agriculture department

Andrew Breitbart got a special surprise at CPAC this weekend:

Blogger Andrew Breitbart has been sued by former U.S. Agriculture Department official Shirley Sherrod who contends her reputation was damaged by Breitbart's posting last year of an edited video.

The New York Times reports today Breitbart was served with the lawsuit at CPAC Saturday. Sherrod contends in the suit that a video clip he posted last year "has damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work."

Salon adds the following:

Sherrod argues in the lawsuit that the clip "damaged her reputation and prevented her from continuing her work." Breitbart, meanwhile,denounced the suit, saying he "categorically rejects the transparent effort to chill his constitutionally protected free speech."

(emphasis added)

I just love the conservative definition of “free speech”. What’s funny is if you follow Breitbart on Twitter, there’s been more than one instance where someone says something about him and he threatens a lawsuit. He’s a typical right-wing thug, that thinks he has constitutional protections, yet people he disagrees with don’t.

I am wishing Shirley all the luck in the world with this lawsuit. She deserves it. Breitbart has lower journalistic standards than the worst of the checkout rag magazines.

Again – we have become more like a third world nation under the Bush administration than a thriving super power. Republican economics do not work:

New government figures show that almost 700,000 children went hungry in the United States at some point in 2007, up more than 50 percent from the year before to mark the highest point since 1998. And that's even before this year's sharp economic downtown, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department's annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than double the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Yes children starve while oil companies receive record profits. This should be a matter of national security. When the people get to the point they have nothing to lose, they start acting like it. Then you end up with civil unrest and then possible revolution.

I no longer get done posting my last article and look at what pops up:

A hacker breached the Agriculture Department's computer system and may have taken personal information on 26,000 employees, retirees and contractors, the department said, making it the latest federal agency to have had personal data compromised.

The potential loss is less dramatic than the one that occurred last month with the theft of a laptop computer and hard drive containing personal information on up to 26.5 million veterans and military personnel from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee.

It is interesting that this one was actually done by hackers. I can't believe it was not a "stolen" computer. Perhaps they had to change the story or people might start asking questions.