Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to review the case of Winter v. NRDC, a case ostensibly about the Navy's use of sonar during military training exercises, but in reality about the extent of President Bush's power in influencing court decisions. Backstory: Earlier this year, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals sided with a previous ruling, which declared that in order to protect marine life such as dolphins and whales, the Navy must limit its use of sonar and abide by a "12-nautical-mile no-sonar zone" along the southern California coast. Additionally, the court ordered the Navy to end sonar use if a marine animal was detected within a 2,200-yard radius. In its ruling, the 9th Circuit Court rejected a previous attempt by the Bush administration to exempt Navy sonar from environmental laws.

But now the administration has taken its case to the highest court in the land. The San Jose Mercury News offered a handy precis of the arguments: "Restricting the use of this sonar 'jeopardizes the Navy's ability to train sailors and Marines for wartime deployment during a time of ongoing hostilities,' Bush administration lawyers said in their appeal to the high court. But environmentalists... point to the dead whales that washed ashore in the Bahamas, the Canary Islands and Madeira Islands after the Navy conducted war games nearby. Some of them appeared to have died of hemorrhages in and around their ears, brains and lungs."

By the Navy's own estimate, 170,000 marine mammals have been affected by its sonar exercises over the last two years. The military branch still argues that the exercises are vital to training. But when the Supreme Court hears the case this fall, the justices will not weigh in on whether the dolphins and whales are being harmed. As the New York Times point outs, the court is really considering "the balance of power between the executive branch and the courts in resolving such issues. In an effort to sidestep the courts, the Bush administration invoked national security to exempt the Navy from strict adherence to the two federal environmental laws that underlay the court decisions."

And the extent of the administration's power is one of the reasons that Propeller user TechnologyExpert was interested in the story. "It's another 'national security" ploy by the Bush administration to get their way," he wrote in an email. "Humans don't really care about any other organisms on this planet.... In this case, the evidence is strong that sonar harms whales. Yet, the attitude of most humans is, so what?"

Meanwhile, how will the judges will? Lawyers for the Natural Resources Defense Council told the Los Angeles Times that they "were not surprised by the court's willingness to hear the Navy's appeal but said they remained confident of winning. Richard B. Kendall, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented the NRDC, pointed out that the justices had recently rejected a similar claim from the administration that the military's need to hold 'enemy combatants' at Guantanamo Bay trumps the detainees' right to go to court."

But Technology Expert is less optimistic. "I don't expect a good result: the Supreme Court is conservative. But what gives us the right to decide the life and death of entire species? Our brains? We don't seem to use them well."

Last weekend in Malibu, a group of paparazzi descended on the beach to take photos of actor Matthew McConaughy, who was surfing nearby. Their presence on the beach wouldn't have been notable--"paps," as these photographers and videographers are called, can be spotted most days in Malibu. But on this particular day, the group was confronted by a group of local surfers. Verbal sparring ensued as the surfers insisted on protecting both their beach and McConaughy. "Get off our beach," they told the paps. "Get a real job." Before long the incident escalated into violence. On video, the surfers can be see kicking one pap and throwing his camera into the water.

It's unclear who actually instigated the violence; the video would seem to implicate the local surfers, but the Malibu Surfside reports that the paps were the aggressors, and that one of the photographers pulled a knife on the men. Regardless, the incident, which was quickly picked up by the media, highlighted the ongoing problem of paparazzi in Malibu. And many Angelenos quickly took the side of the locals. "The general sentiment around here is that any time a paparazzo gets his camera smashed or gets popped in the face or gets dunked in the water, we're all for it," Brian Pietro, owner of Malibu General Store, told the Los Angeles Times.

Gossip scribe Joanne Molloy, who writes the Rush & Molloy column for the Daily News, says there's been an escalation in incidents involving citizens harassing the paps. "It used to be that celebrities like Chris Martin or Sean Penn or Alec Baldwin had to fight off the paparazzi themselves," Molloy writes in an email to Propeller. "But we've seen an increase in incidents like the one, with surfers in Malibu or clubgoers in New York who take the side of a star who's just trying to chillax."

As Molloy points out in yesterday's Daily News, the beach fight quickly spread online following last weekend's incident. Thousands of comments were left on the website of the X17 agency, which sells photos to magazines, and paps were quick to respond to the disparaging comments. "I'm a pap," writes one commenter. "I've made $94K a year and I'm only four months into it... because stupid white trash people like your fat mother buy the magazines. We hunt the very people you worship for no reason."

Also lost in the debate---and the media coverage--was an another response. Why attack the photographers when the real villains are the magazines editors and publishers who pay for the photos? A moot point, says Rebecca Fox, managing editor of media web site Mediabistro.com. "It's parallel to the meat industry," she tells Propeller. "People elect not to think about how they get their information." She adds: "I think people want their celebrity stuff however they can get it."

At least one photographer has filed charges, according to reports, while Malibu Mayor Pamela Conley Ulich and L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca announced that following last weekend's incident, a task force will consider whether paparazzi should be required to have special licenses. The task force will also "address what Ulich termed 'a new breed of paparazzi'," who "travel in packs, run red lights, make unsafe . . . U-turns in pursuit of their subject,' according to the Los Angeles Times.

Police also will be heading to the same Malibu beach this weekend. According to comments left on the X17 website, the two sides are planning to have a huge rumble on the beach either on Saturday or Sunday. "The common theme seems to be that one of the weekend days, the two sides are going to come together," one police captain told the Times.

Meanwhile, for all the fuss on the web, the submitted story got few votes here at Propeller. But it was a story that was noticed by locals--and by Propeller Scout Deirdre Woolard, who lives in Los Angeles. "I think that surfers always feel some ownership of the beaches that they frequent and so there is some ego there," she wrote in an email. "Also, it is at the core a sport which requires concentration and the proper environment. If the paparazzi were swarming a golf course (which they have started doing too), you'd hear about angry golfers whacking at cameras with five irons."

Deirdre also believes that paparazzi are indeed getting more aggressive, and using new tactics--like just staking out a spot and waiting for celebrities. "The groups have gotten bigger and bigger and can represent a danger to the community. I think keeping paparazzi off the beach is a good idea."

The modern age calls for modern political tools. Last week, Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's campaign launched a new website solely dedicated to debunking untruths about his life. Called Fight The Smears, the site is laid out in a clean, simple style: it lists each rumor, then neatly debunks it. Example:

LIE: Barack Obama won't put his hand over this heart during the Pledge of Allegiance

TRUTH: View video of Barack leading The Pledge of Allegiance in the United States Senate

Here's the video of Obama communications director Robert Gibbs talking about the site:



Granted, addressing rumors is nothing new for the Obama camp. Previously, the campaign has used a different site, Fact Check Obama, to counteract untruths. But this new site is far more aggressive than its predecessor. And according to some news outlets, this is exactly not the tactic to take. According to Salon, conventional wisdom states that the best way to counteract a negative, rumor-filled attack is to ignore it. The Salon piece also takes the layout of the new site to task. Listing the smear first, says one expert, is a dicey tactic, "which often causes people to later misremember the lie as true."

Not so, says Drew Westen, author of The Political Brain, speaking on Good Morning America. "That is one of the biggest fallacies in politics--that if you respond to an attack, you are somehow dignifying it," he argued. "The reality is that if you don't respond to an attack, what you're allowing the other side to do is to shape the associations people have to your candidate. If you don't offer any counter-association, they come to believe those things. And those things will stick."

While Monicachenoa never got back to NewsQuake on what interested her about the story, look what was submitted to the site last night by IslandDog: "More Obama Lies: He was A Muslim." Now that Obama's site is up and running--and has debunked this very assertion--is this a case of ignorance or deliberate rumor-mongering?

Story: Obama site to debunk rumors
User: Monicachenoa

Story submission: Wedding Plans Underway In Calif. As Foes Rally Offensive
User: David-NWA

California saw two big events this week: First, opponents of California Supreme Court's May ruling (which granted gays the right to get married) gathered enough signatures to put an anti-gay marriage initiative on the ballot. Secondly, the Supreme Court stayed its decision to allow gay marriages to go forward beginning June 16th. California has been through this vote before: In 2000 voters adopted Proposition 22--with 61.4% in favor of the measure--that banned gay marriage. But in this case the legal twist is that the ban on gay marriage could come five months after couples are legally married in the state. To find out how gay groups are feeling about this latest round of events, Propeller followed up with Rachel Dowd, executive editor of The Advocate.

What is the mood, or general mood among your readers in terms of this being on the ballot?

The mood is cautious optimism. Even the fact that the Supreme Court decided to stay their decision and allow gay marriages to go forward on June 17th was a great symbol that we are moving forward.

But at the same time, the amount of money needed to beat this ballot initiative will be between $10 million and $20 million. That's an enormous amount of money for pro gay groups to raise. It will be the most ever they have raised and so it's an enormous task ahead. But it feels like winds have changed.

What will the money be spent on?

Media outreach, mostly. The main group [who helped put the initiative on the ballot] is the National Coalition for Marriage in California. They spent $8 million to get it on the ballot and they have plans to spend $15 million more.

Where do current polls show in terms of how the vote could swing?

A recent Los Angeles Times poll taken at the end of May showed that 51 percent of voters approved of same sex marriages. It's a dead heat. But that in and of itself is progress since Prop. 22 saw 61 percent of voters disapproving... so we are making progress.

One thing that is new now is that when Massachusetts passed their initiative, they got a $102 million boost to their economy in the first 18 months because of gay weddings [wedding and the related business, i.e., catering, florists, etc]. Now, you have to be a resident to Massachusetts to marry, you can't just drive there and get marry, but California won't have the resident clause. And it's estimated that it'll give a $375 million boost to our economy.

What happens to those marriages that happen before November if voters approve the amendment to ban gay marriage?

This has never happened before so there are issues.. but you can't take away something that was legal.

What kinds of implications will the November vote have for the rest of the country?

The California Supreme is the most-cited court in the country, it is used more often in arguments than in any other state. It's the most important Supreme Court in the country. There are other states, like Connecticut, that are close [to approving gay marriage] and looking to California right now.

With both candidates saying they are opposed to gay marriage, will this have any impact on the presidential race?

With the number of young voters who now plan to got to the polls [because of Obama] and vote this November, it's in our favor....Even though, he respects the right to choose, he has inspired younger voters.


Propeller also caught up with user David NWPA to find out what interesting him about the story. Here's what he wrote back: "I was most interested by the fact that some people in California (and elsewhere) are vehemently opposed to marriage equality and will stop at nothing to embolden their supporters. The reasoning behind why gay marriage is so offensive to some rests solely with religious beliefs and mythical ideas about marriage. That it is a heterosexual institution and has traditionally been so is sufficient reason to keep gays and lesbians from marrying. However, if one uses that logic, neither women, nor blacks could vote. They could not wed one another, and we would have slaves picking cotton in the south. Traditions can and rightly should change. Those who oppose gay marriage, like the ones mentioned in the article, fail to understand that position. Those ideas I found to be most compelling."

Nightly PBS show The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer may be popular with Propeller Scout Corey Spring, but a New York Times story about the show's funding difficulties wasn't a hit with users. As reported by the Times earlier this week, Archer Daniels Midland--the country's leading producer of ethanol--has withdrawn its funding, ending a 14-year deal that had helped pad out the program's roughly $27 million budget.

The story went on to detail the show's difficulties in securing corporate sponsorship, Corporations "no longer sponsor public television program for purely philanthropic reasons," according to the paper; instead they prefer a more targeted, marketing approach. Overall, PBS has seen its corporate underwriting drop 40 percent in the last five years.

As a result, the budget for the NewsHour is "several million dollars short" this year, according to the paper. According to the Times, Linda Winslow, the program's executive producer, "is still figuring out new ways to operate under a budget squeeze. Open jobs, including a correspondent and a senior producer, are not being filled for now. Longer term, she is investigating partnerships, but covering the news remains her top priority, a sentiment echoed by Mr. Lehrer. 'We've always played it close to the chest financially,' he said. 'That's part of who we are, part of being in public broadcasting.'"

The show, originally conceived as the half-hour Robert MacNeil Report, first aired on New York's channel 13 (WNET) in 1975. Reporter Robert MacNeil moderated the show, while Lehrer served as the Washington correspondent. In September 1983, The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour launched, and the revamped NewsHour with Jim Lehrer debuted in 1995.

Anne Bell, public relations manager for the NewsHour, tells Propeller that there has been "a lot of reaction" in the wake of the Times story. "Calls, emails, everyone from individuals and corporations, asking 'How can I help you?'"

Bells says she has been telling individuals to donate to their local PBS stations--that way, individual stations will have the funds to air the NewsHour. Needless to say, this media attention has been helpful. But as Bell points out, long-term strategies still need to be hammered out. "We are looking at all options right now," she says. "We are in discussions with PBS and foundations and we're looking at the overall strategy."

It's worth noting that the fiscal pinch isn't the result of dwindling viewers. While the award-winning NewsHour sees significantly lower ratings than the news shows of the three major networks, the broadcast does pull in about the same nightly audience as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart or some of Fox's talk shows.

And NewsHour isn't the only PBS show obliged to rethink its funding strategies. "The entire landscape has changed," says Bell. "It's no longer the three networks and us. There are more and more cable television programs. Now underwriters are spreading out their advertising--it's not one charity that underwrites the program exclusively."

In an email to Overlooked, Spring explained his interest in the story: "I submitted it because I've always respected Jim Lehrer as a newsman. He is very evenhanded and just gives you the news straight, which is what a good journalist should do. It's a shame that the show is on the ropes, because journalistically, it's one of the better ones on television.... And no one knows it." Spring adds that the story's lack of traction on Propeller was somewhat predictable. "I wasn't really surprised it didn't get more votes, because PBS isn't really popular (at least in ratings) with the general public."

When AOL announced in March that it would acquire social-networking service Bebo for $850 million, there was a collective gasp from those watching the company. At the time, news headlines bluntly suggested that the flailing corporation could be spun off into parts (Variety: "AOL Seeks Reinvention") or suggested a Yahoo-AOL joint venture. While social media sites are all the rage (just last week, LinkedIn valued itself at $1 billion), no one expected AOL to gobble up the third-largest social networking service in the U.S., which trails only MySpace and Facebook.

An acronym of the phrase "Blog early, blog often," Bebo was founded in 2005 by a San Francisco-based husband and wife team, Michael and Xochi Birch. The site remains more popular in Europe than in America, but as analysts saw it, AOL was wise to focus on a younger audience (and to acquire a venue that might bring in substantial advertising dollars). Anthony Valencia, an analyst for TCW Group in Los Angeles, told the Los Angeles Times that "AOL was in danger of becoming your father's Oldsmobile. This acquisition is designed to prevent that."

But how would Bebo fit into AOL's larger strategy? At the Economics of Social Media conference, held at Los Angeles' Skirball Center earlier this month, AOL President and COO Ron Grant addressed that very question, albeit in rather vague terms. "About 14 months ago, we took a look at the space," Grant told the 400-plus attendees at the conference. "And we believe that engagement is one of the critical things to look at."

According to Grant, he and other executives had heard Bebo president Joanna Shield speak at a conference about a year and half ago, which piqued their interest in the company. Shield herself also appeared on the panel (via satellite) with Grant, and talked about how the company is engaging teens. "[Teens] are using Bebo to live their life online," said Shields. " It's a platform for self-expression."

Self-expression, community, and letting users determine their own experience online--these seem to be the fundamentals of AOL's new strategy. "Bebo is at the center of our international expansion," said Grant, who also noted that Bebo "is the centerpiece for what AOL is doing."

"You will see us embracing the community," Grant added. He also called Bebo the "final leg of the stool" in terms of AOL's existing content sites and its advertising division.

Later, Grant spoke in a bit more detail to the Context Next staff. "We're not trying to build a portal," he insisted. "We're literally putting relevance front-and-center--relevant ads, relevant content, and letting the users decide where to take these platforms. That's what you'll see a lot with Bebo. We're not going to care where the content comes from. We're just going to put the right stuff in front of the right people."

After the conference, which also included panels featuring Jeff Weiner, Executive Vice President of Yahoo's Network Division, and Gordon McLeod, president of the Wall Street Journal Digital Network, Grant's remarks were the subject of some animated discussion at the concluding cocktail party. If the news of AOL buying Bebo seemed peculiar at the moment, least one partygoer noted that the industry was just as shocked when NewsCorp purchased MySpace in 2005 for $580 million. "Go back and read the headlines," he said. "The press were saying just the same things." [Pictured: Context Next co-editor and Executive Vice President Staci Kramer interviewing AOL COO Ron Grant]

Story: Minnesota's New Ghost Towns
Propeller user: Buglover

If there's an epicenter to the country's real-estate downturn, it may be just be Wright County in Northwest Minnesota. As outlined in the recent three-part Star-Tribune feature "From Boom to Bust," the county, located 30 miles from the Twin Cities, is facing the brunt of the subprime mortgage meltdown and overbuilding.

Starting in the late 1990s, ambitious developers carved out large acreages, building inexpensive subdivisions and selling many of the units to buyers as investments. Today, these same homes in Wright County, which has a population of about 114,787, have gone unsold or been abandoned by buyers unable to pay their mortgage payments. This has in turn created an epidemic of "ghost-towns." As the Star-Tribune notes: "There are few trees or hills in this flat, predominantly rural county to obscure the evidence: Rows of vacant and unfinished homes, often with lockboxes on the front doors and foreclosure notices taped to the windows. Realtors call them 'see-through houses,' so empty of furniture and curtains that it's possible to see right through them."

Values in the country have declined 30 percent in the last year. (By comparison, in Los Angeles County, also considered a down market, the median sale price declined 18.5 percent from a year ago.) Wright County is bracing for 1,080 foreclosures this year, up 43 percent from a year earlier, according to the paper. On average, there are 43 foreclosures a week.

The Star-Tribune story is "a snapshot of what we're going through," says Zachary Adams, a real estate agent at Wright Sherburne Realty Inc. in Monticito. Adams, whose firm was featured the newspaper piece, has typically sold about 6,000 units in the Twin Cities area each year. But he estimates that there is now five to six years of inventory on the market. As to why prices climbed so high, especially in comparison to other regions, Adams is blunt: "These new prices were artificially inflated. Investors were appraising the homes as high as they could get them."

Putting aside the economic strain on the area--many towns had figured on tax dollars from the developments coming their way-- there is the simple matter of the abandoned homes. Inexpensively made and erected quickly, the houses are now a blight on the landscape. "There are no architectural features on the homes," says Adams. "If I am selling to bulk and all I am doing is selling to investors, then it's all about cost vs. sale price." (Some sample listings off the Wright County Minnesota MLS can be found here.)

Given that he's a homeowner in Minnesota, the story caught the attention of Propeller user Buglover. "I'm trying to move to the Twin Cities, " he writes in an email. "With what I can sell my current house for, I wouldn't be able to come up with a down payment. So the real estate market is becoming somewhat of an obsession for me."

But unlike those waiting for the market to recover, Buglover sees investment prospects in all those empty houses. "If I had the cash, I would grab up some of these deals, and just sit on them for a year or two, [waiting] for the market to come back around," he writes. Clearly, that's something that other Minnesotans have in mind. If there's anyone who stands to make money off the real estate downturn, it may be investors who can grab these foreclosed or abandoned properties, Adams told Propeller. "They'll purchase after the units are sold back to the bank."

Part 1: Minnesota's new ghost town
Part 2: Housing bets gone bad
Part 3: Housing downturn has suburbs stuck with the bills

Few Americans likely noticed when a new website, Let Them Return.com, run by the Chagossian Refugee Committee, launched two weeks ago. With scant coverage from the blogs or press, the site received about as much attention in the U.S. as the story of the Chagossians themselves, a group of indigenous people who were expelled from the island of Diego Garcia in the 1960s and 1970s by the U.S. and British governments.

"The story is almost entirely overlooked by the U.S. media," says David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University in Washington, D.C. who is writing a book on the plight of the Chagossian people. "People may know there is a U.S. military base there, but they don't know the history of Diego Garcia."

Once home to about 2,000 Chagossians, Diego Garcia, a V-shaped, 13-mile-long island situated between Africa and Indonesia in the Indian Ocean, is now solely used as a U.S. military installation. The base has been instrumental in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and according to a New York Times story, it was also used as a fueling stopover for at least one prisoner bound for Guantanomo Bay in Cuba.

Since their removal, the Chagossians, most of whom are scattered in Mauritius and Seychelles, have sued for the right to return home to their island. Twice they have won in Britain's lower courts, and last May they won once again in the Court of Appeals. Yet the British government has continued to file appeals, and in June, the case will be heard by the High Court, Britain's version of the Supreme Court. (A similar case was brought against the U.S. government, but ultimately dismissed in 2006.)

"What they have done to us is illegal," says Oliver Bancoult, the London-based spokesman for the group who has led the legal battle. "Since 1997, we have been fighting with the British government to get back our rights." With some of the funds raised through the website, Bancoult plans to bring 2,500 Chagossians from Mauritius to London in June, hoping that their physical presence will impact the court decision.

According to Vine, a series of covert deals between the United States and Britain starting in the 1960s helped secure the island as a U.S. base. Beginning in 1968, any Chagossians who left the island and traveled to Mauritius for medical treatment or vacation were forcibly barred from returning home. Three years later, the U.S. had stepped up its conversion of the island into a military base. As Vine wrote for the Washington Post: "In 1971 the U.S. Navy began construction on Diego Garcia and ordered the British to complete the removals. First British agents and U.S. soldiers on Diego Garcia herded the Chagossians' pet dogs into sealed sheds and gassed and burned them in front of their traumatized owners awaiting deportation. Then, between 1971 and 1973, British agents forced the islanders to board overcrowded cargo ships and left them on the docks in Mauritius and the Seychelles."

The conditions in Mauritius were a stark contrast to life on Diego Garcia. A 2004 UK film, Stealing a Nation, shows the tenement-like structures the Chagosssians were now forced to live in. According to Vine, the islanders had come from a life that wasn't rich in material terms, but comfortable and secure. "On the island, they had jobs, food, health care, retirement benefits, their own land," he says. "And then they were dumped in a place where there was no security, no jobs, and no health care."

As a result, the effects of expulsion have lasted generations, says Vine. "They are still deeply impoverished," he notes. "There has been some improvements, but they are still the poorest of the poor."

The U.S. military base takes up only about one third of the island, so it's entirely feasible that the Chagossians could return. Ironically, the U.S. allows other area islanders to come and work at the base, but the former inhabitants remain barred from entering.

The military also bars civilians from entering the island, Vine says, which makes it hard to pitch the Diego Garcia story to the media. "Editors will tell me, 'Well, we can't send a reporter there,'" says Vine, whose book Island of Shame will published next year by Princeton University Press. Additionally, he believes that the U.S. media has little interest in covering the story because of its location. "This is a story about a small group of people in the Indian Ocean," he says. "It's very far away."

Diego Garcia may be far away, but Propeller member Berkeley certainly noticed the story on the AntiWar.com site (where Vine's story appeared), one of many web sites that he reads every few days. "It's a story that gives an excellent brief summary of the military take-over, " he writes in email. "And it [covers] the crime of removing the inhabitants, and the CIA prison."

As for Bancoult, he is currently in the midst of a two-week tour in America, hoping to raise awareness about the Chagossian people and their story. "I know I have to do a lot of work to let people know," says Bancoult. "But before [their expulsion], people were living in peace on Diego Garcia."

On November 24, 1971, a man named Dan Cooper hijacked a Northwest Orient plane headed to Seattle, demanding $200,000 in ransom money and a flight to Mexico. After releasing passengers in Seattle, the hijacker, who would later be known as D.B. Cooper, parachuted out of the back of the plane somewhere over the Oregon-Washington border, with the ransom money strapped to his chest.

The country's only unsolved skyjacking, the case is now folklore, and D.B. Cooper has been immortalized as a dapper and dashing figure. His story was revived last week when children playing in Amboy, Washington, found what was initially suspected to be a possible link to the case: a parachute, partially buried in the ground.

Propeller Scout and user Lizbethxq submitted the story about a possible break in the Cooper case. "I had just watched a show on the Discovery Channel about D.B. Cooper," she tells Newsquake. "I thought it would make for an interesting story for Propeller."

F.B.I. agents have long contended that the hijacker probably didn't survive the fall. (A recent New York magazine article on the case describes the forbidding terrain this way: "The trees are hundreds of feet tall in the Cascades, a snow-capped collection of volcanoes and glaciers and miles of snowfields that never melt.") But that didn't stop locals from celebrating this latest twist in the D.B. Cooper saga. Dona Elliott, whose store in Ariel, Washington, is the site of an annual D.B. Cooper tribute, told the Los Angeles Times that if the parachute turned out to be authentic, "We're going to have to have a party."

But Friday, Earl Cossey, the very man who handed out the parachute to Cooper in 1971, delivered his verdict after being shown the material: It didn't match. "The D.B. Cooper parachute was made of nylon," he told The Columbian. "This 1945 parachute was made of silk." Cossey, who has been approached by the F.B.I. to examine a handful of other parachutes allegedly linked to the case, also said that the hijacker's chute was manufactured in the late 1950s or 1960s.

And late Tuesday, F.B.I. investigators agreed that the chute didn't belong to Cooper. "From the best we could learn from the people we spoke to, it just didn't look like it was the right kind of parachute in any way," agency spokeswoman Robbie Burroughs told the Associated Press.

The story didn't end there. As an April Fool's joke, Cossey told a reporter for the Columbian that the chute did belong to Cooper. According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a "story briefly appeared on the Columbian's Web site titled 'Parachute rigger now says it could have been DB Cooper's chute.'" Cossey subsequently received an angry phone call from the paper. "I could have been fired," one of the reporters told him. No doubt diehard D.B. Cooper fans appreciated Cossey's sense of humor.

When a bomb went off in Times Square in the early morning hours of March 6, David Karnes, an entertainment lawyer from Los Angeles, became one of the first suspects. Due to a set of circumstances that made him, in the words of one investigator, the "unluckiest person" in the world, he was immediately tried and found guilty by the media. Almost every newspaper account of the bombing referenced Karnes as a possible suspect.

Why was Karnes even mentioned? Shortly before the bombing, he had sent multiple documents, including a photo of himself in front of the Times Square recruiting station, to Democratic members of Congress. The written material expressed the young lawyer's opposition to the Iraq war. And the caption underneath the photo read: "We Did It!" According to Karnes, the photo was part of a holiday card sent to family friends after the 2006 election, now being recycled to congratulate Democratic lawmakers on regaining a congressional majority. Within a couple of days (and after an FBI interrogation), Karnes was cleared of any wrongdoing.

Karnes was hardly the first person to be unjustly smeared by the media. Not everyone, however, gets the chance to air his or her grievances in the editorial pages of a major newspaper. Karnes penned an article in the Los Angeles Times on March 16, recounting his how quickly the media had piled on. He chronicled the rush to judgment he saw in print and on television, and the sarcastic response to his protestations of innocence. (As the Weekly Standard put it: "There's only one way we can know for sure. Waterboard him!")

According to Karnes, what upset him most was that nobody ever got a chance to anyone to read his writings. But in addition to publishing his editorial, the Los Angeles Times--one of the few papers that didn't reference his name in the first place--linked to PDF files of several of his essays. Readers could sample "Memorandum to Democratic Members of Congress," "Common Ground: Rebuilding the Democracy for the New Millennium," and "Elections 2008: Summary of Key Premises."

According to Nicholas Goldberg, editor of the Times' Op-Ed pages, the paper wanted to give readers the chance to study the documents. He also notes that while his department often commissions articles, it was Karnes who approached the paper in this case. "We didn't solicit the piece," explains Goldberg. " But we looked into it and thought it was an interesting story."

For some, the story may bring to mind the tale of Richard Jewell, a security guard who was an initial "person of interest" after the Olympic bombing in Atlanta in 1996. For Propeller user bruhaha, who submitted the story, it was the "bad luck coincidence of the whole thing" that made it worthy of attention. Yet bruhaha also saw a broader theme: "This caught my attention because it showed another case of the media jumping on a story, without the facts. When the story turns out to not be true, and [the media] are forced to admit that they were wrong, they oftentimes bury it where no one sees it. So many of the people who saw the original report still think it was true.... Also, what made this more interesting to me is that it was just some 'Regular Joe' doing what more of us should do: being a part of the political system, being active."

Overlooked Story: Utah Students Hide Guns, Head to Class
Submitted By: Pamcak3

Last week, Joshua Molina, a senior at Utah's Brigham Young University and a campus correspondent for CNN, interviewed students at the University of Utah for a story on campuses and gun control. Utah is currently the only state that allows students and professors to carry guns on a public campus, but legislation that could allow concealed handguns on campuses is pending in about 14 states, according to the Washington, D.C-based Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Those in favor of such statutes argue that a would-be killer may be less likely to attack on a campus if both students and teachers are armed. Opponents insist that guns don't belong in the drinking-heavy college environment. For his story, Molina hung out with a student who carried a concealed weapon. Propeller's Dakota Smith caught up with him by phone on Monday.

Propeller: What's been the reaction from people since the story came out?

Joshua Molina: I've gotten a lot of emails from people who know me, saying congratulations on the article, along with a ton of messages on Facebook from people I don't know. I also heard from one of the Virginia Tech victims, who wrote, "Thanks for showing this side of the story, most of the time the media only shows one side of the story."

Propeller: When you talked to students at the University of Utah, what was the general reaction to having guns in the school?

Molina: I thought most people would be against it. I still think the majority of people are. But I was surprised at the number of students who don't mind [guns on campuses], or actually want them in school. Of course, you have to consider the demographic. You're in the western part of the country. I am from New Jersey, and where I grew up, you just don't have guns. But it's a different culture here.

Propeller: When you were with the student who had the gun, did other students know that he was armed?

Molina: The student said that most of his friends figured out who he was after the article came out. But no, you wouldn't know he carries a gun. He prefers it that way, that's why it's a concealed weapon.

Propeller: Would somebody like this student carry the gun everywhere, or just on campus?

Molina: The students that I talked to that carry guns on campus already carried guns in other public places. For a while students couldn't carry guns on the University of Utah campus because of a school rule, but the Utah Supreme Court overturned that rule in 2006. Since then, and especially since the Virginia Tech shootings, students have chosen to carry their concealed guns to school as well. They wanted to feel protected if another shooting occurred.

Propeller: Did the students or professors that you spoke to discuss other methods of preventing Virginia Tech-like incidents?

Molina: I don't think there is a dialogue about it all. People liked my article because it opened up a conversation on the topic, but no, they haven't offered alternative suggestions.

Propeller: At Brigham Young University, where you got to school, how do students feel about allowing weapons on campus?

Molina: You can't have guns on campus because it is a private institution, and they make the rules. But you can check guns at the dorm, you can leave them with someone at the front desk. I think most people feel safe here knowing that there are no guns, but I think that attitude is also changing.

Propeller: When these school shootings take place, what happens on your campus? Do students watch TV and talk about it, or have they become blasé?

Molina: I think we've been desensitized since Columbine. That was the first one, and I remember watching CNN and all the coverage. But since then, there have been so many other ones and so much media coverage. If it's not a local shooting, we don't spend that much time on it. Last year, there was a shooting at the Trolley Square Mall [in Salt Lake City], and people at our school sat around and watched TV and cried, but that's because it was local.

Propeller: When you are sitting in class, do you think about the possibility of a shooting?

Molina: It's crossed my mind. But even after interviewing these people, it's not in my forefront of my thoughts. Until it hits us closely and personally, it's hard to treat [security issues] as a priority.

Propeller: Now that you've done the story, what's your take on the issue?

Molina: I don't have a stance on this issue, but after researching the topic and interviewing people who are on either side of the issue, I'm coming to a more educated opinion about it.

Via flickr user Sarflondunc

Story: Graffiti Heroes: G Davis is Innocent
Submitted by: Grungeplunge

In Los Angeles, the widespread tagging of public and private property--scrawls made by gangs to mark their territory--has the unfortunate effect of overshadowing the work of legitimate graffiti artists. So when a new mural by the anonymous, London-based Bansky was spotted in the city, that was real news. According to a local blog, Laist.com, Banksy's latest creation appeared last week on the side of a movie theater on Beverly Boulevard.

And Banksy's official website is where this week's Overlooked story emerges. Was it posted by Banksy himself? It's not clear, but the post entitled "Graffiti Hero" tells the story of George Davis, a 33-year-old British man sentenced to 20 years for the armed robbery of a Leeds bank. Convinced that Davis was innocent, his friend Peter Chappell embarked on one of the "largest sustained graffiti campaigns Britain has ever seen." The phrase "G Davis is innocent" appeared on walls, bridges and tunnels across London. The campaign culminated in Chappell's arrest in 1977, when he and several collaborators vandalized a Headingley cricket ground before an important Australian-English match. (After breaking in, the culprits had written "Sorry it had to be done, but George Davis is innocent" on the surrounding walls.)

Chappell's actions brought attention to the case, and Davis was released after serving two years. His conviction wasn't actually overturned by British officials, who, according to the Independent, were by no means persuaded of his innocence. So the British legal system barely raised an eyebrow when, a year after his release, Davis was caught robbing a Bank of Cyprus branch. After his release for that crime, he was caught robbing a mail train in 1987.

In an interview with the Independent last year, Davis, who is now living in London and married to the daughter of a police chief inspector, said he is looking to clear his name and overturn his original conviction. "My life and livelihood has been very badly affected by that conviction," he told the paper. As for those valid convictions: ""Yes I did them, I pleaded guilty. But I have been a good boy since then and just kept out of trouble." What will happen next is unclear, but Davis still has his anonymous supporters. To this day, signs around the country still boast the "G Davis is Innocent" message. A few Flickr examples can be seen here and here. And Davis also has the support, for better or for worse, of the country's most famous graffiti artist.

More information on Bansky here.
BBC arrest on George Davis here.

In his relatively brief political career, Barack Obama has already achieved miracles. Still, nobody expected the candidate to wake the dead--which is exactly what happened last night at San Francisco's Warfield Theater. After a four-year hiatus that easily could have been permanent, the Grateful Dead reunited to play a benefit concert for the presidential contender.

The four-hour concert, held on the eve of the California primary and attended by a crowd of 2,400, kicked off with a video clip of Obama, who thanked the members of the band for their endorsement. The candidate made only a single faux pas. "I want everyone to sit down and enjoy the music," he said, prompting a roar from the crowd. Sit down? No way.

The Dead, who officially broke up in 1995 after the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, started in with "Playing In The Band," then took a typically circuitous route through such staples as "Sugaree," "Throwing Stones," "Deal," and "Iko Iko." Guitarist Bob Weir, drummer Mickey Hart, and bassist Phil Lesh, all original members of the band, were joined by Jackie Greene, John Molo, Steve Molitz, Mark Karan and Barry Sless. The late Garcia was also there and not just in spirit: A small, shaggy-haired Garcia doll rested on recording equipment on the right hand of the stage.

Between sets, band members shared their thoughts on the Illinois senator and his campaign. "I haven't seen something like this since Robert Kennedy in 1968," said Lesh, speaking of watching Obama at a rally last fall. "This is the real deal." In fact, Dead fans could thank Brian Lesh, the bassist's 18-year-old son, for the impromptu reunion. After spending the last summer working on Obama's campaign, he convinced his father and the rest of the band to do the show.

"Every few generations a guy like [Obama] comes along," drummer Hart told Reuters at a news conference held hours before the concert. "It seems like desperate times and we're desperate people."

Famously apolitical, the Dead have never before given their collective endorsement to a candidate. But band members have supported personal causes: Weir played at President Bill Clinton's inauguration festivities and publicly supported John Kerry in the last election, while Lesh is active in numerous issues in Marin County.

For Deadheads who'd already decided who to vote for, the band's imprimatur was sweet. "They just happen to be backing the guy I'm backing," said Mike Shoun, 37, a San Francisco resident who claims to have seen 75 Dead shows. "It's a nice coincidence." Other voters, such as Irenie Schlesinger, 49, were still undecided. "I was voting for Edwards, " shrugged Schlesinger, who added that she had spent the last 12 years following RatDog, Bob Weir's band, around the world.

Announced on the Dead's official web site last Friday, the concert sold out in less than an hour. On Craigslist, frantic fans offered at least $1,000 for a ticket. Crowds gathered outside the Market Street theater long before the show, with Deadheads hawking wooden pipes and light sticks. Overhead, a stereo system played the Dead (what else?) while hopeful fans trawled the crowd, looking for a spare ticket. Most simply held one finger aloft. Others were more direct. "I'll give you $600 for a ticket," yelled one young man, his arm upright, a fistful of bills in his hand.

Inside, a few local celebrities were spotted. Larry Brilliant, executive director of Google.org, the firm's charity, sat next to Sixties activist Wavy Gravy, while NBA star Bill Walton wandered the dance floor.

With a median age of 40-plus, there were fewer tie dyes, and more gray hairs spotted in the crowd. But whatever your political leanings, the event was a joyous celebration. Fans took cell phone pictures, strangers shared joints and friends reminisced about past shows. James Cottle and John Kantor, both who looked to be in their early 40s, had last seen the Dead play at Shoreline in 1995. "What's impressive is [the Dead's] fundraising skills," said Cottle, a self-professed independent. "They can still raise money for a good cause."

Jolie Wiggins, 48, had been to a "decade" worth of shows with longtime friend Danica Rehmy, 46. "We haven't been excited about anything in a long time," said Wiggins, referring to the country's political malaise. But, no, Wiggins hadn't decided on a candidate. Noting the sometimes fractious relationships between Dead members, Rehmy said it was significant that band was "doing something united" with tonight's concert. And looking around at the legions of potential voters, she wondered why no one had tapped these fans. "Has anyone ever thought of Deadheads as a voting block?" she asked rhetorically.

They did last night.

And via the band's official web site, Dead.net, the concert's set list:

I. Playing in the Band Brown-Eyed Women, Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo, New Minglewood Blues, Come Together

II. (Acoustic) Deep Elem Blues, Friend of the Devil, Deal, Ripple

III.China Cat Sunflower, The Wheel, The Other One, Sugaree, Eyes of the World, Throwin' Stones, Iko Iko, Playing reprise

Encore: U.S. Blues

[An idyllic, wreck-free stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu]

Story: Man who crashed Ferrari in Malibu, going 199 mph to be deported
Submitted by: Propeller member JessicaLaurie

"I would rank it as probably the most incredible exotic car crash in history." That's Gregg Carlson, editor of WreckedExotics.com, speaking in Wired magazine about the 2006 Malibu car crash of Bo Steffan Eriksson, a Swedish businessman and gangster, whose pending deportation recently made headlines.

According to news reports, on the early morning of February 21, 2006, Eriksson crashed a rare Ferrari Enzo--valued at $3 million, and one of only 400 made--into a telephone pole on Malibu's Pacific Coast Highway. Eriksson was going at least 162 miles per hour, and some news reports estimated a speed closer to 199 miles per hour when he crashed. Not surprisingly, his car "disintegrated into thousands of pieces along the highway." The sole reason that Eriksson and his passenger, Trevor Karney, escaped injury was that their passenger cabin remained intact.

When the police arrived, Eriksson, who had been drinking that night, said that he too had been a passenger in the Ferrari. The driver, whom he called Dietrich, had supposedly fled into the hills. According to Wired, Karney told the police that he'd been in a passenger in another car, a Mercedes Benz. He claimed to have stopped to help Eriksson, at which point his friend in the Benz suddenly sped off. Even more bizarre: as police were interviewing Eriksson and Karney at the scene, two cars pulled up and a pair of men, who identified themselves as Homeland Security experts, said they needed to speak to Eriksson.

Given all those details, it's little wonder that the media pounced on the story. Shortly after the crash, the Los Angeles Times ran a profile of Eriksson, portraying him as a playboy businessman and gangster with a history of assault and counterfeiting. Additionally, Eriksson was involved with Gizmondo Europe Ltd., a London-based videogame company that declared bankruptcy in 2006 after suffering losses of more than $380 million. (According to the company's website, it will soon be back in business.) Meanwhile, it was revealed that a .40 Glock automatic pistol was found in the car of a stranger who had stopped to help at the crash scene--possibly hidden there by Karney. And that Homeland Security field team would eventually be exposed as a low-level security group run out of the San Gabriel Valley.

According to news reports, police initially said they didn't have any charges. Enter Eriksson's wife, Nicole Persson. According to CBS2, Nicole was stopped after circling a Beverly Hills block three times, in clear view of a parked police officer who eventually pulled her over for having no US license plates. The documents in the front seat would reveal that the crashed Ferrari was about to be repossessed by a British Bank. In fact, it was one of three cars that Eriksson had illegally had flown into Los Angeles in the cargo holds of Virgin Atlantic 747s.

Eriksson was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement and fraud, and reportedly had been serving time in the Corcoran State Prison in the San Joaquin Valley. According to news reports, his deportation is the result of a decision to voluntarily leave the United States. Via CBS2: "Everything was ready before Christmas," wife Nicole Persson told the Stockholm newspaper Veckans Affaerer. "It took a while for the Swedish consulate to prepare a new passport. But he's expected to be on his way very soon."

MSNBC stars Tim Russert and Brian Williams

Overlooked story: CNN Beats Out Fox News and MSNBC in New Hampsire
Submitted by: TimALoftis

As recent media reports have pointed out, the presidential race isn't just between Hillary, Obama, and McCain, but the three big cable networks: CNN, MSNBC, and Fox. And if CNN has long trailed behind Fox in the ratings race, the network placed first during the recent New Hampshire primary. According to the New York Times, CNN had 3.3 million viewers, nearly double the number of viewers during the 2004 New Hampshire primary, while Fox had 3.06 million viewers and MSNBC, which claimed 1.64 million viewers.

"This was one of the first times that CNN overtook Fox in quite a while," says Steve Krakauer, associate editor at TV Newser. "So it came as a bit of a surprise." According to Krakauer, CNN first raised its profile last summer by broadcasting the YouTube debates. Since then, the network has aggressively marketed itself to viewers, adopting the "Best Political Team" tag line, while bringing in special guests such as Carl Bernstein and Bill Bennett to round out coverage by longtime anchors Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper. Additionally, this week CNN announced a new nightly show, CNN Election Center. According to the AP, the show will air opposite competitors Bill O'Reilly on Fox and Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.

Sharpening its election coverage, Fox has shuffled programming, having Greta Van Susteren and Shepard Smith report together in a pairing that's unique for the network since the two don't usually share air time, according to Krakauer. The network is also prominently featuring longtime duo Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes. For its part, MSNBC is using Tom Brokaw as a special correspondent, while continuing to plug longtime anchors Tim Russert and Brian Williams, as well as Olbermann and Chris Matthews of Hardball.

Increased eyeballs translate to increased advertising dollars for the cable networks, points out Anthony Crupi, senior editor at Mediaweek. And given the WGA strike, is there anything better to watch? According to Crupi, some of the cable networks are quietly pitching the election to advertisers as the "ultimate reality television" show. "The fact that these debates can be factious is helping ratings," says Crupi.

If MSNBC's Russert raised his profile by covering the elections in 2000, and the same gig helped to make Ashley Banfield a star in 2004, there haven't been any breakout stars spotted at the news desk this season, according to Crupi. "My guess is that the networks want to have more established newspeople," says Crupi. "It's such a wide open field, and they want a sense of gravitas."

Nevertheless, with February's Super Tuesday primary elections looming, expect the competition between the networks to heat up as even more viewers to tune in. "People are generally interested in this process," says Crupi.