Today the UK Guardian newspaper launches Guardian America. The Editor Mike Tomasky writes:

Hello there. So what is Guardian America, what makes a British newspaper think that Americans will want to imbibe its view of America and the world, and why, having decided to undertake such an improbable project, would the paper place it in my hands? Fine questions. Let's explore. The journalistic shorthand version is that Guardian America is the US-based website of the Guardian newspaper of London and Manchester, which will combine content produced in the UK and around the world with content that we originate here to create a Guardian especially tailored to American readers. I am sometimes asked what, or who, this means we will try to be "like"; the questioner wants an American reference point the better to slot this project into a known category. The only answer is that we will try to be like ... the Guardian.

A worthy example to emulate. Good luck to all involved.

Via atrios, Glenn Beck:

"I think there is a handful of people who hate America. Unfortunately for them, a lot of them are losing their homes in a forest fire today." . . . Beck's comment came as forest fires ravaged parts of Southern California, leaving one person dead, four firefighters wounded, and forcing about 1,500 people from their homes.

Funny guy. Nice host you have there CNN. Delivers "big" ratings too.

Whenever folks try to rehabilitate Andrew Sullivan, he is quick to remind us why he is so detestable.

As for the "science" of the Bell Curve, see this:

Via Greenwald, Scott Horton demonstrates that the corrupt logrolling practices of our Media are now a part of the blogs as well:

I stumbled across something pretty strange. I found Rachel Sklar’s “Ringside at the Reality Show” over at the Huffington Post. Sklar’s piece is a drooling, fawning blurb-like emission. In fact, had it been authored by Kurtz’s own PR agent, I can’t imagine he’d have changed a comma. Of course, Sklar hasn’t really read Kurtz’s book (other than the first 7500 words, she says), but her praise couldn’t be stronger . . .

He debunks it here. Read the whole thing. But this part was really a terrific aside:

Well, I’ve gotten a dismissive review in the NYT. It’s sort of a tradition. After all, The Great Unraveling received an equally dismissive review from Peter Beinart, in which he portrayed my conclusion that the Bush administration deliberately misled us into war as a crazy conspiracy theory, and contained this immortal pronouncement:

But most Americans do not consider the Bush administration corrupt, and Paul Krugman cannot convincingly prove it is.

I think David Kennedy’s review will hold up about as well as Peter Beinart’s.

Heh.

The winning bid in a charity auction of the original "smear letter" that 41 senators sent to the CEO of Clear Channel, criticizing Rush Limbaugh's reference to "phony soldiers," was $2,100,100. Limbaugh auctioned off the "smear letter" to benefit a charity of his choosing, while promising to match the bid out of his own pocket. The recipient nonprofit: the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation Inc.

Mr. Limbaugh is a director of the organization, which had total revenues of $5.2 million last year.

Harry Reid wrote the letter. His take on the auction:

Reid did a clever thing right back. He went on the Senate floor and praised Limbaugh's attempt to raise money for a good cause off his letter and said he could have gotten every Democratic senator's signature if he'd had time.

Who would pay to support Limbaugh's assertion that the letter was a "smear," when it is in fact Limbaugh who smears soldiers who speak out against the war? Reports differ. This is the NY Times:

The New York Times Book Review assigned Stanford history professor David Kennedy to review Paul Krugman's new book, "The Conscience of a Liberal." It is an extremely negative review. I have not read the book so can not comment on it but I did read the review. And I found it inconsistent to say the least. For example, after chiding Krugman for being, in Kennedy's words, "factually shaky," he then writes:

For this dismal state of affairs the Democratic Party is held to be blameless. Never mind the Democrats’ embrace of inherently divisive identity politics, or Democratic condescension toward the ungrammatical yokels who consider their spiritual and moral commitments no less important than the minimum wage or the Endangered Species Act, nor even the Democrats’ vulnerable post-Vietnam record on national security.

Ummm, that all sounds factually shaky to me. What is the basis of Kennedy's statement? A fact or 2 to support this sweeping claim, especially from someone throwing stones, might have been in order. Kennedy continues:

WaPo's Howie Kurtz is, as anyone who has ever read him knows, a joke. Via Digby, he is at it again. This time he makes statements so stupefyingly wrongheaded that it is a wonder he is allowed to publish:

I agree that leakers often get to set the story line, but I also know that Democrats are not unfamiliar with the practice. (Remember the Bush DUI leak just before the 2000 election?) And those who leaked information about domestic surveillance, Abu Ghraib and secret CIA prisons also had an impact.

Digby explains how the timing of Bush's DUI story was actually a function of Media incompetence, not leaking. But the truly stunning assertion from Kurtz is his view that McConnell's office's attack on the Frosts is comparable to this:

You may not remember the name Joe Darby, but you remember the impact of what he did. Darby turned in the pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq – pictures he had discovered purely by accident. Unfortunately for Darby, exposing the truth has changed his life forever, and for the worse.

Comparing Joseph Darby's act of courage to the McConnell false smear of 12 year old Graeme Frost? Are you serious Mr. Kurtz? What a dim hack you are. As for the warrantless surveillance leak, the one the Times held inappropriately for a year, what can one say? It is simply incredible that Howard Kurtz is a reporter, much less a Media critic. He is truly awful.

Bump and Update: The case has been dropped and the special prosecutor has been fired.

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Grand Jury Investigation Seeking Phoenix Newspaper's Reader Data

In the department of news ranging from unprecedented to shocking, from the Phoenix New Times, this stands out.

This newspaper and its editorial staff — both current and former — are the targets of unprecedented grand jury subpoenas dated August 24.

The authorities are also using the grand jury subpoenas in an attempt to research the identity, purchasing habits, and browsing proclivities of our online readership.

At the heart of the matter is controversial Sheriff Joe Arpaio (think, inmates wearing pink underwear and juvenile chain gangs forced to bury the dead and other bizarre jail programs.) The grand jury subpoena seeks:

More....

Newsweek debuted a new design this week. I don't know about you, but when I log on to a site and the audio of a commercial loads instantly, forcing me to either search for the button to turn the sound off or exit the site, I exit immediately.

Goodbye, Newsweek unless you dump that feature quick. I also dislike the in-your-face lightbox with huge rotating pictures and headlines.

The site is also crowded as hell. Back to the drawing board, Newsweek, this one's a bust.

I only found out about this today because I was going to do a segment on Dan Abrams show tonight about Rush Limbaugh (story below)and they canceled at the last minute because they are going to cover the Ellen DeGeneres meltdown instead. You can watch the video at the link.

I'm totally supporting Ellen.

In a nutshell: Ellen got a dog from a rescue mission. She paid $3,000 to have it neutered and go through training to make sure it would get along with her cats. The cats and dog didn't get along. Ellen gave the dog to her hairdresser who does her hair daily for the show and who has two young daughters. The kids bonded with the dog.

But Ellen didn't read the fine print of her contract with the rescue mission which said if she doesn't keep the dog it goes back to them. When they called to check on the dog, Ellen told them the truth. The rescue mission went and repossessed the dog. Ellen breaks down on the show saying it's all her fault and pleads with the company to return the dog to the kids.

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Media Matters has the transcript of Rush Limbaugh telling his audience that in the past, he told the reporter of a national newsmagazine he would dig into his past to come up with dirt on him in order to get the reporter to change his story. Rush felt the reporter's story was a hit job so he says he engaged in the "destructive" behavior himself. He says the statements did the trick and the reporter changed the story.

I've practiced it once. I am not going to tell you the story because I'm don't want to give it away, and I would have to mention names, and I'm not going to mention names. But there was a cover story on me coming out of one of the big news magazines, and it was going to totally mischaracterize me and what I do and how I do it. And we found out who was writing it and made a couple phone calls to the person writing it. And we said, "You know what? We're going to find out where your kids go to school. We're going to find out who you knocked up in high school. We're going to find out what drugs you used. We're going to find out where you go to drink and do -- we're gonna find out how you paid for your house. We're going to do -- and we're going to do exact -- and we're going to say that, you know what?

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