Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.”

Moreover, the documents — recent confidential profiles of the work of individual reporters prepared by a Pentagon contractor — indicate that the ratings are intended to help Pentagon image-makers manipulate the types of stories that reporters produce while they are embedded with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

How the policy works:

One reporter on the staff of one of America’s pre-eminent newspapers is rated in a Pentagon report as “neutral to positive” in his coverage of the U.S. military. Any negative stories he writes “could possibly be neutralized” by feeding him mitigating quotes from military officials.

Another reporter, from a TV station, provides coverage from a “subjective angle,” according to his Pentagon profile. Steering him toward covering “the positive work of a successful operation” could “result in favorable coverage.”

Full story:

Files prove Pentagon is profiling reporters | Stars and Stripes.

(h/t @jayrosen_nyu)

Here’s a video from the Topeka Capital Journal. From the paper’s story:

Jenkins offered encouragement to conservatives at a town hall forum that the Republican Party would embrace a “great white hope” capable of thwarting the political agenda endorsed by Democrats who control Congress and President Barack Obama.

A spokeswoman for Jenkins later called the paper to “apologize for her word choice and to emphasize she had no intention of expressing herself in an offensive manner.” More from spokeswoman Mary Geiger:

“There may be some misunderstanding there when she talked about the great white hope,” Geiger said. “What she meant by it is they have a bright future. They’re bright lights within the party.”

Misunderstanding? Sure — sort of like the misunderstanding about the motivation of the birthers (turns out they’re just sticklers for properly-filed paperwork).

In fact, Jenkins may have been the one who was confused. More from the Rep’s spokeswoman:

Geiger said she had never previously heard Jenkins use the phrase “great white hope” in a political speech or private conversation.

So the excuse for saying “we need a great white hope” in regards to challenging Obama is “it just popped into her head”? I think that might be worse than the quote.

Read the full story:

Jenkins’ remark raises eyebrows | CJOnline.com.

Check out the heavily-redacted story of America and torture in all its international reputation-destroying glory:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/19048367/v1

Read the WashIndy’s full coverage:

The Washington Independent » The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s Report on Torture.

From an interview with Chesterfield, MO Hummer dealer Jim Lynch (from a story broadcast on St. Louis CBS affiliate KSDK):

“Well a lot of our Hummer owners were gun owners, already,” said Lynch. “So we had a very favorable response. Didn’t have enough business to keep this big, beautiful building going with the decline, so we decided we needed to do something else. And the guns fit in with our customer base… a lot of sportsman, a lot of outdoorsmen, and they’ve loved it.”

I wonder if other dealers will start adding these “lifestyle accessories” to their showrooms. Who wouldn’t want a “BMW Golf Shirt Collar-Popper” or a “Subaru Overly Fawned-Over Purebred Dog”?

Read the full story of the Chesterfield Hummer dealership promotion here:

Hummer dealership begins selling guns/ammo | ksdk.com | St. Louis, MO.

From the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer:

“There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

In the four decades since the mass killings, Calley hasn’t spoken publicly about what happened — save for Calley’s 1971 court martial where he was convicted of 22 counts of premeditated murder and sentenced to life in prison. (He only served four and half months of that sentence, though, thanks to an early release by President Richard Nixon and a later sentence adjustment.)

Calley told the same story last week that he did back in ‘71: that he was acting on orders from above and (total shocker) faulty intelligence. More from the Columbus paper’s account:

Calley explained he had been ordered to take out My Lai, adding that he had intelligence that the village was fortified and would be “hot” when he went in. He also said the area was submitted to an artillery barrage and helicopter fire before his troops went in. It turned out that it was not hot and there was no armed resistance. But he had been told, he said, that if he left anyone behind, his troops could be trapped and caught in a crossfire.

This is all fascinating enough — especially for Seymour Hersh fanboys like me — but what’s really amazing about the newspaper account of the  meeting is the scene itself. A sample of the questions from the audience and Calley’s responses:

• Asked about American casualties, Calley said there were two injuries, but neither was the result of enemy fire, adding, “They didn’t have time.”

• One person asked about the story of a helicopter coming into My Lai during the massacre and its pilot threatening to open fire if the killing of civilians didn’t stop. Calley said the pilot asked if he could take children out of the area and he relayed that request to his captain, who said the pilot could.

• When asked if obeying an unlawful order was not itself an unlawful act, [Calley] said, “I believe that is true. If you are asking why I did not stand up to them when I was given the orders, I will have to say that I was a second lieutenant getting orders from my commander and I followed them — foolishly, I guess.” Calley then said that was not an excuse; it was just what happened.

These are regular, everyday folks confronting one of their fellow citizens about the questions they (and the rest of us) have had about My Lai since the first time we heard about it. Even decades removed from the story as I was when I first heard it as a high school student, My Lai is one of those events that make any of us desperate to know why and how something so objectively opposed to our professed values could have occurred under our flag.  After all, a Kiwanis Club meeting isn’t exactly Drinking Liberally, but the Columbus members still asked Calley the hard questions that help us all understand and learn from our history.

And he answered them, fully and honestly.

A call for a truth commission to uncover, discuss and process the mistakes made during the so-called War On Terror was quickly raised in the weeks after Obama’s inauguration brought the WOT as we knew it to an end. But, just as quickly, the idea was scrapped due to (here comes shocker number two) partisan rancor in Washington. The idea was a simple one, and one we all know to be true: sunshine cleans everything. The truth commission plan wasn’t about blame, prosecutions or aquittal. It was about letting American citizens confront the people that tortured, illegally spied, lied and of course killed on our behalf in the years after 9/11. We all know those people thought they doing their jobs when they did what they did. What we need to know is why they thought that — and how that idea worked its way through our entire government. That way, maybe, we can keep it from happening again.

Look again at Calley’s version of events — does it seem the least bit implausible in the wake of Weapons Of Mass Destruction and politically-motivated terror alerts? Calley didn’t have to go before those Kiwanis members and take their questions. But when he did — without fear of persecution or prosecution — he gave us insights into the last failed American war that can help us understand the current one.

Imagine what would happen if Rumsfeld, Cheney, Tenet, Rice and Bush all took their turn before the Columbus, GA Kiwanis Club. We’d have the tools to actually learn and grown from our recent past. And they would have the catharsis of telling their fellow Americans about the (sometimes reasonable) fear and guesswork that drove them after the towers fell. Plus — if the Columbus chapter is anything like the Lebanon, TN Kiwanis Club I used to cover as a reporter — they’d get a three-course free lunch to boot. Now that’s what I call win-win.

Welcome to the Battle Of The Boycotts, the lesser front of the thermonuclear war that is Summer ‘09 on the partisan blogs. It all started predictably enough — liberals were upset with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal and conservatives with a story in the New York Times. But then things got weird.

The WSJ op-ed was penned by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey. It begins with a quote from Margaret Thatcher before launching into an attack on so-called “Obamacare.” A sample:

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system.

Needless to say, the op-ed was about as appetizing to liberals as carob is to a chocoholic. It wasn’t long before a left-wing blogger called for a boycott. The idea caught on quicker than gluten-free stuffing at a vegan Thanksgiving. Within days, Whole Foods had set up a special forum on its website to deal with all the complaints.

(To be fair, this isn’t the Left’s first run-in with Mackey. The nation’s most powerful all-organic CEO has run afoul of progressives with his less-than-progressive take on organized labor. But the Mackey’s timing made this a special case.)

For their part, conservatives suddenly got a hankering for seitan. (Note: I like this line so much, this I’ve used it twice this week. I can plagiarize myself, right?) National Review’s Johnathan Adler summed up the Right’s new love affair with Whole Foods:

Progressive folks who are offended at the idea of a private firm opposing expanded government intervention in the economy are certaily free to boycott Whole Foods — but they’re not entitled to be free from criticism for it. Others of us are also free to shop there more often — and I think I will (though I’ll still buy the conventional produce instead of the organic).

Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, conservatives are boycotting dozens of companies over their decision to stop advertising on Glenn Beck’s TV show. The boycott began after ColorOfChange, a liberal African American advocacy group, had a negative reaction to this delectable slice of trademark Beckery:

“This president, I think, has exposed himself as a guy — over and over and over again — who has a deep seated hatred for white people or white culture, I don’t know what it is … I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people. I’m saying he has a problem, this guy is, I believe, a racist.”

After more than 100,000 people signed a ColorOfChange petition, companies began dropping their ads from Beck’s show. Conservatives were not amused. From the RedState blog, which called for a boycott of the companies that abandoned Beck:

We need to strike back and boycott these groups for ditching Beck. If they are going to fold so easily in the face of Obama brownshirts, we must push back. If not, who’ll be next?

Who indeed.

Now that both boycotts are up and running, who’s winning? The answer, according to the boycotters on both sides, is “us.” It’s true that major corporations like Wal-Mart and Best Buy have dropped their spots from Beck’s show, but his show is officially a smash success for Fox News and is attracting more viewers than ever. I”m guessing Wal-Mart and the rest will be back eventually.

Whole Foods’ stock was on the rise at the beginning of August, and investment gurus still think the stock is a good buy today. There’s a good reason for that: despite the fact that the company is losing liberal cred these days — and despite all the organic and health foods available in nearly any grocery store these days — no store has the cache of a Whole Foods. I’ve been around Whole Foods shoppers literally my entire life, and, trust me, nothing can keep them out of that place for long. One reason for that: there are a lot of progressive policies at Whole Foods. Just ask anyone who’s worked there. But the other reason is similar to the reason I think the Beck boycotts will fail in the end: Whole Foods is the biggest and best at what it does (namely, making people really happy about themselves for shopping there.)

So when all is said and done, I think the Battle Of The Boycotts will be a footnote to the story of the Great Blogger War of 2009. In the meantime, though, it’s fun to think of Whole Foods liberals wandering the aisles of Wal-Mart in a fruitless search for nori sheets while across town, Wal-Mart conservatives stand dumbfounded in the cereal aisle at Whole Foods, peeking behind boxes of Kashi trying to find the the Lucky Charms.

Yes, it’s been a while since I posted. I’m sorry. All I can say is, August happened in all its forms. First came the standard-operating DC shutdown. Then came the also standard people-quitting-their-jobs-in-August DC workload increase at my day job (oh right — and then all hell broke loose outside the Beltway, making things even busier for the plucky political journo). Finally, there was cramming in as many outdoor activities as possible before DC became a sweltering mess. What can I say? Blogging fell through the cracks.

Very lame, I know. Anyway, to my minuscule fan base: I’m back. August ends now!

Watch Franken and Sotomayor talk about their mutual Perry Mason fandom at Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings last month:

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

…

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

The less amazing, but funnier, buried lede: Chirac, like most people, had no clue what Bush was talking about.

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel.

This isn’t the first we’ve heard of the Bush administration’s attempts to link the war in Iraq to the Bible, but it’s one of the clearest indications of how serious the White House took that connection back in 2003. The Christian-tinged warmongering rhetoric from the that appeared at the time to many on the left to be Bush’s isolationist base-appeasing cover for a war for oil now appears to actually be a prime motivation for sending troops into combat.

Even those lefties who thought Bush’s “Crusade” talk was a ploy to dupe average Republicans into buying into an arguably clever neocon plan to remake the Middle East in the image of post-WW2 Germany or Japan had it wrong, it seems.

Turns out Bush really did think he was the lost Blues Brother after 9/11. Right or wrong, he took the nation with him on his “mission from God.”

I am writing to let the Senate community know that the Senate Page Program is reporting that five of our summer pages are exhibiting flu-like symptoms—slightly elevated temperature, cough, and sore throats – and the Office of Attending Physician believes that they most likely have influenza, quite possibly the H1N1 virus.   The Office of Attending Physician (and the vast majority of outside doctors) are not testing for the virus right now since the test itself is uncomfortable and the results of the test will not alter the treatment plan.  The pages are resting comfortably apart from their peers and will not be allowed to return to work until cleared by the Physician’s Office.  While it is not unusual for several pages in a class of 50 to be ill at any given time, we are aware that the flu is of particular concern to our community right now.

The Office of the Attending Physician is closely monitoring the situation and does not believe that further actions on the part of the Senate Community are necessary at this time.  If that changes, we will let you know.  This is a good time, however, to remind all of you that flu season, and the expected stronger return of the H1N1 virus, is coming, particularly as colleges and schools resume in the fall.  We ask all of you to continue to take precautions, including frequent hand washing and sanitizing, staying home if you feel ill, and ensuring that you and your colleagues are prepared to work from home if a pandemic flu strikes this area.  We encourage all of you to review the excellent material on the flu available on the Office of the Attending Physician’s website on Webster at Senate.gov.

More likely than not, these pages did not get the flu on the job. As anyone in DC can tell you, pages sleep, eat and forage for underage booze in large, unruly packs in this city. It’s kind of like the nerdy sequel to The Warriors and it’s a big, germ-swapping (at best) mess.

However they got infected, these unpaid biohazard zones in suits are now coughing their way through the halls of power. It’s the real reason your nation’s capitol shuts down in the month of August — it gives us time to wipe down with Clorox everything those interns have touched.