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Sunday, April 22, 2007

Brownback: Mentally Deranged Have a Right to Bear Arms, Women DON'T Have a Right NOT to Bear Children

Today with Wolfie:

Right-wing Brownback reiterates his repugneocon hypocritical commitment to the standard fascicratic right wing nutjob woman/child/people-hating beliefs:

Force women to bear children who can be murdered during unjust, illegal, mendacious wars abroad or by gun nuts & wackos after they're here.

Protect gun owners but not women, children, mentally ill, sick, disabled, elderly, poor ...

because Brownback is among those that only actually value theoretical life while in-utero. Fuhgeddaboutit once actually born — then you'll have total second-amendment rights for gun-totin' and head-blowin'-off!

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Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Regrets, Schmegrets

From the ever witty Mr. Fish, LA Weekly




Our thoughts & deepest sympathies are with the V-Tech families and community.


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Thursday, April 12, 2007

CBS Radio to Imus: Buh-bye Bigot!

Heads up alert: Breaking News.
Imus shown the CBS Radio door. Finally.


Don't let it hit your racist sexist misogynistic homophobic totally bigoted prejudiced ass on the way out the door disingenuous dirtbag!

Don't have all the details yet. Does this mean he and his henchmen (lynchmen?) KKK rightwing nutjob bigotry promoting point-headed sheet-wearing sidekicks McCord and McGuirk (and Rosenberg) are also gone from CBS Radio? And that all are gone from the flagship station of WFAN in NYC? That's not completely clear as of this writing.

More details to follow.

You see? We can accomplish change when we all work together!

Power to the people.

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Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Imus No Longer to be Simulcast on MSNBC

Imus has been daring MSNBC to boot him for several years; apparently he got his wish. NBC news with Brian Williams, as reported by Rehema Ellis: the President of the NBC News Division (which oversees MSNBC), Steve Capus, has decided and announced tonight that as guardians of the NBC News Division name, Don Imus is no longer welcome on MSNBC.

Imus has derided MSNBC and associated NBC managers for years bullying and calling their staff, employees all sorts of put-downs/names and criticizing them, causing visible tensions — to the point that last summer staff celebrated the summer hiatus of the Imus program and had a countdown bemoaning the Imus show return in the fall.

Time for WFAN and CBS Radio to step up to the plate. They've had their run; time for it all to end. The world has changed. See previous entry on how to contact them.

MSNBC/NBC story here.

Footnote 1: Jossip has done a good job of documenting the flap resulting from the bigot's unconscionable slurs and corporate media's slowness to take action (because they have made so much money from this crap).

Footnote 2: Steve Capus — not a very impressive decider or leader. In fact, during a just-held interview with David Gregory on Spitball (hardball) it sounded very much like Mr. Capus would have been happy to allow the Imus Show's business-as-usual to continue — he's a self-avowed Imus fan — but apparently he was pressured from above to discontinue the relationship.

Boos to Steve Capus, thus to MSNBC, NBC: thumbs down, jeers, poop-head award, typical white male privilege, etc. Hard evidence of extremely poor leadership which allowed and countenanced the bigoted behavior for as long as it was allowed to go on. Steve Capus: Hope you're the next to go down for poor leadership, perpetuating bigotry and failing to be a leader with a backbone you spineless coward.

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Speak UP! Send Feedback to CBS Radio, WFAN, MSNBC, NBC

Tell CBS Radio what you think about the latest in sexist, racist, misogynistic Imus crap: http://www.cbsradio.com/contact/webhelpform.html

Tell WFAN sports radio which employs knuckle dragging KKKers Bernard McGuirk, Charles McCord and Sid Rosenberg — the ones who frequently instigate and truly believe the vile crap which spews out of the Imus show and the CBS Radio programs: http://wfan.com/pages/122916.php (go to the Instant Fan feedback form).

Tell MSNBC what they can do with Imus. You can find snail mail addresses at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10285339/ or send an email GeneralComments@feedback.msnbc.com

Tell NBC here http://www.nbc.com/Footer/Contact_Us/


Don't forget to tell them that you are aware that the usual Imus knuckle-dragging right-wing pointy-headed sheet-wearing sidekicks: McGuirk, McCord and Rosenberg are a major part of the problem too.

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Two Top Artists Cancel Their Appearances on Imus?

Mary Chapin Carpenter and Patti Smith have apparently quietly cancelled their April appearances on the Imus show. As late as the Tuesday, April 10 edition of the MSNBC-Imus enewsletters, Imus and MSNBC were promoting the April 11 and April 20 appearances of Carpenter and Smith respectively. However, the April 11 edition of the newsletter (sent out approximately 5:00PM on the 10th) no longer had references to either Carpenter or Smith.

The Imus Show appearance is no longer on Carpenter's website although it was previously listed there according to the google cache dated April 4.

Carpenter's new CD is "The Calling" — while Smith was set to perform songs from her new offering "Twelve." Both are known for being politically progressive as well as for their artistry and incredible music.

Numerous major advertisers including Staples, Proctor & Gamble and Bigelow Tea have pulled their ads due to the racist, sexist, misogynist statements (and lame apologies and excuses) by Imus, which were instigated by his producer Bernard McGuirk. Republican presidential candidates John McCain and Rudy Guiliani, as well as the current administration have indicated their public support for Imus.

Gretchen Wilson is still listed in the the April 11 newsletter as the live performer scheduled for May 10. Her new CD is entitled (ironically enough) "One of the Boys."


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Sunday, April 08, 2007

Cracking the Hermetic Seals: Press starts acting like reporters instead of stenographers — Better Late than Never

What's Leaking Out of the White House
By Peter Baker, Washington Post
Sunday, April 8, 2007
Shortly before leaving Moscow after four years covering Russia, I was granted a rare audience by a top Kremlin official. As we talked about Vladimir Putin and his relationship with President Bush, the Kremlin official compared the Bush team to the Bolsheviks and laughed at how secretive their White House appeared. "They've adopted some of our techniques with the press," he said.

For most of the past six years, journalists covering the White House have indeed been forced to master the art of Kremlinology. The famously disciplined and leak-averse Bush team succeeded at hermetically sealing the building, keeping behind-the-scenes machinations, well, behind the scenes. Deprived of any genuine information about how the institution operated, reporters were left to extrapolate what was really going on based on who was standing where at a Rose Garden photo op.

But something surprising has been happening in the past few months. The hermetic seal is showing cracks, and now the most disciplined administration in modern times has begun to see its internal workings seep into public view. Bush's shake-up of his Iraq team appeared in the newspapers before he was ready to announce it. His fight with the Joint Chiefs of Staff over plans to send more troops to Iraq played out on the front page for weeks. Secret memos by his national security adviser and his old defense secretary showed up in print. And unnamed officials put out word that Bush's new defense secretary tried unsuccessfully to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

"You always have more leaks when you have a combination of a late term and big controversy," observed Marlin Fitzwater, the only person to serve as press secretary to two presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. "Between the war and the last two years in office, I think it's pretty normal to have this kind of increase in leaked material. You've got to remember that the primary motivation for most leaks is that people want to influence the policy or the president when they're not otherwise able to do so. At the end of a term and in the middle of a controversy is when you can do that."

None of this means that the White House is suddenly leaking like a sieve. This is still not the most transparent institution; extracting information can be maddening at times. Just two months ago, as the Super Bowl neared, the White House refused to reveal what kind of television the president would watch it on. And in fact, many disclosures that have come out lately seem to have originated from other agencies in the administration. But it signals that the White House is no longer able to enforce its will on all corners of government quite as efficiently as it once seemed to do.

"Discipline is enforced by fear, and there's not a lot of people right now afraid of the president, politically afraid," said Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary for President Bill Clinton. "The Joint Chiefs, the Republican leadership, former aides are not worried about political retribution from the White House. They're a paper tiger."

Indeed, the toughest criticism of the Bush White House these days seems to emanate from those who were once on the inside and are no longer reluctant to speak out. Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, told the New York Times this month that he is "so disappointed in things" that he has concluded that Sen. John F. Kerry was right about Iraq. John R. Bolton left his post as Bush's ambassador to the United Nations and within weeks complained that the administration was not being tough enough on Iran and North Korea. Kenneth Adelman, a former confidant of Vice President Cheney and adviser to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, now denounces his erstwhile friends for running the worst administration in modern times.

Some of what is happening now was commonplace in past administrations. During Clinton's tenure -- and, I'm told, during those of his predecessors -- it was possible within limits to gain insight into how the White House worked. Reporters who had a question about economic policy could call the president's economic adviser, those writing on health care could call his domestic policy adviser, those with legal queries could call the counsel's office. None of those officials in the Bush White House returns reporters' calls.

In the past, it usually became known who was being considered for the Supreme Court or top administration posts long before any announcements were made. Options for welfare policy and diplomatic initiatives were effectively vetted in the media before landing on the president's desk. At times, that put Clinton's disarray on public display, but on many other occasions, it helped air dissent and further legitimize debate.

"Within reason, it's healthy for the system," Lockhart said. "You can't govern through the newspapers. But you also can't govern with six people in the room. You have to strike a balance." In the first two years of Clinton's presidency, "there was too much public argument," he added. "But by the end of the administration, the balance was pretty good."

Bush didn't think so, and he came into office determined to do things differently. Leaks, in his view, were a sign of a disorderly White House. Nothing should get out that was not supposed to get out. And his ability to make that stick through so many years suggested an unusual solidarity among his team. Bush remembered people in his father's White House coming to him as the president's son to complain that they had no access to the Oval Office. The son vowed not to repeat that management pattern and believed that by keeping an open door, there would be less incentive for aides to go to the media to be heard.

"You've got two polar extremes there," said Trent Duffy, a former Bush spokesman, comparing his White House with the previous one. "The main reason the Bush White House was able to maintain such a level of discipline was largely because they and the vice president's office were really in sync and there wasn't a lot of freelancing, versus the Clinton White House, which was the opposite."

Still, as Duffy noted, the signature disagreement of Bush's first term did eventually become public -- the struggle over the Iraq war between Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on one side and Cheney and Rumsfeld on the other. The losing side in that struggle, Powell's State Department, was more likely to leak, a pattern that irritated Bush and the West Wing.

Every White House engages in strategic leaks that are planned and authorized at the top -- information placed without fingerprints to advance a particular goal or undercut a rival. Some aides in the Clinton White House kept a list of whose turn it was to receive a leak of an initiative that the president was soon to announce -- if it's Tuesday, it must be USA Today. Those sorts of meaningless 24-hour scoops were designed to maximize coverage of something the White House wanted covered on the theory that the recipient media organization would play up its "exclusive" and others would chase it.

The other kind of authorized leak can blow up on a White House, as the Bush team discovered when an attempt to discredit former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a critic of the Iraq war, triggered a special counsel investigation that ultimately led to the indictment and conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, for perjury and obstruction of justice.

But it is the unauthorized leak that every president rails against and, in the end, finds impossible to stop. Now Bush sees it happening more often. In the past few weeks, for example, The Washington Post reported on internal e-mails sent by White House aide Elliott Abrams blasting the president's nuclear agreement with North Korea. And the New York Times detailed an effort by Rumsfeld's replacement, Robert M. Gates, to shut down Guantanamo Bay, a proposal blocked by Cheney and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

Those are classic Washington stories, where debates on important issues of unquestionable public interest are aired in the open, something that might not have happened all that long ago. Duffy said that may stem from a somewhat more open environment fostered in the past year by White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and press secretary Tony Snow, who are not wedded to rote talking points.

Rather than shun the media, Snow has made a point of putting the president and top aides out for more interviews as well as off-the-record meetings with journalists. "It's obvious the White House is doing things they didn't do in the first term," Duffy said. "Tony has a totally different approach."

Snow also hasn't sweated garden-variety leaks the way others used to. After Bush recently held an unpublicized meeting with a Russian general accused of war crimes in Chechnya, a government official leaked it to Human Rights Watch, which tipped off The Post. The resulting publicity prompted the White House to disavow knowing about the general's past and to swear off any future contacts.

The Russians were annoyed. No doubt they wished the old Kremlin techniques were still in effect.

bakerp@washpost.com

Peter Baker is a Washington Post White House correspondent.

Original article here.

Freedom demands openness and transparency, a type of courage and willingness to share truth despite fear. Fascism and hegemony require secrecy, lies, closed-systems, obedience to authority, manipulation and playing on fear. We are at a crossroads as a nation. Do we choose fear or freedom?

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Frank Rich: Defending the Indefensible

FRANK RICH: If defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of John McCain’s heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, the Iraq war die-hards have nowhere to go but down.

Sunday in the Market With McCain

By FRANK RICH
NYTimes OP-ED COLUMNIST
April 8, 2007

John McCain's April Fools’ Day stroll through Baghdad’s Shorja market last weekend was instantly acclaimed as a classic political pratfall. Protected by more than a hundred American soldiers, three Black Hawk helicopters, two Apache gunships and a bulletproof vest, the senator extolled the “progress” and “good news” in Iraq. Befitting this loopy brand of comedy — reminiscent of “Wedding Crashers,” in which Mr. McCain gamely made a cameo appearance — the star had a crackerjack cast of supporting buffoons: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told reporters “I bought five rugs for five bucks!,” and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, who likened the scene to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”

Five rugs for five bucks: boy, we’ve really got that Iraq economy up and running now! No wonder the McCain show was quickly dubbed “McCain’s Mission Accomplished” and “McCain’s Dukakis-in-the-Tank Photo Op.” But at a certain point the laughter curdled. Reporters rudely pointed out there were 60-plus casualties in this market from one February attack alone and that six Americans were killed in the Baghdad environs on the day of his visit.“ Your heart goes out to just the typical Iraqi because they can’t have that kind of entourage,” said Kyra Phillips of CNN. The day after Mr. McCain’s stroll, The Times of London reported that 21 of the Shorja market’s merchants and workers were ambushed and murdered.

The political press has stepped up its sotto voce deathwatch on the McCain presidential campaign ever since, a drumbeat enhanced by last week’s announcement of Mr. McCain’s third-place finish in the Republican field’s fund-raising sweepstakes. (He is scheduled to restate his commitment to the race on “60 Minutes” tonight.) But his campaign was sagging well before he went to Baghdad. In retrospect, his disastrous trip may be less significant as yet another downturn in a faltering presidential candidacy than as a turning point in hastening the inevitable American exit from Iraq.

Mr. McCain is no Michael Dukakis. Unlike the 1988 Democratic standard-bearer, who was trying to counter accusations that he was weak on national defense, the Arizona senator has more military cred than any current presidential aspirant, let alone the current president. Every American knows that Mr. McCain is a genuine hero who survived torture during more than five years of captivity at the Hanoi Hilton. That’s why when he squandered that credibility on an embarrassing propaganda stunt, he didn’t hurt only himself but also inflicted collateral damage on lesser Washington mortals who still claim that the “surge” can bring “victory” in Iraq.

It can’t be lost on those dwindling die-hards, particularly those on the 2008 ballot, that if defending the indefensible can reduce even a politician of Mr. McCain’s heroic stature to that of Dukakis-in-the-tank, they have nowhere to go but down. They’ll cut and run soon enough. For starters, just watch as Mr. McCain’s G.O.P. presidential rivals add more caveats to their support for the administration’s Iraq policy. Already, in a Tuesday interview on “Good Morning America,” Mitt Romney inched toward concrete “timetables and milestones” for Iraq, with the nonsensical proviso they shouldn’t be published “for the enemy.”

As if to confirm we’re in the last throes, President Bush threw any remaining caution to the winds during his news conference in the Rose Garden that same morning. Almost everything he said was patently misleading or an outright lie, a sure sign of a leader so entombed in his bunker (he couldn’t even emerge for the Washington Nationals’ ceremonial first pitch last week) that he feels he has nothing left to lose.

Incredibly, he chided his adversaries on the Hill for going on vacation just as he was heading off for his own vacation in Crawford. Then he attacked Congress for taking 57 days to “pass emergency funds for our troops” even though the previous, Republican-led Congress took 119 days on the same bill in 2006. He ridiculed the House bill for “pork and other spending that has nothing to do with the war,” though last year’s war-spending bill was also larded with unrelated pork, from Congressional efforts to add agricultural subsidies to the president’s own request for money for bird-flu preparation.

Mr. Bush’s claim that military equipment would be shortchanged if he couldn’t sign a spending bill by mid-April was contradicted by not one but two government agencies. A Government Accountability Office report faulted poor Pentagon planning for endemic existing equipment shortages in the National Guard. The Congressional Research Service found that the Pentagon could pay for the war until well into July. Since by that point we’ll already be on the threshold of our own commanders’ late-summer deadline for judging the surge, what’s the crisis?

The president then ratcheted up his habitual exploitation of the suffering of the troops and their families — a button he had pushed five days earlier when making his six-weeks-tardy visit to pose for photos at scandal-ridden Walter Reed. “Congress’s failure to fund our troops on the front lines will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines,” he said. “And others could see their loved ones headed back to the war sooner than they need to.”

His own failures had already foreordained exactly these grim results. Only the day before this news conference, the Pentagon said that the first unit tossed into the Baghdad surge would stay in Iraq a full year rather than the expected nine months, and that three other units had been ordered back there without the usual yearlong stay at home. By week’s end, we would learn the story of the suspected friendly-fire death of 18-year-old Pvt. Matthew Zeimer, just two hours after assuming his first combat post. He had been among those who had been shipped to war with a vastly stripped-down training regimen, 10 days instead of four weeks, forced by the relentless need for new troops in Iraq.

Meanwhile the Iraqi “democracy” that Mr. Zeimer died for was given yet another free pass. Mr. Bush applauded the Iraqi government for “working on an oil law,” though it languishes in Parliament, and for having named a commander for its Baghdad troops. Much of this was a replay of Mr. Bush’s sunny Rose Garden news conference in June, only then he claimed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki was taking charge of Baghdad security on his own. Now it’s not even clear whom the newly named Iraqi commander is commanding. The number of military operations with Iraqis in the lead is falling, not rising, according to the Pentagon. Even as the administration claims that Iraqis are leading the Baghdad crackdown, American military losses were double those of the Iraqi Army in March.

Mr. Bush or anyone else who sees progress in the surge is correct only in the most literal and temporary sense. Yes, an influx of American troops is depressing some Baghdad violence. But any falloff in the capital is being offset by increased violence in the rest of the country; the civilian death toll rose 15 percent from February to March. Mosul, which was supposedly secured in 2003 by the current American commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is now a safe haven for terrorists, according to an Iraqi government spokesman. The once-pacified Tal Afar, which Mr. Bush declared “a free city that gives reason for hope for a free Iraq” in 2006, is a cauldron of bloodshed.

If Baghdad isn’t going to repeat Tal Afar’s history, we will have to send many more American troops than promised and keep them there until Mr. Maliki presides over a stable coalition government providing its own security. Hell is more likely to freeze over first. Yet if American troops don’t start to leave far sooner than that — by the beginning of next year, according to the retired general and sometime White House consultant Barry McCaffrey — the American Army will start to unravel. The National Guard, whose own new involuntary deployments to Iraq were uncovered last week by NBC News, can’t ride to the rescue indefinitely.

The center will not hold, no matter what happens in the Washington standoff over war funding. Surely no one understands better than Mr. McCain that American lives are being wasted in the war’s escalation. That is what he said on David Letterman’s show in an unguarded moment some five weeks ago — though he recanted the word wasted after taking flak the morning after.

Like his Letterman gaffe, Mr. McCain’s ludicrous market stunt was at least in the tradition of his old brand of straight talk, in that it revealed the truth, however unintentionally. But many more have watched the constantly recycled and ridiculed spectacle of his “safe” walk in Baghdad than heard him on a late-night talk show. This incident has the staying power of the Howard Dean scream. Should it speed America’s disengagement from Iraq, what looks today like John McCain’s farcical act of political suicide may some day loom large as a patriot’s final act of sacrifice for his country.

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Support Representative Patrick Murphy of PA; He actually served in the Military Unlike the Repugs in Chief

The only Iraq War vet currently in Congress has been targeted by KKKarl Rove and the repugneocons for speaking truth to power. Support Murphy Now.

Back From Iraq at the Great American Diner

Editorial Observer
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
NYTimes April 8, 2007
BENSALEM, Pa.

As the only Iraq war veteran in Congress, Representative Patrick Murphy has his own way of fact-finding when he travels back there these days.

“When I was there in ’03, I had a gunner — Pvt. First Class Juan Santiago — and he’s now Sgt. Juan Santiago, still with the 82nd Airborne Division, on his third deployment, away from his wife and two children,” said the Pennsylvania Democrat, a former paratrooper captain. “Sure, I met with General Petraeus, but I had lunch with Santiago and checked with the other guys who could give me the straight story on what they’re seeing out there.”

Mr. Murphy, a 33-year-old Congressional freshman, paused amid the jukebox boom at the Great American Diner and Pub, a roadhouse where he likes to meet with constituents. “The guys said it’s like Groundhog Day all over, four years later.”

That is the message Mr. Murphy is pressing on voters as they hear each other out in his suburban Philadelphia district during Congress’s two-week break. He cites a tearful female sergeant who sought him out to deliver a three-page plea to “speak truth to power” in Washington.

It was his honor to be a junior House whip — a point man, in Army lingo — in the Democrats’ recent passage of a war budget that included timelines for an exit from Iraq. But that’s hardly enough in the lawmaker’s speaking to power.

“President Bush and Vice President Cheney have called me and my colleagues unpatriotic for that vote,” Mr. Murphy said, admitting this still had his Irish up. “With all due respect to Mr. Cheney who had — what was it? — ‘better things to do’ during Vietnam and got four deferments, I don’t think he’s in a position to question my patriotism.”

Mr. Murphy journeyed from a blue-collar upbringing in Philadelphia, where his father was a cop, to enlistment as a teenager in the military. He eventually flourished to become an officer who studied law, and was promoted to Army prosecutor and then to the faculty at West Point. “I’m a guy from Bucks County Community College who wound up at West Point when they needed someone to teach constitutional law!” he summarized, grinning as the epitome of the patriot’s dream.

The day after 9/11, Mr. Murphy volunteered for combat with the 82nd Airborne. In Iraq, he discovered the real war alongside Private Santiago and his other buddies. “Nineteen were killed in my combat brigade; I carry all their names in my pocket,” the congressman said.

In the buzz of the roadhouse, the scene suggested a mini-America: There were more drinkers at the bar ignoring the congressman and watching a ballgame than constituents buttonholing this curious representative who used to lead convoys down Ambush Alley in Baghdad. This day, Mr. Murphy was all diligence, listening to old-timers describe Medicare snafus in tedious detail over beers. “You have my word I’ll try and help,” he promised as his aides took notes.

He did discover a few things from Robin Stelly, a constituent who grilled him on his vote against the domestic budget, which he cast as the newest Blue Dog Democrat, part of the caucus that aims to cut spending.

“I learned the lessons of the ’60s, where I saw the domestic program torpedoed by foreign entanglements,” said Ms. Stelly, a field organizer for PA Action, a nonpartisan advocacy organization dedicated to protecting social welfare programs.

“He is The Guy in Congress on the war,” Ms. Stelly conceded. She happens to run weekly vigils against the war but thinks her congressman better keep an eye out for the government basics that national recovery will eventually require.

The constituent chats at the diner topped off a good week for Mr. Murphy. His new daughter was due for Easter Sunday baptism, with one of his old combat pals among the guests. “And did you see? I’m on Karl Rove’s top 20 list of targeted Democrats,” he exulted above the bar noise, eager to spread the word to Sergeant Santiago and beyond.

Recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer

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