©Copyright 2004 Lewis Downey 
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Lewisland
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Tuesday, June 29, 2004 |
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3:54:01 PM 
Boing Boing President Bush accidentally allowed to be interviewed by a real journalist. The President's handlers foolishly granted a Presidential interview (requires RealPlayer) to a non-White House Press Corps journalist, Carole Coleman, the Washington correspondent for RTE, the Irish public television network. When she asked him pointed, pertinent questions, he became upset when his stock answers failed to satisfy her. An aide to the President later complained that Coleman had "overstepped the bounds of politeness."
Coleman is a mainstream European journalist who has conducted interviews with top officials from a number of countries - her January interview with Secretary of State Colin Powell was apparently solid enough to merit posting on the State Department's Web site.
Unfortunately, it appears that Coleman failed to receive the memo informing reporters that they are supposed to treat this president with kid gloves. Instead, she confronted him as any serious journalist would a world leader.
She asked tough questions about the mounting death toll in Iraq, the failure of U.S. planning, and European opposition to the invasion and occupation. And when the president offered the sort of empty and listless "answers" that satisfy the White House press corps - at one point, he mumbled, "My job is to do my job" - she tried to get him focused by asking precise follow-up questions.
The president complained five times during the course of the interview about the pointed nature of Coleman's questions and follow-ups - "Please, please, please, for a minute, OK?" the hapless Bush pleaded at one point, as he demanded his questioner go easy on him.
Link
Vidiot sez: The White House complained later that Coleman was disrespectful and didn't ask the "suggested question" about what Irish PM Ahern was wearing that day.
Coleman has responded to White House criticism, noting that she submitted her questions three days in advance.
[Boing Boing]
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9:42:46 AM
Yahoo! Rulings on prisoners would make Founders proud (USATODAY.com). USATODAY.com - The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a much-needed message Monday about one of the bedrock principles of liberty rooted in the American Revolution: [Yahoo! News - Reader Ratings]...The court rejected the Bush administration's claims that it doesn't have to answer to the courts about those it has jailed.
The decisions uphold a legal tradition that stemmed from a backlash against British colonial rule. The Founding Fathers had seen the injustices that occur when authorities can throw people into jail indefinitely. In the Europe they and their forebears had left, such practices had been routine.
So they wrote it into the Constitution. It is called habeas corpus, the right to have an independent judge review whether a prisoner is being held without justification...
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8:20:27 AM
Yahoo! Report: Warming May Lower Rice Yield (AP). AP - Global warming could mean bad news for one of the world's most important crops, rice. Increased nighttime temperatures were associated with significant declines in crop yield at the International Rice Research Institute Farm in the Philippines, according to a report in Monday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Yahoo! News - Reader Ratings]
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12:21:21 AM
Yahoo! Two Thirds of U.S. Public Willing to Pay Nearly $200 a Year to Fight Global Warming (OneWorld.net). OneWorld.net - WASHINGTON, D.C., Jun 28 (OneWorld) - More than 80 percent of the U.S. public supports pending legislation to cut the emission of greenhouse gases, while two thirds said they are willing to pay the U.S.$15 a month - or nearly $200 a year - that experts believe the legislation, the Climate Stewardship Act (CSA), will cost the average household, according to a nationwide poll released Friday. [Yahoo! News - Reader Ratings]
...The Act, which was endorsed by the 27 members of the non-governmental Sustainable Energy Coalition (SEG) earlier this month, aims to bring U.S. levels of greenhouse gas emissions to year 2000 levels by 2010 and down again to 1990 levels by 2020. These goals fall somewhat short of those established under the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for bringing emissions down to 1990 levels by no later than 2012.
The United States, which currently accounts for about 25 percent of total global emissions, signed the Protocol under the Clinton administration, but Bush withdrew from the treaty in the spring of 2001...
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