As voters in conservative-leaning and moderate districts are learning, topics such as war and the economy affect them far more than the private decisions their neighbors make. Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District is such a district, and the race between Republican Erik Paulsen and DFLer Madia is being watched closely. Can a Democratic candidate for Congress win in a moderate suburban district on a platform that includes equality for gays and lesbians?

Democrats are watching the race in the suburbs west on Minneapolis as Iraq veteran Madia has been unequivocal in his support for gay and lesbian equality throughout his campaign. But it’s not a position he came to lightly.

A personal transformation

As student body president at the University of Minnesota in 1997, Madia was a conservative and a Republican. According to Minnesota Daily archives, the student government, with Madia at the helm, significantly reduced the amount of student fees money going to the Queer Student Cultural Center (QSCC), the only gay-straight alliance on campus.

Madia’s turn-about happened while he was a U.S. Marine. As a member of the judge advocate general’s corps in the Marines, Madia was assigned to defend the case of a servicemember who was being discharged because he is gay. Madia was one of the first attorneys in history to successfully defend a fellow Marine against the military’s discriminatory “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy.

“Real patriotism sometimes means taking on the system if you know what you’re doing is the right thing,” he said of taking the case.

In 2005, Madia took on a client who had downloaded gay pornography on a government computer and was caught. The same day, another Marine had gotten caught doing the same thing, only the pornography was heterosexual in nature.

“The gay Marine was given a demotion in rank; loss of pay; restricted in his movements on base; and, most severe of all, an administrative separation from the Marine Corps with an Other-Than-Honorable (OTH) discharge, just one step below a court martial,” Madia said. “The straight Marine received a verbal reprimand by the commanding officer.”

Madia successfully argued to a panel of Marines that the disparity in punishment was unjust. They agreed.

His client was able to continue his career with the Marines, but Madia was concerned about the man’s well-being now that he had been outed as gay. Madia checked up on him. “When PFC Smith got on the phone, he was calm and his voice level toned. He said, ‘Sir, nobody cares about that stuff,’” Madia recalled.

“If the Marines, some of the most conservative members of our society, can look beyond sexual preference, maybe the rest of America can do so too,” says Madia. “If someone is willing to wear the uniform, fight, and possibly die for this country, it shouldn’t matter who they are and who they love.”

While Madia was serving in Iraq, the issue hit closer to home as one of his siblings came out to him as gay. Family members relate that Madia sought out information to understand more about the issue, and came back to Minnesota fully embracing his gay sibling.

Megan Thomas was the administrative assistant at the QSCC in 1997 when Madia ran the conservative student government at the University of Minnesota. She says that the Madia’s growth in understanding the controversial issues surrounding gay and lesbian issues has brought him to the side of equality.

“Since then Madia has grown and has seen the error that was. So, let me state this as clearly as possible,” she wrote recently. “As someone who was part of that whole brouhaha, as a former chair of the Stonewall DFL Caucus and as an out lesbian, I have no doubt whatsoever in Ashwin Madia’s support of and dedication to GLBT issues and people.”

Going on the offensive

In debates, Madia, often joined by Independence Party candidate David Dillon, have been taking Paulsen to task for his push for constitutional amendments banning civil unions and same-sex marriage, which for three years during his tenure as House majority leader were the topic of intense debate and media hype.

“I look at the happiness my parents have through their marriage, and I wouldn’t want to deny that to anybody. But what’s important is that — and this is a difference between the candidates — I wouldn’t take government time away from dealing with Iraq or the economy for these kinds of constitutional amendments,” Madia said at a Sept. 16 debate.

He followed up at a Minnetonka debate on Sept. 22. “There are so many things that we ought to be focusing on, that I don’t think we ought to be using public dollars or our constitution to try to impose our religious beliefs on other people,” Madia said of Paulsen’s amendment push.

“I’ve come to like both of the guys sitting at the table with me,” Dillon added. “The plain fact of the matter is that Erik has come out of the right wing of the Republican Party.”

Paulsen defended himself saying, “That is not what I’ve done in the state Legislature,” noting that he hadn’t made any floor speeches in support of the amendments. He might not have made any floor speeches, but he voted for the measures each time, and as House Majority Leader, he made them a priority amongst his caucus.

Indeed Paulsen has focused on the issue of banning same-sex marriage by constitutional amendment (it has already been made illegal by statute), so much so that religious right figurehead James Dobson of Focus on the Family praised Paulsen for his efforts in a letter to district voters.

Turning the controversy over social issues back onto Republicans is not an approach that DFLers often take when it comes to LGBT equality in the suburbs. But the 3rd Congressional District is more diverse than the suburbs north, east and south of the Twin Cities.

Almost 6 percent of voters identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, according to the Williams Institute at UCLA, easily within the margin of this very close race. That’s 26,000 voters, and that doesn’t count the friends and family of those voters who are much more likely to support an equality candidate. In addition, the 3rd District lies to the west of the 5th Congressional District, which has one of the highest percentage of gay, lesbian and bisexual voters in the state, ranking ninth out of 435 districts nationwide.

It might be the reason Rep. Jim Ramstad, the moderate Republican retiring from the district this year, supported a key piece of LGBT legislation — the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. On that issue, Madia is much more closely aligned with Ramstad than is Paulsen.

A candidate to watch

DFL Rep. Tim Walz demonstrated in 2006 that a Democratic candidate can win in a moderate rural district while supporting LGBT equality. Democrats are hoping that a Madia win on Tuesday will demonstrate that honesty and fairness regarding LGBT equality can be a positive in a moderate suburban district.

“I think what Ashwin has realized is that there are larger issues which unite us than the divisive social tactics some Republicans have used in the past to try to win elections,” said Jon Hoadley, executive director of Stonewall Democrats, an LGBT group affiliated with the Democratic Party. “I think Ashwin Madia represents a new generation in Congress who says, ‘Let’s focus on the fundamentals that we were elected to work on. Let’s give everyone a fair shot, and let’s get back to tackling the issues important to our constituents.’”

Hoadley says that it’s important for candidates to be direct with voters. “Ashwin has also been honest with voters [on LGBT equality]. He’s stated his position and then turned back to focus on the larger issues which impact his district. And we’ve seen voters say ‘OK, I see where you’re coming from.”

Even if voters don’t agree on LGBT issues, Hoadley says there is trust built when candidates are honest with voters. “It’s that honest answer that has allowed him to tackle those things which impact all of us. I think voters have been lied to enough by politicians in the past that they truly appreciate an honest, straightforward answer by a candidate like Ashwin.”

Walz, a National Guard veteran, took the same approach, and while Republicans attacked him for his support, the voters rewarded him with a seat in Congress. “For some reason, it is the same approach that has also been embraced by numerous Iraq War veterans running for office, like former Army Captain Patrick Murphy who was elected to Congress from Pennsylvania in 2006,” noted Hoadley. “Perhaps it’s the belief that their service to the people whom they fought for on the battlefield extends beyond the war zone and onto the home front. Servicemembers are remarkable that way, and Ashwin Madia is a remarkable candidate.”

Opening statements:

The economy and the bailout package:

Job creation:

The deficit:

Corn ethanol:

Energy independence:

Iraq:

The Bush Doctrine:

Higher education costs:

Campaign civility:

Rail near Mayo Clinic:

Closing statements:

Photo: DoD

This week at the 6th District congressional debate in Stillwater, Michele Bachmann hailed last year’s “surge” of troops to Iraq as an unmitigated success, saying it has done “what no one thought was possible.” Iraq has peace and calm, she said. And al-Qaeda has “essentially been vanquished.”

At the vice-presidential debate in St. Louis, Sarah Palin testified repeatedly to the Good News of the surge.

Violence is down in Iraq, there is no question. Iraqis are out on the streets after dark. Some are even returning home from the neighboring countries the fled to. Not too long ago thousands of Iraqis were murdered every month; today it’s hundreds. Fewer Americans are dying. Iraq’s national soccer team is even back in Baghdad–training there for the first time since 2004.

But can we pin all of this on the surge? And will it last?

No. And maybe.

Here are five things Michele Bachmann and the “surge” evangelists aren’t telling you:

ONE: An uncertain future for the “Awakening”

A major factor in the reduction of violence was the so-called “Awakening” of Sunni tribal leaders who began publicly opposing the indiscriminate tactics of al-Qaeda in Iraq beginning in the Anbar province in 2005. Today Iraq’s many “Awakening councils” boast nearly 100,000 members–trained, armed and funded by the U.S. military to battle al-Qaeda in Iraq.

The problem? This month the U.S. military, which has been paying Awakening members $300 a month for their loyalty, begins handing control of the force over to the Shi’ite led Iraqi government, which has been tentative at best about a separate Sunni army. It’s a tense relationship and so far Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has only agreed to pay salaries to about half of the Awakening members beginning October 31. There are no clear plans for the rest–raising the prospect of a repeat of the early days of the insurgency, when the U.S. dismissed the entire Iraqi army, leaving hundreds of thousands of Iraqis unemployed, poor, armed and mad as hell.

TWO: Killings of Iraqi security forces higher than last year

A Pentagon report does indeed claim a 77 percent decline in violence in Iraq from just one year ago. However, the Associated Press recently reported that the number of Iraqi security forces killed last month hit 159–a third higher than the same period last year. And what are we to make of the suicide bombings that killed at least two-dozen Shi’ite worshipers yesterday in Baghdad?

THREE: Young Sadr isn’t going anywhere

Remember the “firebrand cleric”? The effect of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army on violence levels in Iraq is the stuff of legend. When his army and its affiliated (some say rogue) death squads stands down, violence drops. When the army is told to fight, it fights hard and fierce. Sadr is again calling for the U.S. to make a swift exit from the country. Where will Sadr’s allegiances and judgments fall in one month? Six months? One year?

FOUR: The death squads may have made the “peace”

There is compelling–and chilling–evidence that the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad’s neighborhoods was basically completed in the weeks before the first surge forces landed in Iraq. You need look no further than the New York Times’ recent multimedia survey of Baghdad neighborhoods to understand the extent to the neighborhood-by-neighborhood cleansing that preceded the surge.

There is also the less conventional but terribly compelling study published recently by UCLA geographers showing evidence of the cleansing of Sunni neighborhoods using satellite analysis of night light. Here’s what they found:

“Essentially, our interpretation is that violence has declined in Baghdad because of intercommunal violence that reached a climax as the surge was beginning,” lead author John Agnew, a UCLA professor of geography and authority on ethnic conflict, told Science Daily. “By the launch of the surge, many of the targets of conflict had either been killed or fled the country, and they turned off the lights when they left.”

“If the surge had truly ‘worked,’ we would expect to see a steady increase in night-light output over time, as electrical infrastructure continued to be repaired and restored, with little discrimination across neighborhoods,” said co-author Thomas Gillespie. “Instead, we found that the night-light signature diminished in only in certain neighborhoods, and the pattern appears to be associated with ethno-sectarian violence and neighborhood ethnic cleansing.”

FIVE: Look north! Look south!

Don’t forget the north and south of Iraq. In the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Kurds are competing with Turkmens and Sunni Arabs for ownership of oil centers like Kirkuk. Kurdish ambitions are a constant point of tension within the Iraqi government and have paralyzed the government repeatedly. There has been an uptick in sectarian killing in the north. It’s ominous to say the least.

In the south, particularly in Amarah and the port city of Basra, the Shi’ite Dawa party–led in part by Maliki–is in constant, sometimes bloody, conflict with another powerful Shi’ite party (with a formadable militia): the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

There are elections on the horizon in Iraq. But here too there are great tensions and risks. Elections in Iraq have been stained by campaigns of assassination and intimidation.

The seeds of future conflict are strewn everywhere in Baghdad even as the surge comes to an end.

If the many campaign-trail boosters of the surge are worried about any of these things, they’re not showing it. And where are the politicians who opposed the surge? With November fast approaching, they may be afraid to challenge a narrative of victory that seems to have taken hold with the American mainstream. The success mantra seems to satisfy all sides for now.

Republican incumbent Rep. Michele Bachmann and two challengers who hope to unseat her to represent Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District in Washington met in Stillwater Wednesday evening for the first candidates’ forum. In front of a standing-room-only crowd, Bachmann, DFL-endorsed El Tinklenberg and Bob Anderson, the unendorsed Independence Party candidate, sparred mainly over the economy, although energy, the war in Iraq and the Stillwater lift bridge each garnered some attention.

Many people couldn’t get in through the door and watched through the foyer. The crowd, particularly Tinklenberg supporters, got rowdy at times, especially when Bachmann brought up ANWR and offshore drilling.

The best line of the night came when Tinklenberg criticized Bachmann on her offshore and ANWR drilling proposals: “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy.”

The Minnesota Independent will have full video available shortly, but here’s a preview of some of the discussion.

On the $700 billion bailout

Bob Anderson, on the Wall Street bailout: "I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer."

“I do not feel that we should put this burden on the taxpayer,” said Anderson. “We need to do something but this is not the way to go.” He said he would rather have private financiers gobble up some of the problem.

Bachmann was critical of the bailout. “We do have a very real credit crunch but I don’t believe the prescription put forward by Bush and the leadership in Congress is the right way to go.” Of the Senate version she said, “It just has different wrapping paper on it. There’s a lot of spending in there as well as the $700 billion… I will be a ‘no’ vote on that bill.”

Instead she favors privatizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, suspending the capital gains tax, repealing the Community Reinvestment Act and suspending mark-to-market accounting.

Tinklenberg said he also opposed the bailout. “What the economy, what the financial markets needed most of all on Monday was a sense of confidence. The rebuilding of confidence, the belief that somebody was in charge and somebody was leading and somebody was moving this forward to find a solution,” he said. “And instead what they got was uncertainty and chaos. The ‘no’ vote, you saw what the outcome was.”

He believes assisting families facing foreclosure would have lessened the crisis months ago. “I think we would have made much more progress in terms of helping to stem some of the underlying problems that we have seen in the meltdown over the last week,” he said.

The war in Iraq

Tinklenberg on Afghanistan: "That's where al-Qaida was. That's where bin Laden was. That's where we should've been focusing our effort."

Bachmann says the surge was successful. “We saw a 60-percent improvement level from July 4 to Christmas — what no one thought was possible, the peace that was brought and the calm that was brought to that region,” she said. “Then we went to March of this year, and there was a 70-percent level of improvement. Today, al-Qaida has essentially been vanquished in Iraq.”

Bachmann gave no indication when she thought the conflict might end, but said that the Iraqis should give the United States some funds. “My opinion is that Iraq is getting on its feet. They did have $76 billion in surpluses, and I believe they need to take over the funding for this measure. I don’t believe the United States should be funding the measure.”

Tinklenberg said that turning over responsibility to Iraq and a responsible end to the conflict is his policy. “I have long advocated the idea of a timeframe that would help provide the environment in which the Iraqis would stand up and take more responsibility for their region and for the security of Iraq,” he said. “It’s interesting that now the president and the Iraqi government have also agreed that we need to be moving forward with some kind of a timeframe that establishes that message to the Iraqi people: that we are not there permanently, that we are going to be removing our troops.”

He also said that the United States should never have weakened its presence in Afghanistan by engaging Iraq. “I think we need to reinforce the troops in Afghanistan. They are doing an incredible job there, but we have seen that they are not there in sufficient strength to be able to deal with the resurgence of violence in that country,” he said. “And that’s where we should’ve been fighting from the beginning. That’s where al-Qaida was. That’s where bin Laden was. That’s where we should’ve been focusing our effort. It’s unfortunate that we discovered too late that al-Qaida was not in Iraq. They were not in Iraq until we were engaged there, and that brought them into that country. And now we have to fight to try to quell the violence there while they have also been growing in strength again in Afghanistan.”

Anderson said these decisions need to be left to General Petraeus. “Terrorism is something that we’re going to be dealing with for a long time, and I think we need to be on the offense. We’ve got to be trailing them, keeping an eye on them, surveillance, and troops,” he said. “I’d leave the decision to General Petraeus.”

St. Croix River Bridge

The lift bridge over the St. Croix has been a project that has needed action for years. It’s outdated for the amount of traffic that crosses through the area into Wisconsin, but there is significant disagreement in Stillwater and surrounding communities over environmental, aesthetic and funding considerations.

Anderson didn’t know much about the issue. “I’m not going to pretend to be an expert on this subject,’ he said. “I’d need to be educated on that, that’s for sure.”

Bachmann said: Keep the old bridge and build a new, higher capacity bridge. “I love the lift bridge. I would love to be able to see us keep it, but we also need to have a new bridge, as well. I think it is going to happen, and that’s what I want to make sure during my time in Congress, that we actually get a bill.”

Tinklenberg said community leaders need to reach a consensus on the issue to communicate it to Congress. “I want the bridge decision to reflect a consensus in the community, what the community wants for its future, how it’s going to address the needs of the community, how it’s going to connect with 36 and other communities that are a part of this and affected by it, and then I would do everything I could in terms of going after funding,” he said. “There has been a lot of discussion over a lot of years. I think it’s time to build a consensus in the community and see what the community wants to do, and then I’m going to do everything I can to help them implement it.”

Energy

Bachmann says the answer to energy problems is right under foot. "We have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia."

Bachmann talked about drilling. “American energy independence, this is something we absolutely must embrace. I don’t want to see us enriching foreign nations on foreign oil, especially when we’re sitting on the answer to our own problem — we have more oil in the United States than in all of Saudi Arabia, and that’s just in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming,” she said. “We have so much oil here that we don’t need to go outside our country to be truly energy independent.”

Tinklenberg said that energy independence depends on sustainable energy. “I think that there are more things that we can be doing,” he said. “The strategy that she has proposed of ‘Drain America First’ is a bad strategy. It’s bad in that it maintains our dependence on petroleum, and it’s bad in that it reduces the security of our future energy policy. It means that we have used up our reserves. I agree with her: we need to be exploring more domestically, we need to identify those reserves, and we need to protect those reserves, because petroleum is going to continue to be a part of our future. But we also need to move aggressively both in the area of conservation and in the area of alternatives. We can do so much of a better job in terms of reducing consumption.”

He attacked Bachmann for not voting for renewables. “And I was disappointed that Rep. Bachmann voted against extending the tax credits for wind and solar. Those are important resources for our future and can be a part of the mix, along with what she has said about natural gas.”

Anderson said he wants a mix of everything. “I believe in ‘All of the Above.’ Drilling in Alaska? They’re telling us that it’s okay,” he said. “I’m no expert, but if the people in the state think we should do it, I guess I don’t have a problem with that.”

Arrested in preemptive raids, Eryn Trimmer and Monica Bicking

Police would like to to paint 23-year-old Monica Bicking, whose home was raided on Saturday, August 30, as part of a preemptive strike against RNC protesters, as a “terrorist.” But her brother, Ian Bicking, has come out to speak in support of his sister, whom he says was arrested in an attempt to preemptively suppress the protests at the Republican National Convention.

“That war is still with us,” he writes on his blog, “and is still the most significant motivation for the RNC protests…I don’t have any third path to offer, but I just want to make it clear: none of us know what is best to do, none of us have figured out the way to effect change. People complain protest doesn’t work. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but frankly most things don’t work. Doing nothing definitely doesn’t work, and frankly that’s what most of us are doing. It’s hard to take criticisms seriously when they are made from a stance of inaction.”

In Monica Bicking’s South Minneapolis home, where are least 13 people were staying for the RNC, the police seized, among typical household items and laptop computers, curtain rods, foam mattresses, “propaganda literature,” 37 caltrops (nail-like devices used to puncture tires), and a few throwing knives. A total of three homes in Minneapolis were raided (and a fourth surrounded in St. Paul) the morning after the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office, supported by the Minneapolis Police Department, Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, raided the RNC Welcoming Committee’s convergence space in St. Paul.

The raids resulted in five arrests and more than 100 people handcuffed and detained. Last week, Ramsey County formally charged eight members of the RNC Welcoming Committte, Bicking, her boyfriend Eryn Trimmer, Luce Guillen Givins, Erik Oseland, Nathanael Secor, Robert Czernik, Garrett Fitzgerald, and Max Spector, with conspiracy to riot in futherance of terrorism.

The word “terrorism,” at least by definition, is fairly innocuous: “The use of violence and intimidation in the pursuit of political aims.” Under that definition, any government could be a terrorist. But after 9/11, the media and Bush administration gave it a much more frightful and sinister meaning, one that led to the creation of the Federal Patriot Act. It’s under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act that Bicking and others could receive as much as seven years in jail simply for having “evidence” in their homes. The terrorism enhancement charge allows for a 50 percent increase in the maximum penalty for conspiracy to riot.

Ian Bicking says Monica and others in the RNC Welcoming Committee had no plans of their own to protest during those four days, but to offer a safe place for those who wished to protest their own issues, whatever they might be. “The preemptive arrest was surprising to everyone,” he writes. “It is normal in the course of civil disobedience that some people expect to be arrested. Civil disobedience is confrontational. You have to go into it knowing that there will be certain consequences. Those are the consequences of the confrontation [his emphasis]. They are not the consequences of the possibility of future confrontation. As organizers I know Monica and Eryn weren’t planning on being arrested.”

Listen: Jeff Paterson, founder of Courage to Resist

“The president and his advisors undertook a relentless public campaign in the aftermath of the [Sept. 11] attacks to use the war against al Qaeda as a justification for overthrowing Saddam Hussein,” Sen. John Rockefeller, D-W.V., wrote in a commentary on the report. “Representing to the American people that the two had an operational partnership and posed a single, indistinguishable threat was fundamentally misleading and led the nation to war on false premises.”

Here are some of the report’s key findings:

• Statements and implications by the president and secretary of state suggesting that Iraq and al Qaeda had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al Qaeda with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.
• Statements by the president and the vice president indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.
• Statements by Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.
• Statements by the president and vice president prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.
• The secretary of defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.
• The Intelligence community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the vice president repeatedly claimed.

As the Obama campaign immediately pointed out, this is false. Most of the 30,000 additional troops dispatched as part of the fabled Surge are still in Iraq — about two-thirds of them. (John Aravosis of Americablog does the math.)

The McCain campaign responded with the same grace and finesse for which it is becoming famous: Its math pedant critics were “nitpicking” over verb tenses, and should have realized that when McCain said the US has already drawn down to pre-surge troop levels, he really meant that it plans to do so in July. Really.

McCain in Wisconsin: “Pre-surge levels” (:15)

Never mind the feigned outrage of some commentators over McClellan’s waiting this long to speak; what really torques them off is that he spoke up at all, and in doing so laid bare the extent to which “professionalism” in news media means preserving one’s access to A-list sources, and preserving one’s access to A-list sources means repeating whatever they tell you to repeat.

This is what Judy Miller did in reporting Iraqi WMD claims from a cherry-picked Pentagon source. It’s what the entire US press did with the forged claims of Saddam’s efforts to obtain milled uranium from Niger. It’s the reason the cable news networks have almost completely disappeared the New York Times story from a few weeks back that revealed all the major TV news operations had been used like $20 hookers in their Iraq War coverage by a Pentagon propaganda op conceived to make sure that all war news and views were served sunny side up. 

The LA Times’ Top of the Ticket blog records several network journo reactions. In the video below, network anchors Brian Williams, Katie Couric, and If-I-Only-Had-A-Brain Gibson kick around McClellan’s allegations on the Wednesday Today Show. Also note that Glenn Greenwald at Salon has the goods on Gibson’s indignant insistence that “there was a lot of skepticism raised about” Colin Powell’s WMD speech on the eve of war. (Gibson’s first question about that speech, to Terence Taylor of the International Institute for Strategic Studies: “Specifically, of all the biological and chemical weapons that [Powell] outlined, and the means of delivery, what’s the most frightening? Should be the most frightening?”

Today at Politico, Michael Calderone writes about CNN producer Jessica Yellin’s appearance last night on Anderson Cooper:

Yellin… [revealed] that news executives–presumably at ABC News, where she’d worked  from July 2003 to August 2007–actively pushed her not do hard-hitting pieces on the Bush administration. “The press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war presented in way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings,” Yellin said.

“And my own experience at the White House was that the higher the president’s approval ratings, the more pressure I had from news executives–and I was not at this network at the time–but the more pressure I had from news executives to put on positive stories about the president, I think over time….”