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There seem to be some problems with the calendar and archive links on this page. Links to some months and days are missing. The entries themselves seem to be present. I’m investigating, and hope to have links working again soon.

Update: Fixed it. One post got filed out of order, confusing the programs that generate the links.

Well, whatta ya know? The Sinclair Broadcast Group will not block tonight’s episode of Nightline, honoring American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. When Nightline aired a similar program last year, Sinclair banned it from their stations, including the ABC network affiliate here in Columbus, Ohio.

This year, Sinclair “applauds” reading the names on Memorial Day, “a day set aside to honor our fallen heroes.”

“Unlike Nightline’s reading of the names last year, which coincided with the start of the May ratings sweeps, we feel that this year’s Memorial Day selection is the appropriate setting to remember those who have sacrificed their lives to keep all Americans safe and free,” the Sinclair statement said.

As every American knows, each year on Memorial Day, we honor those who’ve given their lives for our country. The rest of the year, we just shut the hell up about them.

Sinclair also refused to air Saving Private Ryan last year on November 11, Veterans’ Day.

When they banned the Nightline tribute last year, Sinclair didn’t say anything about the ratings sweeps period. Rather, they said Nightline’s tribute “appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq.”

The former Washington bureau chief for Sinclair, Jon Leiberman, was fired after publicly criticizing Sinclair’s plan to run an anti-John Kerry documentary days before last year’s election. For his stand, Leiberman received the Payne Award for Ethics in Journalism earlier this month in Eugene, Ore.

Well, this year, it’s not about politics. It’s all about profit. The controversy over Sinclair’s ban last year gave a substantial boost to Nightline’s ratings. Maybe the higher ratings would be good enough even for sweeps month.

I’m sure glad those guys aren’t on my side.

Via this site, here’s Richard Feynman on discovering new laws of physics:

First you guess. Don’t laugh, this is the most important step. Then you compute the consequences. Compare the consequences to experience. If it disagrees with experience, the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Via This Modern World, Editor and Publisher discusses a double standard:

Where, in the week after the Great Newsweek Error, is the comparable outrage in the press, in the blogosphere, and at the White House over the military’s outright lying in the coverup of the death of former NFL star Pat Tillman? Where are the calls for apologies to the public and the firing of those responsible? Who is demanding that the Pentagon’s word should never be trusted unless backed up by numerous named and credible sources?

Where is a Scott McClellan lecture on ethics and credibility?

…

Patrick Tillman Sr., the father — a lawyer, as it happens — said he blames high-ranking Army officers for presenting “outright lies” to the family and to the public. “After it happened, all the people in positions of authority went out of their way to script this,” he told the Post. “They purposely interfered with the investigation, they covered it up. I think they thought they could control it, and they realized that their recruiting efforts were going to go to hell in a handbasket if the truth about his death got out. They blew up their poster boy.”

“Maybe lying’s not a big deal anymore,” he said. “Pat’s dead, and this isn’t going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has.”

Mary Tillman, the mother, complained to the Post that the government used her son for weeks after his death. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall.

The problem isn’t really a double standard. The current administration is above all standards of conduct. That leaves them free to pound on the table about the failings of others.

From PERRspectives Blog, the Bush Mea Culpa Watch:

With the White House and its conservative media goose-steppers pressuring Newsweek for an apology, I thought I might help President Bush keep track of his own:

It’s not enough for wealthy corporations that their money ensures their message is heard, loudly and clearly. As Think Progress observes, Morgan Stanley and British Petroleum want to leverage their wealth to silence other voices:

Both financial services powerhouse Morgan Stanley and global energy powerhouse British Petroleum, two giants of their respective industries, recently “informed print publications that its ads must be automatically pulled from any edition containing ‘objectionable editorial coverage.’” In the case of British Petroleum, ad-accepting publications are now required to “inform BP in advance of any news text or visuals they plan to publish that directly mention the company, a competitor or the oil-and-energy industry.” These are not empty threats. As one veteran of the magazine industry put it, “magazines are not in the financial position today to buck rules from advertisers.”

A comment at the site says, “It has always been thus,” and I suppose that’s true. But in bygone days, there were real journalists who put their careers, and sometimes their lives, on the line in order to get the full story out. There were publishers who had chosen to be publishers, and who would be ashamed to knuckle under to pressure from big business or big government, unlike today’s “managers of media corporations.”

As citizens, we need to spread the word about these corporate strong-arm tactics. We can’t rely on news media, beholden to big advertisers, to do it. Don’t be deceived: the forces that try to prevent us from learning the whole truth on matters of public policy are our enemies. Their assault on our right to know deserves lots of publicity. Our outrage must become more costly to them than the truth is.

The New Yorker on the Bush Administration’s attempt to blame Newsweek for our deteriorating stature in the world:

Is it really necessary at this late date to point out that the problem is torture and abuse, not dubiously sourced reports of torture and abuse? If the allegations in the Newsweek story seemed credible on their face, not only to its editors but also to government officials (such as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who quickly assigned a general to look into them), perhaps that is because of the long, dismal history of horrors that have already been documented—in many cases, by investigations conducted within the Armed Forces themselves, which are full of men and women who recognize that the honor of their service is at stake.

In preparation to see Revenge of the Sith sometime soon, I’ve dug out the old DVDs and watched them.

Yikes, is The Phantom Menace ever a rotten movie!

If anyone ever tries to tell you that good special effects make a good movie, sit him down and show him — oh, Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights — back-to-back with The Phantom Menace. And the next time he dares to open his mouth to say something about movies, say two or three years from now, offer to show him those two movies again.

Attack of the Clones is much, much better, but it’s not very good, either.

Years ago, when Return of the Jedi came out, and I saw those adorable Ewoks, I knew that whatever George Lucas’ original vision might have been, the movie had been tailored to sell teddy bears. And when I first saw The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, I knew those movies were not so much written, as designed — built around ideas for video games.

There was one glimmer of a thought in Attack of the Clones: that it’s possible to feel completely justified in doing something terrible, but that sense of justification does not excuse the terrible deed. The new movie is getting a lot of attention for commenting on current events, but I think that started here.

Nevertheless, I was ready to skip Revenge of the Sith entirely, but I won’t. The reviewers have been mostly positive, and surprised.

Andy Ihnatko likes it:

Unbelievable. Unbelievable!

“Revenge Of The Sith” is clearly the best of all the Prequels, but that sounds like faint praise at best and sarcasm at worst. It’s better than “Return Of The Jedi” and I have to ask myself if it isn’t better than “A New Hope,” too. When I come down off the endorphin buzz, I’ll probably conclude that no, it isn’t, but the fact that I even have to consider such a question says a whole hell of a lot about this movie.

So I’m going to see it soon. I hope I’ll like it, too.

Doctor Faust — er, Frist — seemed disappointed that a last-minute compromise prevented him from blowing up two hundred years of Senate tradition with his innovative nuclear option. But he needn’t feel that he’s accomplished nothing. Even without pulling the nuclear trigger, Senator Frist has poisoned the atmosphere in the Senate in a way that can probably never be undone.

The Constitution of the United States says “Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings,” and over the years, the Senate has accumulated a long list of rules, including rules defining how those rules may be changed. The current rules require a three-fifths majority to cut off debate on an issue. Even larger majorities are required to change the rules. The idea is to avoid precipitous and foolish changes to serve the passions of the moment.

Some of those rules were inconvenient to Doctor Frist, so he proposed his diabolical innovation: that the Vice-President can dictate what the rules of the Senate are, so long as he has fifty like-minded Senators to uphold his decrees.

It doesn’t matter that Bill Frist didn’t get to pull the nuclear trigger today. The idea, once thought, can’t be unthought. From now on, until the U.S. government itself has crumbled into dust, any time the Vice-President and half the Senate wish to dictate the outcome of any deliberation, that devilish Fristian bargain will be there, tempting them.

The nuclear genie isn’t going back in the bottle.

From the PBS program NOW, here’s Jan LaRue, Chief Counsel of the right-wing group Concerned Women for America, on the topic of an official government religion:

Well, you know the interesting thing is, at the founding of our country, there were state churches. That’s what it’s all about in a country where the people get to rule. And if you’re in a state you don’t like, you get to move to another state.

You may notice I called Concerned Women for America a right-wing group, not a conservative group. Their vision for America is a radical one. There’s nothing conservative about them.

Bob Harris at This Modern World:

When I was a kid, I remember reading about how democracies ended. What surprised me was how often it was a peaceful takeover. Fascists took power in many places not through force, but through rigged elections, broken rules, and consolidation of power, all hidden behind flags and God and promises of glory.

Today, the fanatics who have seized the GOP are beginning their attempt to flagrantly defy a half-dozen Senate rules which have existed for generations in order to install federal judges more interested in ideology than legal precedent.

If this “nuclear option” works, they will very likely soon also begin stacking the Supreme Court as they wish… The character of the very laws of our nation itself could soon be under the fundamentalists’ control.

It’s happening right now.

I guess I wasn’t the only person to note the 1,347 day milestone. I haven’t seen it mentioned in the mainstream media, except for this column by Randall J. Larsen in the Washington Post:

I find it difficult to understand why, 1,347 days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States remains inadequately prepared for the two most dangerous threats facing it: biological and nuclear terrorism.

Why 1,347 days? That was the number of days between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day — a reasonable measurement of progress. Starting from an abysmally unprepared posture, the United States required only 1,347 days to defeat Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. I do not expect a World War II-style victory in the war on terrorism, but after 1,347 days it is reasonable to ask: Who is in charge of defending this nation against what most experts agree are the only two existential threats we face — biological and nuclear terrorism? The disturbing answer: no one.

It seems most of the people who noticed the milestone were bloggers. Ed Fitzgerald:

I’m not claiming I’m the victim of any kind of post-traumatic stress disorder: I’ve been able to go about my life fairly normally in the past four years — but, on the other hand, I’m still not “over it” completely either. And nothing, not one single blessed thing, that the Bush administration and their neo-con and religious right allies have done since that day has made things any better, for me or for the rest of the world. Instead of using that awful event as a springboard to something good, a potential revolution in the way the world works, they seized on it as a convenient catch-all excuse to put across their warped agenda of rights rollbacks and tax giveaways to the rich and powerful, and leveraged it to reinvigorate the right-wing’s culture war against rationality and secularism.

Another blog, called Bush Lied Again, contrasts Bush’s Mission Accomplished declaration with the end of World War II:

US troops encircle Germans in the Ruhr, Allies liberate Buchenwald and Belsen concentration camps, Roosevelt dies, Truman becomes president, and on May 7, Germany unconditionally surrenders. In August, the US drops an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and another on Nagasaki 3 days later. Japan surrenders unconditionally.

Mission Accomplished. (Really!)

Another blogger, Angry Bear:

But this milestone does provide the opportunity to compare the effectiveness of America’s responses to both crises. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, America came together, and with determination, shared sacrifice, and the effective and focused leadership of FDR, George C. Marshall, and many others, America and her allies were victorious.

After the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, America once again came together. However, within months of 9/11, the Bush Administration lost focus and never clearly defined a winnable [Global War on Terror].

V-J Day, marking victory over Japan and the end of World War II, came on August 15, 1945 — 1,347 days after the United States was drawn into the war by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Today, it’s been 1,347 days since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The war that began that day has now lasted as long as U.S. involvement in World War II. How have we used that time?

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, we were ill-prepared for war. Americans across the country rushed to volunteer, and the military draft brought in more. There weren’t enough guns, so recruits drilled with broomsticks, or with dummy wooden rifles.

Taxes were levied to pay for the war, and money was borrowed through the sale of War Bonds. Old factories were converted to wartime production, and new factories were built. We built ships, planes, jeeps, trucks, tanks. New designs moved swiftly from the drawing board, to the factory floor, to the field of battle.

Soldiers, sailors and pilots were quickly trained to use the new weapons. Our British allies had invented radar, and we learned to use it. We sought and exploited countless advances in science and engineering.

The German army was the best in the world. U.S. soldiers were mauled in their first major encounter with crack German troops at the battle of the Kasserine Pass in north Africa. We understood we weren’t yet good enough. We learned from our failures.

We fought massive naval battles and fierce island battles across the Pacific, demolishing the Japanese navy and closing in on the Japanese islands.

With our allies, we captured Sicily and landed on the Italian mainland. We fought German and Italian fascist forces as we drove up that country. We landed at Normandy in northern France on D-Day, the largest amphibious assault in history. We liberated France, driving the once unbeatable German army of occupation back mile by brutal mile. We suffered Germany’s devastating counter-attack in the Battle of the Bulge, and we surmounted it.

At home, women worked factory jobs to replace men who had gone to war. Scarce resources were rationed. There were scrap metal drives. Nearly every American made sacrifices to help win the war. In secrecy, tapping the talents of European scientists who had fled Nazi oppression, we developed the atomic bomb.

Americans, British, Canadians, Russians all pushed into Germany. Hitler, trapped, killed himself and the German government capitulated. In the Pacific, Japan’s empire collapsed. American forces were poised for invasion. Russian forces were expected to join the assault, too. Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Tokyo, a military coup was attempted to prevent Emperor Hirohito from surrendering. It failed. The war ended.

World War II was a hard struggle, and the path was not always as clear as it may seem now in hindsight. But we saw what needed to be done; we didn’t seek diversions. We did not seek dominion; we knew we couldn’t win without our allies. We shared sacrifices; the wealthy were not exempted. Congress investigated reports of war profiteering. The government made post-war plans to bring our defeated enemies back into the community of civilized nations.

All in 1,347 days.

Have we made good use of our 1,347 days?

Too good to ignore, from Newsweek’s Perspectives:

“That’s unconscionable … I believe in family values.” —Seminole County (Fla.) Republican Party chairman Jim Stellings, testifying in the defamation suit he filed against a political rival who he says falsely accused him of having been married six times. The correct number of marriages is five.

Buy five, get one free?

George Lucas knows how to get people talking about his movies. A right-wing website has added him to its long list of boycotted entertainers. (The website demands “Please name one liberty we’ve lost, Mr. Lucas,” right under their online petition asking the Attorney General to charge Michael Moore with treason.) Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity. From the New York Times:

For sheer lack of subtlety, the light-saber-wielding forces of good and evil in George Lucas’s “Star Wars” movies can’t hold a candle to the blogging, advertising and boycotting forces of the right and left. (Or left and right.)

More a measure of the nation’s apparently permanent political warfare than of a filmmaker’s intent, the heroes and antiheroes of Mr. Lucas’s final entry, “Episode III – Revenge of the Sith,” were on their way to becoming the stock characters of partisan debate by mid-Wednesday, hours before the film’s opening just after midnight:

¶The liberal advocacy group Moveon.org was preparing to spend $150,000 to run advertisements on CNN over the next few days … comparing Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, to the movie’s power-grabbing, evil Chancellor Palpatine, for Dr. Frist’s role in the Senate’s showdown over the confirmation of federal judges.

¶Conservative Web logs were lacerating Mr. Lucas over the film’s perceived jabs at President Bush – as when Anakin Skywalker, on his way to becoming the evil Darth Vader, warns, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” in an echo of Mr. Bush’s post-9/11 ultimatum, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

¶A little-trafficked conservative Web site about film, Pabaah.com – for “Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood” – added Mr. Lucas to its list of boycotted entertainers…

¶Even the Drudge Report Web site got into the act: beneath a picture of Darth Vader, it compared the White House press corps to the vengeful Sith, after reporters peppered a press secretary for pressing Newsweek magazine to “repair the damage” in the Muslim world caused by a retracted report about desecration of the Koran.