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For anyone that didn't catch it, Democracy Now's Amy Goodman was featured on C-SPAN's Book TV series, In Depth, this weekend and spoke to host Peter Slen for three hours about a wide range of topics, including her books Exception to the Rulers, Standing Up to the Madness, and The Silenced Majority.

During the opening of her interview, she discussed how Democracy Now first started broadcasting and their studio's proximity to the World Trade Center during the attacks on 9-11 and the importance of independent media in America where information is not brought to the viewers courtesy of corporate America.

You can watch the entire interview here at C-SPAN's web site. Lots and lots of really interesting and important topics were covered ranging from everything from how close she's come to being killed trying to cover genocide which the American media ignored due to our government's complicity in it being allowed to go on, among a host of other stories which her show has covered that the corporate media here in America ignores.

They discussed what the role of journalism should be in the United States, the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, whistle blowers being prosecuted, Gitmo, and many more topics than I've got the time to mention here.

She took questions from viewers, most supportive, a few that sounded a little bit nuts and if you've got three hours to spare and are a fan of Goodman's, I don't think you'll be disappointed about making the time to watch the whole thing.

C-SPAN is generally pretty terrible about the number of right-wing authors who they have on the air as part of their Book TV series. It was nice to see the give this amount of air time to someone from the left for once. It doesn't happen that often on their network.

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Chris Hedges appeared last Sunday on C-SPAN's Book TV series, In Depth for a three hour interview which you can watch all of at their archives. Here's a portion from the beginning of the last hour where Hedges weighed in on Ron Paul and Libertarianism, the battle between the working class and the elites for democracy and on Oprah Winfrey and her role in the cultural and religious pursuit of personal wealth in America.

On Ron Paul and Libertarianism:

HEDGES: Ron Paul for me is sort of a funny guy. I mean, he says a lot of good stuff, but for me Libertarianism is sort of a preindustrial ideology. The idea that government should be so diminished... well, I mean, the problem is that government is anemic in the face of corporations like Exxon Mobil, City Bank and Goldman Sachs and Bank of America. And we need to find leverage by which these monopolies can be broken up and the power of these corporations can be curbed.

And so I think Ron Paul is pretty good in terms of empire, in terms of fiscal responsibility, in terms of Constitutional rights, but the core of his message, which is essentially to gut government is one that I think isn't going to do anything to diminish the power of the corporate state.

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From C-SPAN's in Depth on Book TV, author and documentary maker Michael Moore recalls his account of speaking out against the invasion of Iraq during the 2003 Academy Awards and the subsequent death threats he received, egged on by right wing radio and the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck for the year or two following the speech.

You can watch the entire three hour interview at C-SPAN's web site here.

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Grover Norquist was asked a very specific question about one of the talking points that we hear constantly from Republicans, that you can't raise taxes on the small businesses and "job creators" or you'll do terrible damages to those businesses and put them under and of course when he had some actual numbers put in his face, he couldn't defend it.

Rather than address the fact that yes, this is something Republicans claim over and over on the air and defend the talking point, Norquist punts and turns the conversation to tanning salon taxes being increased, the possibility of increasing taxes on big oil companies and whether or not you can trust President Obama to keep campaign promises with not raising taxes on anyone earning over $250,000 a year.

Sorry Grover, but that's not what the man asked you about. He asked if increasing someone's taxes who makes $300,000 a year by a pittance was really going to mean they didn't have the ability to create jobs any more and you got forced to tell the truth here, no, it won't. It's too bad the caller didn't get a chance to do a follow up with him because the useless C-SPAN hosts like Peter Slen here sure aren't going to.

KEN: The Republican argument says do not raise any taxes or the revenue side, because those are the job makers. And if we do that we're going to crush the jobs. Now explain, I want to understand this. So if somebody making $300,000, they've got a small business, they're creating jobs; the tax increases would be for over $250,000 and I think it's a 4% rate.

Now if I have that right, we're saying that the Democrats want to raise taxes for that $50,000 at 4%, $2000 annually on that $300,000 income, so that person's making $25,000 a month. We're going to raise their taxes $2000 a year, or $160 a month; so are we saying, are the Republicans saying that if you raise taxes on somebody making $25,000 a month, by $160, the equivalent of their cable bill, all of the sudden, their business is going to collapse?

NORQUIST: Umm... no. The concerns about what President Obama want to do on taxes under present structure, Obama wants to take the tax rate which is now 35% on individuals and companies, we're talking the uprate and take that up to 44%. He takes it up to 40% by by one and two and the 2001 tax cut. There are tax increases in Obama-care. On our web site at atr.org there's a list of all the tax increases that exist on, as part of Obama-care's nationalization of health care.

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I have a really hard time believing that this caller on Washington Journal has actually been talking to anyone receiving food stamps. The topic on C-SPAN's morning call-in show was the budget cuts being proposed by the House Republicans and the question for their callers was "What if any programs would you like to see cut from the federal budget"?

After host Peter Slen read off more of some of the cuts being proposed by the GOP, he got this response from an "Independent" caller in John Boehner's district in Ohio.

SLEN: Lee in Cincinnati Ohio on our Independent line, what if anything from the federal budget would you cut Lee?

CALLER LEE: Um, I believe it would be the food stamps. Um...

SLEN: Why?

CALLER LEE: Well uh... I know quite a few people on food stamps and when I talk to them or I go over to their house, some of them are eating steak, crab legs and I believe they should have more of a program like the WIC, you know there's only certain food items you're allowed to buy. It'd be cheese, milk, some cereals. You know, I don't believe you should be allowed to buy any luxury food items you want.

SLEN: Alright, hey Lee, you're from Cincinnati, how much coverage is Speaker Boehner getting in his home town area?

CALLER LEE: Um... he's getting quite a bit of coverage.

SLEN: What do you think of about him?

CALLER LEE: Um... I actually... um... like him a lot.

SLEN: Thanks for calling in this morning. What do you do in Cincinnati?

CALLER LEE: I'm a um... small business owner.

SLEN: What kind of business?

CALLER LEE: It's a roofing company.

SLEN: How's business?

CALLER LEE: It's quite good actually.

SLEN: Good. Thanks for calling in.

Everyone I know who has ever depended on food stamps to get by clipped coupons and made sure the money they spent on food went as far as possible and they surely weren't buying steak and crab legs or they'd have been starving for the rest of the week. This "Independent" caller sounds like he's living in some alternate reality called right-wing world.

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C-SPAN's Book TV's Peter Slen asked publisher Jenn Risko why George W. Bush was doing so well with the sales of his recently published memoir and we got some blather about how relaxed he looks these days and how people are just curious as to what went on behind the scenes with his administration and other similar nonsense.

I happened to catch some of Hannity's show where he devoted the full hour to pimping W's book on Fox, so I think Ms. Risko forgot to mention a couple of reasons why the sales are going so well. Other than Fox doing their best to push the sales of Bush's book as Hannity was doing, we also have the fact that many conservative organizations buy up books in bulk from the authors they want to push and give them away for free to make sure they end up in spots where they don't belong on the best seller's list.

Sadly C-SPAN only seems to cater to right wing authors. John and Dave never had a chance of getting an appearance on the network to talk about their book, Over the Cliff, but they'll give every right wing nut job a full hour on there at every opportunity. And they'll also pretend Georgie's book is doing just fine with sales without any help from the usual suspects out there pushing the right wing propaganda.

Here's the beginning of Hannity's hour long love fest with W if you've got the stomach for it.

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Robert Byrd, Respected Voice of the Senate, Dies at 92:

Robert C. Byrd, who used his record tenure as a United States senator to fight for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and to build a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money, died at about 3 a.m. Monday, his office said. He was 92.He had been in failing health for several years.

Mr. Byrd’s death comes as Senate Democrats are working to pass the final version of the financial overhaul bill and win other procedural battles in the week before the Independence Day recess. In the polarized atmosphere of Washington, President Obama’s agenda seemed to hinge on Mr. Byrd’s health. Earlier this year, in the final days of the health care debate, the ailing senator was pushed onto the Senate floor in his plaid wheelchair so he could cast his votes.

Governor Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, will appoint an interim successor to Mr. Byrd.

Nate Silver wrote this on Byrd's replacement before the Senator passed away but after the news of his illness did not sound good.

Senator Byrd is Ill; A Note on West Virginia's Vacancy Laws:

Byrd's current term expires on January 3, 2013. Under West Virginia state law on handling Senate vacancies, "if the vacancy occurs less than two years and six months before the end of the term, the Governor appoints someone to fill the unexpired term and there is no election". Otherwise, Manchin would appoint an interim replacement, and an special election would be held in November to determine who held the seat in 2011 and 2012.

In other words, we are within a week of the threshold established by West Virginia law. If a vacancy were to be declared on July 3rd or later, there would not be an election to replace Byrd until 2012. If it were to occur earlier, there could potentially be an election later this year, although there might be some ambiguities arising from precisely when and how the vacancy were declared.

Washington Journal's Peter Slen spoke to Politico's Martin Kady about his article on the Senator's passing and took calls from viewers in the video above.

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I thought conservatives hated the 'War on Christmas'. From C-SPAN's Washington Journal Dec. 24, 2009.

TPM has more--Not Knowing What Else To Do, Health Reform Foe Takes Down Christmas Tree:

No, this is not an Onion story. On C-SPAN's call in show this morning, a woman named Bunny from Parsons, Kansas, said she was so disappointed by the Senate's health care vote that she took down her Christmas tree. And it seems like her call was not a prank.

It wasn't just Bunny's tree that went. "I have taken my Christmas wreath off my house. I have taken all the lights down," she said. "This is supposed to be a nation under God, and it isn't. They absolutely have ruined Christmas."

[...]

"So you took down your Christmas tree because of the Senate health care bill?" he asks, with a hint of incredulity.

"I certainly did. And I would like to see every light in the nation go out, especially in the White House," Bunny replies.

She also explains that members of Congress are sullying "God's holiday for the birth of his son" and that she opposes the bill so fiercely because its death panel provisions will unleash a "genocide"on seniors.

I think someone was mixing a little too much Fox News with their eggnog.