Media Matters for America

On the June 28 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Glenn Beck commented on a mock ad -- produced by subscribers to his website known as "Insiders" -- depicting a "giant refinery" that produces "Mexinol," which, according to the ad, is a fuel made from the bodies of illegal immigrants from Mexico. Beck read from the ad: "At Evil Conservative Industries, we know four things for certain. The country needs cheap, alternative fuel source. Two, the human body is 18 percent carbon. Three, carbons can be turned into hydrocarbons. Four, we have a buttload of illegal aliens in our country."

Beck continued to read from the ad: "Evil Conservative Industries is proud to present the fuel of the future, Mexinol. A clean-burning, cheap alternative to gasoline, Mexinol's future seems unlimited in its potential. There are other gasoline alternatives available such as ethanol. However, Mexinol has certain advantages from corn. Corn has to be grown, harvested, and processed. With Mexinol, raw materials come to you in a seemingly never-ending stream. Go ahead and purchase that boat-sized SUV. There's plenty of Mexinol for everyone."

Beck introduced the discussion by saying, "Sometimes the Insiders go too ...   more »

DMI Blog

Today, in the latest in a string of questionable decisions by the Supreme Court, five of our nine justices decided that the monumental 1954 Brown v. Board of Ed. decision wasn’t actually meant to ensure racial integration. 5-4, the court said that schools no longer could use race to help integrate their students.

The cases in question, Parent Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District and Meredith, custodial parent and next friend of McDonald V. Jefferson County Board of Ed et al , had to do with the right of school districts to use race as a minor factor in determining school placement in certain circumstances (the decision applied to both cases). The two plans, one in Louisville and one in Seattle, are not easily summarized, but Louisville’s involves school transfers for parents who want their children to attend a school outside of their assigned district and Seattle’s is for determining which high school a student is assigned to.

Several things are very interesting about these cases. The mother who brought the case against Louisville missed kindergarten registration and thus could not enroll her child in her neighborhood school or second choice school because both ...   more »

ACLU Newsroom

WASHINGTON - The American Civil Liberties Union today filed a federal lawsuit against a former high-level White House staffer for enacting a policy that unlawfully excluded individuals perceived to be critical of the administration from public events where President Bush was present. The policy is laid out in an October 2002 "Presidential Advance Manual" obtained by the ACLU.

"The White House has gone too far in its attempt to make dissent invisible," said Chris Hansen, a senior ACLU attorney who is lead counsel in this case. "When taxpayers foot the bill for a public event, the president does not have the right to use a partisan litmus test to stack the audience with his political supporters."

The ACLU filed today's lawsuit after obtaining a heavily redacted version of the Presidential Advance Manual from the Justice Department. This manual is the Bush administration's guide for planning presidential events around the country, and it repeatedly instructs organizers about "the best method for preventing demonstrators," "deterring potential protestors from attending events," "designat[ing] a protest area . . . preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route," and the like.

The ACLU said it is clear from the manual that the aim of the White House policy is to keep people who are critical of the president away from him and from the news media. According to the manual, "if it is determined that the media will not see or hear" demonstrators, then event staff can ignore them. The manual's guidelines are designed for use at all presidential events, not just fundraisers or political rallies. However, the ACLU noted that there are stricter constitutional guidelines for taxpayer-funded events than for privately- or politically-funded events. ...

In the Republican presidential debate Tuesday night, every Republican candidate — all of them — said that the Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell policy is working and that gays who are discovered to be gay should be booted out of the service.

None of them objected to gay Arabic translators being kicked out of the service even though we have a desperate shortage of Arabic translators to translate for our troops in Iraq and to translate intercepted enemy documents.

In other words: THE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES THINK GAYS ARE EVEN MORE DANGEROUS THAN TERRORISTS. Let me put it another way: The Republican presidential candidates think kicking gays out of the service is a higher priority than national security.

Let’s lay out a scenario:

Some Al Queda terrorists manage to get into the United States and blow up a high school football stadium during a Friday night game, killing 6,000 people and seriously injuring another 3,000. Then, it turns out that the plot was detailed in a document still sitting in the inbox of a gay Arabic translator who was kicked out of the service for being gay. Had he not been kicked out of the service, he would have translated the document and the attack could have been ...   more »

We’re going to miss Cindy Sheehan. We hope you’ll be back! GS

Ryan Alexander

Thousands of contractors doing business with Uncle Sam are stiffing the federal government for billions of dollars in back-taxes.

Over the past few years, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has discovered more than 60,000 contractors that owe more than $7.7 billion in back taxes. This includes 27,000 Department of Defense (DOD) contractors, 33,000 civilian agency contractors and 3,800 General Service Agency contractors; contractors working for DOD, NASA, Department of Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs, providing a wide range of services ranging from law enforcement to disaster relief. While these contractors have one hand out to get government cash, they were using the other to stiff-arm the taxman.

Federal purchasing rules require contractors to be “responsible,” which includes having “a satisfactory record of integrity and business ethics.” Contractors don’t have to ‘fess up to tax debts to comply, and even if they did, federal contracting officers don’t have to disqualify tax cheats from getting contracts. Only in the bizarre world of federal contracting can failure to pay taxes be interpreted as ethical behavior.

The GAO investigation also found that some of these contractors were fly-by-night operations. Company directors would set up a company, win contracts, pocket employees’ payroll taxes, ...   more »