Tim Russert: May 7, 1950 – June 13, 2008

Mr. Russert has died of an apparent heart attack in NBC’s Washington Bureau according to NBC News. He was 58 years old. Mr. Russert was NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief and had been the moderator of Meet The Press since 1991. He had received 48 honorary doctorates and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by TIME magazine in their most recent list. He was a New York Times Best-Selling Author for books such as his tribute to his father Big Russ and Me. He was a very familiar face to anyone who watched NBC Nightly News, MSNBC’s election coverage, Hardball, Countdown, and of course Meet The Press. He is survived by his father ‘Big Russ’, wife Maureen Orth and his son Luke Russert.

A part of why the timing is so tragic is that Russert was palpably excited by this landmark election and you could see that he was overjoyed that he was covering what could be the election of the first Black President of the United States.

His final episode of Meet The Press featured Mr. Russert and a panel of NBC News’ political reporters examining why Hillary suspended her campaign, whether or not the Clintons underestimated Obama, whether or not Bill Clinton can help Obama, a dissection of the Obama-McCain electoral map, and a look back at Robert Kennedy.

Rest In Peace Tim.

Slander Sense Is Tingling

Floyd Brown, the man behind such slander as the infamous Willy Horton ads is back and as immoral as ever. This time he’s turning his attacks, on Barack Obama. The race-baiter extraordinaire drew upon racism in this ad just as he did in the Willy Horton ads in the 1980s. The ad repeats the false claim that Barack Obama was a Muslim as a child(which he wasn’t.) It then says that it doesn’t matter if he was a Muslim then(which again he wasn’t) what matters is if he is one now(which he’s not.)

Every Republican should denounce this racist and xenophobic ad for the trash that it is. However, the majority won’t. A few with a conscience may, but most won’t. Most will simply say that this is politics as usual and say that the use of racism, xenophobia, and slander in a political campaign is perfectly acceptable. It has been but that doesn’t mean it should be. We’re Americans, we should be better than this. We should run campaigns where all involved take the high road and deal solely in the facts rather than make up lies which they can use to scare the ignorant. He and every involved on this ad or the Willy Horton ad(including Roger Ailes) should be ashamed of themselves.

Anyone who had morals or a conscience would be outraged, but clearly Brown doesn’t have that burden. McCain also apparently doesn’t as he has resigned himself to silence on the misconduct of his party and its attack dogs.

Okay, So I Was Wrong About McCain

In the article directly below this one I stated that “Both candidates also hold the correct position on the issue and favor the closing of Guantanamo Bay.” and I thought this was true as John McCain has said that he favors the closing of Gitmo:

However, that apparently doesn’t mean that he believes the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay has been unconstitutional. As he says in the first video, he doesn’t believe that detainees deserve the right to fair trial(despite the Constitution saying all within the US’s jurisdiction do) and today Senator McCain sharply criticized the Supreme Court for their defense of Habeas Corpus:

“These are unlawful combatants, they are not American citizens and I think we should pay attention to Justice Roberts’ opinion in this decision, but it is a decision that the Supreme Court has made. Now we need to move forward. As you know I always favored closing Guantanamo Bay and I still think we ought to do that.”

So, it appears that McCain holds the wrong stance on the issue in that he supports violating the Constitution in order for expediency but is right in that he supports closing Guantanamo Bay(though it’s strange that he wants to close it since apparently he doesn’t think they’re doing anything wrong there.)