Conventional wisdom in this country and in the mainstream, corporate news media holds that the American public is fundamentally conservative - hostile to government, in favor of unregulated markets, at peace with inequality, wanting a foreign policy based on the projection of military power and traditional in its social values.

But as a new report demonstrates from the non-profit Media Matters in America, that picture is fundamentally false.

Media perceptions and past Republican electoral successes notwithstanding, Americans are progressive across a wide range of controversial issues, and they’re growing more progressive all the time.

This report gathers together years of public opinion data from unimpeachably nonpartisan sources to show that on issue after issue, the majority of Americans hold progressive positions. And this is true not only of specific policy proposals, but of the fundamental perspectives and approaches that Americans bring to bear on issues.

Nor is the progressive majority merely a product of the current political moment. On a broad array of issues, particularly social issues, American opinion has grown more and more progressive over the past few decades. In contrast, it is difficult to find an issue on which the public has grown steadily more conservative over the last 10, 20, or 30 years.

The Issues

The role of government

Americans support an active government that tackles problems, provides services and aids those in need.

The economy

Americans support increasing the minimum wage and strong unions, and believe the wealthy and corporations don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

Social issues

Americans support legal abortion and embryonic stem cell research; opinions on equal rights for women and gay Americans have grown dramatically more progressive in recent years.

Security

Americans support a progressive approach to national security, emphasizing strong alliances and diplomacy over the indiscriminate use of military force. On domestic security issues, progressive approaches to crime and gun control enjoy wide support.

The environment

By enormous margins, Americans favor strong environmental protections, a core progressive belief.

Energy

Americans support energy conservation and the development of alternative fuels.

Health care

Americans clearly favor universal coverage and are more than comfortable with government solutions to the health care problem.

In summary, a look across the scope of American opinion reveals a public that holds progressive positions and supports progressive solutions on economic issues, on social issues, on security issues - indeed, on nearly all the key issues confronting the country. For years, the conventional wisdom has maintained just the opposite, but the facts are impossible to ignore.

Read the full study report here

A draft recovery plan outlining habitat needs and future conservation efforts aimed at preventing the extinction of the Ivory-billed woodpecker was made available for public comment today.

Interested citizens, conservation organizations, state and federal agencies and others will have 60 days to provide comments on the 185-page blueprint put together by one of the most talented recovery teams ever assembled by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, according to a press release.

It is the first recovery plan crafted for this species and comments on the plan will be accepted by the Service until October 22, 2007.

Evidence supporting the Ivory-billed Woodpecker’s rediscovery with the presence of at least one bird in the Bayou de View area of Cache River National Wildlife Refuge was announced in 2004 and 2005. The woodpecker’s rediscovery led to the need to develop a recovery plan, according to the agency.

While the woodpecker’s existence has not been confirmed since, tantalizing evidence continues to be gathered in Arkansas, Florida’s panhandle, South Carolina,and other locations across its historic range.

“The opportunity to recover this icon of the ornithological world cannot and should not be passed over,” said Sam Hamilton, regional director for the Service’s Southeast Region and leader of the recovery team. “Given the evidence pointing to its survival, we believe it would be irresponsible not to act. That’s why we established this recovery team with some of the nation’s best biologists to help us chart a reasonable, well founded path to save this species. It’s the right thing to do.”

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service works with its partners to prevent extinction of species like the Ivory-billed woodpecker.

The agency encourages interested citizens, agencies and conservation organizations to participate in the comment period. The diverse team developed a balanced, common sense approach, they say, and “look forward to receiving feedback that makes it even better.”

Since 1967, the Ivory-billed woodpecker has been federally listed as an endangered species. The species appeared to be widely distributed throughout the southeast prior to European settlement. In this country, the bird ranged from the coastal plain of North and South Carolina, Georgia,Florida, large portions of Alabama, Mississippi and Arkansas, Louisiana, eastern Texas, west Tennessee, and small areas of Illinois, Kentucky, Oklahoma and Missouri.

The range became smaller by the late 1800s and the woodpecker was no longer found in Oklahoma, Missouri, Illinois or Kentucky. Ivory-billed numbers continued to decline with the last confirmed sighting in 1944. Until 2004, there had been no confirmed sighting of’an Ivory-billed Woodpecker in more than 60 years.

The woodpecker’s disappearance is closely linked to logging and the disappearance of contiguous forest habitats that once covered much of the southeastern United States. Preventing extinction and ensuring the recovery of imperiled wildlife is a top priority for the Service. Recovery plans describe actions that may be necessary for conservation of the species and establish criteria for reclassification from endangered to threatened status or removal from the list of threatened and endangered species.

For the Ivory-billed woodpecker,the recovery strategy will initially focus on learning more about the species status and ecology, including documenting known locations and characterizing those habitats.

Population goals are not identified though such goals are key to recovery. Current efforts include development of models and additional research that will generate these spatially explicit population goals.

Copies of the draft recovery plan are available by request from the service’s Lafayette Field Office at 646 Cajundome Boulevard, Suite’400, Lafayette, Louisiana, 70506, or by visiting the web at: http://endangered.fws.gov/recovery/index.html#plans.

The draft plan also can be found at www.fws.gov/ivorybill/.

Comments will be accepted by mail or hand-delivery at the above address’or faxed to 337-291-3139. For further information contact Deborah Fuller’at the above address, or by calling 337-291-3100.

Comments also may be provided electronically by using the following email address: ibwplan@fws.gov.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is the principal federal agency responsible for conserving, protecting and enhancing fish, wildlife,’plants, and their habitats for the continuing benefit of the American people. Visit the Service’s Website at http://www.fws.gov.

AP: $27 Million Woodpecker Habitat Plan Unveiled

To secure another Iraq War blank check, George W. Bush is conjuring up the specter of the Vietnam War, arguing that the U.S. withdrawal caused the human horrors, not the original intervention.

Bush airbrushed out of this history the bloodbath caused by U.S. bombings and other massive firepower.

One is left wondering what might have happened if Bush had been Commander in Chief three decades ago. But the danger today is what this selective history might mean for Iraq.

For the full story of the dangerous, bogus narrative, go to the independent ConsortiumNews.Com.

by Glynn Wilson

A few newspaper reporters used to have courage. Now they are afraid of bloggers. Or just maybe, they are afraid of their Republican publishers.

There is a wild debate still going on out there on the role of bloggers and journalism and politics. And the bad information gets just as much play as the good.

In the interest of playing an education role using blogging software, and yes journalism, here are today’s must read links.

Blogs: All the noise that fits

The journalism that bloggers actually do

Skube vs. Marshall and the LA Times’ editorial kabuki

After you read those stories and know what we are talking about, here’s my informed editorial comment on the subject.

The journalism professor who wrote the first column, Michael Skube, is a rube who did no homework, but lectures us all on how bad bloggers are at journalism. Woops!

Jay Rosen of NYU responds, but does not mention the two most important journalist bloggers who publish stories important to this area of the world: Scott Horton at Harpers.org and yours truly, who not only conduct journalism AND use blogging software to publish on the Web, but make money at it too.

Even before I woke up this morning and read this claptrap, I was thinking about some of the problems of the news business around here. And I remembered something an editor from the Birmingham News said a long time ago at an appearance at a junior college here in a symposium on journalism.

I can’t remember the editor’s name. It was about 1981. And I’m sure he’s no longer with the News and most likely dead.

But when I asked him a question as a young aspiring reporter something about freedom of the press and the central role of a newspaper in a democratic society, he didn’t hesitate. He said in effect that freedom of the press is reserved for those who own one, a printing press that is. And he said the central role of a newspaper in society was to make a profit for the publisher.

That was a not so funny answer at the time. And it certainly didn’t correspond to what is written in every journalism and communications history textbook ever published (I know because I’ve read most of them, and taught out of a great number of them).

Journalism historians and college professors always glorify the press in America for being the defender of freedom and the watchdog of government. Although they often skirt the fact that the times when the press actually played that role in our history can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

So-called objective journalism really is - and always has been - about the money.

That Birmingham News editor also said the role of a newspaper was to inform, not to educate, as if there was a significant difference between the two. In fact, according to journalism historians, in the early days of the mass circulation daily newspapers the late 19th and early 20th centuires, publishers were interested in using their newspapers to educate the public to help them become more informed citizens to participate in democracy. And some of them were especially interested in promoting a knowledge of science.

Our Pulitzer Prize-winning op/ed contributor above spends a considerable amount of time bashing bloggers for working for free, while using as examples journalist bloggers who make a considerable amount of money doing it.

I suspect I made more money last month blogging than any single newspaper reporter made working for a corporate newspaper in Alabama, but I can’t even get the good folks at Alabama Public Television to realize that I am not a nutjob blogger that is somehow separate from any other journalism being conducted in this state. Just because it is not printed on paper with ink does not necessarily make it less than journalism.

Now there are a lot of bloggers who do not claim to be journalists. And some of them are highly partisan, to be sure.

But what’s wrong with that? Maybe they can energize our political system and draw more people into the process. And just maybe, they can help educate people and contribute to a change in our obviously stagnant political system that continues to elect rubes like George W. Bush and Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions.

I don’t say that about our president or our senator because I am a left-wing blogger. I say it because there is a considerable amount of evidence that it is true.

Isn’t that what we expect journalists to do? Tell the truth? Does it really matter if the truth is printed on paper or read on TV – or published on a Web site?

This particular Website, for the benefit of those who may be new readers here, is being read by almost as many people as a number of the newspaper Websites in this state, including the Anniston Star, the Decatur Daily, the Tuscaloosa News and the Montgomery Advertiser. We get about 80 percent more traffic than my favorite newspaper columnist in this state, Tommy Stevenson at the Tuscaloosa News.

When he first started his blog over there, I met him at Egan’s pub in Tuscaloosa to talk about blogging. The last time I talked to him about his blog, he said he was getting a couple of thousand hits a day, while we were already getting more than 10,000 hits a day. After the recent series on the Jill Simpson affidavit and all the interest in the jail sentence of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman, we topped 20,000.

True, they are not all in Alabama or even from Alabama. In fact, most of them probably are not. That’s the beauty of it, you see. To reach a global audience.

But as the circulation continues to slide in the corporate, chain newspaper business, they will continue to bash blogging – even while engaging in it themselves.

Now, who are you going to trust? Newspaper reporters – who rely primarily on press releases from corporations and lobbyists for a majority of their news – or a blogger, who has the freedom to say what he really thinks?

We report. You decide. Isn’t that what journalists are fond of saying? What’s the difference here?