There has been much discussion both here and on the rest of the interwebs about the quality of journalism by one of the recently deceased and that subject has been flogged to death over the last few days, so rather than continuing to discuss whether the equine in question is in fact deceased, I thought it might be nice to take a look at what quality journalism looks like from one of the still living who's been keeping America informed for over four decades-Bill Moyers.

If this has been talked about, please let me know and I'll delete the diary.

Anyhow, I was just listening to the Thom Hartman program on Air America and he was discussing the Michelle Obama quote which has conservatives in an uproar and was trying to put her words into context.  She supposedly said "For the first time in my adult life I am proud of my country."

But it appears the context was already there until it was edited out.

We are all used to Senator Specter talking a good game when it comes to holding the Bush administration accountable and then folding like a house of cards as soon as it comes time to actually do something about.

Well this time he seems serious.  Follow me below the fold for more.

I was pleasantly surprised to find this in my email this morning:

Maine Congressman Mike Michaud calls for impeachment hearings!!

On December 21, Maine Congressman Michael Michaud sent a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers requesting that the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee begin impeachment hearings of Vice President Cheney.

This is a very big development and one of the reasons 15,000 of us signed the MaineImpeach petition.

The Republicans today decided that the most important order of business was to censure Rep. Pete Stark for telling the truth in his statements regarding Bush's treatment of our troops.  The Democratic leadership, rather than telling the republicans to crawl back into their holes, decided it would be worthwhile to bring this piece of crap to the floor for a vote.  Josh Marshall has some details  and a video link here: http://tpmelectioncentral.com/...

As I am currently at a loss for words to describe my utter discouragement and sadness over the latest capitulation by the Democrats, I thought it might be nice to focus on a heartwarming story that is taking place in my hometown of South Portland, Maine.

Follow me below the fold for the story of a young activist who is taking on city hall and might just win the fight yet.

Earlier tonight this link came to my attention:  http://www.democrats.com/

Scroll down the page a bit to find the post entitled 'Yearlykos bans impeachment'.

If this information is inaccurate, I will delete this diary immediately.  So far I've posted a couple comments on this subject with no refutation, but I'm kind of hoping for one.

Last week Harriet Miers defied a Congressional subpoena under orders from the White House and refused to even show up for questioning.  If you missed the story, you can get the basics here: http://news.yahoo.com/...

There was a lot of grumbling by Democrats and they threatened her with contempt if she did not change her tune, but one week later she is still walking around a free woman.

In the past couple days, those who are currently disappointed by the latest escapades of our elected representatives have been called a lot of things:  idiots, children who just don't understand, and reality deficient just to name a few.  But there is one point the 'reality-based' don't seem to understand:  

We are not pissed off because the Democrats failed to end the war in four months, we are irate because they don't seem to be even trying.

Please excuse the brevity of this diary, as I am at work and do not have time to do the subject proper justice.  Perhaps others can flesh out the history a bit.

We have been having a vigorous and healthy debate lately about the merits of impeaching the current resident of the White House, George W Bush.  There are those who favor beginning investigations immediately when the new Congress begins with an eye towards impeachment, others who feel impeachment should be placed on the back burner while using our new found majority to pass important legislation, and still others who feel impeachment should not be brought up at all for fear of a backlash from the public and a loss of seats in Congress.  I place myself in the first group, and I'll give you my .02 worth after the flip.

Last night was the first broadcast of a live football game on the NFL channel. A lot of cable companies don't carry the channel yet, but it is on the two satellite companies.  This channel is owned and operated by the NFL itself.

As a football fan I'm often forced to sit through a bunch of pre-game patriotic jingoism and vapid lip-synced halftime shows in order to watch the games.  We've all seen the fighter plane fly-bys and boring flavor-of-the-week halftimes shows by no talent hacks.  But last night seemed a little different...

Many here have followed the adventures of our favorite politician over the last few months, from his losing primary campaign which almost made us give up hope for a better America, right on through his nail-biting general election victory over upstart Communist Ned Lamont, which restored our faith in Democracy once again.  All throughout this campaign he and his supporters conducted themselves with the grace and poise all true Americans expect of their elected officials, but now he is going back to the den of iniquity known as Washington DC without much party support.  You may recall that he was forced to form his own party, Connecticut for Lieberman, in order to thwart the forces of evil who, with direct support from Al Qaeda and Kim Jong-Il, sought to unseat him from his rightful place as the Conscience of the Nation in the US senate.

London Yank has laid out a very strong case today and in other diaries arguing the manipulation of gas prices in the run-up to the election, and yet there are many who refuse to believe such a 'conspiracy' could be possible without some sort of direct evidence.  The same goes for many of the arguments talking about possible election fraud.

Now I don't claim to have all the answers, but my memory still works pretty well, so if you'll indulge me, let's take a trip back to the year 2001.

As the republican party continues to self-immolate, I feel it would be unwise simply to stand on the sidelines watching and hope for the best on November 7th.  Here's one issue the Democrats should start beating the republicans over the head with: CORPORATE TAXES.

Today the Dow Jones hit a new high (unadjusted for inflation) and many republicans have been talking about the booming economy they've created, while lowering taxes for all Americans. While the preceding statements may be technically true, they certainly do not tell the whole story, and Democrats been letting them get away with using these sorts of arguments without rebuttal for far too long.

With all the ass-covering going on in Washington these last few weeks, I thought it would be a fun exercise to imagine what would happen if the Republican attempts at obfuscation were to fail.  Now I know many of us, myself included, have fantasized about what we'd like to do personally were we ever to get our hands on any member of the Bush cabal, but for the purposes of this exercise I propose that we refrain from our extra-legal fantasies and limit ourselves to purely legal punishments.

More below the fold...

I was reading the sports page this morning when I noticed that Jeff Jacoby had the most emailed story of the day on the Boston Globe's website.  For those of you unfamiliar with him, he's the Globe's own mouth-breathing Republican columnist, who usually manages to write his op-eds without recourse to a single fact.  I decided to see what had made him so popular today and I found this...

http://www.e.bell.ca/...

He is in high dudgeon today once again over those who would dare to call our president bad names, but if you read to the end of the article you'll notice he reserves most of his ire for a movie debuting today at the toronto film festival which depicts a fictionalized assassination of our dear leader in its opening scene.  And evidently, he has actually not just made this up out of whole cloth like he usuallly does, because I found this when I searched the film festival website...

After Keith Olbermann's righteous smackdown of Rumsfeld the other night, the rest of the media has been jumping on the bandwagon to some extent.  However being the cynic that I  am, I suspect that this is due to the fact that Olbermann received thousands of kudos from viewers, and probably got a bit of a ratings spike as well.  They'll probably forget all about our little home-grown fascism problem as soon as the next dead white girl comes along, so let's make sure they are forced to keep bringing it up.

Getting the media to tell it like it is about our own dangerous government may seem like a daunting task based on their record over the last few years, and it is, but I received a little encouragement yesterday which gives me hope that they may be catching on.  More after the flip...