Jamison Foser of Media Matters has the must read article of the day. He writes about why progressives should make the media the defining issue of our times.

I just finished being on a panel "Leakers and the Press" at the American Constitution Society convention in D.C. There was one conservative law professor, Maimon Schwarzchild, on the panel, which also included Law Prof Geoff Stone, 9th Circuit Justice Stephen Reinhardt and Constitutional and Media Law attorney Laura Handman.

Professor Shwarzchild asserted the mainstream media has an overly liberal bias. I challenged him on thatand asked him if he had read Lapdogs or What Liberal Media? I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to get a third reference in....it would have been to Media Matters.

The point being, it's a myth that there is liberal bias in the media. Read Media Matters and learn how to refute the myth with facts.

TL readers may remember that my first foray into investigative reporting occurred after Jason Leopold's May 13 article stating that Karl Rove had been indicted. After Byron York reported that Mark Corallo, Karl Rove's media spokesman, denied speaking with Jason, I spoke with Jason and published his account of his conversations with Corallo. Then I spoke with Corallo and published his denials.

Corallo said Jason had misrepresented himself as Sunday Times (London) reporter Joe Lauria.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Joe Lauria details his encounter with Jason and conversations with Mark Corallo, which he says he learned about from my post on Corallo's statements.

The Washington Post paints a fairly glowing portrait of Karl Rove today. His involvement in PlameGate? No big deal. His position as chief architect of Bush's failed social security revamp? Water under the bridge. Bush's low poll numbers while he was in charge? So what? And no one will remember Harriet Who by 2006.

Now that we have the non-negatives out of the way, here is what uber-strategist Karl is planning for his 2006 election strategy:

He hopes to make the election a choice between the philosophies of the two parties, especially on national security, rather than a referendum on Bush's performance. He also aims to stoke the Republican base with such issues as tax cuts, same-sex marriage and judicial appointments.

The grand jury returned a "no true bill" for Cynthia McKinney Friday. That means they decided not to indict. But, were they asked to indict?

Prosecutors declined to say whether they asked the grand jury to return an indictment, noting court rules that bar them from disclosing such matters.

How else would the grand jury have returned a "no true bill" unless they had been asked to vote?

I had dinner with Murray Waas in DC tonight. While we've talked on the phone a bunch and e-mailed about PlameGate, we had never met in person. He was suffering from a really bad bout of bronchitis, so we just ate at my hotel. Then we walked to the Capitol building where I took some pix on my cell phone, but I haven't figured out how to get them from the phone to the email (or set up email in the phone -- one of those high-tech razors,) so it will be next week before I get them posted and you all can see Murray standing in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Yesterday's Duke lacrosse thread generated 300 comments, so it's time for another. And a commenter got banned and had all his/her comments deleted because of repetitive insults to other commenters. So be forwarned, disagreement is fine, name-calling and personal attacks are not.

Will people listen now that it is the Pentagon, not the ACLU or Human Rights First that is confirming American soldiers in Iraq abused detainees?

United States Special Operations troops employed a set of harsh, unauthorized interrogation techniques against detainees in Iraq during a four-month period in early 2004, long after approval for their use was rescinded, according to a Pentagon inquiry released Friday.

The abuse by special-ops forces detailed in the report continued after the allegations at Abu Ghraib came to light. As for the particular abusive techniques used,

I'm very glad to see that Marc Ash of Truthout yesterday published a "stand down" on Jason Leopold's May 13 article reporting that Karl Rove had been indicted.

Yesterday, most Mainstream Media organizations published reports about a letter supposedly received by Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin. As an example of the supposed letter's contents, TIME Magazine stated that, "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald said or wrote, 'Absent any unexpected developments, he does not anticipate seeking any criminal charges against Rove.'"

Truthout of course published an article on May 13 which reported that Karl Rove had in fact already been indicted. Obviously there is a major contradiction between our version of the story and what was reported yesterday. As such, we are going to stand down on the Rove matter at this time. We defer instead to the nation's leading publications.

Ash also, appropriately in my view, defends Jason Leopold:

The House of Representatives copped out again.

In a vote charged with election-year politics, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed a symbolic resolution that wrapped the Iraq conflict into the war on terrorism and rejected a deadline for U.S. troop withdrawal.

The war on terror is not the war in Iraq. 2,500 American troops have died. Instead of instilling the fear of terrorism in the heart of every American, it's time to instill grief at the loss of life and the failure of our misguided U.S. policy in Iraq.

Here's the roll call vote. Set a deadline and bring the troops home.

Senator Hillary Clinton delivered the opening address at the American Constitution Society Convention in Washington this morning. [Update: I just watched her speech on C-Span 2, it's a good one, catch a repeat if you can]

She announced new proposed legislation to address the security of private information. Declaring privacy to be "synonymous with liberty," Senator Clinton called for greater federal protection for personal data from theft or misuse by private commercial actors, as well as great Congressional and judicial oversight over domestic surveillance and data-mining programs unilaterally crafted by the executive branch.

You can watch her speech here.

Anderson Cooper 360 featured a long segment on how the Chinese are taking and selling organs from prisoners condemned to death. Doctors have testified at hearings that sometimes the prisoners are still alive. Americans and other foreigners who can't get an organ in time from being on a donor list are flying to China to receive the organs, justifying their decision by saying they aren't told anything about the organ donor, so they don't know their new liver, kidney or eyes, whatever the case may be, came from a person who was killed in order that the organ be harvested and sold.

CNN referred to the "death vans" I wrote about here, which are used both to execute the prisoner by lethal injection and then, within 15 minutes, take their organs.

In an editorial Wednesday, a Chinese newspaper defends its death penalty and organ harvesting program.

The defense filed another challenge to DA Mike Nifong Thursday. Remember when he told America on national tv that his reading of the accuser's rmedical eport indicated a rape had taken place? Turns out, the report hadn't been printed as of that date.

"On March 29, 2006, Mr. Nifong claimed to have read a medical report that, according to discovery, was not printed until March 30, 2006, or retrieved by law enforcement pursuant to Mr. Nifong's own subpoena until April 5, 2006," read the filing from lawyers Joseph Cheshire and Bradley Bannon.

As to the accuser's injurie that might be consistent with a sexual assault, what injuries?

According to the defense, the only injuries noted by the doctor who performed the 33exam were "three small scratches" on her right knee and ankle.