gripes

It's looking like Fox could be involved in some phone hacking also:

According to former Fox News executive Dan Cooper, whose gripes with his former employer run quite deep after being fired in 1996, Fox News chief Roger Ailes allegedly had him design the so-called "Brain Room" to facilitate counter-intelligence efforts and other "black ops."

In a lengthy 2008 diatribe said to have doubled as a book pitch, Cooper claimed his own phone records had been hacked by Fox News employees, who he says used them to pinpoint him as a source used by David Brock, who founded liberal watchdog group Media Matters.

"Ailes knew I had given Brock the interview," he wrote. "Certainly Brock didn't tell him. Of course. Fox News had gotten Brock's telephone records from the phone company, and my phone number was on the list. Deep in the bowels of 1211 Avenue of the Americas, News Corporation's New York headquarters, was what Roger called the Brain Room. Most people thought it was simply the research department of Fox News. But unlike virtually everybody else, because I had to design and build the Brain Room, I knew it also housed a counterintelligence and black ops office. So accessing phone records was easy pie."

Given what's happening in London, this report must be taken very seriously. It's time for congressional hearing and a full blown investigation by the Justice Department. If News Corp is found to have engaged in this highly illegal activity, Ruppert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and anyone else involved must be prosecuted to the fullest extent and News Corp must be taken over by the government and broken up. If that doesn't happen then why even say we are nation of justice?

This brings a huge smile to my face:

President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning - but he also left no doubt about who's in charge of these negotiations. "I won," Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

Apparently the Republicans are still wanting to push all their tax cuts. Obama was right to say this. It wasn’t a partisan jab, but rather a statement of fact. The voters were presented with the Democratic economic views and the Republican economic views last fall, all while the economy was a front and center issue. Guess what? The voters spoke and the Democrats won overwhelmingly, meaning their ideals and beliefs won. If the American public wanted more tax cuts then we would be talking about President McCain today.

It’s time that the Republicans start learning that they are there to represent the people, not their base. The American voters have given them enough chances in the past and they have been dealt to two consecutive blows at the polls because of it. The problem is that the Republicans are back in campaign mode, and the first step to re-election for people like John Boehner is the possibility of a primary win, plus raising money to run, so they will continue to cater to the extremist wing of the Republican Party. Just another example of why our system of democracy is still failed.