A number of Republican party-liners are trying to whip up a hue and cry over John Kerry's mention of Dick Cheney's daughter. Carl Limbacher ludicrously calls it "Kerry's 'Lesbian'

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  Attack."

In Pennsylvania, Lynne Cheney called it "a cheap and tawdry political trick" and said Kerry "is not a good man."

If you scan over the right-wing press, they're using terms like 'outed' and 'attack' and other words like that.

They doth protest too much.

Not only is Mary Cheney not closeted, her professional life has been explicitly tied to her sexuality. She did outreach to the gay and lesbian communities when she worked at Coors.

It is a delicate issue -- since it's inherently personal and deals with one of the candidate's children. But it was brought up in the context of a question about whether homosexuality is a choice. And more to the point: what's the problem exactly unless you instinctively believe that homosexuality is something to be ashamed of?

If one of Cheney's children was, God forbid, paraplegic and Kerry referred to him or her in the context of a question about people with disabilities, would there be a problem?

I suspect not.

From what some are saying, you'd think he brought up her criminal record, her problem with shoplifting, the unspeakable problem with pills.

Now, to follow up.

Various mistatements get made in debates. Some clearly intentional; others because of poor memory or confusion. But the president gave the Democrats one helluva gift with that remark about bin Laden.

As you'll remember, it came from this exchange ...

KERRY: Yes. When the president had an opportunity to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, he took his focus off of them, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords, and Osama bin Laden escaped.

Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, "Where is Osama bin Laden?" He said, "I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned."

We need a president who stays deadly focused on the real war on terror.

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President?

BUSH: Gosh, I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations.

Now of course about a thousand wire stories have made crystal clear that the president said precisely that.

As the AP put it in a story out just after the debate ...

Kerry accurately quoted Bush as saying he does not think much about Osama bin Laden and is not all that concerned about him. The president protested: "I just don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden. It's kind of one of those exaggerations."

But in March 2002, Bush indeed said, "I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run." He described the terrorist leader as "marginalized," and said, "I just don't spend that much time on him."

It's actually worth reading the passage in its entirety. It comes from a press conference the president held on March 13th 2002, just as the build-up for the Iraq war was getting underway ...

Q But don't you believe that the threat that bin Laden posed won't truly be eliminated until he is found either dead or alive?

THE PRESIDENT: Well, as I say, we haven't heard much from him. And I wouldn't necessarily say he's at the center of any command structure. And, again, I don't know where he is. I -- I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him. I know he is on the run. I was concerned about him, when he had taken over a country. I was concerned about the fact that he was basically running Afghanistan and calling the shots for the Taliban.

But once we set out the policy and started executing the plan, he became -- we shoved him out more and more on the margins. He has no place to train his al Qaeda killers anymore. And if we -- excuse me for a minute -- and if we find a training camp, we'll take care of it. Either we will or our friends will. That's one of the things -- part of the new phase that's becoming apparent to the American people is that we're working closely with other governments to deny sanctuary, or training, or a place to hide, or a place to raise money.

And we've got more work to do. See, that's the thing the American people have got to understand, that we've only been at this six months. This is going to be a long struggle. I keep saying that; I don't know whether you all believe me or not. But time will show you that it's going to take a long time to achieve this objective. And I can assure you, I am not going to blink. And I'm not going to get tired. Because I know what is at stake. And history has called us to action, and I am going to seize this moment for the good of the world, for peace in the world and for freedom.

Not only is the quote accurate. But the broader context is

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 entirely on the mark. This wasn't some stray comment taken out of context.

Setting the narrow gotcha issue aside, though, there are three reasons why the Democrats can use this effectively against the president.

First, this isn't some insignifcant matter like whether Dick Cheney ever met John Edwards. This cuts to the essence of what the election is about: terrorism and whether the president kept his eye on the ball.

Second, the president's honesty is also a central issue. In particular, honesty about terrorism and bin Laden and Saddam. This cuts to the heart of that too: the president not leveling with the public about what's happened in the war on terror.

Third, as Kevin Drum rightly notes, this is an excuse to play that video clip again and again and again. And for the president that's not a good clip at all. In that passage, when the president says that bin Laden has become marginalized and that he's moving ahead with the war on terror, what he's talking about -- more or less explicitly -- is shifting from bin Laden to Iraq. He's describing how he took his eye off the ball. And seeing what we're now seeing in Iraq, that really says it all.

Looking back over these four debates I realize that in two of the cases my judgment was significantly different than what the consensus judgment turned out to be. In the first debate I thought Kerry put on a solid performance while the president

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  was wobbly. I thought Kerry won; but my initial impression was not that it was a rout, as the consensus judgment eventually determined. I thought the veep debate went much better for Edwards than many thought.

Having said that, I thought John Kerry won this debate. And I say that in the context of the debate itself as well as its role in the campaign now unfolding. It wasn't a trouncing. Bush did okay. But here are several reasons why I think Kerry bested the president.

Kerry looked more presidential than the president. I don't know how else to put it.

He seemed collected and forceful through the whole thing. The president, meanwhile, seemed excitable, edgy and sometimes ungrounded. Again and again with the banging the table. Perhaps after one question you can get away with a cocky look of sarcastic disbelief after your opponent stops talking. But not every other time.

At one point in the debate, after Kerry referred to two leading news organizations rejecting the president's attacks on Kerry's plan, Bush looked back at Bob Schieffer and made a crack about trusting "leading news organizations."

I don't doubt a few media bias obsessives (and probably a few CBS execs) understood that this was a dig at Scieffer's employer, CBS. But I suspect it went right over most people's heads. As well it should have. Not everyone lives in wingerville. And the president's habit of roughing people up with jocular derision doesn't work as well when the trappings of power aren't all around him.

Again, to recap, Kerry seemed more presidential than the president.

Another point struck me as similar to the first debate, very similar. Kerry controlled the tempo of the evening. He kept the president on the defensive. He landed his key points about the budget deficit and the president's avoidance of the job issue several times. On health care there was more of a tussle. But I don't think the president framed the evening in the way he and his advisors wanted -- defining Kerry as an out-of-the-mainstream liberal. He did better at that in debate number two than he did tonight.

Let me draw back now and say something about timing and the progression of the debate. I thought both candidates came out to fight. The president came in hitting hard. But Kerry stood toe-to-toe with him. And after maybe 15 or 20 minutes I thought some of the ummph went out of the president.

I watched on CSPAN, where you have the benefit of the permanent split screen. And right there at probably about the half hour mark, there were a few times when Kerry was talking and the president was looking over at him, neck slightly craned, with this odd look on his face. (My dad would probably call it a sh-t-eating grin.). And with that look of edgy hesitation the president seemed to be saying, 'You're guttin' me like a fish.'

At some level the president seemed to wobble after that. His hits about the 'global test' seemed half-hearted and poorly delivered, as did other attacks. They even struck me as a tad desperate. Sometimes he'd tack on a catch-phrase after not being able to put together an actual answer. He talked about being strong but he didn't seem strong.

A few other miscellaneous points.

The president should have used humor more. It works for him. And I mean actual humor, not the jabs at the moderator.

I thought President Bush landed some punches with his attacks on leadership as well as when he hit Kerry on spending in the abstract after Kerry was discussing so many different new programs.

On the other hand, as was the case with the veep's debate, the president just told a number of untruths. And I think that'll be used against him in the coming days. Kerry is better at thinking on his feet than using prefab lines from the debate coaches. The Tony Soprano line? ehhh ...

As for the broader context of the race. If you look at the polls right now they are about as close to an absolute tie as they could possibly be. Even a standard margin of error should -- or one might expect would -- have created a little more of a spread in the numbers. But if these guys go into election day dead even in the mid- or high 40s, that's not good at all for the president. And there does seem to be some very slight poll momentum moving in Kerry's direction. As was the case with the first debate I think the key to tonight's performance was that the public saw a very different John Kerry than the president, his vice president and their surrogates are portraying on the hustings.

The president needed to land some punches tonight. I don't think he did. I think a tie would be a narrow win for Kerry, given the broader dynamics of the race. And I don't think it was a tie.

One more time, same drill: comments to follow shortly.

You'll notice that we've been referring to Voters Outreach of America as GOP-backed or GOP-funded. We're not using the phrase loosely. You'll note that on this VOA job flyer posted on careerbuilder.com it says "Paid for by the Republican National Committee. www.gop.com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee."

Nathan Sproul, it seems, is also a regional president of Voyager Expanded Learning Company, a company chock-full of Bush cronies currently supping at the No Child Left Behind act gravy-train. Also at Voyager is Jim Nelson, President Bush's education commissioner during his tenure in Texas. That was before the president appointed him as deputy education czar in Baghdad for a brief stint in 2003. This thread at Kos seems to provide a complete Sproularama.

Nevada state records on Voters Outreach of America, Inc.

Fascinating. Employees of Voters Outreach of America, a GOP-funded voter registration outfit operating in Nevada, say they personally witnessed company employees shredding

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  hundreds or even thousands of Democratic registrations. Now the same company (VOA) is being accused of destroying Democratic registration forms in Oregon.

The head of VOA is Nathan Sproul, a Republican political consultant who used to be the executive director of the Arizona state Republican party.

In gaining access to venues to register voters, he has apparently been claiming that his group is part of America Votes, a voter education and registration groups put together by a consortium of Democrat-leaning groups like the AFL-CIO, Emily's List, the Sierra Club and others.

A quick scan of Nexis shows Sproul's outfit is also operating in West Virginia (see Charleston Gazette, August 20th), where they've already raised some controversy for misleading tactics if not destroying legally valid registrations.

The guy who's got the best handle on the Bush campaign's strategy in the final stretch is the author of the NewDonkey website. It's back to the future, straight outta the 1980s,

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  'liberal, liberal, liberal!'

Before the afternoon slips away, I'm hoping to do a few posts about tonight's debate. But given that new strategy, the Kerry camp would do well to mine this end-of-August piece from the National Journal. You'll remember that the Bush campaign has been endlessly harping on the claim that the Journal judged Kerry the most liberal member of the Senate.

In this piece the Journal itself says in so many words that the stat is bogus and that the Republicans' use of it has been "sometimes misleading -- or just plain wrong."

As the Bush campaign's reputation for lying goes, it's not all that bad. But it's still worth noting.

Bush abandoning Pennsylvania? Pulling up stakes?

I've already gotten a number

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 of emails, as I expected, about the Newsmax ad for Ann Coulter's new book down there to the left. It's not a mistake. The site hasn't been hacked. A year ago, when I started accepting ads I gave much thought to the policy I would maintain for them. And I decided, for many reasons, that I would not reject ads based on political content. (I restated the policy a few days ago in this post and discussed limits of taste and appropriateness that I do apply.) Distinguishing issues of taste and appropriateness from mere political disagreement is not always easy, especially when the opinions expressed are as hateful, ugly and -- more than either of those two -- just ridiculous as Coulter's are. But this is my policy. It is consistent with my understanding of what this site is and why it accepts paid advertising. And I'm sticking with it. Your comments are of course welcome.

Their own private Florida. News from the CBS affiliate in Las Vegas ...

Employees of a private voter registration company allege that hundreds, perhaps thousands of voters who may think they are registered will be rudely surprised on election day. The company claims hundreds of registration forms were thrown in the trash.

Anyone who has recently registered or re-registered to vote outside a mall or grocery store or even government building may be affected.

The I-Team has obtained information about an alleged widespread pattern of potential registration fraud aimed at democrats. Thee focus of the story is a private registration company called Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes.

The out-of-state firm has been in Las Vegas for the past few months, registering voters. It employed up to 300 part-time workers and collected hundreds of registrations per day, but former employees of the company say that Voters Outreach of America only wanted Republican registrations.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

And here's a careerbuilder.com listing for the same company looking for door-to-door canvassers. Paid for by the GOP. And here it seems that the same outfit was doing work for Nader in Arizona.

Do you live in a Sinclair media market? (Check here to find out.)

If so, watch tonight's evening newscast and write down a list of the advertisers (especially the local ones) who have commercials running during the broadcast.

Write up a list, as brief, clear and concise as possible, including the names of the advertisers and the time and date of the program you watched them on. Of course, include the name of the affiliate and the city too. Then send them in to us. Make the Subject heading "ADVERTS."

In the last few hours many readers have written in to say that they've called various Sinclair affiliates either to be referred to Sinclair corporate headquarters, shunted into voicemail, or hung up on.

Some affiliates have refused to identify

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  the given station's sales manager.

Now, this site might be of help for identifying who's who at various stations. But let's be very clear: contacting a given affiliate's sales manager and telling them of your displeasure is very much of secondary importance.

Local Sinclair reps are suggesting that callers call their corporate HQ. But, believe me, don't waste your time.

The key is to identify their local advertisers and contact them. You can find information out here or, if you're in a Sinclair market, just watch the evening news show and mark down who the advertisers are. Then contact them directly -- and if possible, place a call. Or better yet, send an old-fashioned paper letter. Actually, scratch that, do both.

For good measure, it's great to tell the sales manager what you're doing. But if your message to the advertiser is successful they'll be taking the matter up with the sales manager directly. And he or she will definitely be taking their call.

A reader from the WSTR media market sends in the following ...

Just talked to Eric Lazar, sales manager at WSTR, who said he'd heard from only one or two other people regarding Sinclair's decision to broadcast the program. He was very courteous, but suggested I contact the corporate office before I began calling advertisers culled from tonight's 10 p.m. news broadcast. He suggested I start with William Butler, vice president of programming and promotions.

I just put in a second call to Lazar. The reader is correct: Lazar was quite courteous. I asked if he would confirm that LaRosa's and King's Automall were WSTR advertisers. He politely declined to discuss who their advertisers are and referred me on to corporate headquarters. But with respect to Mr. Lazar, calling corporate headquarters is exactly what Sinclair would like you to do. And calling their local advertisers -- where most of their revenue comes from -- is the last thing they want you doing.

A brief follow-up on contacting advertisers. I'm already getting reports from the field that many Sinclair advertisers are starting to communicate their concern to Sinclair. If you don't live anywhere near a Sinclair station then by all means make your concerns known to their national advertisers. But from knowledgable folks I talk to, I get the strong impression that the real point of vulnerability are the local advertisers. So if you live in or really anywhere near a Sinclair market that's definitely where to focus.

Just a note on how this can work.

The Sinclair boycott website lists two advertisers on WSTR, the Sinclair station in Cincinnati, Ohio. I know some folks haven't been able to access

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  the site, but the two listed are King's Automall and LaRosa's, a pizzeria chain.

I called WSTR and the sales manager wasn't available. The woman I spoke to could not confirm that King's Automall and LaRosa's were advertising at this moment. But she did say that they were regular advertisers on the station.

I then called LaRosa's and King's Automall to ask if they were indeed presently advertising on WSTR. In both cases I was told the person in question was at lunch. So I wasn't able to get confirmation from the advertisers.

But you can see how this is done. As the reader earlier today noted, the key is to talk to the sales manager. Tell that person of your concerns and that you'll be contacting the advertisers individually to do the same.

Specificity is key.

And one other point about tactics and decency, which overlap in this case. Please don't be rude or hostile. Be firm. Make clear that you're serious. And make your feelings known. But remember that the advertiser in question probably didn't know anything about this until today or maybe yesterday. And the person you'll actually be talking to at the station, and even more so with the advertiser, is as likely as not to be a Kerry supporter. What Sinclair is doing is egregious. But if you start making calls you'll be talking to a lot of folks who don't even know what's going on with all this and certainly aren't directly responsible for it.

Finally, and again, there are good instructions for how to approach this in the reader letter posted here this morning. And here's the list of Sinclair's local stations.

Anti-Defamation League condemns Sinclair's Mark Hyman over holocaust comments.

A reader gets results...

As suggested in a post you have further down, I just called the Cincinatti station's sales mgr. He was really concerned when I read him a list of local adverstisers and said I'd be calling their advertising managers to express my displeasure that they choose to advertise on a Sinclair station. He practically begged me not to, saying "this involves people's livelihoods." And then I did call the local advertisers.

So you are correct. Local stations -- SALES MANAGERS and local advertisers AD MANAGERS are the pressure point.

Please do what you can to get the word out.

You heard the guy ...

The verbatim quote from Sinclair's Mark Hyman, from this morning on CNN ...

However, the accusations coming from Terry McAuliffe and others, is it because they are some elements of this that may reflect poorly on John Kerry? That it's somehow an in-kind contribution of George Bush?

If you use that logic and reasoning, that means every car bomb in Iraq would be an in-kind contribution to John Kerry. Weak job performance ratings that came out last month would have been an in- kind contribution to John Kerry. And that's just nonsense.

This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.

Reporting unemployment statistics is the same as running free commercials from rabid partisans. See where we're going with this?

Pigs ...

From Reed Hundt, Former Chair, FCC ...

Dear Josh:

Why is it important that Sinclair Broadcasting be urged in all lawful ways that can be imagined to reconsider its decision to broadcast on its television stations the anti-Kerry "documentary"?

Because in a large, pluralistic information society democracy will not work unless electronic media distribute reasonably accurate information and also competing opinions about political candidates to the entire population. Certainly, for the overwhelming number of voters this year, controlling impressions of the candidates for President are obtained from television.

In all countries, candidates for public office governments aspire to have favorable information and a chorus of favorable opinion disseminated through mass media to the citizenry. In a democracy, on the eve of a quadrennial election, the incumbent government plainly has a motive to encourage the media to report positively on its record but also negatively on the rival. But its role instead is to make sure that broadcast television promote democracy by conveying reasonably accurate reflections of where the candidates stand and what they are like.

To that end, since television was invented, Congress and its delegated agency, the Federal Communications Commision, together have passed laws and regulations to ensure that broadcast television stations provide reasonably accurate, balanced, and fair coverage of major Presidential and Congressional candidates. These obligations are reflected in specific provisions relating to rights to buy advertising time, bans against the gift of advertising time, rights to reply to opponents, and various other specific means of accomplishing the goal of balance and fairness. The various rules are part of a tradition well known to broadcasters an honored by almost all of them. This tradition is embodied in the commitment of the broadcasters to show the conventions and the debates.

Part of this tradition is that broadcasters do not show propaganda for any candidate, no matter how much a station owner may personally favor one or dislike the other. Broadcasters understand that they have a special and conditional role in public discourse. They received their licenses from the public -- licenses to use airwaves that, for instance, cellular companies bought in auctions -- for free, and one condition is the obligation to help us hold a fair and free election. The Supreme Court has routinely upheld this "public interest" obligation. Virtually all broadcasters understand and honor it.

Sinclair has a different idea, and a wrong one in my view. If Sinclair wants to disseminate propaganda, it should buy a printing press, or create a web site. These other media have no conditions on their publication of points of view. This is the law, and it should be honored. In fact, if the FCC had any sense of its responsibility as a steward of fair elections its chairman now would express exactly what I am writing to you here.

-- Reed Hundt

Speaks for itself ...

From a reader ...

I’ve worked in the media business for 30 years and I guarantee you that sales is what these local TV stations are all about. They don’t care about license renewal or overwhelming public outrage. They care about sales only, so only local advertisers can affect their decisions.

Here's how to have an impact on the local Sinclair stations: first, watch the station and make a list of all of the local advertisers. Then, write to the sales manager -- not the general manager, but the sales manager -- and tell him that you're going to contact all of the local advertisers to register a protest about the station airing this program. Be specific -- mention the names of those local advertisers. Then, actually contact them (if you write or email, cc the sales manager). These stations make most of their income (around 60%) from local advertisers and will NOT want to have that income threatened.

This has worked numerous times. A recent example was when a local radio morning show host in North Carolina told his listeners to aim for bicyclists on the road (he was ranting about how cyclists have no right to share the roadways). The station defended him for several days amidst public outcry, until the advertisers, under pressure from outraged cyclists, began to make noise. Suddenly, the station reversed itself, suspended the host for several days, and made him do public service announcements for weeks about sharing the road with cyclists.

This can work! I plan to start tonight!

Sounds right to me.

Schadenfreude on the prairie ...

So many Republican bark lines really do come down to simple projection. John Thune and the South Dakota GOP have now spent two elections trying to get him back into office with trumped up charges of voter fraud -- largely aimed at the state's Native American population.

Last night six employees and affiliates of the state Republican party had to resign over their own burgeoning ballot fraud scandal.

Meanwhile, if you needed more evidence of what sort of sick trash we're dealing with here, according to a poster on DailyKos, Sinclair vice president Mark Hyman just said on CNN that Kerry and the Democrats are like "holocaust deniers" and that if the Sinclair stunt is an "in-kind donation to George Bush" then "every suicide bomb that goes off in Iraq is an in-kind donation to John Kerry."

Presumably this was just down from on-air within the last hour. So I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the quotes. But a quite look at this morning's Post shows that yesterday Hyman said "the networks are acting like Holocaust deniers" for not showing the POWs' story. So I think there's every reason to believe that the quotes are accurate.

Many readers have written in to say that the link below to a database of Sinclair advertisers does not work. I'm not sure why or what to suggest. It opens up fine for me and at least some other readers. All I can figure is that perhaps it's a brand new domain (URL) and it hasn't propagated fully yet. So keep trying and if anyone has another site or address for the same info, send it along and I'll post it.

Zogby has the race back to a tie at 45%. CBS has a new poll out with Bush up by three -- 48% to 45%. (CBS has a one point Bush lead if Nader isn't included, which shows you the impact of the fools who are planning to vote for Nader.) Gallup has Kerry up by one, 49% to 48%.

A database of Sinclair Broadcasting Group advertisers, organized by market.

The buck stops with the Joint Staff ...

KERRY: He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.

Ladies and gentleman, he gave you a speech and told you he'd plan carefully, take every precaution, take our allies with us. He didn't. He broke his word.

GIBSON: Mr. President?

BUSH: I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying, "Do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes?"

I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort, looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground, asking them, "Do we have the right plan with the right troop level?"

And they looked me in the eye and said, "Yes, sir, Mr. President." Of course, I listen to our generals. That's what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

From Friday night's debate.

A suggestion from a reader ...

A stockholder in Sinclair Broadcast Group can file what's called a "shareholder's derivative action" against the officers and directors of the corporation, which is publically traded, to enjoin the officers and directors from using corporate resources in ways that do not benefit the shareholders. I believe Sinclair is incorporated in Maryland, and if so that's probably where the action should be brought. One stockholder has standing to sue and should request a temporary restraining order before the pseudo-documentary airs to prevent the officers and directors from misusing corporate property to benefit their political agenda. The reason it is misuse of corporate property is because ordering the local stations to air the anti-Kerry propoganda will likely cause a loss of network advertising revenue, may in fact violate the stations' contracts with the networks they are affiliated with, and is almost sure to embroil the corporation in costly legal battles, for example from entities complaining that this is an illegal corporate campaign contribution, or from angry consumers who will contest the stations' license renewals. Against this, there has to be some plausible benefit to the stockholders or the corporate action is unlawful and could subject the officers and directors to personal liability for any damage to the stockholders. They also could be stuck with the legal fees of both the corporation and the stockholders who sued them.

Shareholders derivative actions are fairly complex; we need a Maryland corporate lawyer type. I'm a lawyer in Texas and was thinking to file the suit here but under Texas law, the acts of the officers and directors are governed by the corporate law of the state of incorporation, about which I know little. However, I do know that as a general principle, corporate officials have a fiduciary obligation to the stockholders, and everything they do is supposed to be for the benefit of the same. Normally a court won't second-guess the decisions unless the stockholder can show that there is no plausible benefit to the corporation in the complained-of act. What could the benefit be here?

I'd be curious to hear reactions from readers with relevant legal or business experience how practicable this would be. Of course, I'm curious about everyone's reactions. But in this case I'm particularly interested in hearing with folks with professional insight into how this might work. Of course, the most direct approach -- and I suspect a successful one if done correctly -- is to target Sinclair's advertisers. Another reader writes in the following ...

[I've removed the introduction to this letter where the reader describes a local TV market where he works. Suffice it to say that he works in local TV and says he has friends who work at some of the Sinclair affiliates in question.]

Let me tell you, they're NOT afraid in the least of the license challenges that Steve Soto has proposed. I mean, what's the point? If they air it, then fine, challenge away, I'm all for taking revenge on them. But the goal should be to shut down the broadcast before it happens.

What they're deathly afraid of is the stink of this thing will somehow waft over to their advertisers. That's of course why they're not selling local ad time for this show. Having worked in the ad department of Sinclair's competitor, I know that local Sinclair stations make over 60% of their ad revenue from their nightly 6pm newscast. That's their bread and butter. You make a concerted effort to go after their top advertisers on the 5pm/6pm news hour and you'll have the executives spiking this show so fast it'll be amazing.

Again, I have no basis for judging what would work best, though common sense suggests that going after these guys on every front simultaneously would probably be the best bet.

As we move into the rough and tumble of the final month of this campaign, let me take a brief moment to restate the TPM ad policy first discussed here just under a

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  year ago.

(If you'd rather read about US politics rather than this site's ad policy -- which I'd entirely understand -- by all means scroll down to the next post.)

I've gotten many questions about this via email. So let me try to address them again in one fell swoop.

The ads that run on this site represent a commercial transaction. There is no implied endorsement whatsoever.

Recently, there was one ad running on this site that was pro-Nader; another that was anti-Nader. People wrote in complaining about the pro-Nader ad; others were miffed by the anti-Nader ad. And when they were both running at the same time there were several complaints from folks claiming it was hypocritical to run both of them since I could not support the messages contained in each.

Anybody who's read this site for any length of time knows there aren't many people who have a dimmer view of Ralph Nader these days than I do. But, again, the ad space is open to all political views -- left, right and center.

That doesn't mean that everything is allowed. I reserve the right to reject ads that I find inappropriate for reasons of content or taste. And I would reject ads that I thought were unambiguously spreading falsehoods. But in each case my effort would be to lean in the direction of inclusion. And I would do my best to make the judgment with as little coloration as possible by my political views.

(I have, for instance, rejected a number of ads over the last year. Some of those were simply cases of content that censors wouldn't let you put on TV -- four letter words, sexual content, etc. Most though were ads that attacked the president in ways I found tasteless, needlessly degrading or just disrespectful.)

I think this is a sound policy, both practically and in principle. And I don't plan on changing it. But I welcome your views and suggestions.

Too generous ...

I had been thinking about a post that would put in stark terms what is going on with this Sinclair Broadcasting stunt, noting how it amounts to a massive in-kind contribution from Sinclair to the Bush-Cheney campaign to pay for the

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  broadcast of an hourlong Swift Boat ad ("Stolen Honor") smack down in the middle of primetime broadcasting on local network television channels across the country. After all, it's the same basic material and it even includes several of the same aggrieved veterans.

But like I said, too generous. It isn't like a Swift Boat ad. It actually is a Swift Boat ad.

A perspicacious TPM reader (JJG) notes that a September 29th press release on the 'Stolen Honor' website announced that 'POWs for Truth', the sponsor of the 'documentary', was merging with 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' to form the new consolidated group 'Swift Vets and POWs For Truth.'

If it weren't so disgusting, it would almost be funny.

So the Swift Boat folks are hawking a 'documentary' put together by a guy who has specialized for the last fifteen years or so in made-to-order investigations for various right-wing outfits like Rev. Moon. Sinclair orders their 62 network affiliates to run the thing in prime time days before the election. And they give the Swift Boat folks the ad time for free on the premise that they're running it as news programming.

Unlike cable programming, local broadcast licenses aren't 'owned' -- courts have always been clear on this. The right to broadcast over a given slice of spectrum is public property on loan to the broadcaster in exchange for providing programming in the public interest. This move is but a paler version of the de-democratization we're now seeing in Russia as the standing government asserts increasing control over a nominally independent media.

It's not a 'fairness' or a free speech issue. It's a massive and quite public case of election and campaign finance fraud.

It's the sort of thing that, if it happens, will put the legitimacy of the entire election into doubt.

Welcome to the world of Rove.

Yesterday former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt sent the following message to executives at Sinclair Broadcasting Group ...

Dear sirs:

I'm told you were involved in a decision to order Sinclair stations to carry anti-Kerry propaganda. If my information is false, please forgive this intrusion. While I do not believe you should be required to carry pro-Kerry content, except of course for an even-handed sale of your advertising time to both campaigns, I do wish to register my objection and concern if in fact you have obliged your stations to carry anti-Kerry propaganda.

I assure you that if you were carrying anti-Bush propaganda I would be equally concerned.

The problem is this: How can it be part of a broadcaster's public interest obligation to aspire to alter the perceptions of the audience about a presidential candidate by showing biased content that in no way reflects either breaking news or even-handed treatment of the issues? Why should a broadcaster keep its licenses if it behaves in this manner? I hope you will reconsider your edict -- unless, of course, I am misinformed, in which case I do hope you forgive this message.

-- Reed Hundt

He hits on the key point: the stations' licenses. And here are some good ideas about how to proceed.

The Times today has a piece on the anti-Kerry documentary Sinclair Broadcasting

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  Group has ordered its 62 local stations to broadcast in the days before the election. Those 62 stations include affiliates of all six major broadcast networks in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada and Pennsylvania. The broadcast will preempt normal prime-time programming on those channels.

In case you are holding out some errant hope about the accuracy or fairness of the presentation, you'll be happy to know that the major claim-to-fame of the movie's producer, Carlton Sherwood, is Inquisition, his 1991 expose on the US government's alleged 'persecution' of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Sherwood's report was so 'independent' that he let Moon's representatives pre-screen it and make changes to the text. They also reportedly agreed to buy 100,000 copies of the book for good measure.

Welcome to the world of Rove.

Amazing. Just as the Department of Health and Human Services did last year with the White House's Medicare reform bill, it seems the Department of Education has been sending out faux 'news'

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  videos to local TV stations promoting the No Child Left Behind bill.

(They even use the same faux reporter -- 'Karen Ryan' -- as appeared in the earlier HHS videos.)

What really popped out at me in this new AP story, however, was this: The company that the Department of Education hired to produce the 'news' videos was also hired to analyze and rank news coverage of the law in order to gauge the success of their PR campaign.

One might say that this was a reasonable use of public money if the coverage were being judged on the basis of how effectively it informed the public about benefits they could receive under the law, and stuff like that. But according to the AP story, in the rankings paid for by the Department, "points are awarded for stories that say President Bush and the Republican Party are strong on education."

What's the public interest in that exactly? That's campaign work, paid for by tax dollars.