Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Drum on oil

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Changes at CPB

Republican-friendly former F.C.C. chief operating officer W. Kenneth Ferree, whose primary legacy is his long-time lobbying to relax the rules regulating corporate media expansion, has been named interim CPB president and CEO, replacing Kathleen Cox after only nine months on the job:

Asked whether he shared the criticism by some conservative groups that public broadcasting is either out of touch or too liberal, Mr. Ferree said: “We can always do better in programming. We’re for balance. We want balanced programming.”

Uh oh. We well know know what balanced means.

Kos is a star

Q&A on Sunday; Wired news today. Kos is getting good attention. The Wired story is about his latest venture, SportsBlogs (of virtually no interest to a person like me). But the Q&A interview is my kind of media.

Blocking judges

Salon:

There are 871 seats in the federal judiciary. Over the last four and a half years, the Senate has confirmed George W. Bush’s nominees to sit in 204 of them.

Make that 205...It took the Senate six months to confirm Crotty, but not because of obstructionist tactics by the Democrats. As Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, explained last month, Democrats have been waiting for months to vote for Crotty and J. Michael Seabright, Bush’s nominee to serve on the U.S. District Court for Hawaii. Leahy said anonymous holds—placed on the nominations by Republican senators [B mine]—have kept either nominee from coming up for a vote until now. Crotty got his last night; Seabright is still waiting.

If and when the Republicans allow a vote on Seabright, Bush will get his 206th judge.

Bill Clinton on the Today Show yesterday:

COURIC: Let me ask you one political question, if I could, President Clinton. As you know, Howard Dean is now head of the DNC [Democratic National Committee]. Right now it seems the most effective thing that Democrats are doing on Capitol Hill is blocking various nominations, at least from their perspective. Like, you know, John Bolton, or—U.S. ambassador to the U.N.—or head of the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], or the head of the FDA [Food and Drug Administration]. How can the Democratic Party retool itself so they’re not simply seen as obstructionist in terms of the president’s agenda?

CLINTON: Well, first of all, I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t think Mr. [John] Negroponte [nominee for national intelligence director] will be blocked. I’m not sure Mr. Bolton will be blocked. There are policy reasons on the environment and food safety for debates on the others. And on judges, that’s just a hoax. I mean, the Democrats blocked 10 out of over 200 judges. The Republicans wouldn’t even give a vote to 40 of my Court of Appeals judges—four times as many, just on the Court of Appeals, never mind all the others that they wouldn’t have voted. So, this image that, I’m sad to say, you know, you just perpetrated it, it’s ridiculous. The Democratic Senate has been nowhere near as obstructionist to President Bush on judges as the Republican Senate was to me. Not even close.