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Running out of real negative news about Democrats, Fox News cuts and pastes video clips to invent things to criticize. This amusing compilation of side-by-side takes sets the record straight.

Noted right wing savants such as Glenn Beck and Michelle Bachmann seem to think the White House inflamed the swine flu crisis in order to fast track Kathleen Sibelius for Secretary of Health and Human Services. Maybe they are on to something, but not in the way they think.

A lot of this just doesn’t seem to hang together very well. First of all, although travelers from Cancun (where I live) have been diagnosed with swine flu, there is one confirmed swine flu in Cancun. I will repeat that. There is exactly one confirmed swine flu in Cancun. One case. Is that just aporcalypto (as Mexicans are now calling it), or what? In fact, despite being called a pandemic, there really aren’t a lot of cases anywhere in the world, not even in Mexico City. So it would be understandable to wonder why total hazmat anti-terror precautions have been unleashed.

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I’ve been watching this story develop for a while and waited to pass it along until the coverage was more complete. HuffingtonPost has a comprehensive review that is well worth your attention. The hypothesis argues that the epidemic began with swarms of flies feeding on the fetid Smithfield factory farm manure discharges who invaded the surrounding populated areas. If true, it is surely a notable manifestation of Ross Perot’s gigantic sucking sound, its apex a runaway pork plant fouling the global atmosphere in a vast and spreading vortex. As in the rest of the nation, all schools here in Cancun are now closed and many public facilities and events have been canceled. Some feel that authorities are overreacting in an excess of caution, and that very few cases of actual swine flu have been identified, given the population of Mexico City. Let’s hope they are right.

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Transcript (from MediaMatters): Read more »

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) – Two FBI workers are accused of using surveillance equipment to spy on teenage girls as they undressed and tried on prom gowns at a charity event at a West Virginia mall.

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By Jason Leopold

In 1983, the Justice Department prosecuted a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies for waterboarding prisoners to get them to confess to crimes.

The deputies were sentenced to four years in prison and Parker pleaded guilty to extortion and federal civil rights violations and received a 10-year sentence.

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Embedded video from CNN Video

Cop arrests journalists 3:01

A KVIA-TV reporter and cameraman were arrested for allegedly interfering with with police. CNN’s Rick Sanchez reports.

By Jesselyn Radack

Rahm Emanuel said that President Obama opposes any effort to prosecute the Justice Department lawyers who drafted the heinous memos devising, authorizing and justifying torture.

Disappointment does not begin to express my despair that — taking a page straight from the Bush playbook, which characterized those seeking a torture investigation as being out for “revenge” — the Obama administration painted anyone seeking an inquiry as being out for for “retribution.” Contrary to what the MSM would have you believe, this is not a middle ground. It’s a free pass.

First, the MSM is pushing the notion that the White House has struck a “middle ground” after the release of the torture memos by granting all the players immunity. This is not a “middle ground.” The usual transparency and open government advocates “won” the release of long sought-after memos that were in the public’s interest to see. The torturers won immunity. The tragic choice here is not the torture. It’s the decision to willingly blind ourselves to U.S.-sponsored brutality in order to “look forward”–an absurdity on its face.

Second, there is a difference between retribution and justice. There is a difference between retaliation motivated by spite or vindictiveness and justice motivated by lawfulness. Shame on President Obama for deliberately conflating the two when he knows better. Investigation (with the possibility of prosecution) forces a democratic society to confront the evil of torture in an open way. Otherwise, brutality operates off the radar screen of accountability in an extralegal “twilight zone.”

Finally, I would like a presidential pardon for Thomas Tamm (who revealed warrantless wiretapping), Joe Darby (who revealed the atrocities at Abu Ghraib), myself (who revealed the first known instance of torture and government misconduct post-9/11), and anyone else who helped expose the illegalities of the prior administration. If the President of the United States is going to grant immunity to everyone from the telecoms to the torturers, then pardon those of us who have been criminally investigated, bankrupted, blacklisted, and are still suffering the personal and professional fallout of what really was pure “retribution” for doing the right thing.

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Fox News is really scared about what might happen, and oblivious to what already has.

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