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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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The Daily Show's Jon Stewart laid into Sean Hannity for defending the former Rutgers basketball coach who verbally and physically abused his players and his remarks that after being hit by a belt by his father growing up, he "turned out okay."

STEWART: Anyway, coming up next, I shout at people I disagree with for an hour. Seriously? You’re okay? Have you seen your show? Because it seems like the show of a guy who was hit with a belt as a child. By the way, it's got to be so exhausting to have to categorize everything that happens through your right/left, two dimensional goggles. This isn't a liberal, left-wing media, persecuting on politically correct grounds. This was a basketball coach who acted like an asshole and got fired.

What is wrong with you? What do you watch The Shining and go "Oh yeah, that's the movie about how Shelley Duvall learned a good lesson"? Like, what are you talking about? But I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's Fox's brand. They represent the right, much the same way that MSNBC represents.... ugh.... the near-sighted.

Which brought him to "his main story" for this Thursday night, which was CNN and their "neither left nor right" but "steady spiral downward" since Jeff Zucker decided they need a "new approach" to the news. They were treated to being mocked roundly by Stewart for everything from their over the top use of their virtual studio, to overly graphic crime scene reenactments, to their latest fiasco, which I've had the unfortunate experience of catching some of this week, titled (Get To) The Point. Terrible doesn't even begin to describe it. The show is so bad, it really is unwatchable.

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In case you missed it, from Friday evening's The Daily Show, Jon Stewart's Best F#@king News Team Ever showed us that in order to run America more like a business, as Republicans keep claiming we need to do, some under performing states are going to have to downsize.

Once again our comedy shows are doing the work of showing the absurdity of Republican talking points that our Villagers in the media that call themselves "news" refuse to do.

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Here we go again with another beltway Villager giving Mitt Romney cover for not releasing his tax returns. From this Sunday's Face the Nation, Bob Schieffer took his turn and treated us to the false equivalency game with Harry Reid.

Apparently now politicians are supposed to be held to the same standards as journalists, not that I consider Schieffer a journalist. Schieffer was terribly very upset that Reid won't reveal his source on Romney's tax returns, and the fact that he won't of course means Schieffer thinks Reid is lying.

Never mind that Romney has given us no reason to trust him after he lied about his Massachusetts residency and had to retroactively amend his tax returns. It's too bad Schieffer doesn't think the guy running for president should be held to the same standards as the Senator from Nevada.

If Bob Schieffer is truly concerned about politicians lying, it might be nice if he mentioned the fact that the Romney campaign has been running on nothing but one lie after another, starting with his very first attack ad against President Obama which took him out of context while quoting John McCain. I'm not holding my breath though.

Transcript below the fold:

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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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CNN's Howard Kurtz is calling for New York City and Mayor Michael Bloomberg to apologize for the way the media was censored, roughed up and arrested during the recent eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists in Zuccotti Park.

"New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a post-midnight raid to clear the protesters from a lower Manhattan park," Kurtz explained Sunday. "Some reporters were pushed away and barred from covering the confrontation. About two dozen journalists from outlets such as the AP and The New York Daily News were arrested. Bloomberg says the city was trying to -- quote -- 'prevent a situation from getting worse and protect members of the press.' Except police later shoved and roughed up a number of reporters and photographers."

"This is quite simply an outrage, that police haul off journalists trying to do their jobs and push the press corps away from a legitimate news event," Kurtz declared. "That is nothing less than censorship and the city owes these journalist and the rest of us an apology."

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly confirmed that several journalists were arrested in the Tuesday morning crackdown in Zuccotti Park last week. Not only did police prevent reporters on the ground from doing their jobs, authorities also closed the airspace in lower Manhattan so that news helicopters could not film the raid.

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CNN's Don Lemon bragged about how he and his network are going to make an effort to not allow politicians to come on their shows and just repeat talking points instead of answering direct questions by their reporters. Well, that's all well and good, but if Lemon thinks this interview with Rand Paul was some example of what we should expect from those that want to call themselves journalists in our media, he's going to have to do a better job than he did with Rand Paul here.

While I agree that it's a good thing that anyone in our media doesn't want to allow any politician to come on their show and just filibuster the interview with talking points, and that definitely is a step in the right direction, it's also pretty worthless if when they do answer your question and lie, that they're not called out for that lie.

It's also worthless when your network continues to paint the "tea party" as some actual third party, instead of just the right wing of the Republican Party and to continues to do the lazy "both sides" false equivalencies as was done here by Don Lemon. Sorry Don, but there are not two parties unwilling to compromise to make government work. And the "middle" of our political spectrum does not lie between "compromising" on lifting our debt ceiling and crashing our country and our world's economy if one side does not get everything they want with destroying our social safety nets.

Lemon got onto Rand Paul for not answering his questions, but he did not let his viewers know that the Republican Party has gone completely off the cliff with the crazy train with electing extremists like Rand Paul and that the Democratic Party has moved way too far to the right, other than the members of the House progressive caucus who are about the only ones out there actually looking out for everyday working Americans and their interests these days. They're given no voice or very little in our corporate media with the usual exceptions which are some of the prime time shows on MSNBC.

The full interview with Rand Paul is below the fold and I hate to break it to Don Lemon, but if he thinks this represents some sort of hardball interview with Rand Paul and holding him accountable for how he's behaved since he's been elected with pushing his extreme right wing or Libertarian views on the rest of us and for lying about how their balanced budget amendment being included in debt ceiling negotiations that has zero to no chance of being passed through Congress with the clock is ticking is somehow either "rational" or a "compromise", I'd like to have some of what Don Lemon has been smoking.

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Amy Goodman's Democracy Now spent the hour with Bill Moyers discussing his new book and his career as a journalist. I really miss his weekly show on PBS now that he's off the air there.

Bill Moyers on His Legendary Journalism Career: "Democracy Should Be a Brake on Unbridled Greed and Power":

In a Democracy Now! special broadcast, we are joined by legendary journalist Bill Moyers, a founding organizer of the Peace Corps, press secretary for President Lyndon Johnson, a publisher of Newsday, and senior correspondent for CBS News. Public television is where he has made his home, producing many groundbreaking shows and winning more than 30 Emmy Awards. Moyers has just published a new book, "Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues," a collection of interviews from his popular PBS show that aired from 2007 to 2010. "The greatest change in politics in my time has been the transformation of democracy, America, from a citizens’ society, the moral agency of all those people in the civil rights movement who stood up against the weight of authority and against persecution and acted as agents of change—the change from a citizens’ society to a consumer society, where most of us are caught up on that treadmill, trying to get more," Moyers says. In a wide-ranging interview, he also discusses the state of the public media infrastructure he helped to establish as part of the Johnson administration. "Public broadcasting, which remains a place that treats you as a citizen and not a consumer, is also threatened. We must defend it. We must call it back to its heights. We must continue to support it, because without it, we’re at the mercy, totally, of corporate power."

Full transcript available at Democracy Now's site.

Jon Stewart did a good job of making me really sad that Bill Moyers is no longer on the air at PBS anymore with this interview this week. Stewart was Moyers first interview segment after coming back on the air at PBS and Stewart was happy to return the favor with him plugging his new book, Bill Moyers Journal: The Conversation Continues.

Stewart and Moyers discussed the state of journalism today and our media relying on opinion rather than actual reporting to fill their airways.

It's time for your weekly podcast from our own Driftglass and Bluegal, otherwise known at The Professional Left. Enjoy the podcast and don't forget to vote for Bluegal if you'd like to help send her and Driftie to Netroots Nation this year at Democracy for America's site.

You can listen to the archives or make a donation to help keep these going at http://professionalleft.blogspot.com/. And here are some related links to this week's podcast.

1. Lewis Black signs on as Donald Trump's campaign manager.

2. Paul Wolfowitz.

3. Yeats' "The Second Coming".

4. Tom Friedman, "The Mustache of Understanding" .

5. Ginni Thomas hired by Bib-and-Tucker Carlson.

6. Steve Forbes gets eated.

7. Constantine's Sword.