N. Korea Issue Irks Congress (washingtonpost.com). The White House withheld North Korea's admission about a nuclear weapons program from key Democrats until after Congress had passed its resolution authorizing war with Iraq, prompting complaints on Capitol Hill that the administration has let politics influence its conduct of foreign affairs. [Daypop Top News Stories]

[...]  Democrats on Capitol Hill were critical yesterday of the 12-day gap between the admission by North Korea and the administration's disclosure. During that time, Congress passed the Iraq resolution, and President Bush signed it hours before the 7 p.m. disclosure about North Korea. Administration officials said they revealed the information because former Clinton administration officials had leaked the news after learning about it from State Department contacts. Democrats said the episode could further impair the administration's already fragile relations with Congress. [...]

I find it quite ironic that the Bush administration is so willing to try and invade the privacy of American citizens when they are so insistent on keeping as many secrets as possible themselves. Granted, those two philosophies - the government can keep secrets but the citizenry can't - that I shouldn't be surprised, but sometimes the depths to which this administration will go to hide information really does astound me.

I cannot imagie that the knowledge of North Korea's secret nuclear weapons program would not have had an impact on how members of Congress voted in regards to authorizing President Bush to be able to go to war with Iraq. Obviously, neither could the Bush administration, since they felt it was best to withhold this information from Congress and the public for 12 days after they first were made aware of it.

This, more than anything else I've seen, give lie to Bush's claims that he wants to go to war against Iraq because of concerns over weapons of mass destruction.  There is no unquestionable evidence I am aware of that would prove Iraq has such weapons.  North Korea, on the other hand, has admitted that they are working on it, and it's just possible they have working weapons already.  Are we preparing to go to war with them?  No.  Even though they were a part of Bush's Axis of Evil, and even though we have their own admission that they are working on weapons of mass distruction, we are not threatening them with military repercussions if they do not stop.  We aren't working to get a global coalition against them if they do not stop.  We are not demanding any kind of UN inspections or anything else.

In fact, it appears that the only thing we've done with the information is prevent anyone from hearing about it for 12 days, so Bush could get his war authorization for Iraq.  Even then, it was only revealed because they were afraid someone else would reveal it first.

Bush has shown this penchent for secrecy on many occasions.  He has changed the rules on the release of Presidential papers to that the public - which has a right to this material - is kept from it for an even longer period of time. He has decided to store his own gubernatorial papers at his father's Presidential library, where it can be much harder to gain access to them, rather than give them to one of the state libraries as his predecessors have done. He has supported Dick Cheney in his quest to keep anyone from knowing who he met with to help determine what the energy policy of the country should be (and who was influcing that decision). He has tried to prevent investigations into the 9/11 tragedies.  Time and time again, he has shown that given a choice, he believes the public doesn't have a right to know anything.  And now he's hiding things from Congress as well, so that they won't interfere with is plans.

I hope that Congress will realize that this is not a man who can be trusted with disclosing the whole truth, and that they should be wary if he's pushing hard for something and they're not entirely clear on why. I also hope that America in general will recognize that someone this obsessed with secrecy is not the kind of leader a nation built on the idea of "by the people and for the people" needs.

US sniper widens range with first weekend shooting. World latest: Man on life support after being shot in the stomach in the 12th suspected attack by the sniper of the suburbs. [Guardian Unlimited]

[...]  The attack comes at a time when the public is in near despair at the failure of police to hunt down the killer. By local crime standards the nine deaths attributed to the sniper do not constitute an epidemic. Since he set off on his deadly rampage there have been 18 other murders in Washington DC and surrounding areas - or "traditional homicides" as the police now call them.

None was given even a fraction of the attention paid to the sniper. None of the killers was hunted by thousands-strong taskforces. None of the victims received anything near the outpourings of sympathy for those killed and wounded by the serial killer. None of the killings provoked wider panic.  [...]

You know, it's not just other countries' pain we in America are sometimes oblivious to, its also the pain felt by some of our own.  It's just sad that the first time I read about it this time, its in a British newspaper.

The media has a very difficult job, there's no doubt about that, because they not only have a certain perceived obligation to help ensure that citizens are informed of the issues and happenings in this country and around the world, but they also have an obligation to make money - and usually servicing the public good and making a profit seem to be in conflict.

Unfortunately, making a profit often seems to lead to a very myopic view of the world or the country.  One story, or a certain kind of story, takes precedence over all other, until something hotter or more sensational comes along. Eighteen months ago or so it was shark attacks.  The fact that there were actually fewer shark attacks for that time of the year was irrelevent.  Each network seemed to be under the presumption that every other network was covering it, so they needed to cover it, too.

Then, of course, was September 11.  And yes, that was a huge story - a legitimately huge story - but one that was nearly the only story on American newscasts for several months.  During that time, several other stories went under-reported - the beginnings of the Enron collapse and other buisiness scandals, the debate over whether or not the members of Dick Cheney's Energy Task Force should be named or not, and the passage of the USA Patriot Act.

The beginning of this summer was the Season of the Missing Children. That one, at least, provoked a bit of discussion about the fairness of coverage, as some missing children seemed to receive much greater coverage than others, and many of the ones who got the most coverage were from wealthy, white neighborhoods.  The pain of having their child go missing couldn't have been any less for the poorer, non-white families, but the coverage certainly was.

Now, of course, its the sniper's turn.  There are serious debates to be had about whether or not we should go to war against Iraq, what, if anything, we should do regarding the nukes in North Korea, the further erosion of our rights in the name of safety, and, I'm sure, many other things, but all the media can focus on is a mysterious sniper who is randomly killing people in and around Washington DC.

As the Guardian pointed out (in the quote above), these 9 murders/12 shootings, have gotten wall-to-wall coverage on every news network and all of the news magazines and shows.  The fact that 18 other people have lost their lives in a less sensational manner has, until now, gone unreported.  Are their deaths any less tragic?  Were their lives any less worthy?  No, but because of the way the news industry works, some deaths are deemed more important than others.

The only solution, of course, is for the consumer to begin demanding more - and to do that, we have to vote with our remotes.  As a news junkie and unabashed MSNBC addict (though I do gather information from more sources than just them), I know how difficult that can be.  When something "big" happens, my TV seems to automatically set itself to 56 (where MSNBC is located on my cable service) and I can be glued for hours. 

This, of course, means that I am part of the problem.  But as this whole sniper story has been going forward, and I've been seeing more of how the killer responds to the news broadcasts, I'm also finding myself much less interested in watching news about it, simply becuase I don't want to be one who is encouraging them to keep filling their hours with as much speculation as possible.  The fact that I'm not one of the people who's viewing habits aren't being monitered tends to make my own small protest less effective, but maybe if I can let others know about it, some of those who ARE being measured will have made a similar decision for themselves.

In the meantime, I think America needs to get its cultural eyes tested.  We do seem to be more than a bit nearsighted.