FEHRNSTROM RESPONDS. Governor Mitt Romney's communications director, Eric Fehrnstrom, sends an e-mail to Media Log about yesterday's link to Bay Windows. Fehrnstrom writes:

1) Governor Romney hired Katherine Abbott. Her sexual orientation had nothing to do with the decision to bring her on board, and it had nothing to do with her departure.

2) John Wagner is Governor Romney's commissioner of the state welfare department, and is married to a same sex partner. Ditto for Mitchell Adams, the executive director of the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, whose members are appointed by the Governor. Both of them are doing excellent jobs.

MORE ON THE ABBOTT FIRING. Susan Ryan-Vollmar, writing in Bay Windows, observes that Katherine Abbott is the second lesbian to be fired by Governor Mitt Romney after getting married. Ryan-Vollmar wants to know: was this about snow, or about Romney's ongoing campaign to suck up to the religious right in advance of the 2008 presidential campaign?

LIBEL, LIBEL EVERYWHERE. Never in my wildest imagination did I ever think I would have to devote an entire Media Log post to an update of local libel news. But I do. So here we go:

The Herald libel case. I've got a long piece on Superior Court judge Ernest Murphy's libel suit against the Boston Herald, which you can read here. (Thanks to Phoenix staffers Deirdre Fulton and David Bernstein for sharing courtroom duty with me.)

In today's Herald, Greg Gatlin reports on the testimony of Bristol County assistant DA Gerald FitzGerald, which took place after the Phoenix's deadline. It turns out, not surprisingly, that FitzGerald was the source of the infamous "Tell her to get over it" quote about a 14-year-old rape victim, which Murphy has denied ever saying.

Herald reporter Dave Wedge's only direct source, former prosecutor David Crowley, testified on Tuesday that Murphy actually said something more like "She's got to get over it." However, Crowley said that the Herald got the "gist" of it right.

I'm sympathetic to Murphy, who was put through a very public kind of hell. But this isn't libel.

An old Globe libel case. Last week, the Boston Globe easily won a libel case brought by a Stoneham lawyer. Today, an older - and considerably more fascinating - case rears its head.

Three years ago, the Globe lost a libel suit to Dr. Lois Ayash, who argued she had been defamed by the paper's coverage of the circumstances surrounding the 1995 death of Globe columnist Betsy Lehman. Lehman and another woman were both given overdoses of anti-cancer medication; Lehman died, and the other woman was seriously injured. (She later died as well.)

The Globe lost after a default judgment was entered against the paper, the consequence of a decision by the paper and reporter Richard Knox (now with NPR) to refuse to identify a confidential source. A judgment of $2.1 million was entered against the Globe, and that judgment was upheld yesterday by the state's Supreme Judicial Court. (Herald report here; Globe report here.)

Here's part of yesterday's SJC decision that addresses the matter of Knox's confidential source (for clarity, I've removed citations without using ellipses):

This is clearly not a case where the Globe defendants were unable to comply with the orders. We do not suggest that their refusals to obey the discovery orders were in bad faith. Despite their assertions to the contrary, however, the Globe defendants had no special constitutional or statutory testimonial privilege, based on their status as a newspaper publisher or reporter, that would justify their refusal to obey the orders. We have recognized that values underlying the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, and art. 16 of the Amendments to the Massachusetts Constitution, may give rise to a common-law privilege that would allow a news reporter to refuse to reveal his sources. In deference to the effect that compelled discovery has on free speech, and to avoid the "needless disclosure of confidential relationships," our cases require a judge ruling on discovery requests, on a showing that "the asserted damage to the free flow of information is more than speculative or theoretical," to conduct a balancing test between "the public interest in every person's evidence and the public interest in protecting the free flow of information." As has been stated above, the judge carefully performed that balancing test and properly concluded that, in this case, the plaintiff's need for the requested information outweighed the public interest in the protection of the free flow of information to the press.

This is a classic case involving the clash of libel law and the so-called reporter's privilege to protect confidential sources. The Globe has said that it might appeal yesterday's ruling to the US Supreme Court.

Libel mishegas. In today's Globe, David Abel reports that Suffolk County district attorney has sentenced five kids who acted up at the Patriots rally to read and write essays on All Souls, Michael Patrick MacDonald's celebrated memoir of growing up on the mean streets of Southie.

Further inside the paper, though, is an Alex Beam column recounting the events behind - yes - a libel suit filed against MacDonald by Richard Marinick, a former state trooper who went bad, and who is described in All Souls as having strangled MacDonald's wounded brother after a busted heist.

DEFENDING THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA. Steve Silver has some useful thoughts on the subject here. His main point is one I've been trying to make off and on for some time: the blogger-MSM thing is a dialectic. A few blogs have proven to be an incredibly useful corrective to what the mainstream media puts out. But without the mainstream media, what would the bloggers have to write about?

We need a fair, impartial, and professional (as in "paid"; I'm not talking about any particular credentials) media as much as ever. Just because the MSM consistently falls short doesn't mean that the bloggers will or should take over.

WHERE'S THE TAPE? Media Log has withheld fire on the latest controversy involving CNN chief news executive Eason Jordan for a simple reason: we still don't know exactly what he said. But with the Internet swirling with indignation over reports that Jordan accused US troops of deliberately firing on journalists, it's time to ask an equally simple question: where is the tape?

Here's what we know. On January 27, at the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, Jordan said something during a panel discussion that set off a firestorm. Mark Jurkowitz, in the Boston Globe, and Howard Kurtz, in the Washington Post, brought matters up to date yesterday. It should be noted that Kurtz is also an employee of CNN. And if you want to keep going with the disclosures, I am a very occasional unpaid guest on Kurtz's CNN show, Reliable Sources.

Jordan told Kurtz:

I was trying to make a distinction between "collateral damage" and people who got killed in other ways. I have never once in my life thought anyone from the US military tried to kill a journalist. Never meant to suggest that. Obviously I wasn't as clear as I should have been on that panel.

Kurtz adds: "No transcript exists of the Jan. 27 session, which was supposed to be off the record, and a videotape of the event has not been made public."

Let's see the tape!

What's disturbing about this is that two members of Congress who were on hand when Jordan made his remarks - Representative Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd - clearly believed that Jordan had accused American soldiers of targeting reporters. Read their comments. They come across as barely mollified by Jordan's efforts to undo the damage.

Conservatives, as you can imagine, have been going berserk. And in this case, why shouldn't they? (And why shouldn't liberals - and not just Frank and Dodd.) I'm not going to try to track it all down, but here's a sample from last week, from National Review Online.

Nearly two years ago, Media Log went after Jordan for a New York Times op-ed piece in which he confessed that CNN had covered up some of the worst of Saddam Hussein's crimes for years, in part to protect CNN employees, in part to maintain access. But that time, at least, we knew exactly what he'd said.

What Jordan said in Davos has become a big enough story about an important enough institution that it's time for all of us to have a chance to judge for ourselves.

Finally, Jay Rosen has been right on top of this. This post is invaluable. Be sure to read the "After Matters" addendum. Michelle Malkin interviews Barney Frank. How odd is that?

MORE THAN YOU WANT TO KNOW. I want to link to this Slate piece before it slips off the home page. Audiophile Evan Cornog has something to tell you that you may not have realized - your iPod sucks - as well as some not-so-comforting advice: there's nothing wrong with it that $1200 worth of accessories won't fix.

You'll feel better if you read the feedback at the bottom of the article. In any case, Media Log's middle-age ears are perfectly happy with regular MP3 and AAC files and standard-issue Apple earbuds.

SNOW JOB. Media Log was ready to give Governor Mitt Romney a pass on his decision to fire Katherine Abbott, the head of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, for failing to get the snow cleared near West Roxbury High School the other day. Maybe it wasn't Abbott's fault, maybe she was otherwise doing a good job - but when four kids get struck by a pickup truck, a high-profile sacrifice is sometimes necessary.

Then I saw this Herald story by Franci Richardson and Michele McPhee reporting that Romney had grabbed $45,000 from Abbott's underfunded agency for a Patriots hoo-hah last week. Unbelievable. And shameless.

BLAME IT ON FRIEDMAN. According to the Shorenstein Center's Richard Parker, the only big idea put forth by economist Milton Friedman that hasn't been tried yet is privatized Social Security accounts. Unfortunately, as Parker observes in this Globe essay, all of Friedman's other ideas have been whopping failures.

DON'T PAY PER VIEW. Stephen Humphries quotes me in today's Christian Science Monitor on free newspapers and websites, and whether subscription fees are part of the past.

JUST SAY NO. When Bill Clinton proposed a massive restructuring of the health-care system more than a decade ago, William Kristol - then a top Republican strategist, now a pundit - had some simple advice: kill it, sight unseen. As social policy, Kristol's memo was irresponsible; as political hardball, it was brilliant. The Clinton health-care plan was falsely labeled a government takeover of the medical system, and the president's defeat paved the way for the 1994 Republican congressional victory and the rise of Newt Gingrich.

Do the Democrats have the backbone to do the same thing with George W. Bush's Social Security proposal? There are some encouraging signs. Senate minority leader Harry Reid says that not a single one of his members will support Bush's plan to divert Social Security funds into private accounts. But the Bush-Rove machine is an awesome sight once it gets revved up. Bush today launches a tour aimed at building support for his plan, and at pressuring Democrats in conservative states into getting on board.

Unlike the Kristol maneuver of a dozen years ago, killing private Social Security accounts would be good social policy. Bush's description last night in his State of the Union address of the woes facing Social Security might be said to fall into the category of "accurate but not true." Here's the heart of his case:

Thirteen years from now, in 2018, Social Security will be paying out more than it takes in. And every year afterward will bring a new shortfall, bigger than the year before. For example, in the year 2027, the government will somehow have to come up with an extra $200 billion to keep the system afloat - and by 2033, the annual shortfall would be more than $300 billion. By the year 2042, the entire system would be exhausted and bankrupt. If steps are not taken to avert that outcome, the only solutions would be dramatically higher taxes, massive new borrowing, or sudden and severe cuts in Social Security benefits or other government programs.

The problem with this is that it is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of how Social Security works - and a cynical belief that the scare tactics contained therein will be sufficient to persuade millions of Americans into stampeding his way, lest they otherwise lose out on their benefits altogether.

Media Log freely confesses to having spent the better part of a career avoiding the details of Social Security. Nevertheless, I have recently made some attempt to come up to speed, and I'm utterly convinced that people who really understand Social Security have proved there is no crisis. I highly recommend this January 16 New York Times Magazine article by Roger Lowenstein. Unfortunately, it's been moved into the archives, and you'll need to pay a fee. But Lowenstein proves, pretty definitively as far as I can tell, that Social Security should be able to survive more or less intact until at least 2080 with just a few minor tweaks.

A simpler version of the Lowenstein argument is online here. Paul Krugman, Josh Marshall, and Bob Somerby have all been invaluable on this topic as well.

Social Security is a popular program, and Democrats thrived politically for decades by claiming - with some truth and a lot of hyperbole - that Republicans wanted to destroy it and toss elderly folks out into the street. Now that we have a Republican president who really does want to destroy Social Security, can the Dems keep the courage of their convictions?

A possible line of attack against the Democrats was heard last night on MSNBC, with host Chris Matthews and several of his guests observing sagely that though the Democrats oppose private accounts, they haven't proposed any "alternative." Look out: this could be effective. In fact - again, to pick up on Lowenstein's analysis - the politically savvy and socially responsible "alternative" may well be to emulate Bill Kristol circa 1993, and just keep standing up and telling Bush, "No way."

Conservatives aren't going to give the Dems a break on Social Security no matter what they do. So the Democrats might as well do the right thing.

STATE OF DISUNION. Media Log is accustomed to falling asleep during the State of the Union. This was especially true when Clinton was president, and he would regularly drone into a second hour of 10-point proposals to solve whatever.

Last night, though, I had some help in staying awake: before the speech, I took part in a panel discussion at Boston College put together by the student Democratic and Republican organizations. Along with state senator Brian Joyce (D-Milton), Beacon Hill Institute executive director David Tuerck, and WBET Radio (AM 1460) talk-show host Stephen Pina, we mixed it up for about an hour and a half on Iraq, Social Security, and other issues - including immigration, for which I was completely unprepared.

One of the more interesting moments came when Joyce asked for a show of hands on how many of the 50 to 75 students in attendance supported last year's attempt by the Massachusetts legislature to amend the state constitution in order to prohibit same-sex marriage. Even though the crowd was at least one-third Republican, very few hands went up. When he asked how many were in opposition, most of the hands went up. (Sorry if there's any confusion. Oppose the amendment: for gay marriage; support the amendment: against gay marriage.) Joyce - who also opposed the amendment - said it confirmed his belief that opposition to gay marriage is primarily generational. And he lamented Bush's tactic of dividing people for political gain.

Joyce's critique was confirmed during Bush's speech, when the president offered this aside: "Because marriage is a sacred institution and the foundation of society, it should not be re-defined by activist judges. For the good of families, children, and society, I support a constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage."

We already knew that, of course, but it's always appalling when Bush decides he has to throw some red meat to his base. Then, too, this came at a time when his new secretary of education, Margaret Spellings, was denouncing a kids' show (second item) for depicting two normal families headed by lesbian couples.

GANG LAND. Boston Herald columnist Peter Gelzinis interviews a mother who has a special reason for not liking Bush's speech.

ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO. The Boston Globe won its libel suit. The case against the Boston Herald may wrap up toward the end of next week.

Both of these cases are rather odd. I sat through all of the testimony of Herald reporter Dave Wedge, and most of that given by Globe reporter Walter Robinson. At a minimum, the plaintiffs in a libel case must show that the stories about them were substantially untrue. In the Herald's case, the plaintiff, Judge Ernest Murphy, also has to show that Wedge acted with reckless disregard for the truth, a very high constitutional standard that applies to public officials.

Yet the jury concluded in the Globe case that the paper's reporting on Stoneham lawyer Stephen Columbus was basically true - no libel there. (Globe story here; Herald story here.) And in the case of the Herald, Murphy's side has not been able to disprove the essential accuracy of Wedge's reporting (Globe story here; Herald story here.)

Then again, the trial has a few more days to go. And you can never predict what a jury is going to do.

LEGALIZED OBSCENITY. Brought to you by Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and William Rehnquist! I'm a bit slow getting to this, but I haven't seen a lot of coverage, either.

About a year and a half ago I wrote about the case of Extreme Associates, purveyors of such fine entertainment as Ass Clowns 3. The makers of this harder-than-hardcore pornography, Robert Zicari and Janet Romano, were being prosecuted by Attorney General John Ashcroft under federal obscenity statutes. Zicari and Romano were doing business in California; the case was brought in conservative Western Pennsylvania.

Well, guess what? Extreme Associates won. On January 20, US District Court judge Gary Lancaster dismissed the case against Zicari and Romano, and possibly paved the way for the long-overdue death of anti-obscenity laws. And if Lancaster is upheld, you can send your thank-you cards to Supreme Court justices Scalia, Rehnquist, and Thomas.

You may recall that, a few years ago, the three conservatives dissented in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned anti-sodomy laws. Scalia - who actually wrote the dissent - fumed that the majority decision could pave the way for obscenity laws to be overturned as well. It turns out that Lancaster read Scalia's dissent and agreed. Wrote Lancaster:

In a dissenting opinion joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, Justice Scalia opined that the holding in Lawrence calls into question the constitutionality of the nation's obscenity laws, among many other laws based on the state's desire to establish a "moral code" of conduct.... It is reasonable to assume that these three members of the Court came to this conclusion only after reflection and that the opinion was not merely a result of over-reactive hyperbole by those on the losing side of the argument.

You've got to love the way that Lancaster is willing to twist the logical knife into the conservative Supremes.

Lancaster's opinion is a great victory for free speech and privacy. It's also a challenge aimed directly at the right-wing agenda being pursued by George W. Bush's Justice Department.

PAINFUL TO READ. Take a look at the side-by-side comparisons posted by Bruce Allen of a column by the Worcester Telegram & Gazette's Ken Powers and an earlier piece by Sports Illustrated's Peter King. Powers's career is obviously hanging by a thread at this point. What was he thinking? (Via Romenesko.)

SIXTY PERCENT. The early returns from the Iraqi election are very promising. The Washington Post reports that turnout may have been around 60 percent, despite a boycott in the Sunni regions of the country. Here is a prescient piece from today's New York Times Magazine by Michael Ignatieff, who explains that the Iraqi people may get it right despite American arrogance and bumbling.

It's only one good day, but that's something, given how few there have been. It would be wonderful if, say, a year from now we can look back on this day as a turning point. The next big question: what will be the implications of the Sunnis' decision to disenfranchise themselves? Is there any real chance that Iraq can remain as one country. Should it?

COUNTING THE YEARS. Michael Kranish's piece in today's Globe on Social Security and African-Americans is hardly pro-Bush, and Kranish has pulled together a lot of information. Still, I think the statistics offered by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Friday provide a truer picture.

Kranish writes:

The question of whether the system is tilted against blacks has become a central argument in the debate over private accounts. The White House strategy for selling the idea of private accounts includes an effort to win over African-Americans, on grounds that black males, on average, die at age 69, compared with 75 years for white males. Social Security's full retirement benefits begin to be paid between age 65 and 67.

That's true. But as Krugman points out, those life-expectancy figures are calculated at birth. The principal reason that life expectancy among African-Americans is so low is that they are far more likely to die younger - much younger.

Krugman explains:

It's true that the current life expectancy for black males at birth is only 68.8 years - but that doesn't mean that a black man who has worked all his life can expect to die after collecting only a few years' worth of Social Security benefits. Blacks' low life expectancy is largely due to high death rates in childhood and young adulthood. African-American men who make it to age 65 can expect to live, and collect benefits, for an additional 14.6 years - not that far short of the 16.6-year figure for white men.

Thanks to Bob Somerby, who, unfortunately, is threatening to retire.

GROPING FOR THE TRUTH. The Herald's David Guarino and State Auditor Joe DeNucci are at loggerheads over Guarino's Saturday story reporting that DeNucci intervened in the groping investigation of his son-in-law. In today's Herald, DeNucci denies it.

BUSH ON KERRY. Today the Herald runs a transcript of its interview with George W. Bush. The president is among the least interesting of public figures, but his take on John Kerry is at least worth noting:

Q: We wonder what your relationship is with your opponent, Senator Kerry. Have you had a chance to speak to him after the election?

A: No, I haven't. When you're in a race as competitive as that, you, at least I, came to respect my opponent. And he ran a tough campaign and campaigned hard, and I was hoping coming down the stretch he would tire and lose his composure, but he didn't. He was a very strong candidate, and I hadn't talked to him except for Election Night, I guess it wasn't Election Night, the next day in the Oval Office, he called me at about maybe 10:00 or 10:30 in the morning and I told him then. I said I admired the campaign. I know it's not easy to lose, and you know, wished him all the best.

FIRE AWAY. The Globe's first installment on fire-department response times, by Bill Dedman, is a pretty astounding piece of work, and it's even more useful on the Web. Here is a website with additional resources, including something you'll go to right away: maps and detailed statistics for the city or town in which you live.

Numbers can't tell the whole story. For example, the town in which Media Log Central is based has a lower rating than another community that had actually cut its firefighting budget so deeply that other departments - including my town's - had threatened to cut off mutual aid.

Still, this is fascinating and useful, and it brings out into the light an important problem that rarely gets discussed.

PRO-WAR, ANTI-TORTURE. There's no reason conservative supporters of the war in Iraq should be any less critical of torture than liberal opponents. Nevertheless, in many conservative circles there has been a disconcerting reluctance to condemn the widespread torture of inmates in Iraq, at Guantánamo Bay, and elsewhere.

Which is why I say good for Jeff Jacoby. The pro-war Globe columnist not only says all the right things today, but he even nails the hypocrisy on the part of the conservative establishment, concluding:

If this were happening on a Democratic president's watch, the criticism from Republicans and conservatives would be deafening. Why the near-silence now? Who has better reason to be outraged by this scandal than those of us who support the war? More than anyone, it is the war hawks who should be infuriated by it. It shouldn't have taken me this long to say so.

No kidding. And Jacoby could have mentioned the shameful near-silence of much of the media as well.

THE GREEN LINE. Oh, yes. One more thing. Jay Fitzgerald's blog points me to this Greg Gatlin story in the Herald about the Massachusetts Lottery's decision to pull $20,000 worth of ads from Boston's Metro tab, the latest shot in the Metro wars.

Treasurer Tim evidently takes sensitivity seriously: the Globe's Raphael Lewis reports that a son-in-law of State Auditor Joe DeNucci has been suspended from his Lottery job as part of a groping investigation.

GILLETTE &TC. Welcome to today's abbreviated bullet-point edition of Media Log. I'm up to my ears in other matters, but there are a few things I want to call your attention to. So let's get right down to it.

- Was there any funny business going on in the run-up to the announced merger between Procter & Gamble and Gillette? Brett Arends reports in today's Boston Herald that the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating some mighty odd activity that could have put a lot of money in a few people's hands.

Dow Jones reported Friday afternoon: "Because Gillette isn't a volatile stock, its puts and calls generally don't attract zealous buying - since options tend to pay off when the underlying stock moves enough to hit certain strike prices. But Gillette call volume was noticeably heavier just before the deal was announced."

- Also on the Gillette front, the Boston Globe's Tom Palmer asks: as Boston companies continue to be gobbled up by out-of-town corporations, what's going to happen to all that office space?

- Mehsin who? Today's New York Times and Boston Globe have front-page lead photos of the same Iraqi man voting in Southgate, Michigan. The Times photo is not on its website, but the print version is in front of me; the paper identifies him as Mehsin al-Busaid, and the photo was taken by J.D. Pooley "for The New York Times." The Globe identifies him as Mehsin Imgoter, and credits the photo to Reuters.

No idea what the discrepancy is. I understand that people in the Arab world often have many names (I read somewhere once that Saddam Hussein has five or six names, and that neither "Saddam" nor "Hussein" would be considered a first or last name under Western naming conventions); but it seems strange that Mr. Mehsin would give two different names to two different photographers. In any case, the blue ink on his index finger is clearly visible, so it's unlikely that any James Michael Curley stuff was going on.

- Another David Nyhan tribute: Jeff Epperly writes for Bay Windows that the late Globe columnist was pro-gay-rights before it was cool.

- Sickening murder: the New York City slaying of Nicole duFresne, an Emerson College graduate and aspiring actress, is one of the more horrifying stories of the week. Here is yesterday's AP report. The Times' Michael Brick and Jennifer 8. Lee report on the murder today, and the Herald's Michele McPhee has more details as well.

HERALDING THE GILLETTE DEAL. I just got into the newsroom a little while ago after a day-long assignment, and have finally had a chance to get a good look at the print edition of today's Herald. The paper put together a terrific package on the Gillette deal, filling pages four and five. Greg Gatlin got quotes from workers who are worried about what it means to them. ("Change isn't always bad, but it doesn't sound so good.")

Sidebars look at what the sale of Gillette to Procter & Gamble means to the business community (written by Jay Fitzgerald and Gatlin) and to top Gillette executives (Brett Arends). Particularly interesting, at least to these eyes, was a Fitzgerald piece on the history of the company, and of how founder King Camp Gillette came up with the idea of disposable blades, proving the skeptics wrong.

A fine job, with the Herald beating the Globe on day one of a hugely important local story.

Meanwhile, Governor Mitt Romney, who made his reputation in part as a takeover artist, is nevertheless saying some critical things about the Gillette deal. In this AP story, Romney calls the merger a "real shame," and says that Gillette "did not need to merge to maintain its future and to have a bright future."

Good for Romney, but can he do anything about it? I would imagine that the answer is no.

RAZOR ATTACK. Guess we'll have to wait until tomorrow to find out whether anyone at Procter & Gamble plans to change the name of Gillette Stadium. Probably not. Still, it's huge news that Boston is losing yet another major local institution to out-of-towners. It would have given the late Boston Globe columnist David Nyhan another reason to lament what's happened to the city as well.

Both the Globe and the Herald lead with the Gillette story today, as well they should. Sadly, this isn't even the end of an era. Rather, it's just the latest in an era that began a long time ago. In many ways, Boston today is just another franchise town. If it weren't for the city's universities and medical institutions, it would be - well, I'll say Cleveland, because that seems to be what you're supposed to say in these situations, even though I've never been there.

MEDIA VICTORY. I'll have to wait until later to comment on the government's decision not to fight a court decision that overturned its plans to deregulate media ownership even further. But this is a huge victory for anyone who worries about corporate media consolidation. Here is the New York Times story.

WHERE'S THE OUTRAGE? Over the next two years, opportunities for the White House and the Republican Congress to make blithering idiots of themselves will be endless. Democrats can take advantage of these opportunities - but only if they demonstrate courage rather than a craven willingness to suck up to people who will never vote for them anyway.

One such opportunity may be over just-installed Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's outrageous, offensive criticism of the new PBS kids' show Postcards from Buster. Spellings has herself twisted into a knot because, in one of the episodes, Buster - a cartoon rabbit - visits a family in Vermont that's headed by a lesbian couple.

Yesterday's New York Times story is online here. Today the Boston Globe has a feature on the family.

PBS has backed off from distributing the show, which is pretty much what the network always does when confronted with controversy. Some PBS stations, including Boston's WGBH-TV (Channels 2 and 44), are going to show it anyway. Good for them.

Of course, the places where it won't be shown are precisely where the kids of gay and lesbian parents are most in need of some sort of validation. So what we end up with is a de facto situation in which anything deemed to be blue-state programming is seen in blue states only. Disgusting.

Conservatives are always threatening to cut off taxpayer funding for PBS. Well, after this, it would be nice to hear a few liberals call for funding to be dumped as well. PBS has gone out of its way to cater to its conservative critics, thinking that its traditional liberal supporters will put up with just about any insult.

Not this time? Maybe? Please?

METROMANIA, CONT'D. You would never read Cosmo Macero's Metro update (sub. req.) in today's Boston Herald unless you're an absolute junkie on the subject. Cosmo, as usual, has got some interesting stuff, but this is incremental. But if you're starting at a Herald box on the street, you see yet another front-page blowout: "METRO 'REFORM' A WHITEWASH."

Good grief.

NEW IN THIS WEEK'S PHOENIX. From deep in the heart of Blue America, Inauguration Day lamentations in real time.

THE TIMES AND THE HOLOCAUST. Media Log reader S.M.M. called my attention to this fine James Carroll column in yesterday's Globe on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. Carroll writes about the New York Times' unseemly reluctance to describe the Holocaust for exactly what it was: genocide aimed primarily at Jews.

Carroll says he learned of this history while conducting a study at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, at Harvard's Kennedy School. The director of the Shorenstein Center, Alex Jones, is an expert on the subject: he and Susan Tifft are the authors of The Trust, the definitive biography of the Times' ruling family, the Sulzbergers.

The book is well worth reading. But this excerpt of an interview with Tifft and Jones, conducted in 1999, gets to the heart of the matter:

Equally interesting is the tale "The Trust" tells of the Ochs-Sulzbergers' conflicted dance around the question of the family's ethnicity. "The Jewishness of the family and how that has affected the news coverage of the Times is a very important aspect of our book," says Tifft.

"Adolph [Ochs, who founded the modern Times in the late 19th century] did everything he could not to call attention to the idea that this was a Jewish newspaper," adds Jones, "which meant sometimes turning a blind eye to terrible situations that involved Jews. He was afraid [that covering 'Jewish issues'] would attract the wrath of people who were enemies of The New York Times and would marginalize the Times' authority by saying they were just a bunch of Jews defending other Jews. He had it as a cardinal rule (which did not change until the 1960s) that the senior editor of The New York Times could not be a Jew."

Rarely observant, often not even self-identified as Jews, the Ochs-Sulzbergers nevertheless could not escape the often petty, sometimes catastrophic prejudice toward their ethnicity. The contradictions involved in trying to do so reached a crescendo during the Nazi era. "New York Times publisher Arthur Hayes Sulzberger (son-in-law of Tennessean Adolph Ochs) had encountered discrimination himself as a Jew," write Jones and Tifft. "He was very bitterly stung by the fact that he could not get into a fraternity at Columbia because he was Jewish. He was turned away at hotels because he was Jewish. But he very much wanted not to have The New York Times' authority compromised by being perceived as a Jewish newspaper. And you look back at the stories in those days, The New York Times did cover the rise of Hitler, it did cover what was happening in Europe, but when it came to the Holocaust, it buried the stories. Instead of putting them on Page One, they'd be on Page 12. They'd be short stories instead of long stories. The most telling example is when Dachau was liberated, the word 'Jew' was never mentioned, although the story itself appeared on the front page."

"This was a mistake, and The New York Times apologized on the centennial of the family's ownership explicitly for the way they handled the Holocaust," adds Jones. He believes that this and other examples of the newspaper's abdication of principle (suppression of information about the Bay of Pigs, editorial obtuseness during the Vietnam War) are a result of the publisher's desire to maintain the Times' influence on the political establishment.

The notion that the Times suppressed what it knew about the Bay of Pigs is a myth. In fact, the evidence shows that the paper published everything its reporters and editors had been able to confirm, on page one and above the fold. But that's a story for another day.

ALL KNOWN FACTS. Those of us who've been waiting for the Globe to weigh in on the Metro racism/sexism story in a significant way had to set aside some time this morning. I think it's safe to say that this effort, by Christopher Rowland and Charles Sennott, doesn't leave anything out.

Meanwhile, the Herald today tries to link the issue to Trent Lott and Strom Thurmond, and New York Times ombudsman Dan Okrent tells Rory O'Connnor that he wishes the Times would cover the story.

NOT ALL MEN. Media Log was reminded this morning that though the Boston Globe was surely a boys' club until the 1990s, there were still plenty of pioneering women at the paper. The best-known: columnist Ellen Goodman, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980, and whose work continues to appear on the op-ed page.

Anne Wyman was editorial-page editor for a good stretch of the Tom Winship era. Loretta McLaughlin, a pioneering medical reporter, also did a stint as editorial-page editor. Muriel Cohen, who covered the education beat for years, helped the Globe win a Pulitzer for its coverage of the school-desegregation battles of the 1970s.

This is not meant to be an all-inclusive list - just a reminder that the Globe of David Nyhan's heyday wasn't exclusively an all-male preserve.

By the way, there are going to be a lot of tributes to Nyhan over the next week or so. Globe columnist Adrian Walker's piece today is well worth reading.

DYLAN IN BLACK AND WHITE. The most fascinating story in the Sunday Globe got buried in the regional Globe North section. It should have been on the front of Living/Arts - or maybe the front page. It's about an Amesbury photographer named Douglas Gilbert, who took some extraordinary photos of Bob Dylan in 1964 that no one knew about until a few years ago.

The story, by Steven Rosenberg, is here; and Gilbert's online Dylan portfolio is here.

DAVID NYHAN. The last time I interviewed David Nyhan, who collapsed and died yesterday after shoveling snow outside his Brookline home, was in the spring of 2004. I was working on an article about the ancient rivalry between the Globe and the Herald, which had just taken a new turn with the Herald's having hired former Globe columnist Mike Barnicle and reinventing itself as a New York Post-style tabloid.

Nyhan had played a role in getting his friend Barnicle the job, and there was talk that perhaps he would soon follow. Ultimately, though, Nyhan decided to keep doing what he was doing: dabbling in politics and writing a column for the Eagle-Tribune newspapers, a small chain north of Boston that included the first paper Nyhan ever worked for, the Salem News.

Nyhan retired from the Globe in 2001, but he wasn't particularly happy about it. Essentially he was forced out. The sense at 135 Morrissey Boulevard was that his florid, overtly liberal style of opinion-mongering was part of the past, and that it was time to make way for a newer generation of more analytical columnists such as Joan Vennochi and Scot Lehigh.

On the day that Nyhan and I talked, he expressed his unhappiness with the New York Times Company's stewardship of the Globe, blaming what he saw as the Globe's relentlessly negative coverage of the upcoming Democratic National Convention over pique back at the Mother Ship that the DNC hadn't come to New York. Nyhan speculated that "the corporate masters on 43rd Street" were "quite PO'd that Boston got it. And I think that the locally owned franchise reflects that view."

It also seemed increasingly apparent to him that the Times Company was intent on making sure the Globe would never be seen as anything but a satellite of the Times. "I believe that the business strategy of the New York Times, and you can find the spoor of it in the annual report - they want to be the dominant newspaper for upper-income Americans, which I applaud," Nyhan said. "But to do that I would argue that they have downsized the Boston Globe."

I don't buy Nyhan's critique; not all of it, anyway. My point is that Nyhan himself was passionate about newspapers, and he never lost that passion. He was part of a now-dwindling band of men - yes, pretty much all men - who brought the paper to greatness and prominence in the 1960s and '70s: the late editor Tom Winship; the late sports columnist Will McDonough; and Marty Nolan, who's still out and about. There were others, of course, but these four still stand out all these years later.

One of the last columns Nyhan wrote appeared in the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune on December 19. It was, in a sense, a summation of the lament that he had delivered to me several months earlier. Headlined "Boston Isn't Run by Bostonians Anymore," he wrote about the loss of local institutions such as the Bank of Boston, Jordan Marsh, John Hancock, and the like, as well as the increasing reality that the city's fate is controlled by business leaders who don't live here:

The banks and businesses that helped build Boston were taken over. "Such well-known institutions as the New England Telephone Co., the Shawmut Bank, Beacon Properties, Jordan Marsh and Filenes were sold, merged, or moved out of state," recounts Boston College historian Thomas O'Connor in "The Hub: Boston Past and Present." The Boston Globe sold itself to the New York Times. Fleet Bank, the merged progeny of the First National Bank, Bank of New England, Shawmut and Bank Boston, became Bank of America, controlled from North Carolina....

The executives now chosen to lead Boston-based institutions are now much more likely to be promoted and fired by people from away. They listen to stockholders and Wall Street analysts and bond issuers and investment bankers far from the corner of Park and Tremont streets. And there is less engagement in civic and philanthropic and educational and charitable endeavors when the bosses live far from area code 617.

Even though I'm pretty sure that Nyhan regarded me as a moralizing twit, I always enjoyed my talks with him. He was smart and funny, and he really cared. He was, in that old-fashioned sense of the term, a good guy, and the city will be a much lesser place without him.

THE METRO AND THE GLOBE. Globe ombudsman Christine Chinlund today weighs in on her paper's rather light coverage of the contretemps over Boston's Metro, whose parent company, Metro International, has had some serious problems with racist remarks. The Times Company is looking to buy 49 percent of the local Metro, and the Herald is fighting it on anti-competitive grounds. If you haven't been following the story, I've got a roundup online here.

Should the Globe have done more? Chinlund says no. I don't really disagree, although maybe one additional story, more prominently played, would have been in order. Still, from the start, this was more fodder for bloggers (including Media Log) and, of course, the rival Herald. Besides, this story isn't over yet by any means.

Meanwhile, Rory O'Connor, who started all this, is bugging the Times' public editor, Daniel Okrent, to write about it.

CRITICAL MASS. What little criticism Peggy Noonan offered of Bush's speech last night was pretty mild. Not today, though. Writing for OpinionJournal.com, Noonan reminds us that she was a speechwriter for Bush I, not Bush II. Check this out:

The inaugural address itself was startling. It left me with a bad feeling, and reluctant dislike. Rhetorically, it veered from high-class boilerplate to strong and simple sentences, but it was not pedestrian. George W. Bush's second inaugural will no doubt prove historic because it carried a punch, asserting an agenda so sweeping that an observer quipped that by the end he would not have been surprised if the president had announced we were going to colonize Mars. [Media Log aside: he actually did, just about a year ago.]

A short and self-conscious preamble led quickly to the meat of the speech: the president's evolving thoughts on freedom in the world. Those thoughts seemed marked by deep moral seriousness and no moral modesty.

Less surprising, but far more vitriolic, is Bob Herbert's column in the New York Times. The lead:

Watching the inaugural ceremonies yesterday reminded me of the scenes near the end of "The Godfather" in which a solemn occasion (a baptism in the movie) is interspersed with a series of spectacularly violent murders.

Wow! It reminds me of a great Kitty Kelley line: when she first started writing about the Bushes, she thought of them as the Cleavers - only to realize they were the Corleones.

With Dick Cheney as Tom Hagen, of course.

OUTFOXED. The talk of the Internet this morning is Judy Bachrach's blistering performance on the Fox News Channel yesterday. The entire clip is online here.

Bachrach's a writer for Vanity Fair, and apparently the anchor, whose name I do not know, thought they were going to chit-chat about the weather and the parties. Instead, Bachrach unloaded on Bush for spending $40 million on his own inauguration during wartime.

Let's roll the tape:

ANCHOR: Judy, to be honest with you, I didn't want to argue politics with you this morning. I was was just - you know -

BACHRACH: I thought I was allowed to talk about what I wanted to talk about.

ANCHOR: Well, you certainly have that right.

BACHRACH: Right.

And Bachrach was just getting warmed up. "During a time of war, 10 parties are not appropriate when your own soldiers are sitting ducks in very, very bad vehicles," she said.

When the anchor defended Bush by noting that he had attended a prayer service for the troops, Bachrach responded, "Well, gee, that prayer service should sure keep them safe and warm in their flimsy vehicles in Iraq."

ANCHOR: All right. Well, Judy Bachrach, I think we've given you more than your time to give us your point of view this morning.

BACHRACH: Well, thanks for having me on.

ANCHOR: All right.

All right!

THE HEAT IS ON. Finally, The Daily Show is on. Other than a hilarious Stephen Colbert bit that is beyond my ability to describe, the best part was Jon Stewart reacting to Chris Dodd's remark that Dick Cheney's daughters would hold the family Bible during their father's swearing-in.

"Actually, it's not quite true," Stewart said. "Mary is not allowed to touch the family Bible." It was, he added, for her own good: "It burns."

Joe Lieberman will be on after the break, but that's all for Media Log tonight. Since I've never heard him say anything funnier than "Joe-mentum," I think it's safe to shut down.

STOP MAKING SENSE. Pat Buchanan, bless his tiny little heart, is making sense on MSNBC, and Joe Scarborough's having none of it. Referring to 9/11, Buchanan said, "Why do you think they were over here? Because we were over there!" He could barely spit it out before Scarborough was accusing him of blaming America, comparing him to the late Susan Sontag, and telling the viewers that Buchanan's next column would appear in the New Yorker.

All in good fun, of course!

Andrew Sullivan - who's getting absolutely creamed by Mickey Kaus - was sitting on the other side of the set. Maybe he'll give Buchanan one of his loathsome Susan Sontag Awards tomorrow.

DEMOCRACY'S LIMITS. CNN's Jeff Greenfield got two-thirds of the way there in his analysis of Bush's "almost startling" speech. In batting it around with Aaron Brown, Greenfield wondered what Bush intended to do about a country like Pakistan - an ally in the war against terrorism, but a country that doesn't hold elections.

What Greenfield left out was that if Pakistan did hold an election, a pretty good share of the populace would vote for Osama bin Laden.

He could have made the same observation about Saudi Arabia, too. And let's not forget that the mullahs came to power in Iran through popular acclamation, even if they're not too popular today.

HAPPY AND BORING. I indulged myself and skipped The O'Reilly Factor tonight. There's only so much one can be expected to take. I'm doing penance by watching Hannity & Colmes, but it's boring tonight. Sean, as usual, is wearing more make-up than Pee-wee Herman, which is always good for a chuckle. But there are no liberals for him to fight with, so the show lacks its only appeal - its car-crash-at-the-side-of-the-road quality that makes you watch despite yourself.

Rudy Giuliani? Please - he's the second-least-controversial Republican in the country after John McCain. Peggy Noonan? She can be wonderfully weird, but not tonight. Ralph Reed? Now that held some promise, but they never gave him a chance to go nutty.

Why on earth wouldn't Alan, at least, ask Reed if he and his fellow religious conservatives are pissed off that Bush is saying almost nothing about gay marriage? That might have been amusing. Instead, Reed was allowed to blather on at length about foreign policy. You'd think the guy was Prince Metternich instead of the little twerp who used to work for Pat Robertson.

Ooh, Bob Shrum's on Chris Matthews. Looks like I missed him. Damn! I want to know how the Democrats can take back the White House in 2008. Maybe by "fighting for working families," Bob? Jesus. I guess if you lose often enough, you become a pundit.

APPARENTLY DON KING WAS WRONG. Presidential nephew Pierce Bush just told Larry King, "Larry, you're the man."

FREAK FACTOR. On MSNBC, Juliette Kayyem was yakking with Keith Olbermann about the terrorist threat involving Boston. Dirty bombs, radiation, blah, blah, blah. You know what? If we're going to die, we're going to die.

So I switched to CNN, where Anderson Cooper, doing party duty, was interviewing Don King. Much better. If TV coverage of inauguration day has been lacking anything, it's the freak factor. I had hoped E! would have Joan Rivers yowling outside the parties, but no such luck. Right now, the E!'s showing some horrible program on Jerry Lewis. So Don King's as good as it gets.

King, whose hair isn't nearly the conversation piece that it used to be, was wearing a tux and more chains than a prisoner at Abu Ghraib. He praised Bush - or, as he referred to him about 15 times, "George Walker Bush." He compared him to Abraham Lincoln. He praised "No Child Left Behind, which is so vitally important." Hmmm ... is King getting any of that Department of Education money?

"You're the man, Anderson Cooper," King said, certainly the first time anyone has said that.

King also called himself a "Republicrat," a word that had Paula Zahn puzzled. "I don't think I've ever heard that phrase before," she said. Obviously she's never listened to Ralph Nader. Lucky woman!

DIAL "Z" FOR REALITY. Zbigniew Brzezinski absolutely ate Walter Russell Mead's lunch on The NewsHour tonight. Of course, Mead was at quite a disadvantage: it's not easy being an idealist when you're the Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Mead's biggest problem, though, was that he really didn't have a coherent answer for Brzezinski's critique of Bush's "I Am the World" speech.

"If it was to be taken literally," Brzezinski said, "it would mean an American crusade throughout the entire world." Mead responded by saying that Bush may very well mean what he says (a view that Media Log shares, with considerably less happiness about that prospect than Mead evinced). Mead pointed to remarks by Cheney today that suggest the White House is already gearing up for its next foreign military adventure - this time in Iran, possibly using Israel as a proxy. Brzezinski replied that such an action would be "destabilizing." To say the least.

Brzezinski characterized Bush's speech as a repackaging of his old ideas in new containers. Instead of "fear," Bush is now talking about "freedom." Instead of "terrorism," it's now "tyranny." But when he pronounced Bush's goals as "vacuous," Mead differed.

That led to an exchange over China. What, Brzezinski wanted to know, could Bush possibly do about China and its horrendous human-rights record?

Mead started to say something about how the Bush administration could encourage China's dissidents. Brzezinski, obviously disdainful, cut him off. "We need to deal with the North Korean bomb. We need China for that," he said. End of discussion.

So thoroughly defeated was Mead that, as Margaret Warner tried to close the segment, he got in a shot about Brzezinski's days as Jimmy Carter's national-security adviser, and the criticism that Carter's concern for human rights was sometimes said to be more intense in places like, say, Argentina than in the Soviet Union. Brzezinski responded that the Carter administration managed to do both. And there it ended.

BUSH BY THE NUMBERS. Brian Williams tried out his best perturbed look tonight in noting that House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi today vowed to continue fighting Bush's "extremist" agenda. The wingnuts don't flood you with as many e-mails if you signal them that you think the Dems are looney-tunes.

But then Williams had to contend with a tough Bush critique from an unexpected source - NBC Washington-bureau chief Tim Russert, who wondered how Bush would apply his aggressive doctrine to Iran, North Korea, or Cuba. How indeed?

Russert, though, was just warming up. It turned out he had some new poll numbers with some very bad news for our only president. For instance:

- Bush's approval/disapproval rating is 50 percent/44 percent, the worst of any just-re-elected president since Richard Nixon.

- Only 40 percent of respondents say that removing Saddam Hussein was worth it; 52 percent say it wasn't worth it. Among independents, Russert reported, 56 percent say it wasn't worth it.

- Was Bush's victory a mandate to change Society Security? Thirty-three percent say yes; 56 percent say no.

- Just 33 percent say that congressional Democrats should act in a "bipartisan" manner; 57 percent say they should "provide balance" - as in, fight like Nancy Pelosi.

Russert: "The president has to be very, very careful not to overplay his mandate."

So how did Bush ever get re-elected, anyway?

SLATE CHECKS IN. Fred Kaplan and Chris Suellentrop both have good analyses of Bush's speech, even though I don't think either one quite gets it. Kaplan focuses on the liberty part, Suellentrop on the religion; neither thinks the rhetoric amounts to much more than - well, rhetoric. But that's not the experience of the past four years, is it?

INDECENT DISRESPECT. There's a lovely phrase in the opening to the Declaration of Independence that I think gets at much of what is wrong with Bush's presidency. Jefferson writes that "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind" compels him and his fellow revolutionaries to explain why they are separating themselves from the British monarchy.

During the presidential debates in October, John Kerry made this very point, saying that when a president takes military action, "you've got to do it in a way that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people, understand fully why you're doing what you're doing, and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons."

A decent respect to the opinions of mankind, in other words. But Bush and his allies on the right sneered and smirked, accusing Kerry of sucking up to the French. Bush twisted Kerry's quote around into a cheap applause line: "America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our people." That's not what Kerry said, but never mind.

Today the Guardian reports on the results of a BBC poll of people in 21 countries that reveals deep distrust of the United States under Bush, and that suggests negative opinions of the White House are beginning to harden into negative opinions about the American people as well. The nut:

Fifty-eight per cent of the 22,000 who took part in the poll, commissioned by the BBC World Service, said they expected Mr Bush to have a negative impact on peace and security, compared with only 26% who considered him a positive force.

The countries are a disparate bunch, ranging from Turkey and Brazil to Germany and France.

In the United States, the political conversation, aided by a fearful and compliant media, has become so dishonest and corrupt that it's impossible even to discuss such things as the BBC poll and be taken seriously. Try talking about this on Fox or MSNBC and you would be accused of appeasement, and our international critics would be portrayed as the "Axis of Weasels." Let's have another round of freedom fries, baby!

But that kind of superficial pap can't paper over the fact that Bush has destroyed our standing in the world, which is the single worst thing he's done during his four years in office.

I think the fact that Bush didn't actually win in 2000 gave us a lot of slack, making it easy for the world to despise Bush, but not the American people. Now, though, we've actually elected him, and we have to face the consequences of our decision.

The Guardian quotes one of the pollsters, Doug Miller, thusly:

Our research makes very clear that the re-election of President Bush has further isolated America from the world. It also supports the view of some Americans that unless his administration changes its approach to world affairs in its second term, it will continue to erode America's good name, and hence its ability to effectively influence world affairs.

This is what Bush has done to us. This is what we have done to ourselves. We had the world behind us after 9/11. And we've pissed it all away. Jefferson would be apoplectic. Something for the fat cats to think about as they make the party-going rounds tonight.

SPIFFED-UP DISSECTOR. Danny Schechter has unrolled a redesigned weblog - complete with audio.

MISGIVINGS ON THE RIGHT. Maybe we can hope that conservatives will slow Bush down. Peter Robinson, writing for National Review Online, was less than thrilled with Bush's speech. Robinson explains:

Bush has just announced that we must remake the entire third world in order to feel safe in our own homes, and he has done so without sounding a single note of reluctance or hesitation. This overturns the nation's fundamental stance toward foreign policy since its inception. Washington warned of "foreign entanglements." The second President Adams asserted that "we go not abroad in search of monsters to destroy." During the Cold War, even Republican presidents made it clear that we played our large role upon the world stage only to defend ourselves and our allies, seeking to changed the world by our example rather than by force. Maybe I'm misreading Bush - I'm writing this based on my notes, and without having had time to study the text - but sheesh.

In today's Boston Globe, conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby calls Bush a "radical conservative." More radical than conservative, wouldn't you say, Jeff?

WHAT'S A FEW MILLION? (PART II). Eric Boehlert writes in Salon that the true cost of Bush's inauguration party may be closer to $70 million than to the widely reported figure of $40 million. Boehlert explains:

For the media, simply reporting on the cost of the inauguration proved to be a challenge. Most major outlets stuck to the lower, albeit still unprecedented [er, not really], figure of $40 million, which the Presidential Inaugural Committee said it hopes to raise from private donors. But a more accurate figure may be $50 million. That's the amount cited by the Washington Times (which is plugged in to GOP circles). But even that number doesn't take into account the nearly $20 million that's being spent for security, putting the real cost at closer to $70 million, instead of the media's preferred $40 million.

I don't begrudge Bush his party, but $70 million would be more than double what Clinton ever spent. It does look like the feds have backed down on plans to stick the District of Columbia with the bill for security. But still.

JIBJAB IS BACK. Sequels are never as good as the originals, except maybe with The Godfather. But Second Term is worth a watch, even if the anti-Bush humor is so mild that it seems designed to appeal to Republicans as much as Democrats.