Andrew Wilkow Live Show Thread 01/22/06 (10:00 a.m.

Andrew Wilkow is the newest and youngest member of the WABC air staff. Yes, he's in his very early 30's, but we don't want to reveal his real age because we don't want to come back and update this bio every year. He does speak a little bit of a different language than your typical WABC talk show host, but we think that's a good thing.

Andrew tell me you're kidding. Axelrod wants to sue... what a dem-entiac. What a shill. Go to guy for Smiley?Worked with Hillary and Spitzer? Spoiled piece of... Funny, didn't hear the political connection (much less than democrat in the MSM).

Behold his nerve...

Fan wants apology; Davises say no way Axelrod says he'll drop threat of lawsuit if Knicks player, wife apologize

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10944584/

Behold the shill:

Behold the lies...

Fan Confronted By Antonio Davis Speaks (CBS) CHICAGO

"I can' t stand that people are thinking that about me". That's what Michael Axelrod, 22, is saying about allegations that he assaulted the wife of New York Knicks forward Antonio Davis at a Bulls-Knicks game Wednesday night, provoking Davis to enter the stands to confront him. "That was wrong, and I never touched her," Axelrod said. As CBS 2's Dana Kozlov reports, Axelrod, whose father is political consultant David Axelrod, claims he was accosted by Kendra Davis after he yelled about a bad overtime call. I'm trying to look at the game, literally, and she's touching my face"; this went on for a little while"; Michael Axelrod said.

Axelrod said he and another fan summoned security, and he said security guards took no action until Kendra Davis went after another fan. It was at that point when Antonio Davis entered the stands and Michael Axelrod was escorted out. David Nemeroff was among some fans who came to Axelrod's defense. Nemeroff said he told security Kendra Davis was the aggressor in the incident, and he even wrote the NBA a letter about it. "I actually faxed it to (NBA Commissioner) David Stern"; he said. Axelrod's attorney, Jay Paul Deratny, said he was drafting a slander and battery lawsuit against the Davises. But, Deratny said, "I could tell you that if they issued a public apology, it would go a long way towards resolving this issue."

Axelrod also said he would like the Bulls and the NBA to reexamine security procedures. The Bulls claimed that by the time Davis entered the stands, security was already there.

'American Taliban' Father Urges Clemency

SAN FRANCISCO - After years of silence, the father of American-born Taliban soldier John Walker Lindh called on President Bush on Thursday to grant clemency to his son, who he says was wrongly maligned as a traitor and murderer.

"In simple terms, this is the story of a decent and honorable young man embarked on a spiritual quest," said Frank Lindh, swallowing back tears at times during a speech at the Commonwealth Club, a nonprofit organization.

Frank Lindh said that although his son had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks, they ended up adding dire consequences to his decision to join the Taliban, targeted by the U.S. after the 2001 attacks for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"Being viewed through the prism of those attacks has caused this young man to be vilified as a terrorist and a traitor," the elder Lindh said.

John Walker Lindh, who turns 25 next month, was 20 when he was captured by American forces on Nov. 21, 2001, alongside Taliban fighters.

Charged with conspiring to kill Americans and supporting terrorists, the younger Lindh avoided a potential life sentence in 2002 by pleading guilty to lesser charges of supplying services to the Taliban in violation of U.S. economic sanctions and of carrying weapons against U.S. forces. In exchange, John Walker Lindh agreed to withdraw claims of abuse or torture.

Until now, his parents have mostly maintained a public silence about the case, hoping to avoid a media barrage that could be detrimental to their son. But on Thursday Frank Lindh shared baby pictures and other photos of his son during the presentation and said he is proud of his child.

Frank Lindh said he decided to break his silence because he hoped the story of his boy's journey from bucolic Marin County to harsh Afghanistan battlefields will help him get a reduction in his 20-year prison sentence. Last year his son renewed his request for clemency, already rejected once.

John Walker Lindh, raised Catholic, was 12 when he saw the movie "Malcolm X" and became interested in Islam, his father said. A few years later he converted to Islam in a mosque in Mill Valley.

With his parents' blessings, he headed to Yemen, and later Pakistan, to memorize the Quran and become an Islamic scholar.

What did Frank Lindh think of his son's decision to pursue these studies?

"It's a wonderful thing for an American kid to go overseas and study, to learn another language, to learn another religion, these are great things," he said.

In the spring of 2001, John Walker Lindh told his parents he was going to dodge the desert heat and spend the summer in the mountains of Pakistan. He did not tell his parents that he planned to cross into Afghanistan and join the Taliban army.

The younger Lindh saw bin Laden speak twice while he was training in Afghanistan, but had no idea that he was involved in terrorism against the U.S., his father said.

On Thursday, Frank Lindh emphasized that John Walker Lindh was involved in an Afghan war, not a fight against the U.S., when the Muslim convert joined the Taliban army to fight the Northern Alliance. He noted that the U.S. once supported Taliban fighters when they were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

"What happened unfortunately for John is that the United States made an abrupt change after the 9-11 attacks," Frank Lindh said. "We switched sides. John was on the ground there when that happened. He certainly didn't go to Afghanistan to do anything against America. He never fought against America. He never fired a gun at an American. He was simply rescued."

Or he thought he had been rescued, his father said, until he was taken into custody, duct taped naked on a stretcher and held in a metal shipping container for two days.

Frank Lindh said he would have urged his son not to get involved in the fighting had he known of his plans.

"If he had asked, I would have told him, 'John, we don't have a stake in that fight,'" said Frank Lindh. "I would have told him that if he wants to help, he should go work in a refugee camp."

Even so, Frank Lindh said his son did no wrong.

"I feel very proud of my son. He acted with great integrity throughout this entire ordeal. He's a great kid. He has more integrity and more dignity than any politician or any journalist that I've ever met," he said.

As passionately as Frank Lindh is advocating for his son's clemency, there is another father fighting just as hard to extend John Walker Lindh's sentence by getting him convicted of murder or treason.

Johnny Spann is the father of CIA officer Johnny Micheal "Mike" Spann, who was killed in a prison riot after being videotaped speaking with John Walker Lindh.

Johnny Spann is conducting his own investigation into the origins of the riot at the Mazar-e-Sharif prison, where suspected Taliban supporters were held. Spann contends that the uprising began with a planned grenade attack inside the prison building rather than a spontaneous scuffle outside where his son was interviewing prisoners, including Lindh.

Frank Lindh, a San Rafael, Calif. attorney for Pacific Gas and Electric Co., said he and Lindh's mother, Marilyn Walker, an office manager who lives in San Anselmo, visit their son for long weekends each month at the medium security federal penitentiary in Victorville, Calif.

"The silver lining in this whole cloud is that we have wonderful visits with our son," said Frank Lindh. "Ordinarily a son who is 25 doesn't have much time to spend with his father. But we have a lot of time."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_us/american_taliban

Shuckin' 'n' jivin' with Hillary Clinton

By Kathleen Parker

Jan 20, 2006

Senator Hillary Clinton - she of the Rodham charm - has thrown it down.

She's unofficially, but inferentially, in the presidential race for 2008.

Not that anyone believed otherwise. But the beyond-all-doubt moment occurred this week when she evoked slavery and plantation life during a speech before a mostly black audience celebrating the Rev. Martin Luther King's birthday.

How else to interpret that bit of race-baiting?

After playing center field the past couple of years, trying to sound mainstream on issues such as abortion and the war, she apparently felt the need to remind her base that they're still on the same page.

Clinton was speaking at a Harlem church Monday when she now-famously said that the U.S. House of Representatives "has been run like a plantation, and you know what I'm talking about. It has been run in a way so that nobody with a contrary view has had a chance to present legislation, to make an argument, to be heard."

The latter part of her comment is substantively true, but she revealed more about herself than she did about Republicans with her plantation reference. She's a panderer, all right, but she won't be the first female black president.

Unlike her husband, who was tagged "America's first black president," Hillary Clinton ain't got "all that" - that soul thang that her husband has in, um, diamonds.

When Clinton said, "and you know what I'm talking about," what she was thinking, of course, was, "and you know wuddumsayin?" She wisely censored herself, but her slightly stuttered body English suggested juuuuuust a hint of ebonics. A little roll here, a little hand there. Oy vey, I've still got muscle cramps from cringing.

Watching Clinton's soul-sister moment was like watching a whiffed high-five, embarrassing as watching middle-aged white guys playing air guitar. Stop it.

No one's asked yet why Senator Clinton felt compelled to critique the House, which is not really her bailiwick. That said, it is largely true that House Republicans have marginalized House Democrats. That's a legitimate criticism, but political maneuvering among elected, paid officials doesn't quite equate with slavery.

Feeling left out of the power loop doesn't quite rise to the level of splitting up families and selling human beings.

But playing the plantation card is guaranteed to stir emotions, and emotionalism is the Clinton ace. Not to overplay the playing card metaphor. And sorry, but there's no separating the Bill from the Hill, no matter how much Democrats protest. The Clintons went to the White House in '92 as a two-fer, and they'll return to the White House as a two-fer. (If Hillary Clinton wins in '08, improbable as it is, stand by for the Vanity Fair cover of Bill in apron, baking Toll House cookies.)

Ever since Clinton's remark, there's been a whole lot of Googlin' going on as Democrats search for Republicans using the P-word. Aha! The Newt did it.

Indeed, former Rep. Newt Gingrich said in 1994 of Democrats, "I clearly fascinate them. I'm much more intense, much more persistent, much more willing to take risks to get it done. Since they think it is their job to run the plantation, it shocks them that I'm actually willing to lead the slave rebellion."

Noted. But Gingrich's poor choice of words doesn't mean that Clinton's are any less offensive (and Gingrich wasn't talking to an African-American audience). What's clear is that no one profits by invoking slavery and plantations. Like the Holocaust, the institution of slavery was too horrible ever to serve as metaphor or simile for anything else.

In an effort to deflect criticism of Clinton as panderer, an anonymous Democratic Senate aide reported in The Washington Post's political blog, "The Fix," that this wasn't the first time Clinton used the P-word. In a November 2004 appearance on CNN, she apparently said: "I mean they're running the House of Representatives like a fiefdom with Tom DeLay as, you know, in charge of the plantation."

The aide insisted that this was "proof positive this wasn't a remark to pander to anyone."

No, it isn't. It's just proof that Clinton has latched onto an unfortunate image.

If Clinton calculated her comment in advance, then she's got supremely bad instincts. If she spoke off the cuff, then her free-associative mind raises another kind of question: How does a white person gaze upon a church filled with African-American faces and come up with the plantation simile?

Up North, they might call that a Freudian slip; down South, they call it racist.

Know wuddumsayin?

Kathleen Parker is a popular syndicated columnist and director of the School of Written Expression at the Buckley School of Public Speaking and Persuasion in Camden, South Carolina.

http://www.townhall.com/print/print_story.php?sid=183315&loc=/opinion/columns/kathleenparker/2006/01/20/183315.html

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