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This Sunday, leaders of the Christian Right will gather at a Nashville church to stage a live televised rally in support of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The event is known as "Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and this Honorable Court!" and features such luminaries as James Dobson, Tom DeLay, and Zell Miller. Religion scholar Jeff Sharlet tells Brooke that you have to peel away a lot of rhetoric to understand the organizers' real intent.
This Sunday, leaders of the Christian Right will gather at a Nashville church to stage a live televised rally in support of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The event is known as "Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and this Honorable Court!" and features such luminaries as James Dobson, Tom DeLay, and Zell Miller. Religion scholar Jeff Sharlet tells Brooke that you have to peel away a lot of rhetoric to understand the organizers' real intent.
This Sunday, leaders of the Christian Right will gather at a Nashville church to stage a live televised rally in support of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The event is known as "Justice Sunday II: God Save the United States and this Honorable Court!" and features such luminaries as James Dobson, Tom DeLay, and Zell Miller. Religion scholar Jeff Sharlet tells Brooke that you have to peel away a lot of rhetoric to understand the organizers' real intent.
During a recent White House visit by Tony Blair, President Bush claimed his administration had tripled its aid to Africa in the last four years. The claim was widely reported, but was it true? Not exactly. Brooke talks to Jamison Foser of the progressive watchdog group Media Matters about why journalists seem to be biased against… doing the math.
The media have wasted no time in getting to work on the past record of John Roberts Jr. But with only two years' experience as a judge, the Supreme Court nominee has left relatively few clues as to his judicial philosophy. Is he a traditionalist? A strict constructionist? A judicial activist? What do these labels mean anyway, and do they really tell us what we need to know? Bob talks legal language with literary theorist and legal scholar Stanley Fish.
Even after it became clear that White House spokesman Mike McCurry had unwittingly lied about Clinton's relationship with Monica, McCurry managed to stay on the media's good side, with attempts at candor and even a little remorse. But such good rapport more often eludes presidential press secretaries. Witness, for example, Scott McLellan's current plight in the hot seat of the Valerie Plame case. Brooke reflects on press secretaries of yore with Senate Historian Donald Ritchie.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan made his semi-annual pilgrimage to Capitol Hill last week, and it may have been his last. The mandarin of monetary policy is scheduled to retire in January. True to form, the media saw plenty of thunderous implications in the chairman's remarks. As Bob first observed in 2001, there's hardly a question about the economy for which, in the media at least, Alan Greenspan isn't the answer.
And so Judith Miller sits in jail, for not revealing the source of information she never printed. Bob Novak, who did publish the information, appears to be in no trouble whatsoever. It's one of many bitter ironies in the Plame affair. Bob reflects on the exploitation of journalistic principle by Machiavellian scoundrels, and what might be done to prevent it in the future.
