TV News LIES

Conservative columnist David Frum, who was speechwriter for former President George W. Bush, blasted Fox News on Sunday for creating an “alternative knowledge system.”

In an article published by New York Magazine in late November, Frum had argued that conservative media like Fox News and talk radio “immerse their audience in a total environment of pseudo-facts and pretend information.”

“Regulatory Meltdown” Reveals Efforts to Improve Nuclear Safety Undermined by Four NRC Commissioners

As part of his ongoing investigation into U.S. nuclear safety since the Fukushima meltdowns, today Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Congress’s leading voice for nuclear safety, released a blockbuster new report that details how four Commissioners at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) colluded to prevent and then delay the work of the NRC Near-Term Task Force on Fukushima, the entity tasked with making recommendations for improvement to NRC regulations and processes after the Fukushima meltdowns, the worst nuclear disaster in history. The Near-Term Task Force members comprise more than 135 years of collective experience at the NRC, and with full access to expert NRC staff completed a methodical and comprehensive review of NRC’s regulatory system.

Undercover American narcotics agents have laundered or smuggled millions of dollars in drug proceeds as part of Washington’s expanding role in Mexico’s fight against drug cartels, according to current and former federal law enforcement officials.

The officials said that while the D.E.A. conducted such operations in other countries, it began doing so in Mexico only in the past few years. The high-risk activities raise delicate questions about the agency’s effectiveness in bringing down drug kingpins, underscore diplomatic concerns about Mexican sovereignty, and blur the line between surveillance and facilitating crime. As it launders drug money, the agency often allows cartels to continue their operations over months or even years before making seizures or arrests.

It is the other Guantánamo, an archipelago of federal prisons that stretches across the country, hidden away on back roads. Today, it houses far more men convicted in terrorism cases than the shrunken population of the prison in Cuba that has generated so much debate.

An aggressive prosecution strategy, aimed at prevention as much as punishment, has sent away scores of people. They serve long sentences, often in restrictive, Muslim-majority units, under intensive monitoring by prison officers. Their world is spare.

Contrary to popular perception, the Obama Administration is not strongly opposed to the provisions in the bills that would authorize indefinite military detentions for U.S. citizens. Here’s what the Administration had to say in a Statement of Administrative Policy on the Senate bill:

“Think of what happened after 9/11,” Paul told a crowd of around 1,000 in Ames this week. “The minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat.”

What’s more, said the presidential hopeful, is that a decade later, the current administration is creating excitement themselves over what is erupting with enemy forces overseas.

“That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran,” said Paul.

"Over the past generation, the patterns of income growth have been radically transformed," said Paul Pierson, professor of political science at UC Berkeley, adding that the argument "that rising inequality is simply an economic reality ... too easily lets policymakers off the hook."

Meanwhile, wages have grown by nearly 40 percent for the top 10 percent of earners over the past three decades, while wages for the bottom 50 percent of earners have remained stagnant or fallen, she said.

Sen. Sanders explained how Citizens United has legalized the takeover of our government by a handful of conservative billionaires, “Here’s what it is. Right now, and I think many people may not understand this, because of the Citizens United 5-4 Supreme Court decision, you can have a group of billionaires, a group of corporate executives sitting around the room, and they’re going to say, look, here’s a guy in California. Here’s somebody in Nevada. Here’s somebody in Oregon who’s opposing our interests. They want to protect the middle class and working families. They don’t want to give the rich tax breaks. They don’t want to end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We have got to defeat that person. All right, I want you to put $20 million into California. $15 million into Oregon. $10 million into Ohio. they do this, Dylan, without disclosure. So somebody goes home to turn on their TV, there’s an ad by Citizens for a Better America, or whatever, attacking a candidate or supporting another candidate. unlimited sums of money from corporations who go into their own corporate treasuries, from the richest people in this country, without any disclosure, bombarding the air waves, electing those people who support big money, trying to defeat those of us who support working class and middle class families.”