This week's edition of the Weekly Pulse is shorter than usual. Our team is
getting ready for the fourth annual Netroots Nation blogger
conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Esther Kaplan, editor of the Nation Investigative Fund, and I are conducting an investigative reporting workshop on
Saturday from 1:30-4:15 p.m. Join us and help expose the corporate roots
of the Teabagger/Town hall mob movement.
Here's the latest news on the healthcare front: Republicans and their
allies are pressuring Democratic healthcare reformers at townhall meetings
around the country. Addie Stan has a blockbuster piece in AlterNet that exposes the network of corporate funders and lobbyists behind the mobs.
The Progressive's Ruth Conniff explains the mobs' marching
orders, as spelled out in a memo by Bob MacGuffie, a volunteer for the Tea
Party Patriots, an anti-reform group with ties to former Republican Rep.
Dick Armey's pressure group Freedom Works. MacGuffie instructs town hall protesters to shout at lawmakers
and attempt to throw them off their game as they try to make the case for
health care reform. So much for reasoned discussion.
As I reported in In These Times, the teabaggers are trying to scapegoat organized labor as the instigators of confrontations at town hall
meetings. On Aug. 6, a scuffle broke out in front of a town hall meeting
in St. Louis. The below video clip shows the last 10 seconds of a scuffle
in which a man in an SEIU t-shirt lies prostrate on the ground. A
38-year-old conservative activist claims to have been severely beaten, but
the video shows him apparently uninjured, darting around to different cops
and trying to convince them that he was attacked. The man's lawyer claims
that he saw his client get punched in the face and kicked in the head by
SEIU members.
A spokesman for the St. Louis County police told me that the police hadn't
reviewed the video because nobody had submitted it to them, despite a call
to the public to turn over evidence for the investigation. The fact that
the videographer hasn't turned over the video kind of makes you wonder if
the teabaggers really take the "evidence" as seriously as they claim.
How's this for irony? According to Talking Points Memo, the activist was
asking for money to pay his hospital bills because he's uninsured.
Finally, Jodi Jacobson of RH Reality Check reports that Kansas Now is
calling upon AG Eric Holder to restore the Federal Marshall security detail of prominent late-term abortion
provider Dr. Leroy Carhart, a friend and colleague of the late Dr. George
Tiller. Carhart was placed under protection after Tiller was shot. But the
feds didn't even wait for the trial of Tiller's alleged assassin to wrap
before pulling Carhart's detail. Now he's on his own, just as the alleged
killer's links to a broader coalition of violent anti-choicers are coming
to light.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive
reporting about healthcare and is free to reprint. Visit Healthcare.newsladder.net for
a complete list of articles on healthcare affordability, healthcare laws,
and healthcare controversy. For the best progressive reporting on the
Economy, and Immigration, check out Economy.Newsladder.net and Immigration.Newsladder.net.
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Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning investigative journalist and In These Times staff writer who writes the blog Duly Noted. Her stories have appeared in Newsweek, Salon, Slate, The Nation, Ms. Magazine, and other publications. Her photographs have been published in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times’ City Room. She also blogs at The Hillman Blog (http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/hillmanblog), a publication of the Sidney Hillman Foundation, a non-profit that honors journalism in the public interest.