Nevada’s Supreme Court today upheld NBC’s exclusion of presidential contender Dennis Kucinich from tonight’s MSNBC Democrats’ debate. But the TV network’s own appeal to the court reveals that its managers changed the program’s qualification rules—a move that threw Kucinich off the program.

An NBC Emergency Petition’s “statement of facts” filed today admits that Kucinich may have qualified for the debate under the rules outlined by Democratic party consultant Jenny Backus. Those guidelines said that a candidate had to finish in at least fourth place in the New Hampshire primary or Iowa Caucus to participate in the January 15th debate.

A candidate could also qualify by being included “in the top four in one of six credible random-sample telephone national news media polls conducted since the Iowa Caucus.” [Read more →]

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“We intend to issue shortly a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to propose and seek comment on additional steps the Commission might take to further implement the Call Home Act and thus further reduce the cost to military personnel of calling home.”

So the Federal Communications Commission declared on January 18th of last year. As the first anniversary of that promise approaches, this blogger can find no sign that it will be kept. A spokesperson for the FCC declined to comment on when such a proceeding might begin.

To recap: Congress passed the Call Home Act in December of 2006: “A bill to direct the Federal Communications Commission to make efforts to reduce telephone rates for Armed Forces personnel deployed overseas.”

[Read more →]

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On the first anniversary of Bush’s “surge,” it is probably appropriate to reflect on what it is and what it isn’t.

What it is involves two primary components:

1) A face-saving program for President Bush in the aftermath of the Baker – Hamilton Iraq report. Baker – Hamilton was a painful dose of reality. Bush doesn’t like reality. It doesn’t agree with the pictures he sees in his head. Pictures of his hunch-based leadership triumphing over evil, of him being tough and resolute, just like Churchill, except with more guts and not so literate and brainy. The media like to report on the pictures Bush sees in his head, in order to please him, and to get favorable regulatory and tax treatment.

2) A means by which to continue the crackpot neocon project in the Middle East. To “creatively destroy” the region per neocon kingpin Michael Leedeen, via a World War IV drool-cup crazy Norman Podhoretz plan. The Podster says we’re already in WWIV, by the way. Got to stop the Islamofascists from turning earth into a Caliphate and forcing everyone into wearing beards and burqas.

To do these things, the media needed to play its part. The media takes Bush’s head-pictures and creates a narrative that sounds good to the American voters. The little stories and chest-beating opinion pieces the neocon scribblers come up with don’t work as well as they used to, but that doesn’t mean they stop trying. They get paid for this, after all. There’s money in neoconning people. [Read more →]

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The ABC television network “is violating its obligation to operate in the public interest” by excluding Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich from tomorrow night’s scheduled debate in Manchester, NH. That’s the gist of the Democratic presidential contender’s last minute complaint, filed with the Federal Communications Commission today.

“The proper enforcement of the Federal Communications Act ensures America’s voters that they will have the ability to vote for candidates with varied and new ideas and policies,” says the Kucinich complaint. “ABC should not be the first primary.”

The Communications Act does normally require a program that offers one candidate access to its airwaves to provide the same access to other candidates. But the FCC has been rather lenient about the provision of late.

Here’s the whole Kucinich release:
[Read more →]

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It was obvious when Hillary ran for Senate in 2000, she was really running for President.

It was obvious that her manifestly conscious tilt to the right as a Senator, supporting a flag-burning amendment, sundry votes supporting Bush policies, including the fateful support for the Iraq War resolution, were all the actions of a triangulating Presidential candidate.

It was obvious from her hard “iron-lady” neocon-lite rhetoric that she was trying to push back against the widely propagated (and false) right-wing meme that she is a raging liberal.  Presidents must build consensus among the American people, after all.

It was obvious that the silence of Bill Clinton during the awful presidency of George W. Bush was about  smoothing the way for Hillary.  This silence was deadly.  There is no greater political talent in the United States than Bill Clinton.  Why was his powerful mind, genuine charisma, and brilliant rhetoric silent during the serial outrages of the GW Bush presidency?  Because he wanted to serve Hillary’s ambitions, he said nothing of Bush’s lunatic war, his handling of Katrina, the “surge,” his economic policies, and on and on.   Bill Clinton speaking against the war may have had real impact.  He may well have saved lives.  He remained silent for her.  I find this hard to forgive. 

It was obvious when, as a presidential candidate, HRC voted for the Kyle-Lieberman amendment, she was pandering to powerful special interests, closely associated with the neocons.  A presidential candidate must do these things, she thought, or was consulted to think.

What message is to be taken from Iowa caucuses?  People have had enough of Bush, that’s for sure.  They want a candidate to put Bush in history’s “worst president ever” dumpster, which awaits him.  They want someone to bring the America they knew back again.  This is clear in both the Democratic and Republican votes.

The Bush-accommodating Hillary is, by her own choice, not that candidate.

[Read more →]

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The Security and Exchange Commission now has a handy-dandy new database that tells you who in the corporate world is making what these days.

These are, of course, the firms that voluntarily disclosed this data. Wirevicus couldn’t resist downloading the numbers and coming up with this table. Enjoy!

[Read more →]

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The announcement earlier today that Attorney General Mukasey has ordered an investigation of the destruction of the CIA interrogation (torture) tapes raises hopes that the DOJ is operating in the objective, professional and independent manner in which it was intended. But, knowing that the Bush administration has politicized and corrupted every institution of the United States government to become wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Republican Party, gives the seasoned observer pause.

You know there will be obfuscation, delay and distraction leading to . . . What?  Another pardon?  How will it play out? First, it should be noted that the investigation will not be independent. Not an independent counsel, like Ken Starr.  And not an independent investigation, like Patrick Fitzgerald’s. 

According to this AP article, “Criminal Probe Opened over CIA Tapes”, Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham will oversee the probe. But, Durham will be in the chain of command, a politicized command which goes to a political appointee. We know from Max Blumenthal’s reporting during the 2007 Senate hearings of the US Attorney firings that the Bush administration, including DOJ, is full of trained “loyal Bushies.” Blumenthal reports there as many as 150 graduates of Pat Robertson’s Regent University law school, and other sensational dispensational institutions, such as the vaunted Messiah College (of which Monica Goodling is the most illustrious graduate — actually of both afore-mentioned institutions) people the administration. Robertson promises that Regent University provides “Christian leadership to change the world.” Presumably, the destroyed CIA tapes answered the question, “who would Jesus torture?” [Read more →]

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Dissatisfied with Federal Communications Commission Chair Kevin Martin’s proposal to relax the agency’s longstanding ban on newspaper/broadcast station co-ownership, the Media General corporation has submitted its own plan.

M. Ann Swanson of Media General met with Monica Desai, Chief of the FCC’s Media Bureau yesterday to explain why “repeal of the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule is needed in small- and medium-sized markets” and to outline the southeastern media company’s counter-proposal. [Read more →]

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“In general none of the managers of RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company smoked. I asked them why they aren’t smokers. … One said: ‘We don’t smoke this shit, we only sell it.’ … He added: ‘We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid’.” — David Garlitz, former Winston promoter

The Tobacco Industry presents itself as a protector and defender of adult freedom of choice. People should be allowed to choose to smoke, and companies allowed to provide smokers with cigarettes, whatever the health risks of smoking because it’s a free country.

The story the tobacco companies tell about smoking is this: smoking cigarettes has health risks, yes, but if people know about these risks [and everyone does] and they choose to smoke, that is their right. It is an exercise of their free will, a cherished value that American society is allegedly built upon. Adults make choices. They, and only they, are responsible for these choices and their consequences It is deceptive to talk about cigarette smoking as an addiction — because unlike drug addicts, cigarette smokers hold down respectable jobs, do not engage in crime to support their habit, and so forth. The main point of calling something an addiction is to deny that the addict can exercise free will over his habit. But on the contrary, the freedom of the smoker to smoke or not is clear — smokers have that choice, because millions and millions of them have quit. [Read more →]

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Adam Candeub

Editor’s note: This story first appeared on Lasar’s Letter on the FCC (LLFCC) on October 15th.

On Thursday, October 4th, the Federal Communications Commission’s Office of Inspector General completed a detailed audit of “allegations that Senior Management Ordered Research Suppressed or Destroyed.” The research in question consisted of two draft studies that came out the FCC’s Media Bureau. One titled “Do Local Owners Deliver More Localism?” suggested that, in fact, locally owned TV stations indeed do produce more local news than non-locally owned broadcasters. The second, a “2003 Draft Radio report,” noted that advertising market share among radio stations had become more concentrated immediately after the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which allowed corporations to own many more radio signals.

Yet the FCC released neither of these studies, at least not until United States Senator Barbara Boxer confronted FCC Chair Kevin Martin with the first report—”deep sixed,” as she put it—during his 2006 reconfirmation hearing. The plot further thickened when Adam Candeub, a former Media Bureau staff attorney, told journalists that the Local TV news report “was stopped in its tracks because it was not the way the agency wanted to go”—that is, towards publishing evidence implying that retaining some of the FCC’s media ownership caps might be prudent.

The Inspector General’s report exonerates the FCC in any suppressive wrongdoing in this matter.

“We have found no evidence of a pattern of any commissioner or anyone in the Commission’s senior management to suppress reports, facts, analysis, or any other material because it was contrary to a result desired by that person,” the 23 page analysis concludes, even though the audit concedes the existence of “troubling issues,” such as one employee who “thought the instruction basically was to lie” about the status of the second report to a Commissioner.

The audit, however, came to this conclusion without speaking to Candeub, now a professor at Michigan State University College of Law. Candeub declined to be interviewed for the investigation.

Being the nosy bunch we are here at LLFCC, we called Professor Candeub to get his perspective on the FCC audit, and why he wouldn’t talk to his former employer. He was kind enough to share his thoughts with us on the controversy. [Read more →]

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