Deputy Secretary of State William Burns is expected to make the announcement at a 3pm briefing.

Goode notes that White House and State Department officials “have not commented publicly Wednesday, but Tuesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney indicated the administration was concerned about the lack of an alternative route in Nebraska.”

Congress had passed a provision giving the Obama Administration until February 21 to make a decision on the proposed 1,661-mile pipeline.

RELATED: Mike Gallagher Defends Keystone XL Pipeline: ‘We’re Just Polluting A Little Bit Of Water!’

Mother Jones environmental journalist Kate Sheppard earlier reported that President Obama’s hands were tied in the matter as “in order to approve the pipeline, he’d have to railroad the review process, which has not been completed yet. He’d also have to ignore a bunch of our nation’s fundamental environmental laws, like the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA).”

(h/t MoJo)

While the chair-holding gig might make for a decent pick-up line (“Why yes, I am the Romney campaign’s chair man…”), it turns out Garrett is more like a Farnsworth Bentley to Romney’s P. Diddy (Jerome Benton to Romney’s Morris Day, for you older readers). From Daily Intel:

Every big-time politician needs a body man, a personal aide who can be counted on to take care of anything and everything the boss requires.  President Obama has his Reggie Love, or at least he used to. Mitt Romney has 2009 Ole Miss graduate Garrett Jackson, who, according to an article in his hometown Daily Leader, has been at Romney’s side since the candidate’s No Apology book tour last year.

All joking aside, the picture is a terrific encapsulation of the stagecraft that’s usually just out of the average person’s view. It reminded me of the way the crowds were arranged at the first campaign event I ever covered live, where humanity simply ceased to exist at the edge of the TV camera’s view. Kudos to Jackson, and all of the other unsung campaign heroes who make our enjoyment of this game possible.

Mother Jones explains the specific motivation behind the movie:

As Bachmann and Chapman explained, a little-known federal program called Goals 2000, initiated under the Clinton administration but consistent with a similar plan supported by President George H.W. Bush, was paving the way for a national curriculum. The new curriculum, the two speakers maintained, moved the state away from established truths like the supposedly Christian founding documents, and replaced them with secular documents, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that allowed the state to craft its own set of values. Guinea Pig Kids was designed to explain “Minnesota’s new centrally-planned education, workforce & economic system and how citizens are trying to reverse it.” Over the course of the film’s two hours, Bachmann and Chapman did just that.

At one point in the film, Chapman asks viewers the following: “Have we evolved beyond the capability of repeating the atrocities of the past?” before launching into a narrative about Nazi concentration camps. This part begins around 2:30 in the Mother Jones clip below, after a rather charming intro for the movie (Bachmann has, truly, come a long way since 2002):

Bachmann echos Chapman’s concerns: “As I was listening to Mike,” she shares, “I wondered — perhaps you had this same thought — I was wondering: Is this something that’s coming? Or is this something that’s already here?” Watch her response, below, during which she also espouses the idea that the Lord had a direct hand in founding our nation:

So, basically, Michele Bachmann is the anti-Hitler.

This was not, however, the sole controversial and discussion-worthy position Bachmann has taken when it comes to childhood education. Ryan Lizza‘s profile of Bachmann for The New Yorker (This is an article I strongly recommend, by the way, especially if you are relatively unfamiliar with the role Christian fundamentalism and the concept of Dominionism play in Bachmann’s political views. Or if you, like me, have grown obsessed with reading all things Bachmann.), details how, in 1993, Bachmann, completely dissatisfied with the education her foster children were receiving, took the initiative to start a charter school, called New Heights, designed especially for at-risk youth. Upon the school’s opening, she and the six other founding members signed a document maintaining that the school — which was obviously publicly-funded — “is and will be non-sectarian in all programs, admission policies, employment practices and all other operations.” But, as time went on, that school began to drift from that original promise:

Soon after the school year started, parents began to notice that New Heights had a strong Christian orientation. At an October meeting, a board member asked whether a document called “20 Key Principles of Christian Management” was officially part of the school’s “documentation,” as Meyer [That would be Dennis L. Meyer, an evangelical activist and former teacher who acted as the school's CEO] had claimed in a memo to the board. Denise Stephens, a parent of a student at the school, told G. R. Anderson, Jr., a reporter for the Minneapolis City Pages, that creationism was being advocated and that students were not allowed to watch the movie “Aladdin,” because it involved magic and paganism. The school district warned New Heights that it risked losing its charter. “I told Mr. Meyer and Ms. Bachmann some of my concerns and indicated that I was not going to be able to support something that seemed to be headed in a direction contrary to the state law,” David Wettergren, Stillwater’s superintendent of schools at the time, told me. About six months after the school was founded, Bachmann and Meyer resigned from the leadership. With the two of them gone, the school purged the curriculum of its religious orientation. “The school pulled itself together, so we continued to charter it,” Wettergren said.

So, while Bachmann’s concerns about education are not entirely invalid, incorrect or misguided — she was worried, for instance, that the “Profile for Learning” program should shift the focus if public school from education to workforce preparation, and her concern over her high school-age foster kids bringing home coloring assignments for math class led to the creation of her charter school, which remains open — they are motivated by the idea that, again, individual states and the nation in general are “moving away from established truths like the supposedly Christian founding documents.”

So, really, the comparison to concentration camps and the concern that mathematics is under attack are all simply a heaping serving of frothy whipped topping over the real issue here: That Bachmann — as a politician — believes that the United States should look to Christian documents and God’s will when it comes to everything from our children’s education to laws concerning civil liberties.

h/t Mother Jones

According to Mother Jones, Rep. Bachmann paid thousands of dollars to a stylist listed as working with Fox News and the Gingriches, something those who have worked with her politically previously found surprising:

According to Bachmann’s latest campaign finance filings, her campaign spent nearly $4,700 on hair and makeup in the weeks after she entered the presidential race on June 13. Records show her campaign made three payments of $1,715, $250, and $2,704 to a Maryland-based stylist named Tamara Robertson. Robertson’s LinkedIn profile says she works as a makeup artist at Fox News in the DC area. She’s also listed in the “Make-up” section of the credits for the Citizens United-produced film A City Upon a Hill, hosted by Newt and Callista Gingrich—a pair who’ve raised eyebrows with their own spending. [...]

In February, the Minneapolis City Pages quoted a celebrity stylist named Natalie Hale saying that Bachmann paid her $225 for three different makeup sessions during the 2010 campaign. Hale added, however, that Bachmann tried to avoid paying for such services when possible. “I know for a fact if Michele has to pay for makeup she will usually instead do it herself,” Hale said.

It isn’t the first time a politician faces scrutiny for aesthetic dedication: John Edwards‘ famously received $400 haircuts and Sarah Palin found herself in trouble after the RNC’s clothing bills for her were released in 2008. It is an attack that, in the right context, has proven to work. What Rep. Bachmann’s detractors will find difficult in using it, however, is precisely that it is so uncharacteristic– that she did not exhibit vain or impulsive behavior in her past, so to highlight expenses that pale in comparison to other, wealthier politicians may backfire.

Not to mention that, as a female candidate with a serious shot at the White House, gender politics comes into play. The whole thing poses a chicken or egg question as to the aesthetics of female candidates: did women up the ante on what they should look like in politics themselves, or is that a mantle foisted upon them by exterior pressures? It seems Rep. Bachmann had previously not felt any urges to spend on such things in these amounts, despite winning several elections and being one of the elite in the U.S. Congress. She has more money to burn now for the campaign, certainly, as donations come in from around the nation, but those around her could very well argue that had she wanted to indulge in such a manner before, she would have just gotten herself a credit card. Those delving into the inside baseball of all this may blame strategist Ed Rollins or others in the campaign for convincing her that it was necessary.

All the speculation, however, presupposes that voters will have an interest in the story. Opponents have opened up far more politically relevant war fronts with this candidate at the moment, from her comments on homosexuality to her routine migraines, than most others, and whether this one is a war front worth pursuing will determine how much voters will hear about it in the future– not the level of outrage appropriate for the spending.

Maddow noted that her favorite statement in all the emails was the latter, and she couldn’t imagine she had missed anything more amusing despite not reading the entirety of the files. That invitation was forwarded but never replied to, “which means absolutely nothing,” Maddow concluded. She did detail the history of why these emails were released this week. Mother Jones’ David Corn requested the files in 2008, when no one quite knew who Palin was. It took more time for the files to be released– in print– than the entirety of Palin’s tenure as governor. The records are so extensive, however, that the organizations that now have copies are “crowdsourcing” the work of reading them: “everybody read, and everybody share what you find,” Maddow explained. The files can be found here.

Maddow had Corn on the program last night to explain the process and thinking behind requesting the files. Corn explained that “she was such an unknown” that it seemed like a good idea to find out more, and that “one of the first stories I came across [about Palin] was an email request for emails of her aides.” The biggest problem seemed to be that Palin had three accounts, only one of which was public.

Corn also noted that many of the emails were redacted, including one whose subject was “same sex,” and that Palin had expressed in several emails admiration for John Hagee, the other controversial pastor from 2008 who endorsed Sen. John McCain

The segment via MSNBC below:

The Alabama state senate recently passed a bill aimed at blocking employers from hiring illegal immigrants, a bill known as the “Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act.” Among the key provisions of the bill: giving law enforcement more authority to check immigration status, requiring voters to bring proof of citizenship with them to the polls—and prohibiting “participation in any extracurricular activity outside of the basic course of study” for K-12 students who aren’t legal residents. So Alabama undocumented teens? You can pretty much forget the prom.

As Mother Jones reports:

Antonio Ginatta, the US Advocacy Director of Human Rights Watch, who editorialized against the bill in the Birmingham News, says: “It’s pretty clearly trying to intimidate parents of undocumented children to [send their kids] to school. Consider practically, how can you figure out who qualifies for 4-H and who doesn’t? Who qualifies for chess club and who doesn’t? The only way to figure that out is to ask for immigration certification. And the Alabama Senate could have just said that, but I don’t think the Supreme Court would have allowed it.”

According to MoJo, if the bill passes the Alabama House, it would go to GOP Gov. Robert Bentley for final approval. The governor has not said if he would sign the bill.

These are the amazing words of Matthew Doig, who’s hiring for the investigative team at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. And Doig’s very clearly written the best job listing in the history of humankind. Take, for instance, Doig’s absolutely dead on (I know, I lived and worked there) description of living and working in Florida:

For those unaware of Florida’s reputation, it’s arguably the best news state in the country and not just because of the great public records laws. We have all kinds of corruption, violence and scumbaggery. The 9/11 terrorists trained here. Bush read My Pet Goat here. Our elections are colossal clusterf***s. Our new governor once ran a health care company that got hit with a record fine because of rampant Medicare fraud. We have hurricanes, wildfires, tar balls, bedbugs, diseased citrus trees and an entire town overrun by giant roaches (only one of those things is made up). And we have Disney World and beaches, so bring the whole family.

For the person who gets the gig, Doig promises “hellish, soul-sucking” work and a chance to hole up “in a tiny, closed office with reporters of questionable hygiene to build databases from scratch by hand-entering thoursands of pages of documents to take on powerful people and institutions that wish you were dead, all for the glorious reward of having readers pick up the paper and glance at your potential prize-winning epic as they flip their way to the Jumble.”

Is there a religion built around this guy yet? I feel like I’ve been saved.

There’s a reason for that.

On December 10, 2007,The New Republic published Harvard professor and author Joseph Nye‘s account of his visit to Libya. Titled “Tripoli Diarist: Big Tent,” Nye’s report detailed a “surreal” meeting with Gaddafi, the two drinking tea in a tent surrounded by camels, goats and the ruins of buildings bombed by U.S. aircraft in the 80s. In his article, Nye disclosed that he was in Libya, meeting with Gaddafi “at the invitation of the Monitor Group, a consulting company that is helping Libya open itself to the global economy.” While that was true, Nye didn’t present a totally complete picture of how the Monitor Group was able to convince “experts” from outside Libya to visit the country, or what the group’s ultimate goals happen to be. The New Republic has since, however, offered an additional, vital bit of disclosure in light of a recent report by Mother Jones on the aims and activities of the Monitor Group. “While the article discloses that Nye traveled to Libya at the invitation of the Monitor Group,” added TNR, “it should have also noted that he was acting as a paid consultant for the company.”

What TNR didn’t add, however, was the the Monitor Group hoped to do more than simply help Libya “open itself to the global economy.” The Boston-based group, which has ties to Harvard’s Business School, was also specifically tasked with changing the global perception of Gaddafi.

But don’t just take our word for it. Take a look at a letter to Libya from Monitor CEO Mark Fuller, via Mother Jones:

“The project is a sustained, long term program to enhance international understanding and appreciation of Libya and the contribution it has made and may continue to make to its region and to the world. It will emphasize the emergence of the new Libya and its ongoing process of change.”

During the course of the project a second important goal was introduced by the client. This goal is to introduce Muammar Qadhafi as a thinker and intellectual, independent of his more widelyknown and very public persona as the Leader of the Revolution in Libya.

Others who visited Libya thanks to Monitor include Princeton professor Andrew Moravcsik, who wrote about his trip for Newsweek International; British author Anthony Giddens, whose account appeared in The Guardian; author Benjamin Barber; and another Harvard professor, Robert Putnam, who wrote of his meeting with Gaddafi for The Wall Street Journal.

The men disclosed their association with Monitor to varying degrees (including denying any association whatsoever), despite Monitor documentation of their visits and cooperation.

For their part, the Monitor is keeping mum about their involvement with each of these writers, telling Mother Jones that the firm does not comment on the specifics of its work with clients.

The firm does not seem to have a client list on its U.S. website, but does offer an explanation about its goals and services:

Monitor serves corporations, governments, and non-profit institutions to help them grow.

We work across virtually all industries and in all parts of the world.

Our clients share an aspiration to lead in their fields and a desire to harness new ideas, unconstrained by conventional wisdom, for the benefit of their organizations.

h/t Mother Jones

While the article goes out of its way to make clear that both articles were totally awesome and that Mother Jones is totally doing awesome, the question you can read between the lines was, which cover was going to sell more issues. Most importantly, which was going to sell more issues to new readers.

From Mother Jones:

“With that in mind, we agonized more than usual about this issue’s cover options. Mac McClelland’s Haiti piece is an amazing story about what has been called America’s 51st state.
…
BBut as compelling as all that is in a story, it’s a tough sell on the newsstand. Even assuming that anyone tempted to buy this magazine probably isn’t expecting cheerful (our joke is that the MoJo tagline should be “It’s Worse Than You Think”), rape gangs are pretty heavy stuff to hit a new reader with on our first encounter.

Josh Harkinson’s story on the pot business poses, if anything, the opposite challenge. It’s a rip-roaring read, an in-depth look at the world of marijuana investors aiming to parlay the medical pot boom (and the growing momentum for legalization) into venture capital, IPOs, and Wall Street dividends. But on the cover, we wondered, would it be seen as a welcome relief from disaster and a Congress gone crazy—or reinforce musty cliches of MoJo as a counterculture relic?”

In the end, they came up with an interesting solution: Give the Haiti cover to the subscribers and the pot cover on the newsstand.

It’s a smart idea as, and it’s increasingly become clear, pot sells. And I’m saying “pot sells” in the same way that one says “sex sells” i.e. referring to the subject of pot and sex selling, not actual pot and sex being sold on the street corner. There’s a reason why CNBC advertised their recent documentary on the business, Marijuana USA, by touting the high ratings of its predecessor, Marijuana Inc. (now available on DVD!), let alone why they made a sequel in the first place. Americans are fascinated by marijuana. Of course, as we all know, they’re totally fascinated by it because they hate it, never touch it, and want it to remain illegal forever, right? Right?

Anyway, the Mother Jones piece is an interesting read and a fascinating look at the decisions and second guessing made inside every news room. Meanwhile, here at Mediaite, we just decide which unflattering screen grab to use of the anchors we don’t like.

Kidding! Kidding!

(h/t LEAP)

Wikileaks seemed to have found the story significant enough to overlook their ongoing feud (ok, maybe just Julian Assange’s feud) with Mother Jones magazine to tweet a link to their article on the subject, which reports:

In discussions with reporters later Wednesday at the Pentagon, [spokesman Bryan] Whitman clarified the military’s position. According to Stars & Stripes DC bureau reporter Kevin Baron: “DOD just released a letter sent on Monday to an indivudual [sic] they ‘came across’ who was ‘purporting’ to be an atty for WikiLeaks.” Whitman told the assembled reporters that the DOD had scheduled a phone conversation at 10 a.m. on Sunday, “but the atty did not show.”

The attorney is Timothy Matusheski, a Mississippi attorney that purports to be representing Wikileaks. Wikileaks also released this document from the Department of Defense to Matusheski, suggesting some sort of dialogue. In light of the documents, the Pentagon maintained that there was still no “direct” contact (which, given Matusheski’s shady nature and the fact that there has not really been established an exact link between him and Assange, is understandable). Whitman also took the opportunity to shoot down any optimism Assange may have initially exhibited early today, stating the Pentagon “will not negotiate some ‘minimized’ or ‘sanitized’ version of a release by WikiLeaks.” Given that Wikileaks is not backing down and obviously eager to work with the Pentagon, it’s a question of time whether the remaining 15,000 documents on the Afghan War they have promised to release will be fully unedited or whether the “harm-minimization process” will have an effect.

[Photo of Wikileaks spokesmen via Wired]

Schmitt, who posed for a picture despite giving a pseudonym, told the AP that the organization is hopeful Americans will become more politically active against the war in Afghanistan due to the documents they leaked. Despite many accusations that Wikileaks has put countless Afghan informants and American soldiers in danger needlessly, Schmitt told AP, “Knowledge about ongoing issues like the war in Afghanistan is the only way to help create something like safety. That said, he toed the same line as Assange and argued that Wikileaks editors “have tried our best and we are still working on minimizing the harm that has been caused.”

None of that deviates significantly from anything said on Assange’s big media tour these past two weeks. So what exactly is Wikileaks complaining about? Perhaps they are uncomfortable with the fact that Schmitt outed the size of the full-time Wikileaks team– Schmitt, Assange, and three more people. Or perhaps it is the fact that AP’s headline states dramatically “Wikileaks to Publish New Documents” which, though it seems to imply that there are new, threatening documents to American national security related to the Afghanistan leak, comes from the following quote from Schmitt: “I can assure you that we will keep publishing documents — that’s what we do.” In other words, that means the headline is about as shocking as “Glenn Beck to Film More Programs for Fox News” or “Ralph Nader to Run for President.” The new documents could be anything from significant national security leaks to candid photos of the scribbles on Sarah Palin‘s hand.

That said, it does follow a trend with Wikileaks and Assange (at some point it becomes difficult to divorce the two entities) of condemning every single news report released by a medium that isn’t their website. Michael Moynihan at Reason gives a good summary:

After Keller’s criticism, Assange moaned that The New York Times, a newspaper with an impressive and brave staff of war correspondents, wouldn’t link to the Wikileaks website and denounced the paper’s coverage of the leak as “unprofessional.” The Times of London, whose staff reported that Wikileaks’ document dump exposed the names of confidential Afghan informants, was “disingenuous” in their reporting, the paper guilty of “media manipulation.” The rest of the media, many of whom are currently translating the leaked material into news stories, is doing “such a bad job” compared to Wikileaks. Those who criticize Wikileaks’ methodology—and they span the ideological spectrum—”feel jealous, or they just don’t understand the issue,” Assange says.

And that’s not to mention the fact that Assange is actually the resident comments curmudgeon (there’s an internet term for that, but I won’t use it) on Mother Jones and regularly calls them things like agents of “right-wing reality distortion.”

When taken altogether, a clear Palinesque narrative against the Lamestream Media™ arises which is voraciously fed by the dual Wikileaks/Assange identity. Even if there initially was a kernel of truth in their accusations of distortion against an interview that read more or less objectively, their attitude and reputation make it increasingly difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff of their whining. If the ultimate goal of Wikileaks’ foray into American foreign policy really is to get the American people on their side, it would benefit them to at least try to be cordial with the media through which the American people interpret them.

UPDATE: Wikileaks recently tweeted that the AP is working on a clarification of the piece. The piece now says it was updated “ten minutes ago” (at 3:52 PM), but the author does not indicate what the updates are. This paragraph, however, seems new:

“For this reason, we conveyed a request to the White House prior to the publication, asking that the International Security Assistance Force provide us with reviewers,” Schmitt said. “That request remains open. However, the Pentagon has stated that it is not interested in ‘harm minimization’ and has not contacted us, directly, or indirectly to discuss this offer.”

The NATO-led ISAF security force is mostly deployed in Afghanistan’s less volatile north.

[Photo of Assange via]

You might recall Inglis as one of a small gang of Republicans who hounded after President Clinton and called for his impeachment. Inglis makes no secret of his desire back then to “destroy” Clinton, but says that in the intervening years he learned a valuable lesson:

It is just wrong to want to destroy another human being and to spend so much time and effort trying to destroy Bill Clinton—some of it with really suspect information. We went on and on about Whitewater. We had talked about the strange things about Vince Foster’s death. The drug dealing at Mena airport. So in the six years I was out [of Congress], I looked back and realized, “Oh what a waste.”

When Inglis returned to Congress in 2005, he was “more focused on policy solutions than ideological battles,” and encouraged bipartisan efforts when President Barack Obama assumed office four years later. More importantly, Inglis stubbornly refuses to subscribe to the dividing, Tea Party-inspired rhetoric that his colleagues in the Republican Party have adopted.

For me to go around saying that Barack Obama is a socialist is a violation of the Ninth Commandment [which contributed to Inglis’ own change of heart]. He is a liberal fellow. I’m conservative. We disagree…But I don’t need to call him a socialist, and I hurt the country by doing so. The country has to come together to find a solution to these challenges or else we go over the cliff.

On the campaign trail this spring, Inglis said he encountered such radical opinions and conspiracy theories that, oftentimes, he had no response. But by refusing to entertain those notions, he ran into trouble courting donors and constituents. Meanwhile, in Congress, he watched as his party increasingly sought the blessing of conservative media personalities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. He notes the fear and panic these figures cultivate, claims “Republican members of Congress are afraid of being run over by that stampeding crowd,” and likens his Party’s pandering to the Tea Party to a dog chasing after a car.

To be fair, we should note that Mother Jones is a liberal publication and, consequently, is likely drawn to such stories of fallen-from-grace-reasonable-sounding Republicans. Still, recent events like the Shirley Sharrod incident have made it increasingly clear that the recent figureheads of the conservative movement are more extreme and uncompromising than is good for America, and the more conservatives willing to attest to that, the better.

The AFP story begins with:

With BP’s broken well in the Gulf of Mexico finally capped, the focus shifts to the surface clean-up and the question on everyone’s lips is: where is all the oil?

Mother Jones‘ Mac McClelland calls BS and says she was able to find out there is still a significant amount of oil just by text messaging a few people:

I sent one text message to Bloomberg’s Lizzie O’Leary, who’s standing on Grand Isle, Louisiana, right now, asking how the beach looks. “Lower part past the barrier untouched with globs of oil that washed up last night,” she said. By “untouched,” she means by cleanup crews, and that “barrier” she’s talking about is the one the press isn’t allowed past. I sent another text to Drew Wheelan, who’s also in Southwestern Louisiana, doing bird surveys for the American Birding Association, asking him how big the biggest tar mat on Grand Terre—the scene of those now famous horrifying oiled-bird photos—is. “20 feet by 15,” he said. “But bigger ones submerged slightly.”

McClelland notes that while it is expected that BP would try to gloss over the extent of devastation in the Gulf, it is certainly not the media’s job to do the same thing.

Also on Tuesday, the New York Times sent out a news alert that read, “Gulf of Mexico Oil Slick Appears to Vanish Quickly.” Then came today’s Time magazine story with the headline: “The BP Spill: Has the Damage Been Exaggerated?” The piece begins by referencing Rush Limbaugh, who has been arguing that the BP Oil Disaster is not as catastrophic as most have been saying:

Well, Limbaugh has a point. The Deepwater Horizon explosion was an awful tragedy for the 11 workers who died on the rig, and it’s no leak; it’s the biggest oil spill in U.S. history. It’s also inflicting serious economic and psychological damage on coastal communities that depend on tourism, fishing and drilling. But so far — while it’s important to acknowledge that the long-term potential danger is simply unknowable for an underwater event that took place just three months ago — it does not seem to be inflicting severe environmental damage.

MoJo’s Kate Sheppard expresses her bewilderment at these news stories because of one reason: the truth is we do not yet know the full extent of damage the Gulf has sustained. The well may be capped, but in some ways, the problem has only just begun. As Sheppard points out, the relief wells haven’t even been finished yet. In short: this disaster is far from over. And Aaron Viles, campaign director at the Gulf Restoration Network, agrees:

“The amount of oil and toxic dispersant pumped into the Gulf is unprecedented, and we know the marine impacts will be massive, we simply don’t know how long it will take for the ecosystem to rebound, and how significant the decrease in productivity will be until it recovers,” [he said].

Michael Grunwald, the Time article’s author, argues against making premature “doomsday predictions,” and Sheppard makes a valid point when she writes, “if he’s going to criticize folks for making premature doomsday predictions, then he, too, shouldn’t engage in making preemptive declarations that the problem is exaggerated, either.”

An unprecedented disaster inherently bears the possibility of yielding unprecedented consequences. Whether that is actually the case has become a topic of debate. But when the problem isn’t over, it seems premature to start taking sides.

Baumann writes that the controversial banning of four reporters from the detention center caused a coalition of news outlets, including the New York Times and the Washington Post, to reach the end of their patience:

David Schulz, who represents the Miami Herald, the Associated Press, Dow Jones, the New York Times, Reuters, and the Washington Post, said he was “hopeful” that the media companies could work out their differences with the Defense Department in a meeting scheduled for next week. But, he said, “some press organizations are at the point where they’ve kind of reached the end of the line” in terms of patience with the restrictions imposed on reporting from the detention camp.

The media have faced these limitations, and complained about them, for years. But it is the Pentagon ban that may have been the last straw, because, despite being partially reversed, it crossed a line:

Statutory law and the Constitution are both fairly clear on press freedom at Guantanamo. The Military Commissions Act expressly says that the proceedings are supposed to be open to the public—and, of course, the press. More important, the Supreme Court has held that reporters have a first amendment constitutional right to legal proceedings and certain types of government documents.

The news organizations involved “are seeking several basic changes to the military’s press procedures at Gitmo” — but most importantly, they want the Pentagon to scrap the limitations that got the reporters banned in the first place. They also want a “permanent exception allowing reporters to publish information that’s already public” (…hence, public records, right?).

Baumann outlines a long list of the sometimes-”Kafkaesque” limitations reporters face at Gitmo, and it’s worth a read. While the United States does allow more press freedom than many other countries, it’s amazing to see how many restrictions do exist. In the story, Schulz notes that “after 9/11 the press was reluctant to challenge the military,” and history shows that wars have shaped the way the media-military relationship has evolved. Free press and democracy go hand-in-hand, but leaders, regardless of party, will be prone to playing politics — so it’s not surprising to see tension in the relationship now and then.

Time, April 28, 2008. Art director and illustrator: Arthur Hochstein.

Mother Jones, July 1981. Art director: Louise Kollenbaum. Illustrator: Ron Giacomaro. Noted Esquire cover designer George Lois commented about this cover in a subsequent letter to the editor, calling it “the best I’ve seen in years. It’s…everything a great cover should be.”

Earth First! is the journal of the radical activist direct action Earth First! movement. “We put our bodies on the line to stop the destruction” is how they describe their activities. Back issues and covers from Earth First! are available here.

Newsweek, April 16, 2007. Art directors: Bruce Ramsey and Amid Capeci. Photographer: Nigel Parry.

Mad, October 2008. Art director: Sam Viviano. Illustrator: Mark Frederickson. See a complete gallery of Mad covers from 1952-present here.

CoEvolution Quarterly, Winter 1980. Illustrator: R. Crumb. CoEvolution Quarterly was a successor to the Whole Earth Catalog. They have a complete archive of issues here.

Robert Newman is a print and online media consultant. His Facebook page can be found here. Linda Rubes is a magazine art director and consultant.

Corn is a well-known author and journalist who broke early news on the Valerie Plame affair, and provided memorable coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign. You’ll also recognize him from frequent cable news appearances.

In the most action-packed Inside the White House Press Corps ever, Corn talks about covering the White House, his Twitter dominance, and tells us what he misses about the Bush White House, all while fending off chaotic distractions.

First, a few quick notes. As I said before, David and I have been trying to synchronize our schedules for awhile now, and he had only a limited time to do the interview, so we really didn’t want to delay it. Unfortunately, it was raining outside, and we had no choice but to do it in the briefing room, where all of the networks were setting up for a round of David Axelrod interviews.

As a result, this interview took place amid nerve-jangling chaos that reminded me of that scene in Boogie Nights where the guy keeps lighting firecrackers for no reason. Although the microphone dampens the ambient noise somewhat, I thought it would be cool to let you all in on what it was like. Thus, I am presenting this interview uncut, to truly give you an insider’s view of a working briefing room.

It should also give you some appreciation for Corn’s unflappability, as he ignores a video camera being dropped behind him, and handles a challenge to the continuation of our interview.

Numerous emails, photographs, and videos portray a Lord of the Flies environment. One email from a current guard describes scenes in which guards and supervisors are “peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks (there is video of that one), broken doors after drnken [sic] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity….”

Disturbing, yes? Mother Jones picked up on the letter yesterday morning and wrote a longish piece about it — that post now has 26 comments. Then, just after 4pm yesterday Gawker published an enormously disturbing slide show of photos (provided by POGO) depicting the “animal house” antics. When I saw the post an hour or so later it had already clocked over 12,000 views. As of this morning 95,000 plus people had seen it. Yesterday evening a State Dept. spokesperson announced that an investigation had been ordered and that “these are very serious allegations, and we are treating them that way.”

So, was Gawker publishing the pics a motivating factor behind the State Dept’s quick response? Hard to say. Clearly that letter and those photos (which POGO also sent to the State Dept.) would have resulted some sort of reaction, though apparently the contractor ArmorGroup has been under some sort of investigation due to its behavior since 2007. But, much like the shots out of Abu Ghraib, the pictures Gawker first pubbed are upsetting, utterly damning, and impossible to ignore, and they’ve now been seen very quickly by a whole lot of people (though not as many as saw McSteamy!).

What may be the most interesting part of all this is that POGO chose to “provide” Gawker with those pictures early on, when no doubt there are plenty of mainstream organizations who would have been happy to pick up. Someone at POGO knows their new media stuff: Gawker is the online tastemaker and is capable of immediately getting a story out to a large, connected audience, who will pay attention and quickly pass it on. Inevitably the MSM will follow sooner or later, and get it out to everyone. Is this a sign of things to come? Maybe Gawker is turning itself into the new media world’s version of Woodward and Bernstein. It’s certainly quickly becoming the MSM of the blogosphere.