Media Matters with Bob McChesney
Sundays at 1 pm Central on AM580
Media Matters features host Bob McChesney in conversation with a variety of guests. Listeners may call with comments or questions.
Bob McChesney is a research professor in the Institute of Communications Research and the Graduate School of Information and Library Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "The media are central to all our lives," he says. "Yet the media are the most frequently misunderstood parts of our lives. We want to help people understand the role of media in society."
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Sunday, September 14, 2008
Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine
This week our guest is Matt Rothschild, editor of The Progressive magazine, one of the leading voices for peace and social justice in this country. Rothschild is also the author of a book entitled You Have No Rights: Stories of America in Our Repressive Age (New Press, 2007). A graduate of Harvard University, Rothschild prior to coming to The Progressive worked as the editor of Multinational Monitor, a magazine founded by Ralph Nader.
Rothschild also hosts Progressive Radio, a syndicated weekly half-hour program, and he does radio commentaries Monday through Friday. Rothschild is also the co-founder and director of The Progressive Media Project, which since 1993 has been distributing opinion pieces to newspapers around the country in an effort to diversify and democratize the national debate.
Progressive Radio is available in Urbana-Champaign on WRFU (104.5FM), Thursdays at 4:30pm, and Rothschild's radio commentaries run on the station daily in the 4pm hour.
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Another enlightening and frightening broadcast. I just wanted to briefly provide a minor correction to Matt’s description of the relative amount of time the Constitution spends laying out the relative responsibilities of the President and the Congress as to the military. The President doesn’t get “a paragraph” as Matt said but only a single clause:
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States”
That’s it!!!
In Article I, however, we get:
“To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress”
Note, in particular, the first of the quoted clauses, which clearly states it is the responsibility of Congress and not the president—even as commander in chief—to define what “Offenses against the Law of Nations” actually are.
My basic point is that the Constitution is not a long or complicated document and it is clear few,if any, of this administration have ever actually read it. Any president can claim vast powers under the “Commander in Chief” clause, but any justification of that seems to involve simply ignoring the rest of the Constitution itself.
Awesome show sir. Very detailed.
Agreed JP. Awesome Show
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