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				 Planting phony stories 
 
			
			Greg wrote:Or maybe red white & blue would be more appropriate, since our founding
 fathers were so adamant about keeping a free press in our new democracy that
 they incorporated its protection in the very First Amendment.
 
 Let's treat it the same as we treat that other thing protected even
 before free press in the First Amendment (religion). You can have a
 free press, but your press people can't do their thing on public
 property or in schools, and they can't offer the paper for sale in
 public, it has to be sought out quietly by those who want it.
 
 The irony here is that you would criticize those newspapers for telling the
 truth.
 
 No, when the NYT or LAT tells the truth, all you'll see out of us is
 amazed silence. We criticize them for telling lies and for passing
 opinion as fact.
 
 In this case the truth is that the Bush administration, while
 bragging about the "free and independent" news sources springing up in Iraq,
 seeks to control what those sources report.
 
 Control? No. Persuade them to print some good stuff about us? Sure, in
 the ages-old way of persuasion in the middle east; we crease their
 palms with silver.
 
 A free press has always been
 anathema to the Bush administration because of all the administration's
 devious pursuits and corrupt practices that don't hold up well to public
 scrutiny.
 
 The truly free press, which has originated with the Internet and other
 available forms of mass communication not controlled by traditional
 media, has been the best thing for Bush and the conservative movement
 in general since the founding fathers created the Constitution. It's
 really anathema to liberal lies. And that ****es you off, doesn't it?
 
 --
 If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
 my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.
 
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