Las Vegas Sun

Here's an example of the "borrowing" done by Carlos Menstealia

Stealing from Bill Cosby
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCixAktGP...

If you think Al Gore would have been a better President than Ralph Nader you're crazy. Al Gore is a good man, but the next time you buckle your child into a safety belt you might think of Ralph Nader (National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act). The next time you take a drink from a water fountain you might think of Ralph Nader (Safe Drinking Water Act). If you're angry about Bush changing the Freedom of Information Act, you might ask who was instrumental in creating the act to begin with.

For those opposed to Yucca Mountain, Nader was a key leader in the anti-nuclear power movement--and if you think that any of today's candidates would even be talking about Corporate control over politics if Nader hadn't run in the last two elections, you should go back to their speeches 4 and 8 years ago.

Excellent video. It's not often that video news actually covers the specifics of what a group is protesting about. Usually all we see is a few muted shots of protest signs without much explanation. One thing that did seem strange was when the presidential limo goes by. It looks as if the protesters weren't that close to where the President was speaking. I remember reading a story in a Tampa Bay newspaper about how Bush protesters there were cordoned-off in a "first amendment zone" about a half a mile away. Here's a link to the story.

http://www.sptimes.com/News/060501/Tampa...

The story reads:
"Kucinich barely registers in opinion polls and he showed poorly in early presidential contests"

First off, why should this be a deciding factor in keeping someone out of the debates? The fact that certain candidates aren't given equal coverage might be a major reason for why they are polling low.

Secondly, here's a link to a long list of polls including ones done by major networks that show Dennis Kucinich as actually scoring quite high in the polls.

http://www.dennis4president.com/go/resou...

Wow. Thank God we have NBC and the Nevada Supreme Court to keep us from hearing different viewpoints in the primaries.

As far as this story is concerned, it's obvious that the reporter didn't do much research on the original case, because the original ruling didn't have anything to do with the First Amendment.

The actual ruling was based on FCC rules, which state that a station must "operate in the public interest for the discussion of conflicting views of public interest". Because Kucinich is the only candidate offering to move troops out of Iraq within a year, he has a distinctly different view (which is actually more in-tune with the public) than the three candidates allowed in the debate.

The other part of the initial lawsuit had to do with Breech of Contract- (the invitation and dis-invitation) which also wasn't addressed in this story.

The bottom line is that a network's First Amendment rights should not allow them to go against FCC regulations which were set up to keep networks from excluding differing opinions in a political debate.

Ok, I feel pretty dumb. It might take me a while to get this foot out of my mouth. It's at least nice to know that others out there that are as disappointed in the news as I am.

horatio
Are you kidding me? You're saying that you're going to let the media tell you to choose from 3 candidates because everyone else is? Tell me this: if you were hiring someone for a job, would you rather have five applicants or three? Would you choose them for their qualifications or because their picture was in the paper? If you don't like Kucinich because of his policies that's one thing, but don't tell me you wouldn't vote for him because you'd rather vote for someone who will win. I mean seriously, where did you learn about democracy from? It's very simple. You pick the candidate that you believe will do the job best. If that's your goal, then you want to hear as much about everyone running as possible.

It's really disheartening to see nothing but Hillary and Obama covered as if they were the only two democratic candidates. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but I always thought journalists were supposed to try and cover things equally and let the public decide who they want. It seems that we always hear political pundits saying "the race isn't over yet" and "voters haven't made up their minds", yet the vast majority of coverage from the very beginning has been on these two candidates, and which of them has the best strategy to win. I realize that reporters get wrapped up in the horse race of it all, but that particular part of this whole process is probably the least helpful to those of us who haven't figured out who we want to vote for yet. As a longtime reader of the Sun, it would be nice to see some more coverage with depth-- involving the issues if possible.

Without polls what will the T.V. reporters talk about? We all know that there won't be any coverage on the issues of the campaign-- so expect to see a lot more about whether Hilary Clinton shows her emotional side and whether Barack Obama is black enough for Latino voters.

Without polls what will the T.V. reporters talk about? We all know that there won't be any coverage on the issues of the campaign-- so expect to see a lot more about whether Hilary Clinton shows her emotional side and whether Barack Obama is black enough for Latino voters.