Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes was the guest teacher for two classes today at the United States Military Academy at West Point, lecturing cadets on “the overall historical relationship between the military and the media.” Ailes, who never served in the military, will also deliver a lecture there this evening on “a variety of media topics.”

As the boss at Fox News, Ailes has had no qualms about crossing the line from journalist to armchair general. Here are some of the lessons Ailes might be expected to impart to the military:

Lesson 1: The Public Won’t Support You, Unless You Do Things “Harshly”: Soon after 9/11, according to Bob Woodward, Ailes sent a “back-channel message” to President Bush, suggesting that he needed to take “the harshest measures possible” in retaliation for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He added that “support” for war “would dissipate if the public did not see Bush acting harshly.”

Lesson 2: The Public Does Not Need To Know The Full Reasons For Going To War: In 2003, a University of Maryland study found that “those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions” about basic facts related to the war. 80 percent of those who relied on Fox News as their primary news source believed at least one of three lies: the discovery of alleged WMD in Iraq, alleged Iraqi involvement in 9/11, and international support for a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Lesson 3: When Things Go Bad, The Public Doesn’t Need To Know: “Fox spent half as much time covering the Iraq war than MSNBC during the first three months” of 2007, “and considerably less than CNN.” Fox News “were obviously cheerleaders for the war,” said CNN U.S. President Jon Klein. “When the war went badly they had to dial back coverage because it didn’t fit their preconceived story lines.”

Most importantly, Ailes’ military philosophy holds that if someone “can’t face Fox’s” biased journalism, then they “can’t face al Qaeda.”

Digg It!

The really bad news: IPCC and status quo media still failing in effort to inform the public

ABC’s The Blotter reports, “A federal grand jury in Washington, D.C. has opened an investigation into the role of Blackwater security guards in the shooting deaths of 17 Iraqi citizens in September in Baghdad. … A number of Blackwater security guards assigned to the ill-fated convoy have been subpoenaed to appear before the grand jury next week.” The U.S. military, FBI, and Iraqi government are also investigating the shooting.

There’s tons of interesting information about the history of American public opinion on this site which has some tables made from the American National Election Study dataset. Here we see answers to the question “Are you in favor of desegregation, strict segregation, or something in between.” I really couldn’t say what that “something in between” would be, but it sure seems to be a popular answer. Between 1964 and 1968, the rise in support for the “in between” position seems mostly driven by the decline in support for segregation, which is all to the good. Then in 1970, support for desegregation reaches its peak as both segregation and desegregation decline.

But then in the next three surveys, support for desegregation consistently declines as more and more people shift into this mysterious middle ground position. It’s too bad that they stopped asking this question in 1978 because public opinion was shifting throughout the 1970s and not just in the predictable sense of a steady decline in support for segregation.

The AP reports:

Rachel Paulose, the embattled U.S. attorney for Minnesota, will be leaving the post to take a position at the Justice Department in Washington, according to a Bush administration official and congressional aide.

Paulose was handpicked by the Justice Department for the U.S. Attorney post because of her personal connections. She is currently under investigation for allegations that she “mishandled classified information, decided to fire the subordinate who called it to her attention, retaliated against others in the office who crossed her, and made racist remarks about one employee.”

UPDATE: Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) spoke with Michael Mukasey before his confirmation as Attorney General and “expressed concerns about the allegations in the U.S. attorney’s office.” Justice Department employees, along with “prominent lawyers and law professors” in Minnesota, have also urged Mukasey to investigate Paulose’s mismanagement.

UPDATE II: Eric Black has Paulose’s resignation letter, noting that the “mood in the office is described as a combination of relief and euphoria.”

(HT: Atrios)

Over the summer, FBI investigators “examined the personal financial records” of two members of the House Appropriations Committee, Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) and Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), as part of “ongoing probes into their earmarking activities.” Both inquiries were made on “July 24 by two agents” in a California field office. For Calvert, it “is the first signal in months that he is still under scrutiny.” (HT: TPMmuckraker.)