News Hounds

Approximately 10 minutes after Hannity & Colmes “debated” Hillary Clinton’s candidacy with two guests with similar views, a Republican and rabidly anti-Clinton Democrat, Sean Hannity was bragging about the fairness of FOX News, lying about CBS’ role in Memogate and using the troops and the news network to promote his own political advocacy. With video.

Near the end of Friday night’s show (2/23/07), Hannity offered a sneak peek at the “investigative piece” he’s working on for next Sunday’s Hannity’s America. It’s Hannity’s answer to a piece on last night’s 60 Minutes (2/25/07) about more than 1,000 military personnel ...   more »

Think Progress

New Yorker columnist Sy Hersh says the “single most explosive” element of his latest article involves an effort by the Bush administration to stem the growth of Shiite influence in the Middle East (specifically the Iranian government and Hezbollah in Lebanon) by funding violent Sunni groups.

Hersh says the U.S. has been “pumping money, a great deal of money, without congressional authority, without any congressional oversight” for covert operations in the Middle East where it wants to “stop the Shiite spread or the Shiite influence.” Hersh says these funds have ended up in the hands of “three Sunni jihadist groups” who are “connected to al Qaeda” but “want to take on Hezbollah.”

Hersh summed up his scoop in stark terms: “We are simply in a situation where this president is really taking his notion of executive privilege to the absolute limit here, running covert operations, using money that was not authorized by Congress, supporting groups indirectly that are involved with the same people that did 9/11.” Watch it:

Hersh added, “All of this should be investigated by Congress, by the way, and I trust it will be. In my talking to membership — members there, they are very upset that they know nothing about this. And they have great many suspicions.” ...

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) released his plan for Iraq in January. His is one of a number of plans advanced by Democrats. Unfortunately, Republicans have been standing on the floor of the U. S. House of Representatives attacking Democrats, further politicizing the war, claiming the Democrats have no plan for Iraq, and wasting time that should have been spent debating the various plans.

Here’s Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) plan, which is quite similar to my plan. The main feature of both is to replace American troops in Iraq with an international force invited into Iraq by the Iraqi government with U. S. ...   more »