O'Reilly harasses liberal blogger

Think Progress's managing editor Amanda Terkel claims she was harassed by one of Bill O'Reilly's producers attempting to score an ambush interview with her on March 21. O'Reilly was upset over a March 1 TP blog post by Terkel, which discussed a speech O'Reilly was scheduled to give at an Alexa Foundation fundraiser for rape victims. In that post Terkel mentioned controversial comments O'Reilly made during his radio show in August 2006 about about an 18-year-old woman who was raped and murdered.

The ambush interview with Terkel was aired on The O'Reilly Factor on March 23. In that segment, O'Reilly claimed that Think Progress and NBC news deliberately tried to cause pain and suffering for rape victims the Alexa Foundation was attempting to help. He also called Terkel a "villain."

Read Terkel's side of the story and watch the ambush interview here.

Think Progress has launched a campaign calling on advertisers that support The O'Reilly Factor to stop supporting "the O'Reilly harassment machine." Support the campaign by sending a letter to O'Reilly's corporate supporters.

IC campaign

I'm running for the VP of Communications position in Ithaca College's Student Government Association.

Learn more at the Fundamentalist Party site.

Obama's first gaffe?

After a near flawless campaign, Obama may have slipped up.

In an interview with Jay Leno on Thursday's Tonight Show, the President compared his bowling game to the Special Olympics. The conservative media -- most notably Rush Limbaugh -- made an issue of the comment, while Governor Schwarzenegger laughed it off.

Kite energy

The company Makani Power is building giant kite turbines that make solar panels and wind farms look so old-school.

A new solution for the energy and climate crises? Could 5 houses be powered by a kite the size of a grand piano?

Birth certificate requirement for future presidents?

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Florida, introduced a bill this Thursday requiring presidential candidates to produce a copy of their birth certificate. Posey wants the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 to be amended to include the birth certificate requirement.

Democrats responded by accusing Posey of implying that President Obama is not really eligible to be in the White House. During the 2008 election, some Republican pundits questioned Obama's eligibility for the White House, even though Obama produced a Hawaiian birth certificate.

Posey, however, claims he's not attacking the current president.


"Opponents of President Bush used the 2000 election results and the court decisions to question the legitimacy of President Bush to serve as President," Posey said in a statement. "Opponents of President Obama are raising the birth certificate issue as a means of questioning his eligibility to serve as president. Neither of these situations are healthy for our Republic."

Top climatologists less optimistic than ever

The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the IPCC's 2007 report was overly optimistic. The predictions the IPCC made in 2007 about the rate of global warming were based off outdated data. New data has revealed that the effects of global warming will be even worse than previously thought.

A web exclusive from the Earth Island Journal has the full story.