BBC Reporter Killed in Somalia, Africa’s Deadliest Country for Journalists

A local journalist working for the BBC in southern Somalia was reportedly shot and killed today.
“They shot him in the ribs and stomach. He was rushed to hospital but died shortly before he could receive a blood transfusion that was being prepared,” local resident Aden Osman told Reuters.
According to witnesses, the journalist who has yet [...]

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Bush: We’ll Be in Iraq for 40 Years, Hamas Election Was “Good Thing”

When NBC News correspondent Richard Engel sat down with President Bush last year for an interview, he had little idea how much Bush would reveal about his true intentions and his real sentiments about the war on terror and America’s allies and enemies.

Among the excerpts of the interview captured in Engel’s new book, “War Journal: My [...]

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McClellan Lashes Media: “Complicit Enablers” of Iraq War

UPDATE: White House spokesperson Dana Perino, clearly frustrated, just told reporters asking her about the McClellan book: “I think that horse has been beaten enough.”
UPDATE: CNN’s Wolf Blitzer just defended the network’s coverage in the lead-up to the Iraq War, telling Howard Kurtz that “we could have done even better” in retrospect.
Some of the choice excerpts from Scott McClellan’s new [...]

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Flacking for the Pentagon:
‘PsyOps,’ ‘Brainwash,’ ‘Parroting’

In the second part of our look at the Pentagon’s document dump regarding the coordinated program to use retired military analysts, we look at an “interview” with former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on April 18, 2006.

Here are some choice excerpts (can you feel the love?):
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Flacking for the Pentagon:
Do Your Own Research

Feel like channeling the New York Times’s David Barstow, who wrote last month’s incisive expose of the Pentagon’s coordinated PR campaign to use retired military analysts?

Go to the Defense Department’s list of documents that were finally released to the Times after months of litigation and discussions.
For example, here’s an “interview” with former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld shortly [...]

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Assignment Desk

- Did Vito Fossella’s mistress, Air Force aide Laura Fay, influence any of his decisions on Congressional budget appropriations?
- How many of Hillary’s fundraisers have switched to Obama and McCain?
- Who cares about the hooker booker’s plea deal? We want to know whether Eliot Spitzer will be prosecuted.
- Who were all the near-sighted idiots touting ethanol last year… [...]

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The Photo That HRC Supporters
Plan to Use In an Anti-Obama Ad

Hearing from sources that a Clinton-supporting 527 organization plans to use this photo of Obama associate William Ayers stepping on an American flag in an anti-Obama mailer in the coming weeks.
(The photo originally appeared in “No Regrets,” a Chicago magazine profile of Ayers in 2001) 
More details to come…

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Turning the Page:
‘The Dark Side of the Diamond’

After his first time using a performance-enhancing testosterone potion, the 32-year-old ballplayer had “one of the best games of his life,” batting in three runs with a double and a triple.
Barry Bonds? Jason Giambi? Jose Canseco?
No, James “Pud” Galvin, who was getting an extra boost back in 1889, more than a century before today’s steroids-abusing superstars.
The story [...]

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On Your Marks, Get Set, Go!

(AP) Thousands of pages of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s schedules as first lady are being released to the public after months of pressure and criticism that the Clintons were delaying the disclosure.
The National Archives, which operates the former President Clinton’s presidential library in Little Rock, announced Tuesday it would release 11,046 pages of Clinton’s daily schedules [...]

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The Skeptic: Who’s the Next Frey?

In the wake of all the recent publishing fiascos involving fraudulent authors - from fake gang-banger Margaret B. Jones to phony Holocaust survivor Misha Defonseca - we’ve decided to revive our 2006 contest, “Memoir or Make-Believe.”
So, who’s the next published pretender?
Could it be “Gang Leader for a Day” by Sudhir Venkatesh? Did he really spend [...]

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