* The Bush administration - how do they get away with it? Media seems to be the usual outgrowth of political prosthetics. Norman Solomon at FAIR.org brings an interesting analysis (FAIR.org Media Beat 17/4 - Media and the Politics of Empathy) shedding light on this question:

"Congress cannot stop him. That's not what the Constitution says, and it's not what the War Powers Act says, but that's how it works in practice."

Mostly, it works that way in practice because countless journalists-- whether they're flag-wavers at Fox News or liberal sophisticates at NPR News-- keep letting authorities define the bounds of appropriate empathy and moral concern. I know of very few mainstream American journalists who have pointed out that President Bush has the blood of many Iraqi children on his hands after launching an aggressive war in violation of the U.N. Charter and the Nuremberg principles established more than half a century ago."

The Nation also concludes that the media continues to fail:

"Deficits are exploding, unemployment remains high, the stock market is still in the tank and interest rates are poised to take off. The country is headed to hell in a handbasket from so many directions one can barely keep track. And yet the increasingly Foxified media tell a story only of heroism: of the US military, of the American people and of the President of the United States, who has so far managed to avoid service to either one."