Sarah Palin: Journalism Major

The information in the article below, sent in by one of our members, focuses on the fact that Sarah Palin transfered something like 5 times before finally graduating with a degree in ....wait for it.... drum roll, please.....JOURNALISM. I'm relatively sure that no one will care much about how many colleges Gov. Palin attended, unless we find out that there was something motivating all those transfers other than 1) Personal reasons, like family illness or 2) that Sarah gets bored easily.

The latter seems highly likely, just from the little we know about her. Of course, that a person who may well be the president is easily bored should concern us. If we are, as we strongly suspect, now under one party rule (by hook or by crook), it should certainly cause red flags to go up.



Nevertheless, I can guarantee the reader that this will not concern the half conscious American electorate. If she can keep her mind on the task long enough to shoot a moose, she's alright with the distracted, deceived, delusional or just simply exhausted American voter. She cares far more about American fetuses than she does about children born into poverty anywhere, Iraqi or Afghan fetuses (the victims of carpet bombing, shock and awe and depleted uranium) or for the planet, itself, which supports all life, including fetuses, babies, toddlers, grade-schoolers, High schoolers, college students, parents and grandparents.


No, it will not occur to the average American voter that we have just gone through the nightmare of rule by the distracted and bored frat boy, George W. Bush.


However, not even this is the subject we find appalling. Rather it is the fact that this journalism major is being made to or has decided to shun all journalistic contact, perhaps for the duration of the campaign, thus shunning the voters, themselves.


What the hell or they hiding now?

POKANE, Wash. - Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin attended five colleges in six years before graduating from the University of Idaho in 1987.

Federal privacy laws prohibit the schools from disclosing her grades, and none of the schools contacted by The Associated Press could say why she transferred. There was no indication any of them were contacted as part of the background investigation of Palin by presidential candidate John McCain's campaign.

"Our office was not contacted by anyone," said Tania Thompson, spokeswoman for the University of Idaho in Moscow.

Palin, the governor of Alaska, was born in Idaho. Her family moved when she was only a few months old to Alaska, where she was raised.

She began college at Hawaii Pacific University, a private, nonsectarian school in Honolulu. She attended only as a freshman during the fall of 1982, school spokeswoman Crystale Lopez said.

Then known as Sarah Louise Heath, she was in the business administration program as a full-time student, Lopez said.

"We're trying to track down someone who knew her," Lopez added.

From Hawaii Pacific, Palin transferred to North Idaho College, a two-year school in Coeur d'Alene, about 30 miles east of Spokane. She attended the college as a general studies major for two semesters, in spring 1983 and fall 1983, spokeswoman Stacy Hudson said.

"We were not able to track down club affiliations or anything," Hudson said.

The school identified one of her professors but he did not remember her, Hudson said.

Prior to her selection by McCain, the North Idaho College Alumni Association notified Palin in June she would be the recipient of its 2008-2009 Distinguished Alumni of the Year Award.

From North Idaho College, Palin transferred 70 miles south to the University of Idaho, the state's flagship institution. She majored in journalism with an emphasis in broadcast news. She attended Idaho, whose mascot is the Vandals, from fall 1984 to spring 1985.

She then returned to Alaska to attend Matanuska-Susitna College in Palmer in fall 1985.

Then she returned to Idaho, for spring 1986, fall 1986 and spring 1987, when she graduated. Despite her journalism degree, she does not appear to have worked for the college newspaper or campus television station, school officials said. She worked briefly as a sportscaster for KTUU in Anchorage after she graduated college.

The McCain campaign did not have an immediate comment on Palin's higher education record.

In a recent interview with the school's alumni magazine, before her selection to run on the GOP ticket, she explained that her curiosity and love of writing made journalism a natural choice.

"I was always asking everyone the questions, and I still am today," Palin told the magazine.

The University of Idaho is taking advantage of Palin's nomination. A prominent photograph of her is featured on the school's Web site.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Bush Administration: Declared War On Journalists

By Scott Horton (Harper's)


Is it hyperbole to say that the Bush Administration has gone to war against journalists?

Increasingly, this claim is a literal truth.

Those who would dismiss the claim should contemplate some hard facts from the real battlefields of the “war on terror” in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, over a hundred journalists have been killed – a multiple of the number who died in World War II – and a large part of that number fell to American arms. I don’t suggest that the U.S. soldiers intentionally targeted them; but it does appear that historical rules that shielded journalists on the battlefield have disappeared, and that this has led to deaths. And with respect to certain foreign press organizations, like al-Jazeera, intentional targeting is now documented.

Thousands of journalists have been arrested by U.S. forces, and a few hundred held for significant periods. Reports of beatings and abuse are fairly routine. Journalists who take pictures or shoot film that the Pentagon and White House don’t want seen on U.S. televisions suffer the worst – consider CBS cameraman Abdul Amir, held in prison for a year, or AP Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Bilal Hussein, now held for over a year – without charges.
In both Afghanistan and Iraq, journalists have had their photographs and film seized and destroyed by U.S. forces, acting on formal orders to interdict the transmission of film footage which would undermine the White House’s message.

This is not the way it once was. America’s historical attitude has been tolerant, reflecting the values of the First Amendment. Reporters may be irksome and inconvenient – they may get in the way of the message the Pentagon and the White House want to get out. But historically the United States has respected that they play a legitimate role – a role that takes them out on to the field of battle to perform a difficult and dangerous job.

Under the Bush Administration, and particularly under the Neocon idealists who have seized the machinery of war, the historical view has been warped and subverted and something quite sinister is emerging in its place.

The notion of “communications” plays a crucial role in the Department of Defense’s last Quadrennial Review. The focus of the discussion of communications is not signals or dealing with allies, but management of the media – and particularly of the media message concerning the conduct of the war beamed back home to the United States. In the view of Neocon theorists like Stephen Cambone and Douglas Feith, the media affords access by the “enemy” to the “soft underbelly of the democratic state.” The war effort can be undermined and the will of the people to fight can be eroded. To most Americans, this would be called “democratic process,” namely the right of the people to be freely informed and to decide to authorize or reject the conduct of war as a part of their essential franchise. But the Neocon theorist has been ever mindful of the “weaknesses” and “vulnerabilities” of democracy, and frankly never so enamored of democracy.
While working in Iraq last year, I was warned repeatedly that journalists were targeted and that documents existed establishing this. I was also warned that by defending journalists, I would myself become a target.

Even more chilling: in a series of speeches given across the country, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld has assailed journalists and suggested that Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations are successfully infiltrating media organizations and controlling their message.

Today some further documents have emerged which establish the official administration viewpoint: journalists are the enemy.

Paul McLeary at Columbia Journalism Review:

It looks like it's official: the United States Army thinks that American reporters are a threat to national security. Thanks to some great sleuthing by Wired's "Danger Room" blogger Noah Shachtman, the Army's new operational security guidelines (OPSEC) hit the Web in a big way yesterday, and the implications they have for reporters -- who are grouped in with drug cartels and Al Qaeda as security threats to be beaten back -- are staggering.

Make no mistake, this is a very big deal, and every American citizen, not just reporters and soldiers, needs to understand the implications of the Army's strict new policy, because it directly affects how citizens receive information about their armed forces: information that it has every right to get.

Shachtman reproduces a slide from the new "OPSEC in the Blogosphere," document, which lists and ranks "Categories of Threat." Under "traditional domestic threats" we find hackers and militia groups, while "non-traditional" threats include drug cartels, and -- yes -- the media. Just to put that into some perspective, the foreign "non-traditional threats" are listed as warlords, and Al Qaeda. In other words, the Army has figuratively and literally put the media in the same box as Al Qaeda, warlords, and drug cartels.

The attitude that appears in these frames reflects the theory of total war. It’s a mindset I have come across many times in my career, in the former Soviet Union and in Communist China, for instance. And now: in training slides for the U.S. Army.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)

The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.