Just a few comments about what is going on...

In the press about Arizona...

Ex-NYT Reporter Rues Arizona “Police State,” Reminds of Nazi-Occupied Denmark

“I’m glad I’ve already seen the Grand Canyon. Because I’m not going back to Arizona as long as it remains a police state....Everyone remembers the wartime Danish king who drove through Copenhagen wearing a Star of David in support of his Jewish subjects. It’s an apocryphal story, actually, but an inspiring one. Let the good people of Arizona — and anyone passing through — walk the streets of Tucson and Phoenix wearing buttons that say: ‘I Could Be Illegal.’”
— The New York Times’s Linda Greenhouse, formerly the paper’s Supreme Court reporter, in an April 27 op-ed.



NBC Pretends Snide Liberal Comics Are Real News

Correspondent Andrea Mitchell: “It’s now gone beyond protest to threats of a boycott, as Arizona becomes a laughingstock to some.”
Seth Myers on Saturday Night Live: “Can we all agree that there’s nothing more Nazi than saying, ‘Show me your papers’?...”
The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart: “It’s not unprecedented, having to carry around your papers. It’s the same thing free black people had to do in 1863.”
Mitchell: “Anger over the law has gone viral. On Facebook today, pages like this one: ‘Arizona, the Grand Canyon State, welcomes you — unless you’re a Mexican or look like one.’”
— NBC Nightly News, April 27. [Audio/video (0:55): Windows Media | MP3 audio]




Nothing Gets by These Einsteins

“Law Makes it a Crime to Be Illegal Immigrant.”
— On-screen graphic during a noon-hour segment about Arizona’s new immigration law, MSNBC Live, April 26.

AND HERE IS A LITTLE BIT OF THE TRUTH...
“Critics have focused on the term ‘reasonable suspicion’ to suggest that the law would give police the power to pick anyone out of a crowd for any reason and force them to prove they are in the U.S. legally. Some foresee mass civil rights violations targeting Hispanics. What fewer people have noticed is the phrase ‘lawful contact,’ which defines what must be going on before police even think about checking immigration status. ‘That means the officer is already engaged in some detention of an individual because he’s violated some other law,’ says Kris Kobach, a University of Missouri Kansas City Law School professor who helped draft the measure.”
— The Washington Examiner’s Byron York, April 26


Tea Party = Oklahoma City Bombing?

Smearing Like It’s 1995

“Watch your words: Former President Clinton warns harsh anti-government talk could lead to violent acts, like the Oklahoma City bombing....There is a lot of attention tonight on comments made by former President Bill Clinton, who has weighed in on the angry anti-government rhetoric, ringing out from talk radio to Tea Party rallies. He warns that sometimes firing people up with caustic comments can have unintended and dire consequences.”
— Fill-in anchor Elizabeth Vargas on ABC’s World News, April 16. [Audio/video (0:08): Windows Media | MP3 audio]

“In so many ways, this moment feels like that same moment from McVeigh’s era, from Timothy McVeigh’s era in Oklahoma City. You know, you have this profound sense of change going on in the country — it’s cultural, it’s social, it’s technological, embodied in many ways by President Obama that scares a lot of people about the fact that are, think they’re losing their country. You have a right-wing media that is encouraging a lot of this behavior. And you have a right, a Republican Party that, if not encouraging it, is certainly tolerating it at this moment. And I think it’s a very combustible and very dangerous moment for the country in that regard.”
— New York magazine writer John Heilemann on The Chris Matthews Show, April 18.

“What was the more likely cause of the Oklahoma City bombing: talk radio or Bill Clinton and Janet Reno’s hands-on management of Waco, the Branch Davidian compound?...Obviously the answer is talk radio. Specifically Rush Limbaugh’s hate radio....Frankly, Rush, you have that blood on your hands now and you have had it for 15 years.”
— MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann naming Rush Limbaugh the “Worst Person in the World,” April 19 Countdown.

“The pitched attacks by some Republicans and conservatives during the health care fight have drawn criticism as incendiary, as have the use of terms and imagery like the placing of target cross hairs over the districts of vulnerable Democrats who backed health care.”
— New York Times reporter Carl Hulse in an April 15 story.

“I looked up the definition of sedition, which is ‘conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state.’ And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck, and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right next — right up close to being seditious.”
— Time’s Joe Klein on The Chris Matthews Show, April 18. [Audio/video (0:29): Windows Media | MP3 audio]


And Finally... Money



Time for a Surgeon General Warning Against Profits?

“Should average Americans think about big Wall Street institutions the way that some have come to think about tobacco companies, that is, companies whose core activities are harmful to the country?”
— CNBC’s John Harwood to President Obama in an interview segment aired on NBC’s Today, April 20. [Audio/video (0:19): Windows Media | MP3 audio]


And the most frightening comment recently...


Sam’s Fantasy: Supreme Court Justice Al Gore

ABC’s Sam Donaldson: “Let’s go further. The Constitution does not say you have to be a lawyer to be on the Supreme Court.”
Co-host George Stephanopoulos: “That’s right.”
Donaldson: “I give you Al Gore.”
Stephanopoulos: “Al Gore?”
Donaldson: “All right, he’s 62. But, he’s still a few years kicking. I think he’s confirmable, although there would be a fight to some extent. I think he might make a very good Justice.”
— ABC’s Good Morning America, April 22. [Audio/video (0:35): Windows Media | MP3 audio]