I recently read Al Franken's Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right which was a very interesting read. It was definitely partisan but in this age of blatant lying by practically every highly visible member of the Bush cabinet and the Republican media boosters on Fox News, it's hard to be objective when describing some of the things they've done.

Al did a lot of research for the book, thanks a team of 14 graduate and undergraduate student researchers he got from Harvard.  There are extensive end notes and some thorough disection of the lies of the usual suspects in the conservative media like Sean Hannity, Bill O'reilly and Ann Coulter. There was also a personal account of behind the scenes of the political circus that was the memorial service of the late Senator Paul Wellstone. An interesting data point is comparing the coverage of the memorial service on CNN the shortly after it happened where they wrote, thousands pay tribute to Wellstone, to the coverage the day after once Republican talk show hosts had put their negative spin on it. The story became tone of Wellstone memorial generates anger. Al gives a blow by blow of how this happened from behind the scenes and exposes a lot of the half truths and exagerations that led to the media reports.

Another thing I found interesting was chapter 16 of the book which was entitled Operation Ignore which described the Bush administration's attitude to terrorism which was to consider a lower priority than the previous administration. A lot of the stuff I've read online about Richard Clarke's testimony to the independent 9-11 commision was stuff I'd already seen in Al Franken's book. I'm just glad it is getting wider coverage in the mainstream media instead of just being available to the few people who bought Al Franken's book.

I pray we don't get four more years of this shit...