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When Junk Interrupts Junk

Once in a while, mass media outlets give a fair hearing to radical ideas that make sense. But those ideas have little chance to take hold -- mainly because followup is scant. Instead of bouncing around the national media echo chamber, the offending concept falls like a tossed rock.

That's what happened a few weeks ago when Parade magazine featured an essay directly challenging the nation's TV commercials.

"With the advent of television, the nature of concentration was altered," Norman Mailer wrote in the magazine's Jan. 23 edition. "Yet children could still develop such powers by watching TV. Video and books had a common denominator then -- narrative." But television did not long retain the continuity of "uninterrupted narratives." Before long, for viewers, "there were constant interruptions to programs -- the commercials."

Year after year, the situation has worsened. "On the major networks, the amount of time given to commercials and other promotional messages increased by 36 percent from 1991 to 2003," Mailer noted. "Each of the four major networks now offers 52 minutes of commercials in the three hours from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. every day."

Libertarians To Testify in Ohio House: Modernize Ohio's Election Laws

"The Libertarian Party is on the ballot in Russia, Afganistan, and Iraq, but not in Ohio," notes LPO Executive Director Robert Butler. "We had a veteran and a hero from the current war in Iraq who wanted to run as a Libertarian last year, but I had to explain to him why that wasn't possible."

The Libertarian Party of Ohio is asking the Ohio House of Representatives to modernize the state's ballot access laws.

Robert Butler, 31, Executive Director of the Libertarian Party of Ohio will testify on Wednesday March 2nd before the Ohio House Election and Ethics Committee.

"Our state's current ballot access laws were created during the Red Scare of the early 20th century," adds State Chair Jason Hallmark, "They do not reflect the ideals of open democracy, the foundation of our great country."

"We are only asking that Ohio modernize its laws, just as all of our neighboring states have recently done," explains Butler, "Ohio has been ranked 49th by OSU Political Science Professor Paul Allen Beck for its restrictive regulation of political parties. We want that to change."

An American Jew laments decline in Jewish influence; Roe v Wade: Nixon's ultimate dirty trick?

Across the world, the Jewish lobby in America is accorded extraordinary power, almost to the mythic levels of guileful effectiveness once attributed to the British Secret Service. And in truth, MI6, as the Secret Service was also known, never approached the Jewish lobby in overall clout. But these days, if you read analyses by American Jews of where their power is headed, the tone is often dour and the forecast grim. They say, in the words of the American anti-Arab fanatic Daniel Pipes, "the golden age of the Jews" in America has passed its zenith.

This may seem strange when there is universal recognition that George Bush may well be the most pro-Israel president in the nation's history, when the role of the so-called "neocons," usually shorthand for the more fanatical supporters of Israel in American public life, is identified as crucial in pushing for the war on Iraq and now on Iran, when pro-Israel votes in the U.S. Congress sweep through by margins of over 90 percent.

Bankruptcy Bill: A gift to big bankers and credit card companies

AUSTIN, Texas -- Gross! How to take a horrible bill and make it genuinely loathsome. Look at this -- look at what they are doing with this bankruptcy bill.

The bankruptcy bill was a gift to big bankers and credit card companies to begin with, in return for copious showers of campaign contributions to our very own elected representatives in Congress. Same old, same old.

The big lenders, the kind who can legally jack up your interest rates at any time for any reason (read that fine print, folks), have a problem. More and more Americans are going broke. So they declare bankruptcy under Chapter 7, which wipes out their credit for 10 years, but gives them a chance to start over without debt. So, naturally, the banks want to make it harder to declare bankruptcy by forcing people to file under Chapter 13, only a partial diminution of debt.

Snow

The New Voting Rights Movement Begins Here Today

As continuing investigations into the 2004 presidential election reveal yet more flaws in the nation’s election machinery, the call for meaningful election reform is growing across the country and in Washington, where members of Congress who opposed Ohio’s 2004 Electoral College vote have proposed sweeping reforms. It remains to be seen if a growing coalition of civil rights activists, election reformers and others can create a clamor for change that cannot be ignored – even by the Republican-dominated Congress.

International Women's Day: Honoring the Lives of Women in Perilous Times

On March 8 women in all corners of the world will join together to observe International Women's Day (IWD). A national holiday in some countries, IWD has become a day to celebrate women's achievements and to focus on the many problems that women face today. Indeed, the pandemic of threats to the welfare and livelihood of women in today's world is truly horrific.

Intimate Violence

They're at it again

AUSTIN, Texas -- I'm sorry, but every now and again a girl just finds it necessary to lay her head down on the table and howl with laughter. I wrote a column warning that USA Next, a Republican Astroturf (meaning "fake grass-roots") group was going to attack the AARP. The senior citizens' lobby does not support the privatization of Social Security, and so clearly incurs the wrath of all God-fearing, true-believing, highly paid Republican public relations firms. But I have to confess, even I did not see this one coming.

You may not believe it, but I swear it is true: USA Next's first salvo was to accuse the geezer lobby of being against our troops in Iraq and in favor of homosexual marriage.

No joke, what journalist-blogger Josh Marshall calls "the fogey-bund" stands accused of being anti-soldier and pro-gay-knot-tying. A charming Internet ad shows a muscular hero of the desert in combat fatigues with a big X across his picture, and on the other side are two guys in tuxedos getting hitched with a big check across their picture. Under these two pictures, it says, "The REAL AARP Agenda."

Teaching

The Mighty Texas Strike Force

On the night of November 1, 2004, Jim Branscome said, he overheard a man, a guest in the Holiday Inn where Mr. Branscome worked in Columbus, Ohio, tell someone over the pay phone in the hotel lobby:

"'Look, I know you got out of prison about'...X amount of months ago...I can't remember how many months he gave, but it was earlier this year, the year 2004, and he said, 'It's illegal for you to vote in this state, and if you show up tomorrow at the polls, we're going to have the FBI there waiting for you, and we're going to haul your ass right back into the slammer' he told him or into the 'can' or something like that."
-- From a videotaped interview with Robert Fitrakis and Linda Byrket.

Mr. Branscome said that the man appeared to be making calls from a list of names and phone numbers. Outraged at what he had heard, Mr. Branscome said, he approached the man, but the man got on the elevator and fled to the sixth floor where he had a room. Mr. Branscome followed him to the sixth floor, but the man returned to the lobby immediately, with Mr. Branscome following him down and out of the

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