Now some fresh pickings from the Political Grapevine:
No News or Good News?
The Chinese government has told its media to report only positive news and is barring reporters from covering some stories altogether. The Guardian newspaper reports the increased censorship comes ahead of an important Communist Party meeting.
The media have been banned from investigating the ongoing problems with Chinese exports. Most state media have been kept from reporting on the bridge collapse in southern China that killed 41 people. And coverage of new traffic control measures — including the ordering of 1 million cars off the roads — has been severely limited. Reporters are forbidden from talking with inconvenienced commuters or showing images of overcrowded buses.
Mind Games
The American Psychological Association is barring its members not only from participating but even witnessing interrogation techniques used against terror suspects at U.S. facilities.
The Washington Post reports the techniques include sleep deprivation, putting hoods over the head and the threat of such actions. The association says the methods are immoral, psychologically damaging and counterproductive in getting useful information.
Psychologists may witness such techniques while monitoring treatment of the detainee for research. Those who have their membership in the association revoked can lose their licenses to practice.
Dust Up
A Nation of Islam school that is using city land in San Francisco is demanding that a nearby housing development be halted because it is throwing naturally occurring asbestos dust into the air.
But now the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that the 5-year-old school has never paid its agreed-upon rent of $2,000-a-month to use that property. The head of the city's housing authority, which controls the buildings the school uses, says he has never asked for the rent because the school district has never billed his agency.
Former Friends?
The American Civil Liberties Union is planning to run a critical ad in the hometown papers of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The ad depicts Pelosi and Reid as sheep and says they have "caved in to yet another Bush assault on our freedoms."
It says the revised Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act gives "new powers" to the attorney general and new eavesdropping powers to the government without meaningful court or congressional oversight. It concludes: "We don't need sheep protecting the Bill of Rights."
The FISA revision authorizes surveillance on suspected foreign terrorists believed to be outside the U.S.
An ACLU spokeswoman tells FOX News that the group wants to hold Democrats accountable now that they control Congress. The ads will run in the next few weeks.
—FOX News Channel's Martin Hill contributed to this report.
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