We are beset by two raging terrors, debt and calumny. In his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin told of how before the Revolution he refused to print "...all libelling and personal abuse which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country." Certainly our press has today become largely a vehicle for such abuse on a scale he could never have imagined, and to the discredit of our nation and its destruction as Machiavelli argued in describing how calumny led peoples to disorder and ruin. But at the same time we are unable to come to grips with our nation's debt resulting from wars and an imprudent banking industry. To this dilemma the Tea Party calumny heaps confusion and distraction. No great nation can long tolerate such conditions and prosper. As Livy noted in his time (circa 10 B.C.E.), "Our defects are unendurable to us - and so are their cures." Perhaps a responsible press on the one hand could lead to responsible and endurable answers on the other.
Rupert Murdock and his News Corporation are out of the news due to the debt crisis and stock market drop. But we should not lose focus on the damage he and Murphy's Liberty Media have done to American democracy over the past 3 decades (see: http://www.dailykos.com/...). While the moment of attention has been on the practices of News Corporation people should keep Liberty Media in mind as a co-conspirator (http://www.dailykos.com/...).