So I was sitting around my house today, putting off doing my Latin homework, when it hit me - instead of just opening the fridge a dozen times and checking my facebook a hundred times, I could be putting this time to good use! And I did. I started doing some online phonebanking for Marcy Winograd's campaign for Congress in California's 36th district.
If you're bored, feeling helpless and alone amidst a sea of political currents fighting against you, excited about the upcoming primaries and election, overcome with energy you need to spend on something, or feeling any other emotion, this is for you! Marcy has been a member of the Netroots for years and is a firebrand progressive. Since she's running against a corrupt Blue Dog (Jane Harman), this is one of the best races in the country for progressives to get involved in.
I live in Pennsylvania, yet I'm still able to help Marcy's campaign, because of a neat online phonebanking tool that has been set up. Follow me below the fold to learn how you can help, too.
Why won't what Atrios calls the zombie lie (that Bob Casey Sr was supposedly denied a 1992 speaking slot for being pro-life) go away and die?
Probably because Bob Casey Jr. continues to spread it.
Today, at "God-o-Meter" (a joint Beliefnet.org/Time project), Dan Gilgoff posts this interview with Senator Casey, where the lie is given fresh life:
[Gilgoff:] Many pro-life Democrats were pushing for the opportunity for you to speak at the convention because of what it would represent symbolically, since your father was famously denied a speaking role at the 1992 convention over his pro-life views. Were you pushing for a speaking slot for that same reason?
[Casey:] We were invited to speak by Senator Obama's campaign and were grateful for the opportunity. But when you're in your first 18 months in the Senate, you shouldn't expect it. So I didn't ask.
I just got an email from Betsy Burton, the public relations Director for Time, alerting me to the correction posted on Joe Klein's story.
In the original version of this story, Joe Klein wrote that the House Democratic version of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) would allow a court review of individual foreign surveillance targets. Republicans believe the bill can be interpreted that way, but Democrats don't.
Modern journalism at Time is just as Paul Krugman writes: "Shape of Earth - Views Differ."
I do love the added touch that I heard of this from their corporate publicist and not from an editor.
Glenn Greenwald has been criticizing Joe Klein's egregious piece on FISA for several days now. What Jane Hamsher began to prove is that the problem is not just Klein, but a systemic rottenness at Time Magazine.
I've spent all morning on the phone trying to figure out who the editor at Time Magazine was on Joe Klein's FISA column (the one Klein has now written about five times, fully admitting he never read the original bill). I finally confirmed that the editor was Priscilla Painton, and called her and identified myself. I asked her what the editing process was, and how a piece with so many errors made it into print.
"That assumes that there are errors," she said. And hung up on me.
To the extent that they care, inside Time Magazine there's probably panic. They were caught red-handed in an act of grossly irresponsible journalism, which isn't such a big deal. Everyone makes mistakes, even big ones. But Klein's meltdown has been epic. He first denied the problem, then conceded it, then argued it wasn't a big deal, and then concluded he couldn't figure out if he got it wrong or right and it wasn't a big deal anyway.
And now the editor of the piece won't concede there is any problem whatsoever and is hanging up on bloggers who ask questions.
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