Here is his response, followed by some elaboration. (The alleged Editor of the Gazette, and Glenn Beck: together at last. Who’d a’ thunk it?)

The future of news is the future of civilization.

Current media practices distort the democratic process in ways that favor those who are already far too powerful, as the recent debt ceiling imbroglio amply demonstrates.

Humans distracted by the newest technologies tend to overlook powerful mature technologies; low-cost web offset printing is more accessible than ever thanks to cheap digital tools.

Every U.S. Congressional district should — and can — have its own concise, independent, and free weekly tabloid, beholden to that district’s constituents rather than their corporate overlords.

Begging the corporate media to reform has not worked yet, and there is no reason to expect that it ever will.

We propose a different approach: creating a new class of newspapers, small, cheap, and out of corporate control. If this approach is pursued aggressively, we think it could result in a 113th Congress that is nothing like the 112th.

That is colossally big talk from such a miniscule operation, but we know what we’ve done, and we believe others could do the same. More, in fact.

Over the course of the last twelve years we have produced and distributed 320 issues of our paper, with a cumulative press run of about 1,600,000 copies. We accept paid subscriptions, but we give the paper away free at about 160 locations spread over 200 square miles.

Though our geographic range is small, we have developed an intensely loyal readership. And even with our limited distribution, we have had some success nationally. We’ll lay claim to focusing national attention on the prevalence of chickenhawks in the George W. Bush administration, and the banking favors done for the Nazis by his grandfather, Prescott Bush.

Call us naive, but we believe that Lincoln was right about the United States being the last best hope of Earth. Call us crazy, but we think there is an argument to be made for American exceptionalism. Or, call us cynical: we think Ron Dellums nailed it when he said we had a government “of the people, by the powerful, for the rich.”

That will not change while the media landscape stays the same. It has to be changed, and we the people are the ones who have to change it. Fortunately, we have the technology.

We haven’t got enough staff to run this site as a full-blown news source. What we can do with it, though, is answer questions about how to organize, produce, and distribute newspapers on this model.

So, comment away …

name:
David R. Ignatius
rank:
Chickenhawk First Class with Distinguished Fleeing Cross
date-of-birth:
May 26, 1950
home state:
Washington, DC
missed opportunity:
Vietnam War
occupation:
Propagandist

David Ignatius turned 18 in 1968 — the year of the Tet Offensive. That year, 296,406 men were drafted. Not David. He went to Harvard. At the time, his daddy was Secretary of the Navy under Lyndon Johnson.

So, yesterday, Veterans Day, 2009, this distinguished and deeply experienced individual wrote in the Washington Post — did we mention that David’s daddy had also been a top-level muckety-muck at the Washington Post? — that the U.S. military is “healthy” and “may be the most resilient part of American society right now” — “in better shape than the political class that sent them to war.” This, we are told, is because they are “anchored to the American bedrock,” and fed ample quantities of “eggs and bacon, ham, patty sausages and link sausages.”

Ignatius learned all this while “travel[ing] for 2 1/2 weeks recently with U.S. Central Command,” at the elbow of the infallible General David Petraeus.

We’ll say no more at this time, because if we did, we’d say far too much.

We extend sincere thanks to all those who commented here for their patience. We hope they feel it was worth the wait.

There are those who will not approve of our building and maintaining this renewed repository of right-wing pusillanimity. We would have them know that some of the fury we bring to this fight comes from the bitter knowledge that these Chickenhawks don’t just “support” wars in which they will not serve, they eagerly suppress and repudiate the anti-war views of those who have served.

In days to come we will be adding a few features to the CHDB, including one to allow visitors to nominate chickenhawks who have been overlooked. Please don’t bombard us with suggestions, but rather, hold your fire until the nominating mechanism is ready. It will not be long.

For now, that is all. We are off to attend the parade.

“What better way to show respect and gratitude to those who have served in our armed forces,” we thought, “than by heaping scorn and ridicule on those who did not?”

That’s right, folks — the one, the only, the Original New Hampshire Gazette Chickenhawk Database is coming back! And, this being America, it will be bigger and better than ever.

To make sure it’s up and running right on the big day, we’re planning to throw the switch several days before the 11th; perhaps some time next week.

Please don’t bombard us with requests, suggestions, or nominations — not yet. There will be plenty of time for that once it’s up and running.

But do look around your local landscape. No need to kick any asses — but do take names. Make a list of chickenhawks who have so far escaped the nation’s attention. And when you write down a name on that list, find a birthdate to go with it.

Also, sadly, we’ve lost touch with the person who designed the lovely logo shown above. That was several computers ago, and it’s a tough digital life. If its creator should happen to discover this post, would you please get in touch? We’d like to give you credit, and we suspect you’ve got a more pristine version of the file somewhere.

Page One

“As the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda.”

This passage, along with a host of other well-known facts, leads almost inescapably to the conclusion that Vice President Dick “Still Dick” Cheney†* and his flock of pet chickenhawks tortured several hundred people, killing at least fifty of them in the process, to “prove” things that weren’t true, and strengthen the false argument that America must either invade Iraq, or put its own survival at risk. The success of Cheney’s scheme led to the deaths of more than four thousand Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, reduced the nation’s international reputation to ruins, and hastened us along the road to bankruptcy.

Page Two

Photo caption: Local author Dan Brown rented the Music Hall last Saturday to host an intimate little private gathering for 600 of his closest friends and family. Scores of potted trees turned Chestnut Street into a Druidic grove, watched over by a demonic hell-hound. Brown’s new film, Angels & Demons, was screened as part of the entertainment. According to media reports, the film includes scenes of Cardinals of the Catholic Church being tortured and murdered. But despite these provocations, there were no angry demonstrations by local clergy, nor were any vengeful thunderbolts hurled from above. Could this be a sign that we’re entering a new era of forbearance?

Page Three

Photo caption: The shattered remains of the building it demolished having been hauled away, an excavating machine rests on the tidied-up site that once was home to the Pier II restaurant, and to Jimmy Canty’s Fisherman’s Pier before that. The developers of the property, having triumphed in a decade-long struggle with public opinion, local boards, and the state’s Department of Environmental Services, will now proceed to build luxury condos, aka “affordable housing for millionaires,” on the site. The public’s access to, and view of the river, will soon be history. We once asked the late Joe Frost what he thought should be done with the site. “Strawberries” was all he said.

Page Four

From William Marvel’s column, “Northcountry Chronicle:”

At the deliberative portion of our town meeting a member of our budget committee remarked, by way of illustration, that he didn’t think there was anyone in the audience without a cell phone. A gadgetmonger like him (or perhaps the word is “techie”) might be excused for making that particular generalization, but it was not the only mistaken assumption he uttered during that evening. I’ve never owned a cell phone, and I hope that I’ll never have to.

Page Five

From Rodman Philbrock’s review of the moving picture Angels & Demons:The Seacoast area has more writers than you can shake a bad check at — they seem to be under every moldy rock and manuscript — but the only homegrown, still-living-among-us talent to conquer the international bestseller lists for years at a time is novelist Dan Brown, of The Da Vinci Code fame. Eighty million copies in print and still finding new readers. Those who haven’t tried their hand at composing a thriller may think it’s merely a matter of filling pages with an intrepid hero, a gorgeous sidekick, and lots of exotic locales. Think again. Of all the genres, thrillers are probably the toughest to carry off, and successful thrillers about intriguing puzzles — Mr. Brown’s specialty — are at least as rare as genuine literary classics. His stories may not meet the compositional requirements of the Iowa Writers Workshop, but with puzzle thrillers it’s less about perfecting a prose style than finding a way to shift the narrative into overdrive while somehow not losing focus on the ideas that unfold, generating the plot.

Page Six

From our “Hate Mail, Mash Notes, & Other Correspondence Department:”
Chickenhawks and Torture
To the Editor:
It is well known that bullies are afraid of being beaten up. That’s why they beat up on younger, smaller kids. Dick Cheney and Rush Limbaugh exhibit the same kind of braggadocio as they advocate torturing people under U.S. custody who are bound, gagged and hooded.
We’ve heard from experienced CIA agents that torture doesn’t provide actionable intelligence; it only elicits what the torturer wants to hear. We’ve heard from political scientists that torture helps terrorists recruit new terrorists. We’ve heard from clergy and, listening to our own hearts, that torture blemishes our country’s moral character, rendering us undistinguishable from the bad guys.

Page Seven

More from our “Hate Mail, Mash Notes, & Other Correspondence Department:”
Yes, Ma’am!
To the Editor:
It seems that most of your rag consists of news articles denouncing Republican shenanigans and heated letters bloviating about Republican outrages, to the point where it makes me wonder if the alleged editor is the secret identity of Keith Olbermann. (Faster than a speeding rumor! Able to leap tall tales at a single bound!) I have only one more thing to say to you, SIR! Please renew my subscription. Regards,
Cynthia Yabut
Albuquerque, NM

Page Eight

From Admiral Fowle’s Piscataqua River Tidal Guide:
2007—Dale Rippy, a 62 year-old Florida resident, is attacked by a rabid 25-pound bobcat. Rippy, a Vietnam veteran, strangles the bobcat with his bare hands.
1971—About 450 people, most of them Vietnam veterans, are arrested during an anti-war protest on Lexington Green.
1937—Police attack striking workers at Republic Steel in Chicago, hospitalizing 55, wounding 30 more, and killing 10.
1912—Two companies of Marines are shipped to Nicaragua “to protect American interests.”
1909—The National Conference on the Negro convenes, leading to the formation of the NAACP.
1904—During a doubleheader, Frank Chance gets hit five times by pitches.

The Bush administration is over, but not gone. And the notorious chickenhawks who provided cover for them by running their mouths on television still seem to be on the Rolodexes of the producers who run the talk shows. In fact, it almost seems like the Iraq War never happened. Unless, of course, you lost a husband, a wife, a child, an eye, a limb …

Which is why we found it so refreshing to view this clip, in which Jesse “The Governator” Ventura tells Larry King, “You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”

This intolerable situation has motivated us to — finally — begin rebuilding the Chickenhawk Database. If these yahoos will not shut up, we can at least expose them as the hypocritical cowards they are.

Nota Bene: We are not asking for individual chickenhawk nominations at this time. We have to build the database first.

We’re going to try to make the design process open. For starters, we are soliciting suggestions about categories of information.

So far, these are the fields we’re considering: Title [if applicable]; First Name; Last Name; Usual Occupation; Born [dd/mm/yy]; Home State; Conflict Avoided; Lame Excuse; Preferred Activity; Pro-War Evidence [quotes, votes, &c.]; and Photo.

Fair Warning: When and if we get operational, we’ll probably have to require potential nominators to register with a valid e-mail address for accountability.

Please use the “Write a Comment” feature below to make your suggestions.

December 18, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 6)

December 4, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 5)
We attempt to make the case that class warfare is the Schrödinger’s cat of American politics. Everyone is on one side or the other, but neither will admit it’s going on. If the winning side were to confess it is fighting, it would immediately begin to lose. If the losing side were to acknowledge that there is a war, it would either have to start fighting or quit complaining.

November 20, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 4)
The Obama Administration recently went before the U.S. Supreme Court and sided with two former Iowa prosecutors who argued that citizens have “no constitutional right not to be framed.” At times like these, the impossibility of communicating with the dead seems especially cruel. We would give almost anything to hear Patrick Henry’s response to this assertion.

November 6, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 3)
With the Afghan election over, we go back a little way to try and discern exactly what it is we’re doing in Afghanistan. Apparently we overshot the mark a little bit — we found ourselves back in Vietnam.

October 23, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 2)
General McChrystal wants President Obama to give him a whole lot more troops in Afghanistan. We try to figure out what in the world he might do with them.

In the News Briefs, we note with dismay that our Senior Senator appears to be taking the side of rape-enabling corporations. Why are we not surprised?

October 9, 2009 (Vol. CCLIV, No. 1)
From the Fortnightly Rant: “Just when it began to seem that the Democratic role in the health care debate was to be modeled after Rocky Balboa’s punching bag, something new appeared in Congress: a Democrat with a pulse. Someone ought to get ahold of Barack Obama’s personal physician and find out if the President and Grayson share the same blood type. A transfusion seems to be in order.”

September 25, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 26)
In this issue’s Rant we attempt to make sense of the Senate’s approach to the reform of our national health care mess.

Not having the ready access to the central figures in the debate, we struggle to explain why the Finance Committee, rather than the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, has jurisdiction. From there it only gets more disheartening.

Heading our News Briefs is an encouraging look at corporate personhood, and our newest Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

September 11, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 25)
We attempt to report on Dick “Dick” Cheney’s latest lack-of-charm offensive. It’s a challenge, since the EPA no longer allows us to print using pure vitriol on asbestos-based paper. But we did what we could.
Once again, we find our brethren in the media coming up a bit short in the fact-checking department. One paper, The Wall Street Journal, draws particular attention to trying to out-Onion the Onion. We hope.

August 28, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 24)
Six out of seven Americans polled in June said the American health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt. The function of Congress is to carry out the will of the people. Health care, ahoy, right? Not exactly. That would be disrespectful to the shareholders of the profit-making health insurers, their lobbyists, the GOP, and the media.

August 14, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 23)
President Obama came to town, and Linda Boettcher, a teacher at Portsmouth High School for 37 years, asked him the most pertinent question heard all summer: “if every American who needed it [had] access to good mental health care, what do you think the impact would be on our society?” For one thing, the summer would have sounded a lot different.

July 31, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 22)
So the big financial houses have put millions out of work, destroyed half savings of the middle class, and generally wrecked the economy. Is that any reason to punish them? Is that any reason not to let them continue to run the show?

July 17, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 21)
The late Robert Strange McNamara labored for decades to exculpate himself from blame for Vietnam by claiming that it was all a tragic mistake. We summarize the import of Gareth Porter’s reporting, which indicates that McNamara “deliberately suppressed” doubts expressed by Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp, Jr. on the initial reports of the Tonkin Gulf incident.

July 3, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 20)
Governor Mark Sanford’s mea culpa performance might have struck some as a too-easy topic for a Fortnightly Rant, but we felt a moral obligation to tackle it.

June 19, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 19)
To prepare to write the Fortnightly Rant for this issue, we had to steel ourselves and take a good look at the fight over health care reform. Sure enough, it made us sick.

June 5, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 18)
He’s out of office, but he won’t shut up — in this issue’s Rant we ponder whether Richard “Still Dick” Cheney is the worst Vice President in U.S. History. Rather surprisingly, we find he is not. Also, in our News Briefs, we take note of a recent hyper-patriotic Memorial Day event.

May 22, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 17)
In the Rant, we try to figure out how so many chickenhawks can get so cranked up about Nancy Pelosi telling what’s probably the truth, but not seem to give a damn about the revelation that the U.S government was torturing people to create out of whole cloth an excuse to invade Iraq.

May 8, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 16)
In the Rant: the Justice Department seems to be passing the buck for prosecuting Bush administration officials to the bar associations of the relevant states. If the bar associations decline to prosecute, then maybe it’s up to the municipalities where the parties reside, their Neighborhood Watch associations, Kiwanis, Rotary, &c. Also: our report on the Save Our Bridges Rally, &c.

April 24, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 15)
In a slightly less long-winded Rant than usual, we take a look at the Laurel & Hardy of Congress, John Boehner (R-OH) and Eric Cantor (R-VA). We took up the remainder of the front page with an alert for the April 28 Rally for Memorial Bridge, and to print a few dozen messages from the Market Square Tea Bagger Rally. Inside: our best effort to convey the thoughts of Kevin Phillips, who spoke in Portsmouth on April 14 on the causes and effects of the collapse of the American financial racket.

April 10, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 14)
Although it pains us to acknowledge the fact, our newspaper and Fox News share a birthday. On October 7, 1996, 240 years to the day after Daniel Fowle published the first issue of this paper, Roger Ailes’s Frankensteinian “news” network went “live.” Glenn Beck, Ailes’s vilest new demagogue, is using the network to tearfully promote Tea Parties. In this issue, we attempt to plumb the depths of this phenomenon. We also report on the latest developments in the effort to save the bridges between Kittery, Maine and Portsmouth.

March 27, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 13)
The Obama administration’s quiet de-funding of the proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump prompted us to write a Rant titled “Kicking the Nuclear Waste Cannister Down the Road.” It looks back at America’s fifty-year history of creating nuclear waste now while promising to do something responsible with it one of these days. It includes a brief summation of the long-forgotten (though not by us) Crystalline Repository Project, which could have put a high-level nuclear waste dump in southwestern New Hampshire. As if that weren’t incendiary enough, we checked in with the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard and learned that, sure enough, the loss of the Sarah Mildred Long Bridge, between Kittery, Maine and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, could jeopardize the future of one of the region’s biggest employers. Not to mention our national security.

March 13, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 12)
Local entrepreneur Marshall Malone angles for some free publicity by donating tea to one of several Santelli-inspired astroturf “tea parties.” He succeeds. Whether it does him any good or not is another question. In News Briefs, we try to keep up with the latest from New Hampshire’s suddenly-entertaining senior Senator, Judd Gregg.

February 27, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 11)
In lieu of a Rant, we publish “Helicopters, Cover-Ups, and War Crimes,” a deeply disturbing piece by Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere. They write that the outrageously expensive contract for 28 new Marine One helicopters appears to be “a payoff to the Italian government for supplying the forged documents showing Saddam had obtained weapons grade uranium from Niger. President Bush famously used this fraudulent yellowcake’ intelligence to justify launching the war.” In News Briefs, we continue to try to report rationally on the increasingly bizarre Judd Gregg situation. We also note a new challenge to the inhumane Feres Doctrine, which despite a judge’s ruling, appears as durable as ever. And we report on the results of Benjamin Porter’s Piscataqua River Bridge survey.

February 13, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 10)
In the Fortnightly Rant—A Stimulating Debate. The financial debacle of the past twenty-eight years notwithstanding, Congressional Republicans adhere to their faith and demand tax cuts. After all, the federal government is still taking in revenue! In News Briefs, we attempt to get inside Judd Gregg’s head—not a job for the squeamish!

January 30, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 9)
In the Fortnightly Rant—”Free At Last! Free At Last! Thank God Almighty, We Are Free At Last!” We cover the Inauguration we feared might not happen, noting that Obama’s address to the nation echoed, among other things, Stephen Colbert’s roast of #43 some time ago, as well as a rare appearance by one of our favorite Revolutionaries, Thomas Paine. In News Briefs, we note with appreciation Jill Lepore’s reference to our paper in her splendid New Yorker piece, “Back Issues,” which reviews Marcus Daniel’s book, Scandal & Civility.

January 16, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. Eight)
In the Fortnightly Rant—You May Go Now. Please. We anticipate the alluring prospect of the Bush administration’s taillights receding into the distance, and review his last press conference. In News Briefs, we consider the resurgence of piracy, a topic this paper has not had to cover for a couple of hundred years. We also analyze the latest reports from the Middle East from Joe the Ex-Plumber, and try to get inside the Pentagon’s thinking about issuing Purple Hearts to military personnel with PTSD.

January 2, 2009 (Vol. CCLIII, No. 7)
In the Fortnightly Rant—Enduring Bush’s Parthian Shots. We attempt a brief survey of some of the more egregious injuries the Bush administration is attempting to inflict on the nation during his final weeks. We’re forced to dredge up the CIA’s Post WW II “Operation Gladio,” as well as the Roman Emperor Crassus, in order to make any sense of it. To give credit, if that’s the word, where it’s due, we also compare and contrast the relative crookedness of Richard Nixon and Dick “Dick” Cheney.

Then this morning we stumbled across Jonathan Chait’s piece in The New Republic, titled “The Left’s New Machine: How the netroots became the most important mass movement in U.S. politics.”

In that article, Chait wrote that “One of the netroots’ distinctive contributions to American political discourse is the extremely promiscuous use of the insult ‘chickenhawk.’”

The New Hampshire Gazette is the home of the original Chickenhawk Database. As such, it is arguably responsible for injecting the concept into the noosphere.

Coming as it does right after Harold’s inquiry, on the fourth anniversary of “Mission Accomplished,” in the context of the standoff between the White House and Congress over war funding versus withdrawal, we find Chait’s characterization of the term somewhat provocative.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the time right now to fully address this question; we are preoccupied with getting out next issue (May 4) ready for our date with the printer tomorrow. Assuming we survive that routine ordeal, we’ll have more to say.