paid. It’s an effort to link compensation to long-term performance rather than short-term gains. The official said the president also will seek legislation that requires corporate compensation committees to be independent from corporate management. The move would give the Securities and Exchange Commission authority to strengthen the independence of the panels that set executive pay.
Nonbinding? What good is that? Don’t the stockholders own the damn company?

A Republican to Save Us (by Robert Scheer at Truthdig)
[Sheila] Bair is the Republican whom President Obama reappointed to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., but she is protecting the interest of taxpayers as no Democrat has in this administration, and she needs your support. Huge financial decisions are being made by this government, involving trillions in future obligations of U.S. taxpayers, and Bair has been a rare effective voice for the interests of ordinary folk… Bair, who has been insisting, over Geithner’s objection, that major changes occur in the leadership of Citigroup to give the taxpayers a better chance to get some of that money back…

Rest assured, if Bair loses out and [Treasury Secretary Timothy] Geithner has his way, Citigroup’s CEO and the other Wall Street moguls will be thrilled. But the public will have lost its most effective advocate.

Bernanke Might Get Another Term (Political Wire)
Though convention wisdom had White House economic adviser Larry Summers as a Federal Board Chairman-in-waiting, the New York Times says current Fed chief Ben Bernanke might actually get reappointed. “Bernanke’s aggressive response to the crisis has so improved his reputation that people close to Mr. Obama increasingly suggest the president could well reappoint him in the interests of financial stability — just as Presidents Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton retained Fed chiefs who had been picked by predecessors of the other party.”

House Committee Subpoenas Federal Reserve (Bloomberg)
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee said it had a subpoena served on the Federal Reserve to compel it to turn over documents related to Bank of America Corp.’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch & Co.

Regulatory “Interagency Turf War” (by Mark Thoma at Economist’s View)
Small, fractured regulatory authority is no match for too big and too interconnected to fail institutions. The problem with multiple regulatory authority, or one problem anyway, is that firms can shop around for the lightest regulation, then do their best to redefine what they do through creative financial engineering until it fits under the less restrictive umbrella (and prior to the crash, firms did just that). In addition, they also put pressure on both legislators and regulators to support those redefinitions. The result is, essentially, regulatory capture through arbitrage and less than effective regulation.

Limbaugh: “[Obama] did not inherit a mess. He has created one” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Fiat closes deal to take bulk of Chrysler’s assets (AP)
Italy‘s Fiat is the new owner of most of Chrysler’s assets, closing a deal Wednesday that saves the troubled U.S. automaker from liquidation and places a new company in the hands of Fiat’s CEO.

Obama rewards AT&T warrantless surveillance CEO Ed Whitacre with chairmanship of GM (by lambert at Corrente)
Thank gawd — or the 11 dimensional chess player — that FISA [cough] reform gave the telcos retroactive immunity! Because otherwise Ed Whitacre, 17-year AT&T Chairman and CEO, would be in jail — since FISA violations were felonies, back when we had the rule of law — instead of being tapped to run GM! Online WSJ: “The 67-year-old Mr. Whitacre is known as a straight-talking, no-nonsense executive with a track record of cutting big deals and working closely with the U.S. government [in small matters like shredding the Fourth Amendment], skills that could prove critical for GM as it orchestrates a massive restructuring under close scrutiny [BWA-HA-HA-HA!] of the U.S. Treasury.”

Rush: Boycott GM so Obama fails (by Alegre)
Unreal… is this guy really so full of hate that he’d work to see one-third of this nation’s largest industrial base go belly-up, just to see the WH fail in their effort to save it? This nation needs to create more jobs and if GM shutters the rest o fits plants then its workers, suppliers, small businesses in the towns and entire communities will fail.  The ripples will turn into a tsunami and Limbaugh is telling his listeners to help make that happen.
My comment: But don’t we call for boycotts of Rush’s advertisers?

Lawmakers scramble to help auto dealers and consumers (McClatchy)
Responding to consumers and car dealers upset by the upheavals in the American auto industry, lawmakers in Congress moved quickly Tuesday to provide relief from dealer closings and sluggish sales.

Yet another review ordered of Afghan policy — fifth this year (McClatchy)
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates Monday gave the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan 60 days to conduct another review of the American strategy there, the fifth since President Barack Obama took office less than five months ago.

Obama given some credit for Lebanon vote’s moderate turn (McClatchy)
Lebanon‘s pro-Western political parties turned their focus Monday toward crafting a stable coalition government hours after voters, prodded by the Obama administration to embrace moderation, soundly rebuffed efforts by Iran-backed Hezbollah politicians to secure more political power in Beirut.

Release of interrogation files would endanger security, CIA tells judge  (Los Angeles Times)
CIA Director Leon Panetta told a federal judge Monday that releasing documents about the agency’s terrorism interrogations would harm national security. Panetta sent an affidavit to New York federal judge Alvin Hellerstein, arguing that release of agency cables describing tough interrogation methods used on Al Qaeda suspects would tell the enemy too much. The CIA director filed the papers in a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The suit has already led to the unveiling of Bush administration legal memos authorizing harsh methods and to a fight over releasing photos of abused detainees.

Cantor Falsely Claims There Are No ‘Judicial Precedents’ For The Prosecution Of Suspected Terrorists On U.S. Soil (Think Progress)
[Tuesday], Guantanamo detainee Ahmed Ghailani was transferred to New York to face trial for the bombing of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya… The right wing … has seized the opportunity to launch baseless, fearmongering attacks, with House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) leading the way: “This is the first step in the Democrats’ plan to import terrorists into America…” However, the Justice Department [on Tuesday] put out a lengthy fact sheet listing nine of major international and domestic terrorism cases that just the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York alone has successfully prosecuted since the 1990s. The release also responded to right-wing criticisms that U.S. prisons can’t handle terrorists… “[O]ther defendants in the embassy bombings were tried and convicted in New York.”

FBI director defends use of informants in mosques (AP)
FBI Director Robert Mueller on Monday defended the agency’s use of informants within U.S. mosques, despite complaints from Muslim organizations that worshippers and clerics are being targeted instead of possible terrorists… “We don’t investigate places, we investigate individuals,” Mueller said during a brief meeting with reporters in Los Angeles… The Council of Islamic Organizations of Michigan sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder after mosques and other groups reported members of the community have been asked to monitor people coming to mosques and donations they make. The FBI’s Detroit office has denied the allegations.

Von Spakovsky: Still Fabricating Facts, Still Suppressing Votes (Think Progress)
Further demonstrating that no conservative can be so disgraced that they cannot later be published in the Wall Street Journal, Bush-era vote suppression guru Hans von Spakovsky has an op-ed in today’s WSJ claiming that the Justice Department has “spent the last several months misinterpreting key voting rights laws for nakedly political reasons”… Both of Spakovsky’s exhibits have no basis in reality… [T]he Justice Department dismissed their claim against [two] Black Panthers not for some nefarious purpose, but because there wasn’t any reliable evidence showing that the Black Panthers violated the law. Now that Spakovsky no longer works there, the DOJ actually requires evidence before it brings a case.

Spakovsky’s claim that the DOJ “stopped Georgia from implementing a key provision of the Help America Vote Act” is also false. In truth the DOJ halted an illegal voter suppression scheme that systematically screened out “thousands of citizens who are in fact eligible to vote.”

Clinton honored for ‘18 million cracks’ in glass ceiling (Foreign Policy)
Yet again, Secretary Clinton receives an award. Today, she receives the Alice Award, presented annually to a woman who has made “an outstanding contribution in breaking barriers and setting new precedents for women.” Clinton is being honored for putting “eighteen million cracks” in the glass ceiling.

Sotomayor fractures ankle at New York airport (USA Today)
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor broke her ankle Monday morning in an airport stumble on her way to Washington to meet with senators who will vote on her confirmation… Sotomayor [kept] her six appointments with senators despite the injury. 

I Feel Your Pain (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Judge Sotomayor, I really do. But 1) your ankle is broken, not sprained – so it will be easier to fix and 2) you’re a federal employee, so you have GREAT insurance!!! So really, you’re much luckier than many people. Don’t forget that on the bench, okay?

Limbaugh: “Would a white male judge have fractured his ankle in the same circumstances” as Sotomayor? (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “I hope [Sotomayor] can find a wise Latina doctor to set that ankle as opposed to an average white doctor” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Sotomayor Hearings To Begin on July 13 (Dissenting Justice)
Senator Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has announced that confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor will begin on July 13. Republicans, however, argue that this date is too early and will not give the Senate enough time to evaluate her record prior to the August recess for Congress. Underneath the political rangling over the timing of the hearings, the Democrats want to complete the process before August because the longer Sotomayor’s nomination remains pending, the longer she will remain vulnerable to attacks from her opponents. Republicans want to keep things unresolved into September for the exact same reason.

Jonah “own goal” Goldberg strikes again (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Jonah Goldberg wonders: “Would judge Sotomayor be your first pick in a lawsuit against a Puerto Rican organization if your livelihood was on the line?…” Goldberg seems to think he’s won some sort of rhetorical point against Sotomayor by inviting readers to consider whether they would want her to preside over their hypothetical lawsuit against a hypothetical “Puerto Rican organization.” In fact, Goldberg has inadvertantly made the case for diversity in the courts.  After all, Goldberg’s question can easily be re-phrased: Would Judge Roberts or Alito be your first pick in a lawsuit against an organization run by white males if your livelihood was on the line?

Cal Thomas compares Sotomayor to ‘white supremacy’ advocate G. Harrold Carswell. (Think Progress)
On Fox News Sunday this weekend, conservative columnist Cal Thomas declared that “as usual,” Rush Limbaugh is “absolutely right” when he calls Judge Sonia Sotomayor a “racist.” Thomas complained that the media has a “double standard” when it comes to covering Supreme Court nominees accused of racism, citing two judges nominated by Richard Nixon — Clement Haynsworth and G. Harrold Carswell.
Click through to watch the video.

Sotomayor: Crimebuster (by Karen Travers, Ann Compton and Sunlen Miller at Political Punch, ABC News)
[Tuesday] in Washington, eight national law enforcement organizations announced their support for Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the Supreme Court, including the Fraternal Order of Police, National Association of District Attorneys and the National Latino Peace Officers Association. Sotomayor served as an assistant district attorney in New York City.

Laura Bush: ‘I’m proud’ of Obama’s pick of Sotomayor, she sounds like ‘a good nominee.’ (Think Progress)
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America, former First Lady Laura Bush offered her endorsement of President Obama’s pick of Sonia Sotomayor to sit on the Supreme Court. “I think she sounds like a very interesting and good nominee,” Bush said. She added: “As a woman, I’m proud there might be another woman on the Court. So we’ll see what happens, but I wish her well.”
Click through to watch the video. I always thought Laura was a liberal. She never seemed comfortable when they trotted her out to spout the party line.

Ana Marie Cox hasn’t read Sotomayor’s writing, but accuses her of “not performing at grade level” (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Ana Marie Cox, in today’s Washington Post online discussion: ”Successful judges tend to be good speakers and even better writers (Scalia probably writes the most entertaining decisions of the SCOTUS, tho Roberts is also good); Sotomayor’s ‘Latina line’ makes me think she’s not performing at grade level on either.” Wow, that’s a pretty harsh assessment.  How did Ana Marie Cox reach her conclusion that Sonia Sotomayor’s writing isn’t at the “grade level” of a successful judge?  Not by reading Sotomayor’s writing: “That said: Like 99% of the people weighing in on her nom, I haven’t read her all of stuff! Or most! Or any!” What “grade level” does suggesting someone’s writing is subpar without actually, you know, reading it qualify you for?  Third?

Like we said, it’s open season on Sotomayor at the New York Times (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
“Lightweight Sotomayor?” That’s a headline that quite literally could have been faxed over from the RNC and a headline that has no connection to reality or Sotomayor’s nearly two-decade career on the bench.

Attack On Sotomayor’s Political Ties Ignores Roberts’ Link To Bush (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
The current chief justice and pride of the conservative judicial movement was a member of Lawyers for Bush-Cheney, DC Lawyers for Bush-Quayle ’88, and the Republican Lawyers Association — an organization affiliated with the RNC. Roberts also donated $1,000 to the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign and started his career in a Republican administration, as special assistant to the U.S. Attorney General William French Smith during the Reagan years. The most serious charge of overt partisanship, though one never established, was that Roberts informally advised then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his handling of the Florida recount [obstruction] effort during the 2000 election.

Court: Judges must avoid appearance of bias (AP)
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that elected judges must step aside from cases when large campaign contributions from interested parties create the appearance of bias.

Excellent (by Susie at Suburban Guerrilla)
Now if only we could get the appointed judges to recuse themselves on similar conflicts.

Four Right-Wing Supreme Court Justices Argue That Buying Off A Judge Is No Problem (Think Progress)
When West Virginia coal overlord Don Blankenship’s company lost a $50 million verdict to one of its competitors, Blankenship set out to buy a judge. Rather than appeal his case to a fair tribunal, Blankenship spent $3 million to elect a friendly lawyer to the West Virginia Supreme Court, even running ads accusing the lawyer’s opponent of voting to free an incarcerated child rapist, and of allowing that rapist to work in a public school. Once elected by a Blankenship-funded campaign, the newly-minted justice cast the deciding vote overturning the verdict against Blankenship’s company.

[Monday], the Supreme Court held that this kind of justice-for-sale bribery has no place under the United States Constitution. But all four of the Court’s most conservative members voted that there is no problem when a wealthy businessman literally buys a judge. In a dissent joined by conservative justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that this decision — on a case so egregious that John Grisham turned it into a legal thriller — would encourage “groundless” charges that other “judges are biased”.

Should Catholic justices recuse themselves on certain cases? (by Joyce Appleby at History News Service)
If Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, joins the court, she will turn its five Catholic members into a two-thirds’ majority. She will in fact be replacing one of the two Protestants who remained on the court.

Union Targets Democrats With Significant Online EFCA Campaign (by Sam Stein at the Huffington Post)
The Service Employees International Union is, according to an aide, putting “well more than $100,000″ behind online ads and similar promotional activities designed to turn up the heat on members of Congress whose support for EFCA is tepid or non-existent… “Big banks and greedy corporations got our country into this mess,” reads the script, which is tailored to each individual Senator and state. “Now they want to fire or harass employees who want to join a union.” In addition to putting out the four web videos, the SEIU is also launching email campaigns targeting the five senators, with much the same message and aim.

U.S. war funding bill brims with unrelated extras (Reuters)
A $100 billion bill to fund U.S. wars in Iraqand Afghanistan is rapidly accumulating extra items such as money for military aircraft the Pentagon doesn’t want and possibly a scheme to jump-start sagging auto sales. The cars and planes are not directly linked to the U.S. war effort. But they are typical of Congress’ penchant for loading bills with unrelated spending in hopes the funds will sail through on the strength of the main legislation.

Lieberman-Graham torture photo ban will be added to ‘every piece of legislation that comes down the pike.’ (Think Progress)
[T]he detainee photo amendment sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was stripped from the war supplemental in committee. The amendment would have allowed the Obama administration to suppress any “photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained” after 9/11 by U.S. forces. This afternoon, Graham and Lieberman held a press conference to register their objections to dropping the measure and announce that they had “added our original legislation as an amendment to the FDA regulation of tobacco bill that’s on the floor right now”:

Hastert Will Run for Father’s Seat (by Greg Sargent at The Plum Line)
Ethan Hastert (R), son of former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R), has announced he’ll run for his father’s old seat in Congress, the Kane County Chronicle reports. Hastert, 31, said that he’s “forming a committee to begin his campaign and fundraising for the 14th District Congressional seat. He’s the first candidate to officially announce a run at the seat in 2010.”
Bill Foster won a surprise victory over the Republican candidate in the IL-14 special election. I haven’t looked at his voting record, but he was considered a progressive during the campaign.

Maloney Poll Shows Gillibrand Vulnerable (Political Wire)
Ben Smith reports on an internal poll conducted for Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) which found that she’d begin a race against Sen. Kristen Gillibrand (D-NY) “with a small lead and could blow it open with attacks on Gillibrand’s ties to the tobacco industry and relatively conservative record.” The poll shows Maloney leading by a 34% to 32% margin and and that she leads 49% to 25% after voters have been read arguments against both senators.

Maloney Close to Hiring Trippi (Political Wire)
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) “is continuing to put the pieces together for a primary campaign” against Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), “entering into serious talks with, among others, veteran campaign strategist Joe Trippi and Penn Schoen and Berland Associates to do her polling,” reports City Hall. “According to one person who spoke with her about Trippi over the weekend, Maloney was speaking about Trippi as if he had already been hired, noting that he had already offered her the advice of waiting until after July 4th to announce her candidacy, instead of by the end of the month, as had been the plan.”

Burris Has No Regrets (Political Wire)
“Amid a fresh round of controversy over the circumstances surrounding his appointment to the U.S. Senate, an unapologetic Roland Burris declared in a Chicago Tribune interview that he has ‘no regrets’ about the way he conducted himself in seeking the office or in the shifting explanations he has provided to the public.” Instead, Burris blamed the media. Said Burris: “There’s nothing to regret. I’ve been truthful in everything I’ve said. And I’ve got to say this, that it’s your colleagues, OK? … In the media, they have to look at what they’ve written.”

The Google Blast (Political Wire)
With Creigh Deeds (D) winning the Democratic primary in Virginia by a wide margin, the story of [last] night — besides Terry McAuliffe (D) losing badly — might be the “Google blast” his campaign used in the final hours. Washington Post: “Starting at 3 p.m EST Monday, hours before polls opened across Virginia, Deeds’s campaign bought what’s called a ‘Google blast.’ Or, more appropriately, a Google attack. If you live in Northern Virginia (or, like many voters, work in D.C. but live in NoVa), Deeds has been almost inescapable on highly-trafficked sites such as washingtonpost.com, the blog Talking Points Memo and Oxygen.com, which is popular among women. Capitalizing on his Post endorsement, he peppered those sites with banner ads reading ‘The Washington Postendorsed one Democrat — Creigh Deeds’ until polls closed.”

Scott Murphy (D) used the same strategy in the final hours of his special election campaign earlier this year in New York‘s 20th congressional district.

The McAuliffe Story (Think Progress)
First Read notes that … the story [isn’t Creigh Deeds’ (D)] victory, but Terry McAuliffe’s (D) loss. ”Terry may have been a flawed candidate from the start. He gave the impression that he woke up one day and thought, ‘Hey, maybe I can win the Virginia governorship.’ A few years back, he pondered a run for Florida governor, but the state has a seven-year residency requirement. If McAuliffe does come up short, his candidacy should serve as a reminder to anyone thinking about running for office — know why you want to run and lay the groundwork for years, not weeks or months.”

Smith Will Run for Senate in Florida (Political Wire)
We noted it two months ago, but now it’s official. Former Sen. Bob Smith (R-NH) will run for Senate from his new home in Florida, according to the St. Petersburg Times. Said Smith: “I can no longer sit on the sidelines in the fight for the soul of the Republican party.”

Paterson Remains Deeply Unpopular (Political Wire)
A new New York Times/Cornell/NY1 poll finds seven in ten New Yorkers believe New York Gov. David Paterson (D) does not deserve to be elected in 2010. In addition, voters “have also taken a personal dislike to Mr. Paterson, who now is less popular in the state than his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer, who resigned in disgrace after being identified as the client of a prostitution ring. Only 21% of New York voters say they have a favorable view of Mr. Paterson.”
So Charlie Rangel, why are you threatening Cuomo to stop him from challenging Paterson in the primary? Are you trying to lose the governorship for the Democrats? Are you starting to see the problem when party bosses try to control who gets to run for office?

GOP Coup Upsets Balance in NY Senate (NBC New York)
Democratic control of the state Senate appears to have ended after just five months after two dissident Democrats voted with the GOP to throw the Democratic majority out of power in a parliamentary coup. The decision by Senators Pedro Espada Jr. of the Bronx and Hiram Monserrate of Queens to join the coalition gave Republicans a 32-30 voting edge on hastily introduced measures that changed the leadership structure. Neither Espada nor Monserrate, who is facing charges of assaulting his girlfriend, changed party affiliation. The move gives Republicans a 32-30 voting edge in the chamber

Sinks Leads McCollum in Florida (Political Wire)
In Florida’s gubernatorial race next year, Alex Sink (D) holds an early lead over Bill McCollum (R), 38% to 34%, according to a new Quinnipiac poll. Said pollster Peter Brown: “Ms. Sink’s gender and the fact she would be the state’s first woman governor are working to her benefit.”

N. Carolina State fires wife of ex-governor as scandal erupts (McClatchy)
North Carolina State University’s Board of Trustees has terminated the contract of Mary Easley, the wife of former Gov. Mike Easley hours after it became clear that the governor had played a key role in arranging for his wife’s job… At the time, the university justified hiring Mary Easley without a job search by saying that she was “unique” for the speakers job and that her connections, many of them developed while her husband, Mike Easley, was the state’s attorney general and two-term governor, would help lure top names to campus. She had previously been a lawyer and then taught law courses at N.C. Central University in Durham. Mike Easley, a Democrat, was governor from 2001 until January.

Pawlenty: The GOP should be ‘just like Eminem.’ (Think Progress)
On Friday night, Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) gave the keynote address at the College Republicans National Convention. Perhaps seeking cachet with his young audience, he referred to a stunt at the recent MTV Movie Awards, and suggested that the Republican Party should be “just like” the rapper Eminem: “‘Eminem was mad,’ he continued, to laughter and applause. ‘And so, just like Eminem getting dumped on, we’ve got to kind of regroup. We’ve got to continue to fight. And we’ve got some things worth fighting for.’” Considering Eminem has been criticized for sexism and homophobia, perhaps he is already serving as a model for the modern conservative movement.
Democrats showed themselves last year not to be free of sexism, either, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some buried homophobia, as well.

Video: Voight calls Obama ‘false prophet’ (On Politics, USA Today)
In case you missed it, here is the video of Jon Voight’s speech [Monday] night at the Republican congressional fundraiser — where the actor called President Obama a “false prophet,” “wildly radical” and “The One.”
That’s that leftist Hollyweird for ya.

Republicans Pull In More Than $14 Million (Political Wire)
Despite the back-and-forth over Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s attendance, Politico reports the NRCC and NRSC announced that [Monday] night’s GOP Senate-House Dinner raised a combined total of approximately $14.45 million.

Sarah Palin Didn’t ‘Plagiarize’ (by Pareene at Gawker)
Grow up, liberals. Sarah Palin gave a 15-minute introduction to Michael Reagan at some event last week, and the HuffPo has discovered that some of the words she used belong to Newt Gingrich! So you can go through her terrible speech and read some old Gingrich op-ed and painstakingly find every sentence or phrase that rings similar, if you want, and cry “plagiarism!” But we gave up on that once we read this bit of Palin’s speech: “Recently, Newt Gingrich, he had written a good article about Reagan….” She then goes on to summarize many of the things Newt Gingrich wrote about Ronald Reagan. So, yes, it is not by any standard a very good speech, and it is quite lazy, but to call it “plagiarism” is bullshit.

Barack Obama Orders the Shaving of Stephen Colbert’s Head (by The Cajun Boy at Gawker)
Stephen Colbert kicked off his week of U.S.O. broadcasts [Monday] night by attending boot camp to show solidarity with the troops stationed in Iraq, but that apparently wasn’t quite enough, as Barack Obama ordered that his head be shaved. Colbert, appearing on stage in a custom-made Brooks Brothers camouflage suit, is making history by being the first person in the history of the U.S.O. to film, edit and broadcast a non-news show from an active war zone. Besides going through a mildly simulated boot camp, Colbert took the liberty to declare victory in the Iraq War on his show last night, explaining his declaration to General Ray Odierno, commander of American troops in Iraq, by saying “we’re not hearing a lot of stories about the war back home.”

Chuck Todd to Write Book about Current Administration (New York Observer)
Chuck Todd — the chief White House correspondent and political director for NBC News — has sold a book proposal to editor Geoff Shandler of Little, Brown about the first few years of Barack Obama’s presidency.
I can already tell you that it will be a totally worthless book. Chuck Todd knows nothing about politics except whatever belching is going on in the Beltway.

Suddenly, Stu Rothenberg thinks Hardball has a “slant” (by Jamison Foser at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
Stuart Rothenberg has had enough, and isn’t going on Hardball again. Why? Because he has suddenly realized “it’s time to change the tone of our ‘politics’” coverage… Uh, when, exactly, was Chris Matthews’s Hardball a “straight political news program”? When has anything about Matthews ever been “straight”? When he was insisting that “everybody” likes George W. Bush, except “the real whack jobs”? (Bush’s approval ratings at the time were in the 30s.) When he was comparing Bush to Atticus Finch? When he said Bush “glimmers” with “sunny nobility”? Or when he gushed over Bush’s “mission accomplished” stunt, revealing what could only be described as a crush on the president?
Click through for more.

Because Politico is really just a GOP bulletin board (by Eric Boehlert at County Fair, Media Matters for America)
And so whatever hopes and aspirations Republicans might have, no matter how far-fetched, means Politico will cover it as news. Witness this week’s beaut: “Republicans hope General Motors is President Obama’s Hurricane Katrina”… Of course, professional Republican spinners are free to tell whatever kind of tale they want. But Politico ought to be embarrassed to the treat the fanciful scenarios as news. Also, please note that the Politico article basically consists entirely of quotes from Republican members of Congress criticizing the GM bailout.

O’Reilly defends torture: ‘Look, if it were illegal, Bush and Cheney would have been arrested.’ (Think Progress)
Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly has always been one of the most outspoken defenders of torture, declaring there’s “certainly no proof” that “mistreatment” ever happened at Guantanamo, and insisting it’s “just bull” to say it’s ineffective to “dunk [someone] into water.” Trying to link abortion (which is legal) and torture (which is not) in an argument with Juan Williams last night, O’Reilly insisted that torture must not be illegal since Bush or Cheney were never arrested.
GODDESS, these people are frustrating. After doing everything they can to make sure Bush and Cheney aren’t arrested, they use the lack of arrest as proof of their innocence. Click through to watch the video and read the transcript.

Murdoch: ‘If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news.’ (Think Progress)
Today, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch sat down with Fox News host Neil Cavuto for a softball interview. At one point, Cavuto asked Murdoch if he feels like Rodney Dangerfield — “not getting that respect” — even though Fox is “pretty much the envy of the world right now.” When Cavuto asked about perceptions that Fox isn’t fair and balanced, Murdoch said that those allegations were “obviously not true”: “If we weren’t fair and balanced, we wouldn’t have the number one network in news — by a very wide margin. People believe we’re fair and balanced, and they love us.”
People who value truth, however, understand that it is the severe rightward tilt that makes Fox News popular. Click through to watch the video.

Fox News hires Steve Doocy’s son as ‘a general assignment reporter.’ (Think Progress)
Last year, Peter Doocy, the son of Fox and Friends co-host Steve Doocy, grabbed his 15 minutes of fame when asked Sen. John McCain on MSNBC’s Hardball if then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was “hitting the sauce.” The young Doocy followed it up with an appearance on Fox and Friends and “reporting” at the Democratic National Convention that included twittering with the Denver Broncos cheerleaders. Now, TVNewser reports that Doocy has been hired as “a general assignment reporter” for Fox News.

Radio hosts’ comments cost Sacramento station ads (McClatchy)
Reacting to critics, the leader of the KRXQ’s “Rob, Arnie & Dawn” show has posted a letter dated Sunday on the radio station’s Web site saying the trio will stop broadcasting live shows until Thursday, when they will “say what needs to be said.” Bank of America, Verizon, Chipotle and other companies have pulled advertising from the Sacramento station (98.5 FM) after talk show hosts referred to transgender people as freaks with mental disorders. During a May 28 show, one of the three hosts said he would hit his child with his shoe if the boy wanted to wear high heels. Another said he would tell a boy he was “a little idiot” if he asked to wear a dress.

Boortz jokes: You can fit 27 “illegal aliens” into a Ford Excursion, “roll” it, “and only kill 10 of them” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Limbaugh: “Snerdly thinks I’m going to be accused of talking down the economy. I hope so.” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

On Hardball , GOP strategist Laxalt says she doesn’t want Limbaugh as “part of my party” (County Fair, Media Matters for America)

Pro-Life Terrorism Chalks Up Another Success (by Ian Welsh)
The Tiller family has announced that it is closing Dr. Tiller’s clinic. The terrorists have won, and that assassination has succeeded in doing what it was meant to do. I’m sure the murderer is very happy tonight. The bottom line on right wing terrorism against abortion rights is that it’s succeeding and has been for some time. Take a good hard look at the chart [below] and try and tell me otherwise. And when it comes to late term abortions, well, Tiller was one of the very few who still provided the service. According to Tiller, speaking in March before his assassination, he was one of only three doctors left in the US doing such abortions. Now there are two. If those numbers are right, one third of all abortion doctors doing these abortions were just killed.

Universal ’Rubik’s Cube’ Could Become Pentagon Shapeshifter (Danger Room, Wired)
Even by the standards of the Pentagon fringe science arm, this project sounds far-out: “programmable matter” that can be ordered to “self-assemble or alter their shape, perform a function and then disassemble themselves.” But researchers backed by Darpa are actually making progress on this incredible goal, Henry Kenyon at Signal magazine reports. One day, that could lead to “morphing aircraft and ground vehicles, uniforms that can alter themselves to be comfortable in any climate, and ’soft’ robots that flow like mercury through small openings to enter caves and bunker complexes.” A soldier could even reach into a can of unformed goop, and order up a custom-made tool or a “universal spare part.”

London’s Metropolitan Police accused of waterboarding suspects (The Times, U.K.)
Metropolitan Police officers subjected suspects to waterboarding, according to allegations at the centre of a major anti-corruption inquiry, The Times has learnt. The torture claims are part of a wide-ranging investigation which also includes accusations that officers fabricated evidence and stole suspects’ property. It has already led to the abandonment of a drug trial and the suspension of several police officers.
OUR police don’t need no stinkin’ waterboarding. They’ve got TASERS.

FM: World opinion Israel’s No. 1 problem (Jerusalem Post)
Although fireworks were expected during Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman’s first appearance in his current role before the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the almost full roster of committee members maintained decorum on Tuesday as he pushed an agenda to re-market Israel. Lieberman told the MKs that world public opinion was Israel’s No. 1 foreign policy problem during the meeting, which was one of a few rare instances in which the usually secretive panel held an open-door and televised session.
It’s not what you do that matters, as we know. The only important thing is what people think of you.

Media Matters for America headlines

NY Times ignored Sessions’ double standard in nomination timing

O’Reilly falsely claimed he didn’t call Tiller “Dr. Killer”

Media figures ignore facts to claim unemployment rate proves stimulus is “failing”

Fox’s Angle reports criticism of public plan, but not defense

Wash. Times fabricates stimulus contradiction between Obama advisers

WSJ publishes op-ed falsely equating “ObamaCare” with Canadian “single-payer” system

LA Times ignores Obama adviser’s explanation for initial unemployment projection

WSJ column’s falsehood: Bush admin did not make claims about jobs “saved or created”

Media don’t ask if Gingrich considered Reagan comment “intellectual nonsense”

Politico disappears Bush from GM bailout history

Probably No Hard Labor for Convicted Journos in North Korea
North Korea‘s sentencing of two American journalists to 12 years of hard labor draws attention to one of the world’s most unforgiving penal systems. But North Korea expert Andrei Lankov says “They will never be sent to a real prison camp, as they would see a lot of things an outsider is not meant to see.”

Great Firewall of China Winds Down; Censorship Battle Continues (by Ben Parr at Mashable)
According to The Wall Street Journal, Chinese Internet users have been regaining access to most social networking websites. However, it seems that the bans have not yet been lifted for YouTube and Blogger, both subsidiaries of Google… While the Great Firewall of China may be disappearing for the moment, the battle for freedom on the web is only beginning. There are plenty of workarounds to these blocks and now there is plenty of attention on the Chinese government’s practices. People will continue to fight censorship and oppression, even in the face of insurmountable odds because it’s just human nature. The battle over web censorship in China has only begun.

Friday is final curtain for analog TV signals
The last major TV stations that are still broadcasting in analog will turn those signals off Friday and go all digital.

U.S. Presses Antitrust Inquiry Into Google Book Settlement
The Justice Department has requested information from Google and groups representing publishers and authors, among others.

Minn. regulators drop bid to block online gambling
Minnesota regulators may have been outplayed when they bet a decades-old federal law would lend itself to anonline gambling crackdown. Following a lawsuit by the gambling industry, which considers the push a violation of federal commerce and free-speech protections, state officials said Monday they’ll withdraw a demand that Internet service providers block access to hundreds of sites.

APNewsBreak: Group says poker winnings are frozen
An advocacy group for online poker said Tuesday that the federal government has frozen more than $30 million in the accounts of payment processors that handle the winnings of thousands of online poker players. The Justice Department has long maintained that Internet gambling is illegal, a view that the poker group challenges.

Lawsuit may decide high school game rights online
The Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association sued The Post-Crescent of Appleton and parent Gannett Co. as well as the Wisconsin Newspaper Association after the newspaper carried the state playoff game on its site Nov. 8. The association said it believes it owns the rights to the online footage because it organized, supervised and sponsored the football tournament… Dan Flannery, executive editor of The Post-Crescent, said local sporting events represent the essence of local news coverage, and media outlets should be able to provide Internet coverage the same way they write stories or produce videos.
If high schools don’t own their games, do colleges and pro teams own theirs?

Rupe Predicts the End of Paper and Ink 
“I can see the day, maybe 20 years away, where you don’t actually have paper and ink and printing presses,” said Rupert Murdoch. “I think it will take a long time and I think it’s a generational thing that is happening. But there’s no doubt that younger people are not picking up the traditional newspapers.”

If the Journalism Business Fails, Who Pays for Journalism? (by James Poniewozik, Time)
Let’s assume newspapers fold en masse, and going online-only does not save enough money to pay people to do journalism as their chief source of income. That’s gone. What replaces it? And by that, I mean, who pays for what replaces it?

“Individually, newspapers don’t have the technological firepower to compete in the Internet world”
That’s what retired Cox Newspapers president Jay Smith says. “Collectively and on their behalf, AP does have the capacity to help newspapers develop new online businesses that can generate revenue, whether from subscribers or advertisers,” writes Smith, who sat on AP’s board. “More important, AP has access to a nation of newspapers. While few newspapers can gin up content on their own for which users will pay, there is content that, when properly collected and edited, does have real value.”

Google Tests Wikipedia Links With News—But What About Credibility Issues? (Paid Content)
The evolution of Google News (and its impact on the news industry overall) continues. The company is experimenting with attaching Wikipedia links to certain stories—essentially giving those entries the stamp of approval for readers searching for more info on the article’s subject. And it’s up for debate as to whether that’s a positive or negative thing for readers.
Click through for an illustration and a discussion on relative merits. Mashable also has a discussion.

Yahoo Nukes Man’s Photos Over Obama Comments (by Ryan Tate at Gawker)
Flickr user Shepherd Johnson was browsing the official White House photostream one night when he decided to post a politically-charged comment. Then another, then another. Soon, without warning, Yahoo’s photo-sharing service deleted his account, complete with 1,200 pictures. An unrepentant Yahoo won’t say what, exactly, Johnson did wrong. His comments were about Barack Obama’s support of a bill allowing the government to suppress torture photos… Users won’t feel safe moving their data into Yahoo’s “cloud” if it can vanish without a trace with no warning.
It’s an important point. Cloud computing not only needs to be very reliable, users shouldn’t have to worry about censorship. But if censored, the data should be available for download by the initial poster.

Gotta love the link (by Jeff Jarvis)
Through the power of the link, someone I’ve never heard of riffs on the discussion this weekend about product v. process journalism from an artist’s perspective, adding this:

“Think about the change from the camera in the 19th century to the projector in the 20th. The camera framed objects, alluded to three dimensions, stilled time. The projector blasted synthesis – one frame negating another and at eye blinking speed. We may think of blogging as the result of another technological frontier not unlike the camera and the projector. A newspaper by its very nature stills time; states the fact wrapped in the eternity of print – it is a moment of truth stilled. A blog is more akin to the projector: the movement itself. Recording the changes of truth over time. Revisionist, processing, excluding and incorporating.”

What The Ideal Newspaper Would Look Like (by Richard J. Tofel, author of “Restless Genius: Barney Kilgore, The Wall Street Journal, and the Invention of Modern Journalism,” and formerly the assistant publisher of The Wall Street Journal, writing at Paid Content)
What would happen if [Barney] Kilgore’s 32-page ideal became today’s norm? (To provide a baseline, The New York Times is averaging 78 pages these days on weekdays, The Wall Street Journal, 50, The Los Angeles Times, 94.)  If you had to cut back to 32 pages, what principles would guide you?… You would focus relentlessly on what your readers still wanted to know by the time they got to their morning paper in a real-time, broadband, wireless email, unlimited texting, all-news radio, cable TV news, Twittering world… Today’s newspaper should be about tomorrow’s events, not yesterday’s.
Click through for a very interesting discussion.

How Social Media is Radically Changing the Newsroom (by Leah Betancourt, digital community manager at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis, Minn., writing at Mashable)
Social networking sites are some of the newest tools for reporters to use in news gathering, networking and promoting their work. But many newsrooms are fuzzy on the usage. “It’s very much the issue of the day. Twitter and Facebook have exploded, and you can’t ignore them,” says Kelly McBride, ethics group leader at the Poynter Institute, who gets a call about once a week from a television station or a newspaper with questions on the ethical issues involving the use of social media. She says journalists’ attitudes toward social media tools range from presuming nothing bad can happen to being terrified.

“You don’t want to be on either end,” says McBride. “You don’t want to be necessarily cautious, but you want to be informed.” In January, McBride worked with the Roanoke Times to help it hammer out newsroom guidelines for using social media tools… “It’s important for the entire newsroom to write that guidance down,” McBride says. “If you don’t write it down, it’s open to distortion.”
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Using Google Trends to Augment Coverage, Drive Traffic (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
Web developer Antone Roundy posted an intriguing YouTube video on his blog last week about how he’s using the free Google Trends service to create online news content that draws massive traffic to his Net Pulse News project.

How to Make Your News Mobile-Friendly, Why It’s Important (by Amy Gahran at Poynter Online)
Since most news organizations crave new markets, I’m amazed that most of them seem to offer little beyond the basics in terms of highly mobile-friendly content and services. I’m talking about a lean and usable mobile-friendly presentation, suitable for simple phones that only have a stripped-down browser. You know, the kind of phone that the vast majority of Americans carry around daily and consider indispensable.

Newport Daily News charges more to read the paper online than in print
“Our goal was to get people back into the printed product,” says publisher Albert K. Sherman, Jr., who charges $345 a year for online access to his paper vs. $145 for home delivery. He tells Edward J. Delaney that some readers, when hearing about the plan, asked “why would they pay for it on the Internet when they can go buy the printed paper? And that’s perfect — that’s what we want.”

Daily is Redesigned for Advertisers First — Then Readers
Newspaper executives have been shouting a common refrain to anybody that will listen these days: The crisis is about revenue, not readership, they contend. So when the tiny 16,900- circulation Wilson Daily Times in North Carolina finally green-lighted a redesign, that refrain was top of mind. 

Plans Announced to Launch New Daily to Fill Home Delivery Gaps in Detroit
Mark Stern, 63, and brother Gary Stern, 67, said they hope to publish within 60 days the first issue of a newspaper serving the Detroit area. The Detroit Daily Press is expected to sell for 50 cents daily and $1 on Sundays. They said they were working to secure contracts with two printing plants and lease office space and were looking to hire department heads for the privately funded newspaper. Mark Stern said the Detroit Daily Press should appeal to older readers who prefer a print copy of the paper, and its primary niche will be those who want their paper home-delivered. The newspaper also will have a Web site with a brief summary of the news for nonsubscribers.

Globe’s Largest Union Rejects Cuts
The Boston Globe’s largest union tonight narrowly rejected $10 million in wage and benefit cuts, and about an hour later the paper’s owner declared an impasse in negotiations and imposed a 23 percent pay cut on the union’s members, effective next week.

‘Globe’ Staffers Ask Sulzberger To Help–Guild Asks Feds to Overturn 23% Cut–NYT Now Seeks Buyer 
A letter purportedly sent to Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company, and signed only from “Concerned Reporters at The Boston Globe,” asks that he take a personal role in the ongoing Newspaper Guild dispute at The Boston Globe.

Boston’s alternative future (by Jeff Jarvis)
The Boston Glob Guild rejected The New York Times Company’s cutbacks. What the Guild should have done, I say, is reject The New York Times Company’s strategy. Rather than nickel-and-diming-and-dollaring their way to survival through cutbacks (though I wonder how saving $20 million when you’re losing $85 million can possibly do the job; it’s a Band-Aid on a gushing artery) the Globe should find its alternate future not as a newspaper but as a journalistic service online. The Guild should have demanded a strategy that transforms the Globe into a smaller but profitable venture that concentrates only on news and serving the community and not on printing and distribution, jettisoning huge costs but coming out with a sustainable plan.

‘Chicago Tribune’ Editorial Board, Post-Blago, Grows Stronger (by Mark Fitzgerald, Editor & Publisher)
Six months after the revelations that former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich allegedly plotted to get certain members of the Chicago Tribune editorial board fired, editorials have grown enormously in importance at the paper.

Denver Public Library gets Rocky’s archives
Other historical material has been earmarked for preservation by the Colorado Historical Society, reports Michael Roberts. “It’s good for Denver that these two institutions share our commitment to maintaining the public’s access to these pages of history,” says Scripps CEO Rich Boehne.

‘Guerrilla drive-ins’ turn nostalgia on its head
Think the only way to see a big-screen movie is while slurping a 64-oz. soft drink, eating a $5 candy bar and shushing the wannabe film critic behind you? That’s not the case anymore, thanks to people like John Young, creator of the West Chester Guerilla Drive-In and part of a loosely knit network of celluloid renegades resurrecting the drive-in for a new age.

Save J.D. Salinger’s Archives
Ron Rosenbaum: The number of people who lose sleep over Salinger’s strange saga may no longer be enormous, but he still has a cult following, and there are also those of us who — without being cultists — think he’s an important figure in American literature whose work (and whose subsequent 45-year-long nonpublishing silence) are both worth paying attention to.

Public radio fights to preserve its footprint.
Public Radio Capital was formed eight years ago to preserve stations facing a never-before-seen push by religious broadcasters to secure full-power stations and translators. Undeterred by the recession, the battle wages on — and has even put some deals within reach.

With AOL Out, TBS Ascends at Time Warner
If Time Warner follows through on a plan to ditch troubled AOL, TBS will suddenly emerge from the relative shadows to become half of Time Warner, at least based on the profits TBS’ cable networks generate.

Hollywood actors agree pay deal
The main US actors’ union has agreed a deal with the major Hollywood studios after a year of acrimonious pay talks which almost led to strike action… The SAG said the deal raised actors’ minimum pay by 3% as part of a $105m package of improvements. But there appeared to be no significant pay increase for internet appearances – a key sticking point in the talks.

Summertime Prime Time Heats Up for Cable
Rash Report: Original Scripted Series Seize Pop-Culture Chatter

As Upfront Talks Stall With Broadcasters, Buyers Eye Cable
Agencies ‘Looking for Soft Spot’ to Get Lower Pricing on Ad Inventory

Reality TV Voting Troubles (Media Decoder, New York Times)
Decoder wants to hear from you: What has been your experience with voting on “American Idol” and other competition shows? Do you think the systems are fair? Most important, do you think your vote counts?

Recession Redrawing Local Media Landscape
Across the country, TV, and radio outlets are in the midst of a cost-cutting effort that is reshaping the industry and offering few hints of when — or if — it might end. Locally, TV stations are downsizing anchor desks, cutting overtime, and looking at new models of content-sharing as ways of coping with a harsh economy.

N.Y. Stations to Pool Video News Content
Four TV stations in the nation’s largest TV market announced Monday that they have formed a local news service to pool video newsgathering resources, a practice that is fast becoming standard operating procedure in major markets.

NBC News Launches An African American News Site
NBC News and Three Part Media LLC have teamed to launch TheGrio.com, a “video centric news site” aimed at the African American community. The site will aggregate related video and news stories from NBC News, O&Os, affiliates and msnbc.com, as well as feature contributors like Rev. Al Sharpton.

Cablevision, Yankees First With In-Market MLB Live Streaming Rights (Paid Content)
The New York Yankees may be able to claim another first: in-market live game streaming. MLBAM and the YES Network have agreed to a streaming rights package that would end the blackout under certain conditions; Cablevision added the in-market streaming rights as part of its latest carriage renewal with the regional sports net and, according to the Sports Business Journal, plans later this season to be the first operator to offer the service. After a false start last season, the deal also makes MLB the first major league with in-market streaming of live games.

But—and this is a capital “B”—this doesn’t end the “logjam” for local live streaming, as the NYT puts it. It’s the beginning of the end, though, for one of online sports’ thorniest issues: how to stream live in market without cannibalizing multichannel viewership and revenue. The solution appears to be a mix of subscriptions (cable and online) and authentication.

Analyst Survey: Why Cable Operators Should Fear Hulu Not YouTube (Paid Content)
With so many video aggregators, user-generated video sites and P2P file-sharing options, people can watch TV on the web in any number of ways—legal and illegal. But those vast options also make it hard to difficult to track viewing habits—and yet those patterns are critical to the future of broadcast and cable TV. In a report released [Tuesday], Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay, who has been surveying hundreds of consumers about their internet TV viewing habits, says traditional broadcasters should be fearing Hulu not user-generated sites like YouTube… The majority of respondents said they would be willing to pay for professional content—as much as $1 for a TV show and $5 for a movie. But most would not pay for user-generated content.
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Why YouTube Will Sink or Swim With Obama Girl
‘Midtail’ Content Safer for Advertisers Than User-Generated Fare

Video Capture and Upload Coming to iPhone Twitter Apps  (Mashable)
[The] iPhone 3G S announcement at Apple’s WWDC has huge implications for application developers. Because the new hardware will support video capture and trimming, that functionality can now exist within third-party applications, much the same way that photo capture does today.

Market7: Project Management and Collaboration for Video Creators (Mashable)
Video production is typically a collaborative effort that combines the creative talents of producers, directors, film editors, writers, and a whole host of other parties. Market7’s online product serves to bring these audiences together and make video production project management and group collaboration simple and efficient.

With Market7, users can create video projects that are subdivided with appropriate tools to support pre-production, production, and post-production. Tools include team setup, a comprehensive project brief, and script creation on the pre-production side, task assignment, even creation, and file sharing on the production front, and an annotative player to gather feedback during post-production.

Why VeVo Could Become The Hulu Of Music (Paid Content)
Universal Music has apparently seduced a co[ns]ortium of indie labels, A2IM, to join its video site Vevo. That follows last week’s news that Sony Music Entertainment has also signed up for VeVo, which Universal is launching with help from YouTube, the Google video site. Assuming it doesn’t run into some unforeseen obstacle, VeVo could easily become a mainstream digital platform for the struggling music industry, much like Hulu has become for the TV industry.
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Scribnia Helps You Discover and Rate Bloggers (Paid Content)
A blog’s content is only as good as its authors. They are the ones doing the research, finding the content, talking to companies, and creating the articles that you either love or hate. Most people, in fact, have not only favorite online publications, but favorite authors and bloggers as well. Scribnia is a social community based on that premise. Its goal: to help you discover new writers based on analyzing user ratings and your preferences.

Songkick’s Social Concert Database Chronicles One Million Events (Mashable)
Concert tracking and ticket listing site Songkick provides a great service for finding concerts near you. Today they’re taking concert tracking to the next level by turning user experiences at events into a social concert database. Now instead of just getting notifications of upcoming concerts and tours, Songkick users can use the site to create their own “gigographies,” which serve as online records of events where users can document their concert history with photos, videos, and set lists. All of this user activity is collectively harnessed to power the social concert database.

Google takes its map cam for a spin on biking, hiking trails
Meet the Google trike. It’s the sequel, of sorts, to the Google Maps-mobile, a specially rigged car with an antenna, GPS and camera that snaps 360-degree images of neighborhoods for display in the “Street View” section of Google Maps.

Bing Racks Up Some Strong Numbers In Week One (Paid Content)
It’s only one week, but Microsoft  can claim some new traction in the search market, courtesy of its Bing search engine relaunch, according to comScore [, which] says that both Microsoft’s “average daily penetration among U.S. searchers” and its “share of search result pages in the U.S.” showed substantial improvements.
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Google Quick Search Box released
Google Quick Search Box, which we covered when it was just a developer preview six months ago, has just been officially released. Press a configurable key combination, and the Google Quick Search Box appears. Not only does this box allow you to search Google, but it also searches your Mac and functions as an appliction launcher.

Fotopedia: An Online Encyclopedia for Photos (Mashable)
Fotopedia, a photo encyclopedia site that [launched Wednesday], hopes to become the Wikipedia for photos by centralizing the photo experience around user-created topics and subject matters. The sleek web interface is coupled with a desktop application for a community experience on site or off. With Fotopedia, users can create or edit pages, which are photo-driven articles, and can use the desktop application to add photos from their desktop library, or online libraries like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook. Fotopedia articles can also include a Google Map and Wikipedia info, but the experience centers around the top photos that make the page slideshow.
There’s a real opportunity here. I’m often bothered by the lack of graphics in Wikipedia.

There’s an art to writing on Facebook or Twitter really
Not so long ago, people used to keep diaries to record their quotidian doings privately, of course. Now people keep Facebook and Twitter accounts, updating their status daily, hourly, even minute-by-minute, and almost nothing is private.

The Web in Numbers: Twitter’s Phenomenal Growth Suddenly Stops (Mashable)
It’s time for our monthly number-crunching, and the month of May definitely brought some surprising results. While YouTube is attracting an ever increasing audience, and Facebook is still growing fast, Twitter’s growth has suddenly stopped, at least according to the numbers from Compete.

Yahoo CEO Keeps Microsoft Deal Door Open, Shuts Out AOL
Yahoo Inc. chief executive Carol Bartz said Monday the struggling Internet giant can “take on” rivals Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc., and she dismissed the idea of striking a partnership with Time Warner Inc.’s AOL unit.

Travel apps may not be worth the download
Mobile applications promise instant travel help, from summoning a taxi to acting as a personal translator. They may be cheap (or free), but they may not be worth downloading.

Movie Rentals and Purchases Now Available on the iPhone (Mashable)
While you can already purchase or rent movies in the PC and Mac versions of iTunes, the ability to do so via iPhone was not previously available. Today, Apple announced the addition along with their iPhone 3.0 OS news. In addition, audiobooks are now available for purchase via the iPhone, as well as integration with iTunes U, which is a project to distribute educational and university content and lectures.

Broadcasters Compete to Put TV on Cellphones
The digital switch is the end of one TV era, but broadcasters and device companies hope it’s opening up another. Their vision for the future: a world in which we access live television not just on big screens in our living rooms, but also on cellphones and computers and in cars.

Ad Biz Optimism Vanishes
Although advertising and media executives have said they see signs that the ad market is bottoming out, none of that optimism is reflected in the latest numbers from Nielsen. U.S. ad expenditures fell $3.8 billion, or 12 percent, to $27.9 billion in the first three months of 2009.

What Internet Ad Slump? P&G Pours Money Into the Web
Procter & Gamble, the world’s biggest marketer, is pouring more into Web ads than ever. Last quarter it increased its spending on display ads by nearly 150 percent. Those numbers are similar to outlays from rival Johnson & Johnson. Both companies are now spending about 4 percent of their ad bugets on online display.

Analyst: Online Advertising Market Is About To Get Worse (Paid Content)
The consensus as of late seems to be that while ad sales have been down, they are stabilizing. Benchmark Capital analyst Clayton Moran says not so fast. In a report [Monday] on Google, he says that his “channel checks” show that while there was indeed an upswing in sales activity in March through mid May, sales in the summer months will drop back again. “Street sentiment has turned positive as economic indicators and online ad trends stabilized in April, but more recent online activity indicates a further pull-back by large advertisers,”  he says.

Report: Many Local Businesses Are Disillusioned With Search Advertising (Paid Content)
Search engines are aggressively trying to entice local advertisers with new initiatives. The findings in a new report from research firm Borrell Associates shed some light on the reason for that urgency. While local businesses as a whole are increasing their search-advertising spending, they are nevertheless largely unhappy with that option, the research firm says. Roughly half of the local businesses that buy search advertising direct from search engines abandon campaigns after a year.

Thinking Beyond the Online Banner
Some Web publishers are moving away from a reliance on typical display ads and pricing methods as the linchpins of their ad efforts. Instead, they’re rolling out unique units and pricing systems, betting advertisers will find custom campaigns worth the extra time and effort.

Smartphone Rises Fast From Gadget to Necessity
The increasing popularity of BlackBerrys, iPhones and their kin owes as much to sociology as technology… For a growing swath of the population, the social expectation is that one is nearly always connected and reachable almost instantly via e-mail. The smartphone, analysts say, is the instrument of that connectedness — and thus worth the cost, both as a communications tool and as a status symbol.

US parents rearing a gadget generation: NPD Group
Research released Tuesday indicates that US parents are rearing a young gadget generation that is at home with smartphones, laptop computers, and videogame consoles.

Apple halves iPhone to $99 to galvanize sales
Apple Inc halved the price of its entry-level iPhone to $99 on Monday in a move that could widen the trendy device’s mass-market appeal as competition for smartphones heats up. The company also unveiled a new iPhone that takes videos and has voice features, matching offerings by rivals Palm and Research in Motion’s BlackBerry. Analysts said sales could double for the lower-priced iPhone.

Angry iPhone Owners Twitition for Lower 3G S Upgrade Prices (Mashable)
Following yesterday’s public unveiling, Apple’s forthcoming iPhone 3G S is the toast of the tech world. However, even though new users can get the phone at subsidized prices ($199 or $299 in the US) with new AT&T service contracts, the carrier has apparently not provided a way for existing iPhone users to upgrade at those lower prices. And many current iPhone owners are irate.

Monitor leader TPV aims low with cheap “nettop” PCs
Top global PC monitor maker TPV Technology on Wednesday said it is developing a low-cost, all-in-one desktop PC optimized for the Internet, in a bid to replicate the success of low-cost portable PCs known as netbooks.

Human ear inspires universal radio antenna
TV, radio, GPS, cell phones, wireless Internet, and other electronics all use different radio waves to receive and send information. Now scientists at MIT have created a tiny antenna capable of receiving any radio signal, based on the human ear.