Posted by Tom Bortnyk on Aug. 12, 2009, at 10:10 am
By Tom Bortnyk PoHo correspondent
“Drowning out opposing views is simply un-American” -Nancy Pelosi
Madam Speaker, I could not agree more. Freedom of speech is one of our most cherished rights as American citizens. So, too, is the right to peaceably assemble and to petition the government without fear of punishment or reprisal. These rights are the foundation for Western Civilization as we know it.
Why then, Madam Speaker, do these rights only apply to citizens who share your ideological views? It seems to be the very definition of irony and a text book example of hypocrisy. The political Left in the US has been working diligently to silence opposition, not only with the current health care debate, but in numerous instances in the past.
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
Last Saturday in Brandon’s Clayton Park, approximately 200 citizens gathered for a TEA Party (Taxed Enough Already) organized by conservative activist Terry Kemple, and featuring a rally-the-troops speech by State Senator Ronda Storms (right).
It was one of what was supposed to be over 1,000 such expressions of outrage at government spending under the Obama administration around the country on Independence Day, and followed a similar outburst of conservative sentiment at the first “Teabag” parties held on Tax Day, April 15th.
That day was also dedicated to federal largesse, though you may recall it more as a media battle between the seeming outright advocacy of the Fox News network, and the derision of it by more liberal commentators, including way too many allusions to what the phrase ‘teabagging’ meant. (This Keith Olbermann bit was just part of that onslaught.)
The growing federal deficit was on the minds of most of the citizenry. Despite the fact that a large part of the current deficit can be laid at the feet of former President George W. Bush (as my previous column, referring NY Times columnist David Leonhardt, can attest to), those in attendance on Saturday were of no mind to hear such specific facts. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted by Mitch Perry on May. 25, 2009, at 7:05 am
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.
D.C. reporters were disappointed last Friday when Nancy Pelosi refused to answer questions regarding her current contretemps on the CIA and waterboarding.
It came right days after her disastrous news conference where she alleged that the CIA misled her in a Sept. 4, 2002, secret briefing about torture.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 15, 2009, at 9:30 am
It may have been the worst news conference performance by a sitting Speaker of the House ever. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi harmed her own cause and ratcheted up the torture debate in a newser in which she parsed her knowledge of CIA waterboarding briefings and accused the spy agency of lying to Congress.
Even Florida’s former Sen. Bob Graham (and his infamous lil’ notebooks) has leapt to her side, telling HuffPo that he, too, was lied to by the CIA about torture tactics and use. From that interview:
“When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ‘02 and two in September ‘02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”
Mitch Perry is the anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio. This is his first post as a PoHo contributor.
Perhaps because of the mind blowing dollars attached to his policy prescriptions to change the country, President Obama’s announcement last Friday that he will withdraw all combat forces from Iraq by next summer and all remaining U.S. troops by the end of 2011 hardly registered as a momentous event on the national scene.. That is, if you go by the measure of how the D.C. press corps addresses news emanating from the Obama administration, which sometimes seems to be viewed through the prism of “How pissed are Congressional Republicans about it?”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Feb. 20, 2009, at 7:27 am
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a wide-ranging interview with Rolling Stone, says at least three senior Bush Administration officials could be prosecuted for crimes they committed while in power.
Do you foresee a scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are actually prosecuted?
I think so. The American people deserve answers. Where we are now, in terms of prosecution of White House staff, is that we have charged them with contempt of Congress. We’re talking about Harriet Miers, Josh Bolten and Karl Rove. The natural course of events from here is that the speaker will determine what charge we’re going to pursue, because there are more than one. Under Bush, the Justice Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the beat goes on – it just gets worse. We don’t know what will happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.
I’m talking more about the level of a Donald Rumsfeld – people who authorized torture and greenlighted the kidnapping and rendition of innocent people.
I didn’t like their policies, which is why we needed to win the election – to get them out of power.
But I don’t know what the evidence is against them on any specific charge. When you have a truth-and-reconciliation commission . . . look, I’m still fighting the bombing of Cambodia. I still have my gripes with the administration that bombed Cambodia before you were born, so I think it’s important to bring these things out. If you have a case against someone, you bring a case.
Pelosi was supportive of legislation aimed at a kind of “Truth Commission” that would look at the wrongdoing in the previous administration.
I say that not because I like pork (yes, Pelosi et al. stuffed some junk into the bill that has very little to do with stimulating the economy.) Or because I think the plan has enough tax breaks for small businesses (it has some, but could use a little more.) Or because I like socking future generations with nearly a trillion dollars in debt. I don’t.
But the consensus among economists is that spending is needed to create jobs. Building infrastructure is not only a quick way to put people to work but makes a small dent in our national backlog of public investments in roads, bridges, transits, energy-efficient buildings and a new energy grid that is sorely needed and will pay dividends (and create jobs) in the long run as well.
What you saw yesterday wasn’t the end of Barack Obama’s ability to reach bipartisanship, nor was it a principled stand against Big Government by Republicans. It was two other things:
