The op-ed pages of The Washington Post should be a place for serious debate about the direction of our country.

But by hiring former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen — the second former Bush speechwriter to whom it has given a regular column — The Washington Post has crossed the line. Thiessen is a serial misinformer. And he shouldn’t be rewarded with the audience or credibility that a regular column provides.

In his latest column, Thiessen attacks lawyers who have represented detainees, warning that these lawyers may hold "radical and dangerous views" and that by giving detainees representation, lawyers are "using the federal courts as a tool to undermine our military’s ability to keep dangerous enemy combatants off the battlefield in a time of war." These outrageous claims have been refuted by lawyers from across the political spectrum, including former Bush administration attorneys — yet the Post gives Thiessen free rein to engage in baseless smears. He’s even used misleading statements in support of torture.

Nearly 7,000 people have signed our petition to tell The Washington Post to say no to promoting torture. Will you join us?

Click here to tell The Washington Post: Stop promoting torture.

Thiessen is a proponent of torture, and in his quest to advocate for torture and attack torture opponents, he has resorted to misinformation and smears that have no place in the debate over national security policy.

Thiessen’s willingness to distort the truth and engage in hysterical attacks doesn’t just undermine his own credibility — it undermines the ability of readers to trust The Washington Post as a source of honest analysis.

The Post has offered Thiessen a platform to promote his views, despite the fact that he:

• …said in his book that lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees were "aiding and abetting America’s enemies."
• … falsely claimed in his most recent book that, since CIA interrogation of terror suspects began after 9-11, there were no attacks on U.S. interests at home or abroad.
• … falsely claimed in a Post op-ed that Bush oversaw "2,688 days without a terrorist attack on [American] soil," ignoring the anthrax mail attacks, the El Al shooting in Los Angeles and other domestic terrorist attacks.
• … misleadingly compared waterboarding of detainees with the training of U.S. troops.
• … called President Obama’s decision to release Bush administration torture memos "irresponsible" and claimed that "Americans may die as a result."

Click here to tell The Washington Post: Stop promoting torture.

The editors of The Washington Post need to hear from you that falsehoods and outrageous smears in support of torture are not acceptable. We need more voices to join the nearly 7,000 who have already confronted the Post. Let’s tell them: You’ve gone too far. Stop promoting torture.

Will you join us?

Sign the petition to The Washington Post.

Thank you for your help in holding the Post accountable.

The protagonists in this tragedy are two working, productive, tax paying citizens and their kids. That an unfortunate medical event has changed their future that had they had affordable medical care and insurance would not have been, must be considered a sin against humanity. All those who think incidents like this are isolated or that given that they may have insurance that they are somehow insulated to this eventuality, better wake up. Most are a job, a pre-existing condition, or an insurance company rescission away from this.

Residents of Kingwood for nine years, Katy Hayes, her husband Al, and their three children, Amber, 16, Jake, 5, and newborn Arielle, currently reside in Greentree Village. Both are self-employed. Al teaches music and Katy is a massage therapist. Katy has been described as having a great laugh, a quick smile, a warm touch, loves animals and is as down to earth as you can get. She’s known to be active, hard-working, and very devoted to her husband, children and friends.

A few weeks ago, a perfectly healthy Katy gave birth to daughter Arielle, only to experience an intense and prolonged pain after the birth.

“It was a home birth, no drugs, eight hours of labor, and almost a 10-pound baby. So a little bit of pain is to be expected, but the pain kept getting worse and worse,” said Michele Dykstra, a close family friend of Hayes. Dykstra stepped into the role of caregiver for Arielle after Hayes went to the hospital. Doctors at Kingwood Medical Center eventually discovered the new mom had a Streptococcal A infection that had aggressively invaded her body.

As a result, Katy has experienced multiple organ failure and is unconscious. Surgery last week involved the removal of several sepsis organs. She is currently on a ventilator and is receiving dialysis.

“She had complete organ failure. They removed her bowels, her uterus, her ovaries, and I believe some colon,” said Dykstra.

Due to the fact that both are self-employed, they do not have medical insurance and their financial need is enormous. Family, friends and a growing online community of supporters are pulling together to help the family. There has been an amazing outpouring of helpful gestures by the community including meals, childcare, housekeeping, groceries and visits. Numerous fundraisers are currently being planned to help the Hayes family. CONTINUED

Mother battles for life after giving birth – Monday, March 01, 2010 – Copyright 2007 Ourtribune.com

I have been one of Geithners staunchest supporters. But as time goes on I am upset of his advice to the President. They are simply too cozy with investment bankers and the movers of capital. Europe is being justifiably more tough on them than we are. It is time that we move and if the bankers respond by slowing the economy, nationalize the whole darn thing and sell relative parts to responsible private entities.

EU hits back at Geithner on regulation

By Nikki Tait in Brussels

Published: March 11 2010 15:29 | Last updated: March 11 2010 19:44

Top European Union officials hit back on Thursday at criticism from Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, who has accused Brussels of pushing ahead with rules to regulate managers of hedge funds and other alternative investment funds that could be protectionist.

A spokesman for Michel Barnier, the new EU internal market commissioner who is responsible for financial services regulation and to whom Mr Geithner addressed his concerns, said that the EU decision to act on hedge funds was in line with a G20 decision to reinforce transparency in the financial system.

He added that the new commissioner wanted to “work closely” with the US, to ensure “robust standards” in financial services. Mr Barnier is due to visit the US shortly, although no final date has been set.

The spat comes at a sensitive time. Diplomats from the 27 EU member states again failed on Thursday to agree a compromise package for regulating hedge funds and private equity funds on a pan-EU basis.

Britain, by far Europe’s biggest centre for hedge funds, is leading opposition to aspects of the directive, which it fears could impede the operations of funds based in London.

Alistair Darling, UK chancellor, has argued that hedge funds authorised by regulators to operate in one EU country should be allowed to operate under a “passport” in all other countries.

CONTINUED

FT.com / Brussels / Business regulation – EU hits back at Geithner on regulation

NYT and the ACORN Hoax
Why can’t paper admit its mistakes?

3/11/10

Ignoring calls from numerous critics, the New York Times refuses to own up to mistakes in the paper’s coverage of the now-famous right-wing videotapes attacking the community organizing group ACORN. Instead, the paper’s public editor, Clark Hoyt, is relying on an absurd semantic justification in order to claim the paper does not need to print any corrections.

As conventionally reported in the Times and elsewhere, right-wing activists James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles dressed up as a pimp and a prostitute and visited several local ACORN offices, where office workers gave the duo advice on setting up a brothel, concealing a child prostitution ring and so forth. But many of the key "facts" surrounding the videos are either in dispute or are demonstrable fabrications.

TAKE ACTION! ACTION: Encourage New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt to recommond that the paper investigate the ACORN videos and produce a report that clarifies the record. CONTACT: New York Times Clark Hoyt, Public Editor public@nytimes.com Phone: (212) 556-7652 Please post copies of your letters in the comments section on the FAIR Blog

 

Though O’Keefe appears in various scenes in the videos wearing a garish and absurd "pimp" costume, he in fact did not wear the outfit when he appeared in the ACORN offices (Washington Independent, 2/19/10); he was dressed in a button-down shirt and slacks. This fact undermines one of the key contentions of the ACORN smear–that the group is so hopelessly corrupt that they would dispense advice to an obvious criminal.

What’s more, the "advice" that they received, according to the transcripts released by O’Keefe and Giles, does not appear to be as incriminating as it was portrayed in the videos–and echoed in outlets like the New York Times.

A review of the Times coverage:

–In an early piece (9/16/09), readers were told of the "amateur actors, posing as a prostitute and a pimp and recorded on hidden cameras in visits to ACORN offices…. Conservative advocates and broadcasters were gleeful about the success of the tactics in exposing ACORN workers, who appeared to blithely encourage prostitution and tax evasion." The Times explained:

The undercover videos showed a scantily dressed young woman, Hannah Giles, posing as a prostitute, while a young man, James O’Keefe, played her pimp. They visited ACORN offices in Baltimore, Washington, Brooklyn and San Bernardino, Calif., candidly describing their illicit business and asking the advice of ACORN workers. Among other questions, they asked how to buy a house to use as a brothel employing underage girls from El Salvador.

The paper also reported that O’Keefe "was dressed so outlandishly that he might have been playing in a risque high school play. But in the footage made public–initially by a new website, BigGovernment.com–ACORN employees raised no objections to the criminal plans. Instead, they eagerly counseled the couple on how to hide their activities from the authorities, avoid taxes and make the brothel scheme work."

–Three days later (9/19/09): "Their travels in the gaudy guise of pimp and prostitute throughvarious offices of ACORN, the national community organizing group, caught its low-level employees in five cities sounding eager to assist with tax evasion, human smuggling and child prostitution."

–New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt weighed in (9/27/09), chiding the paper for not being more aggressive in promoting the ACORN videos–lamenting that Times readers weren’t as up-to-speed on the story as "followers of Fox News," who already knew "that a video sting had caught ACORN workers counseling a bogus prostitute and pimp on how to set up a brothel staffed by under-age girls, avoid detection and cheat on taxes."

–The following week (10/4/09), Hoyt was on the ACORN case again: "To recap: Two conservative activists with a concealed video camera, posing as a prostitute and her pimp, visited offices of ACORN, the community organizing group, and lured employees into bizarre conversations about how to establish a bordello, cheat on taxes and smuggle in underage girls from Central America."

–After O’Keefe was charged in January with attempting to tamper with the phone system in Sen. Mary Landrieu’s office, the Times reported under the headline, "After Arrest, Provocateur’s Tactics Are Questioned" (1/28/10): "Mr. O’Keefe is a conservative activist who gained fame last year by posing as a pimp and secretly recording members of the community group ACORN giving him advice on how to set up a brothel."

—On January 31, 2010: "Mr. O’Keefe made his biggest national splash last year when he dressed up as a pimp and trained his secret camera on counselors with the liberal community group ACORN–eliciting advice on financing a brothel on videos that would threaten to become ACORN’s undoing.

–On March 2, 2010, under the headline, "ACORN’s Advice to Fake Pimp Was No Crime, Prosecutor Says, " the Times reported: "The ACORN employees in Brooklyn who were captured on a hidden camera seeming to offer conservative activists posing as a pimp and a prostitute creative advice on how to get a mortgage have been cleared of wrongdoing by the Brooklyn district attorney’s office."

But the story the Times continues to tell is wildly misleading, as a review of the publicly available transcripts of his visit (BigGovernment.com) makes clear. O’Keefe never dressed as a pimp during his visits to ACORN offices, seems to never actually represent himself as a "pimp
," and the advice he solicits is usually about how to file income taxes (which is not "tax evasion&quot. In at least one encounter (at a Baltimore ACORN office), the pair seemed to first insist that Giles was a dancer, not a prostitute.

In the case recounted in the March 2 Times story, the transcripts show that O’Keefe did not portray himself as a pimp to the ACORN workers in Brooklyn, but told them that he was trying to help his prostitute girlfriend. In part of the exchange, O’Keefe and his accomplice seem to be telling ACORN staffers that they are attempting to buy a house to protect child prostitutes from an abusive pimp.

Throughout the months the Times covered the story, it made a major mistake: believing that Internet videos produced by right-wing activists were to be trusted uncritically, rather than approached with the skepticism due to anything you’d come across on the Web. O’Keefe and the Web publisher Andrew Breitbart refused to make unedited copies of the videotape public, and with good reason: A more complete viewing, as the transcripts show, would produce a much different impression.

While the Times decide to skip the standard rules of journalism, ACORN commissioned an independent investigation led by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (12/7/09), which noted that

theunedited videos have never been made public. The videos that have been released appear to have been edited, in some cases substantially, including the insertion of a substitute voiceover for significant portions of Mr. O’Keefe’s and Ms.Giles’ comments, which makes it difficult to determine the questions to which ACORN employees are responding. A comparison of the publicly available transcripts to the released videos confirms that large portions of the original video have been omitted from the released versions.

So what has the Times done in response? As reported extensively by blogger Brad Friedman (Brad Blog), several Times staffers have been asked to justify the paper’s lack of accountability. In the most remarkable exchange, public editor Clark Hoyt–who had criticized the paper for not doing enough reporting on the tapes–wrote that the paper had made no errors that merited a correction (Brad Blog, 2/23/10). He explained that the January 31 story "says O’Keefe dressed up as a pimp and trained his hidden camera on ACORN counselors. It does not say he did those two things at the same time."

It is hard to believe that Hoyt actually believes what he’s saying here. The obvious implication from the language of the article (and the others documented above) is that ACORN was dispensing advice to someone dressed up in an absurd pimp outfit. The Times chose to believe that O’Keefe’s work was journalism that didn’t need to be treated skeptically. The videos were in fact a hoax, and the Times was duped. Its readers deserve to know as much–and ACORN, which suffered serious political damage as a result of the false stories, deserves an apology.

In his September column criticizing the paper for being slow to report the ACORN videos, Hoyt wrote: "Some stories, lacking facts, never catch fire. But others do, and a newspaper like the Times needs to be alert to them or wind up looking clueless or, worse, partisan itself." Worse than looking partisan, though, is being wrong.

ACTION: Encourage New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt to recommond that the paper investigate the ACORN videos and produce a report that clarifies the record.

CONTACT:
New York Times
Clark Hoyt, Public Editor
public@nytimes.com
Phone: (212) 556-7652

 

CBO offers new estimate for Senate healthcare bill: $875B

By Jordan Fabian – 03/11/10 10:28 AM ET

The Congressional Budget Office released a new estimate of the Senate’s healthcare bill that showed it would save less money.

The new estimate released Thursday states that the Senate bill will now cost $875 billion over 10 years and reduce the deficit by $118 billion, $14 billion less than the previous CBO score.

The figure is sure to play into the healthcare debate as House leaders whip their members to support the Senate bill. But what lawmakers are really waiting for from CBO is its score of President Barack Obama’s proposed fixes to healthcare legislation.

The non-partisan CBO originally estimated that the Senate’s healthcare bill would cost $871 billion over a 10 year period.

CBO offers new estimate for Senate healthcare bill: $875B – The Hill’s Blog Briefing Room

President Obama has called for the House to vote to move health reform forward as early as next week. Your representative, Rep. Ted Poe, voted last fall to allow insurance companies to continue to jack up rates, drop coverage when folks need it the most, and discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions.

Now, we’re in the final march for reform and there’s one last chance to do the right thing. Please call Rep. Poe today and let them know there is a political price to favoring big insurance companies over the American people — OFA supporters in Texas have pledged 506,830 volunteer hours to fight for candidates who support reform.

According to our records, you live in Texas’s 2nd congressional district. You can reach Rep. Poe’s Kingwood office at (281) 446-0242. Please call now — then click here to let us know you made a call.

(Not your representative? Click here to look yours up.)

We know the stakes: Coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. Ending insurance company abuses, like denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions and drastically raising premiums. Reining in costs that are bankrupting families and crushing businesses. Putting life-and-death decisions in the hands of patients and doctors, not insurance company bureaucrats.

Everything we’ve worked for depends on winning this upcoming vote in the House of Representatives — and it’s going to be very, very close. If there was ever a time to pick up the phone and make a difference, that time has come.

Please call today:

http://my.barackobama.com/FinalMarchCall

Thanks for joining together for this Final March for Reform. Because of you, we’re going to win this.
Mitch
Mitch Stewart
Director
Organizing for America

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
Sour Gropes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

 

 

ERICA WERNER | 03/11/10 08:10 AM |

WASHINGTON — A final agreement nearly in hand, President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders are about to embark on one last sales job that will determine the outcome of the president’s signature health care overhaul.

It will come down to a phenomenal effort by congressional leaders and the White House to win over skittish lawmakers after a year of incendiary debate, even as Obama keeps up campaign-style appearances designed to fire up public support.

A closed-door meeting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office Wednesday evening moved congressional leaders and administration officials close to agreement on such issues as additional subsidies to help lower-income families purchase health insurance and more aid for states under the Medicaid program for low-income Americans.

Democrats still need to see a final cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office – and want to ensure it stays around $950 billion over 10 years – but they made plans to begin to read the bill to rank-and-file Democrats at a caucus meeting Thursday.

"We’re going to get started," Pelosi, D-Calif., said after her meeting with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other key officials. Some unanswered questions remain, Pelosi said, "but we’re hoping that we’ll get those answered over the course of the reading. It’s not much."

"I’m very pleased about where we are," she said.

Obama invited members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to meet with him Thursday at the White House to discuss the health legislation. The White House also said Obama would travel to northeastern Ohio on Monday for an appearance near the hometown of an uninsured cancer patient named Natoma Canfield, whom the president has made a symbol of the need for reform.

It will be Obama’s third event on health care in a week. In St. Charles, Mo., on Wednesday Obama shouted to a crowd: "The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote."

At stake is the fate of Obama’s call to expand health care to some 30 million people who lack insurance and to prohibit insurance company practices such as denial of coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Almost every American would be affected by the legislation, which would change the ways people receive and pay for health care, from the most routine checkup to the most expensive, lifesaving treatment. CONTINUED

Health Care Close After Democrats, White House Meet

 

 

ERICA WERNER | 03/11/10 08:10 AM |

WASHINGTON — A final agreement nearly in hand, President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders are about to embark on one last sales job that will determine the outcome of the president’s signature health care overhaul.

It will come down to a phenomenal effort by congressional leaders and the White House to win over skittish lawmakers after a year of incendiary debate, even as Obama keeps up campaign-style appearances designed to fire up public support.

A closed-door meeting in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office Wednesday evening moved congressional leaders and administration officials close to agreement on such issues as additional subsidies to help lower-income families purchase health insurance and more aid for states under the Medicaid program for low-income Americans.

Democrats still need to see a final cost estimate from the Congressional Budget Office – and want to ensure it stays around $950 billion over 10 years – but they made plans to begin to read the bill to rank-and-file Democrats at a caucus meeting Thursday.

"We’re going to get started," Pelosi, D-Calif., said after her meeting with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and other key officials. Some unanswered questions remain, Pelosi said, "but we’re hoping that we’ll get those answered over the course of the reading. It’s not much."

"I’m very pleased about where we are," she said.

Obama invited members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus to meet with him Thursday at the White House to discuss the health legislation. The White House also said Obama would travel to northeastern Ohio on Monday for an appearance near the hometown of an uninsured cancer patient named Natoma Canfield, whom the president has made a symbol of the need for reform.

It will be Obama’s third event on health care in a week. In St. Charles, Mo., on Wednesday Obama shouted to a crowd: "The time for talk is over. It’s time to vote."

At stake is the fate of Obama’s call to expand health care to some 30 million people who lack insurance and to prohibit insurance company practices such as denial of coverage on the basis of pre-existing medical conditions. Almost every American would be affected by the legislation, which would change the ways people receive and pay for health care, from the most routine checkup to the most expensive, lifesaving treatment. CONTINUED

Health Care Close After Democrats, White House Meet