Via Atrios, former Court TV and Brill's Content CEO Steven Brill has written a book, After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era : "From his sweeping new book on how America responded to September 11, Steven Brill follows Attorney General John Ashcroft through the creation of the controversial USA Patriot Act." Brill writes,

Most shocking was that the bill suspended what was known in the law as habeas corpus—which gave anyone detained on American soil the right to demand a court hearing to challenge the authority of those holding them. Lincoln had suspended habeas corpus for a time during the Civil War. Now Ashcroft was proposing that it just plain be eliminated during this undefined emergency that had no designated end date. What was going on at Justice, the conservative Republican [Sensenbrenner] from Wisconsin wondered. (Ashcroft says he cannot “reconstruct with any accuracy” whether the suspension of habeas corpus was proposed. Sensenbrenner’s recollection, as well as that of two White House officials who saw the draft, seems credible.)

Yale Constitutional Law Professor and blogger Jack Balkin explains what this means. It's not good. After: How America Confronted the Sept. 12 Era by Steven Brill

Buy the Book Today!

9pm EST.

Here is the link to the Feb. 28, PBS trancript of Bill Moyers' interview with Nat Hentoff . [via Take Back the Media].

Instapundit reports on an email from Eric Alterman alerting that "C-SPan II will broadcast my talk at the LA Bookstore, Skylights on Saturday, March 1 at 4:30 pm and Monday, March 3 at 7:00 am."

What Liberal Media? by Eric Alterman


Buy the Book Today!

A new Protest Song!

Published on Wednesday, February 26, 2003 by CommonDreams.org
The Ballad of the Ochre Berets by Jerry & Joe Long
(Sung to the tune of 'The Ballad Of The Green Berets')

William Bennett
On TV
Defines our war
And pockets his fee

Richard Perle
Claims deaths will be few
In his think tank
That's certainly true

Gaffney Gingrich
Lieberman Lott
Never fought in Nam
Preferred not to get shot

Today Bill Kristol
Says "Do Iraq"
But when duty called
He didn't call back

Remained in college
To defer
A chance to serve
For a term paper

100 excuses
They'd make that day
Till their draft boards let
Them run away

Rove hurt his back
Cheney was too fat
Will's eyes were poor
DeLay's feet were flat

Rush couldn't risk
Hyperextending a knee
If forced to wade
A rice paddy

But put a microphone
Upon their chest
And they'll explain
Why combat's best

Can America stay
The land of the free
And remain the home
Of hypocrisy?

Jerry Long (JerryBeggar@aol.com) and his brother Joe are known as the satirists the Sturdy Beggars.

A 30 second tv ad will begin airing Thursday spoofing the Nick and Norm ads of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy that push the theme that marijuana funds terrorists.

The ad spots are sponsored by the Marijuana Policy Project.

In the spoof, Nick tells Norm the marijuana trade supports violence only because marijuana is illegal. "If I buy a beer, that doesn't support terror, because beer is legal, right?" Nick asks. When Norm agrees, Nick concludes, "So what you're saying is if we make marijuana legal and regulate it like beer, it wouldn't support violence."

The ads will run on CBS, ABC and Fox affiliates in DC through March 7. Cost for airtime: $20k.

You can watch the commercials here. For more about the ad campaign, go here.

Actor Robert Blake's preliminary hearing in his murder case begins today. But that's not where he'll be talking. Instead, Blake will be talking tonight on 20/20 when he is interviewed by Barbra Walters.

Blake has some stiff competition tonight. At the same time, CBS's 48 Hours Investigates will be interviewing Robert Chambers, of New York "Preppy Murder" fame, who was released from prison last week after serving his full 15 year sentence.

We'll be watching Chambers.

Roman Polanski's film, The Pianist, is up for several Academy Awards. Polanski has been in France the past 25 years due to an outstanding sexual assault case against him dating back to 1977. He and the prosecution had agreed to time served. He pleaded guilty, but before sentencing, the Judge informed the parties that he was unlikely to accept the agreement and might give Polanski 50 years. Polanski fled to Europe. The victim of the assault was 13 at the time.

She is now 38 and living in Hawaii with her husband and children. And she wants the Academy to disregard Polanski's past actions in deciding who gets the Oscar.

She also wants Polanski to be able to return to the U.S. for the ceremony. The LA District Attorney says no way. Polanski says he won't come back.

Samantha Geimer, now 38 and living in Hawaii with her husband and three sons, made her plea in an article in the Los Angeles Times in which she urged academy voters to choose Polanski and his film, The Pianist, as Oscar winners despite his crimes. She said that what the Polish director did to her 25 years ago should not affect their judgment.

Geimer was 13 when Polanski, then 44, told her mother he wanted to take pictures of her for a French magazine at a photo session in Los Angeles. He gave her champagne and a drug that causes drowsiness, then had sex with her at a house on Mulholland Drive in Los Angeles.....

"I believe that Mr Polanski and his film should be honoured according to the quality of the work," wrote Geimer. "What he does for a living and how good he is at it have nothing to do with me or what he did to me. I think academy members should vote for the movies they feel deserve it. Not the people they feel are popular."

She added: "I don't have any hard feelings toward him, or any sympathy either. He is a stranger to me."

Geimer also said Polanksi should be allowed to return to the US because the longer he remained a fugitive, the longer she had to deal with the issue.

Peter Rothberg over at Salon reports on a spate of new anti-war songs.

We'll be interested to learn how many of tonight's Grammy winners refer to the war.

Brent Staples article in today's New York Times strikes us as both correct and very sad: Protest music is unlikely to be heard on today's radio--because all the radio stations are corporate owned and don't want to take chances.

Pop music played a crucial role in the national debate over the Vietnam War. By the late 1960's, radio stations across the country were crackling with blatantly political songs that became mainstream hits. After the National Guard killed four antiwar demonstrators at Kent State University in Ohio in the spring of 1970, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young recorded a song, simply titled "Ohio," about the horror of the event, criticizing President Richard Nixon by name. The song was rushed onto the air while sentiment was still high, and became both an antiwar anthem and a huge moneymaker. A comparable song about George W. Bush's rush to war in Iraq would have no chance at all today. There are plenty of angry people, many with prime music-buying demographics. But independent radio stations that once would have played edgy, political music have been gobbled up by corporations that control hundreds of stations and have no wish to rock the boat. Corporate ownership has changed what gets played — and who plays it.

Remember the Jefferson Airplane album Volunteers? Paul Kantner wrote the song "We Can Be Together", a song protesting the establishment that included the line, "Up against the wall, motherfu**er."

Don't miss PBS Thursday night when it airs frontline: coming soon: the war behind closed doors .

FRONTLINE examines the hidden story of what is really driving the Bush administration to war with Iraq. The investigation asks whether the publicly reported reasons--fear of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction or a desire to insure and protect America's access to oil--are only masking the real reason for the war. Through interviews with well-placed sources in and outside of the administration, FRONTLINE unravels a story known only to the Washington insiders.

Instapundit has an op-ed column in the liberal UK's Guardian on the evolution and increasing power of weblogs. He says mainstream media is now playing catch-up, and must learn to pick up its response time. On the other hand, he says, bloggers have to be careful not to become too full of themselves.