Before any organization gets any taxpayer funds, it should be subject to a background check (including forensic accounting and a tax audit) so invasive that it falls just short of anal probing. That's not paranoia, that's good stewardship.

Never thought I'd be applauding Jon Stewart for political commentary.

Why does the government insist on trying to run businesses? Its been proven over and over they (to quote Tom Clancy) can't even spell efficiency, let alone implement it.

I've been saying for 18 months that we have no need for a president who does not have a strong understanding of economics, and my fears are being realized as I type. If the public's primary concern was the economy why did they elect a president who probably doesn't even know the difference between a note and a bond? I have a financial background, but if I walked into an office building and asked for a position as CFO I'd understandably be laughed out of the room.

Hence my befuddlement that people think a Harvard-educated lawyer (I have no respect for Ivy League education, as the morons who put the economy in the mess it's in all have Ivy League degrees) can fix the biggest economy in the world. Yes, he's got economic advisors (Keynesians and Communists, apparently), but one needs to know whose advice to heed. No law degree in the world will teach that.

Translation: They don't know any better.

Good point. I stand corrected.

I've been wracking my brain trying to figure out why it is the media decides to embrace a biased stance, refusing to cover certain stories while beating others to death. I know it's not because of any love of the truth. The days of newsmen and women like Walter Burns and Hildy Johnson in "His Girl Friday", the ones that scare the living daylights out of politicians, are gone.

The only answer I can come up with is that the media embraces the same elitist mentality that Washington D.C. does, preferring to 1) get their news from Reuters and the Associated Press instead of doing legwork, and 2) only broadcast the stories they think their customers and viewers want to get. Fox has a largely conservative base, ergo their news often has a conservative spin. MSNBC is the opposite, putting a largely liberal spin on stories or at least downplaying those that cast liberal agenda in a bad light. I get the business side of it: you tailor your product to your market. But if they do that they should not peddle themselves as news organizations, an idea that ideally conjures up images of empirical truth and objectivity.

The interesting paradigm shift that we are seeing (none too soon in my opinion) is that news outlets are no longer the only way to learn about the world. There was a time that they were, and they often took that duty seriously. I like to think (can't say for sure) that the greats like Cronkite and Murrow felt a responsibility for the truth. It may be, however, that they never did, which makes to rise of sites like this one such a boon to the world. When you have amateur journalists (I refer to your professional status, not the quality of your work) breaking stories that media outlets refuse to cover, what may have escaped the public's notice twenty years ago due to that refusal now simply casts that outlet as at lazy at best and complicit at worst.

This stuff is finger-licking good.

Well, investigating the CIA must be a better use of the man's time.

And why were they fired? I haven't seen the inside of a law school, but even I could roll into any court and sell that as an admission of guilt.

Good grief... have the guts to admit that there may be bad eggs in their organization and that the field offices need tighter oversight. It would be acceptable, nay, refreshing, to see ANYONE remotely connected to politics admit fault and pledge improvement.

Also, I love how everything antagonistic to liberal organizations is automatically blamed on Fox. Conservatives, unlike many liberals I know, can often think for themselves. We do not require a cheerleader in Washington or on TV to call a cadence

I remember before the primary elections getting a piece of paper in the mail stating item by item how good Republicans were expected to vote. That was the day I registered as an independent. NO ONE tells me how to think or how to vote, and the insinuation that any effort on my part to change my country is attributable not to my common sense but to a news organization or politician is incredibly insulting.