"Which master do these analysts serve?" That is the question Democrat Ike Skelton (MO-4) asked in a recent House floor speech. He, of course, was referring to last weekend's New York Times revelation that retired military analysts were acting as media surrogates for the Pentagon in a deliberate and coordinated effort to sell the Iraq war to the American people. Some of these "analysts" were even employed by defense contractors and were profiting from the war as they made these appearances. Not exactly the impartial observers they were portrayed to be by their hosts.

But the same question could just as easily be asked of Skelton. Which master does he serve?

Hardly a word was spoken this morning about Rev. John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain on Meet The Press. I thought there might at least have been some discussion given they had an hour-long political round table and host Tim Russert was the one who made a big deal out of Louis Farrakhan endorsing Barack Obama during last week's Ohio debate.

But this bit from Republican strategist Mike Murphy was the beginning, middle and end of that topic:

MR. MURPHY:  Look, the McCain campaign's got to, in my view, anyway, from the outside, understand that the primary's over. They don't need to be campaigning with televangelists in San Antonio. They need to pivot to the general election in a way, in a way, with all due respect to the good reverend, and I will say, as a Catholic boy who's spent a lot of time with John McCain, there's not an anti-Catholic atom in, in John McCain.  He loves my people.

This is probably not going to be the most popular diary of the day, and perhaps someone has already made this observation, but if we're going to blame Bush and Company for their tax-cutting, shrink-government-down-so-it fits-in-a-bathtub policies then what are we to make of the Silver Bridge Collapse?

On December 15,1967 at approximately 5 p.m., the U.S. Highway 35 bridge connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia and Kanauga, Ohio suddenly collapsed into the Ohio River. At the time of failure, thirty- seven vehicles were crossing the bridge span, and thirty-one of those automobiles fell with the bridge. Forty- six individuals perished with the buckling of the bridge and nine were seriously injured. Along with the numerous fatalities and injuries, a major transportation route connecting West Virginia and Ohio was destroyed, disrupting the lives of many and striking fear across the nation.

I was very disappointed in Lara Logan's report tonight on the CBS News. (Sorry, couldn't find a separate video clip of her segment). It's entirely understandable how emotions might get the best of an otherwise exceptional war correspondent covering a suicide bombing such as the one in Baghdad today. But to speculate that al Qaeda was behind the bombing when no one has claimed responsibility, and then to use none other than Ahmed Chalabi as a source to support that speculation is reprehensible.

The day of the ribbon cutting ceremony finally came. I was dreading it but mothers can be very persuasive and mine is no different. This day was important to her. She wanted me to come share in the glory of what her "church family" had built.

I pulled into the pristine parking lot -- the curbs and blacktop still clean and smooth from lack of use. Parts of the grounds had no sod yet but the building it surrounded was a massive wall of masonry with a towering stainless steel crucifix that divided the building in half as it reached into the mid-western sky.

A surprisingly small crowd had congregated in front of the main entrance where a pink ribbon stretched between the two brick pillars leading to the "worship center." (Apparently it's no longer called a chapel. I later understood why).

There has been so much ink spilled on Iraq, so many blog posts, so much opinion and analysis that sometimes we lose sight of what's most important. Leave it to a ten year old boy to set us straight.

This letter was given to me this Easter morning by his grandmother. I found it poignant and thought I'd share.

Why does James Inhofe (R-OK) take such a strong position against the science of global warming? Why does he seem to go out of his way to create doubt about this particular issue, and no other? Why does he dismiss the large consensus and data that shows a crisis is at hand?

As always it’s instructive to follow the money. So I headed over to opensecrets.org and here's what I found...

While I was waiting for the groomers to finish up clipping my dog I struck up a conversation with the lady behind the counter. As is often the case when you need to kill a few minutes the weather is often a good subject for small talk. It's been so unusually hot and dry here that regret over not getting the badly-needed rain that was predicted last night was where we began. From there we moved on to how mild the winters have been and how we both miss the snowfall we remember as kids. But her theory about why this is happening is something to ponder.

I posted some of this in the comments of Kos's entry over the weekend, The wingnutosphere war against the media. Given the recent developments regarding the case of the Jewish family in Delaware that Hunter writes about in his front page entry, it has suddenly become even more relevant. I thought it important to show people that this type of thinking is beginning to bubble up in other parts of the country too. My little story will never make the nightly news but collectively these things indicate something's brewing. I'm not sure what it is but I don't like it.

I've always been suspect of the latest al-Qaida boogie man. Some obscure terrorist Web site posts a picture, American media picks it up, and viola, Abu Hafs al-Masri is the new face of terror in Iraq.

But what Lawrence Wright, a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine, had to say last night on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer just floored me.

More...

I'll leave it to the economy wonks around here to explain this but the Japanese stockmarket lost more than $430 billion today. The sell off spiraled out of control to the point where it crashed the computer system.

For the first time in the history of the Tokyo bourse trading was stopped after a wave of orders choked its computer system. Trading closed 20 minutes early after reaching the system's limit, 4 million orders.

They are atributting this to record levels of interest in Japanese stocks by foreign investors and individual internet transactions.

This is good news because there's so much interest in the exchange it overwhelmed their system during a massive selloff. Heh.

It looks like we're going to have to wait a few more days before Fitzgerald announces his findings concerning the Plame Affair. While we wait there's nothing like a good documentary film to pass the time. I thought I'd share some of my favorites with the dKos community.

Each of my picks has a common theme of human potential, limited only by environmental and natural conditions. The first is about elderly progressive activists, the next two about kids from diverse backgrounds and the last about a middle-aged man who has used the environment and nature to reach his own human potential through sculpture.

This diary was posted yesterday on the bombing mission in Iraq that destroyed 12 bridges. I think this is an important story, not because it signals defeat for the US as the diarists suggests, but because of the peculiar timing -- right before the referendum on the new Iraqi Constitution.

More below...

I've put this timeline together to try and come to grips with what just happened this last week in America. None of this is news to dKos readers but compiling it into a timeline starting from when Katrina made landfall in South Florida to the aftermath along the Gulf Coast helped me to process exactly what Bush and his government was and was not doing as the situation worsened.

I'm sure there are events and details I've missed so I thought I'd open it up for peer review to make sure I got it right for posterity.

This may have already been discussed but I don't care. It's worth repeating. Friday night's exchange between Tom Oliphant and Bill Kristol on the Newshour regarding Cindy Sheehan's peace movement is upsetting on so many levels.

Earlier Amando wrote on the Washington Post's ethereal position on the Iraqi parliament's inability to pass a permanent constitution on Monday. The Washington Post, indeed most mainstream media outlets, mentions the Aug. 15 deadline without giving us much context as to why the date was so important.

The threat of not passing the constitution that the WaPo and others focused on last week was based mostly around the concern that Iraq may fall into further chaos if the deadline was not met. While more chaos is always worrisome there's a legal aspect to this that seems to be getting lost in the shuffle. And that is, it was against the Iraq constitution for the current National Assembly to even exist after yesterday.

Cross posted from MyVoice.

emptywheel has a remarkable running series on New York Times reporter Judy Miller, which examines her published articles after the Iraq invasion. Miller's work seems to be a series of sensational big finds on page A1 followed weeks later by admissions that what she thought was evidence of WMD turned out not to be. In total Miller's work leads one to the conclusion that she was desperately trying to justify the Bush Administration's main rationale for war.

If Judy Miller turns out to be a mole of some sort embedded to help the government sell the Pentagon's line on military operations to the American people it would not be the first time in the paper's history that this has occurred.

Well... sort of. NOW with Bill Moyers was probably one of the most thoughtful weekly news magazines of recent years on American television. I watched it regularly so I was saddened (and a bit confused) when the Friday night line up was turned upside down.

Not only was NOW's host Moyers suddenly retired and replaced by David Brancaccio (former host of Marketplace on NPR), but the show was cut from one hour to thirty minutes and the other half hour slot was filled with Tucker Carlson's Unfiltered. Then Wall Street Journal with Paul Gigot suddenly appeared. Both shows decidedly partisan and to the right. What was going on?