If you didn't get a chance to see this special on PBS this week, and you've got some spare time to check it out on line instead, I'd highly recommend making some time to watch this latest documentary from Ken Burns, The Dust Bowl.

From PBS: THE DUST BOWL:

THE DUST BOWL chronicles the worst man-made ecological disaster in American history, in which the frenzied wheat boom of the "Great Plow-Up," followed by a decade-long drought during the 1930s nearly swept away the breadbasket of the nation. Vivid interviews with twenty-six survivors of those hard times, combined with dramatic photographs and seldom seen movie footage, bring to life stories of incredible human suffering and equally incredible human perseverance. It is also a morality tale about our relationship to the land that sustains us—a lesson we ignore at our peril.

You can watch episode two at the link above. The footage and pictures of those storms and their aftermath is just simply amazing and terrifying. Ken Burns has done a lot of really wonderful work with documenting our country's history and this latest from him is no exception.

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Ed Schultz spoke to "Gasland" director Josh Fox about his arrest this Wednesday while attempting to film a Congressional hearing on hydraulic fracturing.

'Gasland' Journalists Arrested At Hearing By Order Of House Republicans (UPDATES):

In a stunning break with First Amendment policy, House Republicans directed Capitol Hill police to detain a highly regarded documentary crew that was attempting to film a Wednesday hearing on a controversial natural gas procurement practice. Initial reports from sources suggested that an ABC News camera was also prevented from taping the hearing; ABC has since denied that they sent a crew to the hearing.

Josh Fox, director of the Academy Award-nominated documentary "Gasland" was taken into custody by Capitol Hill police this morning, along with his crew, after Republicans objected to their presence, according to Democratic sources present at the hearing. The meeting of the House Subcommittee on Energy and Environment had been taking place in room 2318 of the Rayburn building.

After showing video of his arrest, Schultz asked Fox to describe what happened.

FOX: Well, I didn't expect to be arrested for documentary film making and journalism on Capitol Hill today. I was prepared for it, but I didn't expect it. I did think they would come to their senses and just let us film the public hearing. We were there covering a very crucial hearing about a case of groundwater contamination in Pavillion, Wyoming, a three and a half year investigation by the EPA where it shows subjects from the first film, Gasland, from Pavillion with groundwater contamination resulting in fifty times the level of benzine in groundwater.

And EPA has pointed in this case that hydraulic fracturing is the likely cause. And what was happening on the Hill today was Republicans have called, in the Science and Space and Technology Committee, a hearing to challenge science. Their panel was made up of gas industry lobbyists. And we were there to expose what I believe is actually a rather ugly and brazen attack on science itself, on what's happening across the country with this hydraulic fracturing and water contamination.

So we were there actually doing our jobs as journalists. I was not interested in disrupting that hearing. I was not charged with disrupting that hearing. I was simply interested in capturing on film in a broadcast quality camera what the Republicans were going to be doing right there, putting the EPA and citizens of Pavillion and everyone across the nation who is complaining of contamination due to hydraulic fracturing on trial. We wanted to make sure people knew that that was happening.

You can read more about the Pavillion case here and here.

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Nothing like watching Republicans eating their own. On Fox's America Live, host Megyn Kelly first talked to Newt Gingrich Super PAC, Winning Our Future, adviser Rick Tyler about the half hour long documentary, When Mitt Romney Came to Town, now being aired heavily in South Carolina, which attacks Romney for his time at Bain Capital and his claims that he's somehow a "job creator."

Tyler defended the documentary, calling Romney a vulture capitalist, who unlike venture capitalists who come up with new services and innovations, make their money picking companies apart and raiding their pension funds.

For anyone who hasn't seen the documentary, it's available on line now, and it's pretty scathing. You can watch the entire video here -- King of Bain.

And we may have gotten rid of Pat Buchanan on MSNBC, but unfortunately we've still got his sister Bay showing up on Fox (where I suspect we'll see more of Pat as well) and Kelly followed up by bringing her on to defend Romney. When asked about Romney's time at Bain Capital, Buchanan rambled on with their usual talking points that you're just attacking the "free enterprise system" if anyone dares to say anything negative about how Romney and his rich friends conducted business there, painted what they did as a positive for the economy and called the Gingrich campaign "desperate" for the attacks.

I can't disagree that they're not, but I don't think Romney's going to come out of this unscathed. His Super PAC went after Gingrich hard in Iowa and it's payback time from Newt.

If you haven't seen it, or just haven't seen it in a while, apparently someone uploaded the entire Fahrenheit 9/11 movie to You Tube with the approval of Michael Moore who thanked them for it after the fact. I'd much rather be watching Moore's film again than the hours upon hours of so-called "news" coverage we had today where the war criminals were trotted out for some history revisionism and without a bit of perspective given to how that terrible tragedy was exploited by the Bush administration by our corporate media.

In the mean time, as Nicole already pointed out here, many thinking people are still grappling with what sort of country the United States has become in the aftermath of that terrible tragedy on 9-11. Moore's film serves as a reminder of what they decided to ignore during their ten year anniversary coverage and what we really should not be forgetting in the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on American soil - the fact that we allowed that tragedy to be exploited to squash any dissent to our ill advised military invasions and to question the patriotism of anyone that dared to speak out against our invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

I wasn't blogging here or anywhere back then, but I was firmly against both, and at the time took some heat personally for speaking out against either invasion from anyone I discussed the matters with at the time. These days, I'm hard pressed to find anyone who had something to say about it back then willing to defend their stances now.

There are a lot of lessons we could actually be learning from what happened ten years ago on how to avoid repeating what happened that day. Sadly, our corporate media doesn't seem to be interested in any of them, but that pretty much goes without saying after watching their horrid coverage and their cheerleading for war and militarism that we've seen from them over the last ten years. Since it would mean admitting their complicity in the fearmongering and war mongering, I don't expect we'll ever see much of an admission from them with their own role in allowing our country to invade countries that weren't a threat to us or with hyping the fearmongering that allowed our citizens and our politicians who didn't agree with what we were doing to be bullied into going along to get along or you were treated like a pariah. Sadly, I remember that feeling ten years later all too well.

h/t Susie

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John wrote about whistle-blower Bunnatine "Bunny" Greenhouse back in 2005 and sadly this woman's story has fallen completely off the radar, while in the mean time, war profiteer Dick Cheney is allowed to come on the air day after day and not be held to account for his helping his former company, Halliburton, fleece the American taxpayers.

Kudos to Maddow for shedding some more light on the story again during her and Richard Engel's two hour documentary, Day of Destruction, Decade of War.

More video on Halliburton's war profiteering and Greenhouse below the fold.

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The group Citizens United has a new "documentary" out which features Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin among others and from Dave Weigel, it looks like we're going to get to look forward to a few more of these in the near future.

Citizens United, the conservative, Supreme Court-case-winning no-profit that produced Newt Gingrich's "America at Risk" documentary, is releasing two more films this month. The first, coming next Wednesday: "Fire from the Heartland," a documentary that features Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wy.), and Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio) as examples of what CU's David Bossie calls "an awakening among women in America."

The next, coming on September 30: "The Battle for America," a film that stars Dick Morris and makes the case that the 111th Congress has to be replaced. (The working title was "Bill of Indictment.")

By the end of the year Citizens United will have churned out five films, but Bossie tells me that the schedule might become less ambitious in 2011 if he gets his dream off of the launchpad. That dream: Citizens United's first dramatic film, a feature that depends on an event in the news "that hasn't happened yet." A director and writer are lined up for the project, which Bossie anticipates would cost more than the $600,000 to $1 million that the organization spends on documentaries. The first documentary on deck for 2011 is the third in a trilogy about Cold War leaders, focusing on former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. (The first films, hosted by Newt Gingrich, covered the lives of Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.)

Wonderful. Here's the description of the documentary from Citizens United. I'd like to why all of them seem to be extremely obsessed with oral sex for some reason.

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CNN aired a special this weekend Behind the scenes of 'Rescue: Saving the Gulf' which didn't particularly interest me since I thought it looked like a bit of PR for BP by the network. But as Laffy noted over at The Political Carnival, CNN may have just documented something they didn't mean to if they were trying to do either BP or the government any favors.

UPDATED: “CNN may not know what they have documented.” + VIDEO:

Hugh Kaufman just messaged me the following, along with a link to the video below:

CNN may not know what they have documented. Will anybody tell them? Will they figure it out? …

CNN documents, on this documentary airing tonight and tomorrow, that the “air smell’s [sic] bad” (it’s full of carcinogenic and other hazardous material in oil and dispersants). None of the cleanup workers are wearing respirators and nobody is testing the air.

Just like 911 WTC, these workers are gonna be in trouble 5, 10, and 20 years down the line.

Where is EPA and OSHA?

I thought the same thing when I was watching the special. Where are the respirators for these workers and for the CNN reporter for that matter? Gloves, hardhats, boots and safety vests don't cut it with protecting them from this toxic sludge. I posted Hugh Kaughman's interview on Democracy Now the other day talking about how toxic that crude and those dispersants are.

Here's CNN's feedback page if you'd like to contact them and ask them why their reporter wasn't wearing the proper protective gear to be around that mess they're cleaning up and why they didn't bother to ask why the workers weren't wearing the right gear in their special.

Transcript below the fold.

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While discussing Chris Matthews' documentary on Hardball and some of the extreme rhetoric coming from the Tea Party, Ohio Gubernatorial candidate and former Congressman John Kasich tells Matthews that although there some people you could paint as extreme in the movement, "it's not the thrust of the movement" and describes them as "blue collar Democrats", people who are worried about the government's debt, their economic future and their children. Kasich points to the elections of Chris Christie and Scott Brown and says that no one could call them extremists.

Joan Walsh reminds Kasich that Scott Brown is now running away from the Tea Party and lays waste to the talking point that the Tea Party or Republicans are representing the working class. She got Kasich a bit riled up by daring to point out that he went from being a member of Congress to working for Lehman Brothers and how those sorts of issues are being ignored because we're focused on the craziness coming from the likes of the birthers instead.

WALSH: I think -- you know, Scott Brown has run away from the Tea Party.

KASICH: He hasn’t run away from anything.

WALSH: He refused to go to their rally; he refused to go to their Tea Party day. Congressman Kasich, you know, you sound like a wonderful guy compared to a lot of republicans. You are a moderate, but, you know, I think this is garbage that they represent the Underdog. They represent the Overdog, and you know in your own race, you went to work for Lehman Brothers, God bless you, that was your right. That’s become an issue. You know, how do you get to be the champion of the little guy when you went to work for the firm that helped bring about the collapse of the economy? These are the issues that we’re not talking about because we’re talking about where the president was born.

KASICH: First of all.

(CROSSTALK)

MATTHEWS: Well, equal time here. Go ahead.

KASICH: I mean, look, my father was a postman, I ran a two-man office in Columbus, Ohio, OK?

WALSH: Great.

KASICH: And one thing that people in this country want to recognize is if you work hard you ought to be able to get ahead. You play by the rules, you can be successful. This is what the Tea Party wants, not some left wing rhetoric from you. That’s not what they are interested in.

WALSH: That’s not left wing record rhetoric.

KASICH: Yes, it is.

WALSH: I’m talking about fairness.

KASICH: It’s smear.

(CROSSTALK)

KASICH: I didn’t pick on you. I didn’t pick on you, ma'am. If you want to punish success, that’s the opposite of what the Tea Party wants.

WALSH: That’s not the point.

KASICH: They want to reward success and that may be a little bit difficult but I would recommend to you to read every other Monday, so that you don’t start picking on people.

WALSH: Thank you, sir.

So pointing out that someone went from Congress to working for Lehman Brothers is a "smear" now huh? Tweety made sure Joan Walsh never got another word in and and spent the rest of the segment kissing Kasich's butt and telling him how much he looks forward to reading his book. Heaven forbid Matthews could allow the mean liberal woman to "smear" Kasich by pointing out the revolving door between Congress and big business without soothing the poor, horribly injured man a bit after his feelings were hurt so badly. We couldn't have that, now could we?

Q&A with Alex Gibney:

Alex Gibney talked from New York City about the recently released documentary film he wrote and directed, Casino Jack and the United States of Money. It tells the story of Jack Abramoff, who since November 2006, had been in prison after pleading guilty to three felonies with regard to his lobbying efforts for several Indian tribes. He also pleaded guilty to conspiring to bribe a member of Congress. Mr. Abramoff was released from prison to a half-way house June 8, 2010. Alex Gibney runs Jigsaw Productions. A previous documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature in 2008. In 2006, he was nominated for an Oscar for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Mr. Gibney writes regularly for the Huffington Post and has also written for New Republic, Newsday, and The Los Angeles Times. His films include Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson starring Johnny Depp (2008). His current project is a documentary about former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer. Video clips were shown, including some that contain language that some may find offensive.

To find out more you can go to the movie's action page CASINO JACK and the United States of Money and the documentary is still playing in theaters for a little while longer. Check here for dates and times.

You can also pre-order the DVD at Amazon here.

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I just had a chance to watch HBO's documentary Right America: Feeling Wronged I don't know how anyone can watch the film and not agree with the point made by my fellow C&L contributor Jon Perr in this post.

The 5 Signs of Republican and Tea Party Unity:

After a year of denying the obvious, the American media is finally coming to the conclusion that the supposed Tea Party movement is simply a continuation of the failed 2008 Republican presidential campaign by other means. As the data show, the vast majority Tea Baggers don't merely identify themselves as Republicans, they vote for the GOP as well. And as it turns out, the wildest myths propagated by the Tea Bagger are broadly accepted by the Republican faithful. Even in their casual incitements to violence, they are, as Jon Stewart aptly put it last year, "confusing tyranny with losing." Read on...

Of course any of us that followed the presidential elections closely and this astroturf Tea Party movement since it first started came to that same conclusion a long time ago. Alexandra Pelosi talked to Salon about her experience making the documentary -- Watching Republicans grieve:

When Alexandra Pelosi made the Emmy-winning documentary "Journeys With George" in 2000, about her 18 months on the campaign trail with soon-to-be-President George W. Bush, her mother, Nancy, was not yet speaker of the House, and the name "Pelosi" was not yet an epithet on the lips of Republicans.

Eight years later, Pelosi went back out on the GOP campaign trail and into the lion's den, in the waning days of John McCain's failed bid for the White House. In her latest film, "Right America: Feeling Wronged," which debuts on HBO Monday night, Pelosi attends McCain and Sarah Palin rallies in 28 states and puts her microphone in the faces of some very passionate conservatives. As defeat looms, she watches the Republican base go through a very public grieving process, with most of the stages that psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross described -- denial, depression and a whole lot of anger -- but not very much acceptance. Salon spoke to Pelosi by phone. Read on...