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On Friday night, Nightline, inspired by an issue of Life magazine that came out during the Vietnam War, will pay tribute to those brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice by reading the names and showing pictures of more than 500 members of the U.S. armed forces who have died in Iraq. Their names, ranks, branches of service, hometowns and ages will be listed under the photos, just as they were in that issue of Life thirty-five or so years ago.
That will be the entire content of the hour-long show -- a solemn tribute to fallen heroes. Who could have a problem with that?
The Sinclair Broadcast Group, a conservative Fox-wannabe media company that has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican candidates and causes in recent years, that's who. Sinclair, which, of course, makes its money from the public airwaves and is required by law to serve the public good, has prohibited its stations (eight of Sinclair's sixty-two stations are ABC affiliates) from airing tonight's expanded edition of Nightline.
But surely only bleeding-heart liberals like me have a problem with Sinclair's stance, right?
Er, no -- unless one considers Senator John McCain a bleeding-heart liberal.
McCain Letter to Sinclair Broadcasting on Preemption of Nightline
Washington, D.C. -- U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) issued the following letter today to Mr. David Smith, President and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, in response to the preemption of this evening's Nightline program:I write to strongly protest your decision to instruct Sinclair's ABC affiliates to preempt this evening's Nightline program. I find deeply offensive Sinclair's objection to Nightline's intention to broadcast the names and photographs of Americans who gave their lives in service to our country in Iraq.I supported the President's decision to go to war in Iraq, and remain a strong supporter of that decision. But every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war and the extraordinary sacrifices it requires of those brave men and women who volunteer to defend the rest of us; lest we ever forget or grow insensitive to how grave a decision it is for our government to order Americans into combat. It is a solemn responsibility of elected officials to accept responsibility for our decision and its consequences, and, with those who disseminate the news, to ensure that Americans are fully informed of those consequences.
There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war's terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.
If you'd like to let the Sinclair Broadcast Group know what you think of their reprehensible actions, go here -- or you can right to the top by contacting David D. Smith, CEO of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, at (410) 568-1500 x1504.
You might also considering contacting Nightline, which will no doubt be receiving floods of hate mail from the extreme right; they could probably use the support. To drop them a line, go here.
Whatever other actions you decide to undertake, I urge you to watch Nightline tonight. The Bush administration has done everything it can to prevent us from focusing on the human cost of their folly in Iraq, but we, as Americans, are honor-bound to remember and honor these men and women and -- to put it bluntly -- to face up to the sacrifices we have asked of them.
I would next ask Nightline to pay similar tribute to the many thousands of Iraqi citizens who have died as a result of our presence in Iraq over the past year, but that's probably expecting a bit much. That would require, at a minimum, a full broadcast day.
Lord knows the editors of The New York Times, bless their hearts, can often be a little toothless in their treatment of the gang of thugs currently occupying the White House, but in today's edition, they absolutely nailed -- especially in the closing paragraph -- what's so wrong with the ventriliquist act that's today being paraded before the 9/11 commission:
The President's Testimony
It would have been a pleasure to be able to congratulate President Bush on his openness in agreeing to sit down today with the independent commission on the 9/11 attacks and answer questions. Unfortunately, Mr. Bush conditioned his cooperation on stipulations that range from the questionable to the ridiculous.The strangest of the president's conditions is that he will testify only in concert with Vice President Dick Cheney. The White House has given no sensible reason for why Mr. Bush is unwilling to appear alone. (When asked at his recent press conference, the president gave one of his patented nonresponses: "Because it's a good chance for both of us to answer questions that the 9/11 commission is looking forward to asking us, and I'm looking forward to answering them.")
Given the White House's concern for portraying Mr. Bush as a strong leader, it's remarkable that this critical appearance is being structured in a way that is certain to provide fodder for late-night comedians, who enjoy depicting him as the docile puppet of his vice president.
Mr. Bush's reluctant and restrictive cooperation with the panel is consistent with the administration's pattern of stonewalling reasonable requests for documents and testimony and then giving up only the minimum necessary ground when the dispute becomes public. Today's testimony will be in private in the White House, away from reporters or television cameras. The session will not be recorded, and there will be no formal transcript. The president's aides have defended this excessive degree of secrecy with the usual arguments about protecting highly classified information and not wanting to establish dangerous precedents.
The idea that the panel may wring from Mr. Bush some comment that may endanger national security is ridiculous. The commission, led by the respected former Republican governor of New Jersey, Thomas Kean, has already heard, in public, from the leaders of the nation's top intelligence agencies, the secretary of defense and Mr. Bush's national security adviser. It seems highly unlikely that the president knows secrets more sensitive than they do. If he did, he would certainly be free to go off the record while discussing them.
The president's aides have also been arguing that making the event anything more than a "meeting" or informal discussion would establish a pattern that future chief executives would be forced to follow. That is true, in a way. If Mr. Bush or any of his successors have the tragic misfortune to be in command at a time when terrorists strike the country, killing thousands of innocent civilians, they should be expected to cooperate with the official investigations, and to do so in a way that puts their statements on the record and into history.
Just remember, as has been repeated on Air America's Unfiltered so often of late, when Bush and Cheney refused to testify under oath before the commission, it breaks down to simply this: They refused to promise to tell the truth.
One of the silly but fun aspects of life in New York is bumping into celebrities going about their everyday business.
Last week, for example, I attended a vintage clothing show, and every time I turned around, I spotted Frances McDormand. I'm certain she wasn't stalking me, but it occurred to me that she might think I was following her around.
I wasn't -- I swear.
Today's spotting was at Due Amici, a small chain of take-out places that features pizza, pannini, salads, and such. I was enjoying a salad at the 14th Street location (near Sixth Avenue), when I noticed a redhead ordering a salad of her own.
Her face was turned away, but I thought, "From behind, that woman looks just like Julianne Moore."
She turned my way, and, of course, it was indeed Ms. Moore.
I'd share with B&Y readers just which ingredients she favors in a salad, but alas, I was just far enough away that I couldn't hear her order.
She looked good, though -- dark slacks, fashionably clunky black shoes, a lavender-grey raincoat. She wore no discernible makeup, but looked every bit as lovely as she does on screen.
She glanced around for a seat (or so it seemed), but there were none. (Well, there was one at my little table, but those things don't happen in real life, do they?) So she took the salad to go and was off.
The point of this entry? There is no point, beyond the silly fun of celebrity spotting. Call it bird watching, Manhattan style.
I don't generally pull lengthy quotes from other websites, but this one, from Salon, is warranted:
Above the law
The Bush administration is arguing that it has the right to lock up U.S. citizens forever -- without evidence, witnesses, lawyers or trials. If the Supreme Court agrees, will this still be America?By Tim Grieve
April 28, 2004 | U.S. Supreme Court justices listened skeptically last week as Solicitor General Ted Olson argued that foreign detainees being held in U.S. military facilities in Guantánamo Bay have no right to seek relief from U.S. courts. Wednesday, Olson will be back before the court, this time arguing in two historic cases that the government has the authority to lock up U.S. citizens, too -- without charges, without a lawyer, without a trial, without any rights at all -- simply by declaring them "enemy combatants" in the administration's war on terror.
Having government agents sweep U.S. citizens off the streets and into prison cells, holding them incommunicado for as long as the government likes -- it sounds like a dark fantasy of life in a totalitarian state, the kind of thing we're supposed to be fighting against in Iraq. But this is no fantasy. In the cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi, the Bush administration is advancing a vision of governmental power that is both far-reaching and unprecedented, at least in the United States of America. And it is a vision -- like the one the administration articulated Tuesday during Supreme Court arguments on the secrecy of Vice President Cheney's energy task force -- that leaves sole discretion, sole authority, and almost unfettered power in the hands of the executive branch.
It's easy to become blasé about liberties lost in the Ashcroft era. The lines between foreign intelligence efforts and criminal investigations have been blurred; the government has more power to snoop, to search, to study your financial transactions and examine your reading habits; foreigners have been detained, immigrants deported. "There are so many things," says Elliot Mincberg, legal director for the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way.
But the administration's arguments in the Padilla and Hamdi cases have activists and analysts on both the left and the right alarmed all over again. Timothy Lynch, director of the conservative Cato Institute's Project on Criminal Justice, says the Bush administration is advancing a "sweeping theory of executive power" that could lead to "dangerous" legal precedents. "If the administration were to prevail in Hamdi and Padilla, there would be no limit to the number of people who could be arrested here totally outside the normal criminal process, people arrested without arrest warrants, people not going before judges, people being held in solitary confinement in prison facilities right here in the United States," he said.
The Cato Institute and People for the American Way seldom see eye to eye, but they do here. If the Supreme Court accepts the Bush administration's arguments in the Padilla and Hamdi cases, Mincberg says, the executive branch of the U.S. government will have "an unlimited right to put American citizens in an indefinite Constitution-free zone." ...
There's much more; read it here.
This is from today's Talking Points Memo (you may have to scroll down a bit -- look for the 11:41 a.m. entry on 4/26):
George W. Bush has faced three opponents (McCain, Gore and Kerry) since he came onto the national political stage -- each served in Vietnam, though each under very different circumstances. He's had his lieutenants attack the service of each one....
The gall of this particular president attacking anyone's service record is astonishing, but to attack these three men, each of whom volunteered to serve abroad during wartime, is beyond vile.
Any Republicans who haven't totally sold their souls to the party's far right wing should be hanging their heads in shame -- or, better, working hard to prevent this lowlife from stealing a second term.
I urge you to read David Remnick's lovely remembrance of New Yorker writer Philip Hamburger, who passed away recently.
I interviewed Hamburger a few years ago. He was a lovely, lovely person -- a relic, in the best sense of that word, of bygone days and a New York I could only know secondhand. I savored the opportunity to speak with him, to experience through him a certain sophistication and elegance that is now all but gone.
He brought his Anna to the interview, and she, too, was a dear. I'm saddened to learn they're both gone and grateful that I was given an hour to spend in their company.