Okay, I hope none of you out there is named Janet ... this isn't aimed at you. Some of you might remember that line from SNL of the early 80's (and thus I'm dating myself).
But, look at this article. It's from my hometown newspaper. The head of Vermont's AP bureau was fired (or did he "resign"?) over a column he ran last week. What was so controversial about this column you might ask? Well, it was a column written by our Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticizing the administration's secretive policies vis a vis the press. A column written by a Senator for heaven's sake ... now Senators are being censored.
Update: Check out this article for more details
Update 2: Just thought I'd mention that we (my parents and I) originally learned about this in an article in the print version of yesterday's NYTimes. But I can't access that because I don't subscribe to it. But if you want to you can browse it and find the article yourself.
Now first of all the column got pulled before it hit the national wire.
Then, Chris Graff got fired ... or maybe he resigned. In any case, he's gone from 25+ years as AP bureau chief. He's the only bureau chief I can remember.
That all spells censorship to me ...
So ... what exactly is left of our democracy that we're trying so hard to "spread like a flower" throughout the Middle East?
**We don't have a verifiable voting system.
**We don't have a free press.
**We do have rampant jerrymandering.
**The system of checks and balances among the three branches of the federal government is in tatters.
We'd better hope for some good strong candidates in 2008 or our ship is well and truly sunk.
Granuaile
No comments:
Post a Comment