They say August is a slow month.  Not for us.  Our reporters are far from the beach:

• Two big scoops by The Washington Independent’s David Weigel, one debunking the birthers, the fringe group that believes President Obama is not a U.S. citizen, and another about prominent conservatives seeking inspiration from famed community organizer Saul Alinsky for tactics to disrupt town halls
• TWI’s Daphne Eviatar’s explosive investigation into the claims of two military lawyers representing Mohammed Jawad who are accusing the U.S. government of paying prosecution witnesses with cash and gifts
• The Michigan Messenger’s Ed Brayton’s revelations that the affidavits of two former employees of Blackwater, the private military contractor founded by Michigan native Erik Prince, allege Prince and Blackwater are responsible for serious crimes, including murder, in Iraq
• Focus on the Family’s sell-off of its “ex-gay therapy” program called “Love Won Out”—breaking news coinciding with another report by The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey on the American Psychiatric Association’s announcement that such “sexual orientation change programs” are ineffective and, at times, dangerous

And Karl Rove is back in our headlines. The New Mexico Independent team has been devoting much of its attention to the newly released transcripts of Rove’s testimony to the House Judiciary Committee in July concerning the controversial 2006 firing of U.S. attorneys, notably Albuquerque-based David Iglesias.

Best regards,

David S. Bennahum

 

 

For months, Spencer Ackerman has been covering the growing fissure between progressives and the Obama administration on Afghanistan. Earlier this month Ackerman interviewed Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., one of the leading progressives in Congress, who announced that he is unlikely to support another U.S. troop increase in Afghanistan. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is expected to request thousands more troops in coming weeks. With a new poll showing for the first time that a majority of Americans are opposed to the war in Afghanistan, Feingold’s announcement illustrates the problems the president faces, as even some of McChrystal’s own advisers concede the war is starting to look more like Vietnam.

The following week Ackerman covered an appearance by special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, in Washington, D.C. While most coverage focused on Holbrooke’s staff announcements, Ackerman’s innovative and forward-looking approach to the event gave TWI readers a deeper understanding of bigger questions about the war in Afghanistan. Ackerman gathered quotes and background information in the days leading up to the event, so he spotted Holbrooke’s attempts to defuse questions about the waning support for the war among the White House’s progressive base.

Daphne Eviatar has been dogging an explosive story related to the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. Eviatar reported that two military lawyers representing Mohammed Jawad are accusing the U.S. government of paying prosecution witnesses with cash and gifts. Jawad—who was picked up as a 12-year-old in Afghanistan for allegedly throwing a hand grenade at U.S. soldiers—has been ordered freed by U.S. District Court due to a lack of evidence. But rather than releasing Jawad, the government brought charges against him in federal court. Now, after seven years without producing an eyewitness, government lawyers have several witnesses ready to testify. The military lawyers say they have interviewed all of them and found “they have all received some form of government compensation.” While Jawad’s case has garnered national headlines, Eviatar is the only reporter to examine the claims of the military lawyers. She will continue to report out this story.

David Weigel—now widely recognized as the foremost authority on all things birther-related—continued debunking the fringe group that believes President Obama in not a U.S. citizen. Following the conservative WorldNetDaily’s report Sunday of a court filing that included an unconvincing copy of President Obama’s “Kenyan birth certificate,” Weigel had a couple big scoops. First, he got a tip from a source directing him to an authentic Australian birth certificate posted on a genealogy Web site with numerous similarities to the “Kenyan” birth certificate, including corresponding names and form numbers. The surfacing of the Australian document set off a firestorm of speculation in the birther community, which went to work trying to prove that the Australian certificate was the real forgery. Some even accused Weigel of being in on the conspiracy. On August 6, Weigel received another tip, this one pointing to an anonymous blog post documenting the creation of the forged Kenyan document and informing the birthers that they’d been “Punk’d.” Weigel’s reporting was picked up across the blogosphere, and was cited by MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow shows. In a prescient story, Weigel predicted that the obvious forgery would prove to be the undoing of the birther movement.

In another story that has flooded the blogosphere, David Weigel reported that Saul Alinsky, the famed leftist community organizer, has developed a surprising new fanbase in recent months. Despite attacking President Obama for emulating Alinsky during the 2008 campaign, numerous prominent conservatives who are involved in the “tea party” movement have cited Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals” as the inspiration for the tactics being used to disrupt town hall meetings across the country. Weigel noted that 38 years after it was first published, “Rules for Radicals” is currently on Amazon.com’s top 75 bestsellers. Even more surprising, Weigel found that in Amazon’s list of books also purchased by customers who buy “Rules for Radicals,” all are by conservative writers—Michelle Malkin, Mark Levin, and Glenn Beck. Weigel’s early identification of an emerging strategy on the right created a buzz on the Web. It was listed in the “Required Reading” section on The Washington Post’s Political Browser blog, as well as the “In the Know” section of Newsweek’s home page. On Wednesday, The Dallas Morning News—one of the largest papers in Texas—noted, in an editorial about how “the health care debate has gone crazy,” the irony of conservatism’s sudden embrace of Alinsky.

 

 

Ernest Luning provided an eye-opening look into the closed-door proceedings of the Colorado Independent Ethics Commission (EIC), which handed over audio recordings of its secret meetings in response to a lawsuit brought by The Colorado Independent. The recordings confirm that the IEC routinely deliberated in private only to emerge with positions ready for adoption in swift, unanimous public votes. In one case, the recording reveals IEC chairwoman Nancy Friedman asking whether the commissioners had any issues they wanted to talk about in private before leaving executive sessions. “If not, let’s go back into open and vote out,” she said. Commissioners then approved their ruling unanimously without any public discussion.

David O. Williams kept a close eye on the developing conflict over wilderness roadless rules that began when a federal appeals court earlier this month reinstated Clinton-era administration rules, which some in Colorado say are unnecessary because the state has developed its own regulations governing wilderness areas. As Williams reported, a looming wildfire in a roadless area above Vail—which was quickly extinguished—perfectly underscored the ongoing debate.

“Fracking”—a drilling process that injjects wells with a combination of water and chemicals to loosen up additional oil and gas—is at the core of a brewing controversy over new federal regulations of Colorado’s energy sector. The director of the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission says proposed federal legislation pushed by U.S. Reps. Diana DeGette and Jared Polis would stretch his staff too thin. The legislation would add new regulations to the fracking process.  In an interview with David O. Williams, the commission’s director, David Neslin, said if the legislation is passed by Congress, his staff would have to issue a permit for every individual frack, which he said would be overly burdensome.

Town halls across the country have provided conservative grassroots protesters with the perfect petri dish for growing outrage. After one such gathering in Denver, John Tomasic reported that the rhetoric became downright scary in Pueblo, with one conservative speaker equating health-care reform to Hitler’s “Final Solution” and telling the crowd to take their anger to the offices of their elected officials and “put the fear of God in ’em!

 

 

Jason Hancock’s coverage of a town hall meeting in Winterset sparked nationwide outrage at Republican U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley for comments he made promoting a myth that the White House’s health care reform plan would lead to “death panels” that would determine if the frail or infirm should be euthanized. While the event was widely attended by the press, Hancock was the only one to note Grassley’s now-infamous “pull the plug on grandma” quote, pointing out that the Senate’s lead GOP health care negotiator was repeating a widely discredited myth. Hancock’s story was picked up by The Huffington Post and CBS News, and the furor over the quote grew nationally. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Penn., said he would call Grassley about the comment. Progressive Future has started a letter-writing campaign asking Grassley to withdraw from health care negotiations.

The mental health of farmers has become an increasing concern among rural advocates who have been pressing Congress to fund a national hotline to help farmers and others in mental distress. But, as Lynda Waddington reported, although Iowa’s U.S. senators pushed for funding, money for the Farm and Ranch Stress Assistance Network did not come through when the House and Senate passed their agriculture appropriations bills. As the economic downturn hits rural areas hard, mental-health advocates expect an increase in rural violence and suicides.

Hancock interviewed an Iowa anti-abortion activist who hopes to free the man accused of assassinating Kansas doctor George Tiller in May. Dave Leach, who lives in Des Moines, edits a newsletter called “Prayer & Action,” which advocates the doctrine of justifiable homicide in the case of abortion doctors. Leach, who has been regularly in touch with Tiller’s accused killer, Scott Roeder, has been working on a legal strategy to press the justifiable homicide defense that he says will free Roeder. The defense was discredited by a University of Iowa law professor.

And as part of his continuing examination of coal-ash dumping in Iowa, Jason Hancock reported that Iowa’s three major state universities will not change the way they dump the toxic material, which has been shown to increase cancer rates among those who live near dumping sites. One expert told Hancock he was baffled that institutions with “a mandate to serve the public” would engage in an activity other states have determined to be dangerous.