Some good news for journalism today. The two Current TV Vanguard journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, have been pardoned by North Korea after Bill Clinton paid a visit. Actually, I suspect the deal was largely arranged beforehand, since you don't send someone as high profile as Bill Clinton if you don't have some sense that negotiations will be successful. Ling and Lee had been in China covering a story about refugees from North Korea escaping into China when they were kidnapped by North Korean soldiers at the border. North Korea sentenced them to 12 years hard labor. Here is a profile of both women from the Guardian.

Current TV's Vanguard program is among the best investigative journalism in America today. Laura Ling is one of the ones whose work I am familiar with and she, along with the other Vanguard journalists, has gone all over the world covering stories no one else covers. Among her works:

Narco War Next Door:

Haiti's Hotzone:

Turkey/Iraq Border War:

I recommend Current TV as an antidote to the inane journalism that most American TV gives us. And I am happy Laura Ling is now free. This might also be a good time to plug Journalists Without Borders, an organization that works to stop suppression of a free press.

Yup. John McCain's campaign was never really suspended.

Jeff Toobin over at CNN's "The Situation Room" just pointed out the obvious : McCain is still campaigning. All this screaming around Washington DC is pure political posturing.

We already saw how McCain dissed Letterman so he could sit down with Katie Couric. Somehow he found "courage" to get his ass to Clinton's Global Clusterfuck. McCain is doing the rounds at all the major networks newscasts. His flack? They appeared in six different newscasts and cable shows. That was in less than 24 hours. Wow.

Ironically, the "media deaf and dumb" Sarah Palin seemed to have engaged today the media circus assigned to her. The networks and newspapers were so shocked to have Palin taking questions today that it made headlines.
 more this way»

Can I have a witness for Paul Slansky? Go read his A Note to Bill Clinton and testify :

Given that we would never have had the odious George W. Bush in the White House in the first place if it wasn't for your blow jobs, Bill, it seems obvious that you owe it to the people of this country, and especially to the parents whose kids died in the Iraq War that Gore would never have started, and to all the parents whose kids would be killed in the WarFest that would be a McCain/Palin -- sorry, Palin/McCain administration -- to do everything in your power to get Barack Obama elected.

[...]

If Obama loses a close election -- one in which even one state where you could have made a difference goes for McCain because you sat home and pouted -- it will be on you. We will remember that you couldn't be bothered to rise above your petty resentments for something as trivial as saving your country from the enemies of everything you profess to believe in. We forgave you for Monica, Bill, but we won't forgive you for this.

PREACH!

I love it how he starts his rant : Is it me or he didn't want to say Barack Obama's name?

People, it's time to give the shaft to Bill Clinton. It's not only the people who work for him that are petty. The bastard still can't take part of the blame for sinking his wife's campaign to the ground.

She was against teaching condom use in schools before she was for them :

Palin appears to disagree with McCain on sex education - Los Angeles Times

Palin's statements date to her 2006 gubernatorial run. In July of that year, she completed a candidate questionnaire that asked, would she support funding for abstinence-until-marriage programs instead of "explicit sex-education programs, school-based clinics and the distribution of contraceptives in schools?" Palin wrote, "

Yes, the explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support."

But in August of that year, Palin was asked during a KTOO radio debate if "explicit" programs include those that discuss condoms. Palin said no and called discussions of condoms "relatively benign."
 more this way»

[Ed. Note]: Content removed for reasons explained in the comment thread. Here is a visual approximation of the diarist's efforts.