Who is Kathleen Parker?

Kathleen Parker is an American syndicated columnist. Her columns are syndicated nationally by The Washington Post Writers Group. Parker is a consulting faculty member at the Buckley School of Public Speaking, and is a regular guest on television shows like The O'Reilly Factor and The Chris Matthews Show. Parker is a self-described "rational conservative".

Parker is the author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (New York: Random House, 2008). A columnist since 1987, she has worked for five newspapers, from Florida to California, and is the 1993 winner of the H.L. Mencken writing award presented by the Baltimore Sun. She has written for several magazines, including The Weekly Standard, Time, Town & Country, Cosmopolitan and Fortune Small Business. She also serves on the Board of Contributors for USA TODAY's Forum Page, part of the newspaper’s Opinion section. She is also a contributor to the online magazine, The Daily Beast. The Week magazine named her one of the nation's Top Five columnists in 2004 and 2005.

Parker grew up in Winter Haven, Florida, and attended Converse College before transferring to Florida State University where she majored in Spanish Literature. She also holds a Master's degree in the subject from Florida State.

She is married to an attorney, has three sons, and currently resides in Camden, South Carolina.

Parker made news during the 2008 U.S. presidential election when she called on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Governor Sarah Palin, to step down from the party ticket, saying that a series of media interviews showed that Palin was "clearly out of her league." Parker received over 11,000 responses, most from conservatives criticizing her. Recently she wrote that the best explanation for Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally is that he is a former alcoholic and that in organizing the event he was displaying the "grandiosity of the addict."

In April, Kathleen Parker won the 2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary with a selection of political opinion columns.

On June 23, 2010, CNN announced that Parker and former New York governor Eliot Spitzer will host a prime time news program starting in the fall.

Mark Belling guest-host Monday

Rush Limbaugh will be on vacation until after Labor Day.

Mark Belling will be guest host on Monday and Tuesday.

From Wikipedia:

Mark Belling (born July 4, 1956, in Kaukauna, Wisconsin) is a radio talk show host for 1130 WISN in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Belling hosts a three-hour weekday radio program, The Mark Belling Late Afternoon Show, which is regularly rated No. 1 for the afternoon-drive time slot. He is also a weekly columnist for many local newspapers including the Milwaukee Post, Waukesha Freeman, West Bend Daily News and Hometown Publications. Belling occasionally serves as a substitute for national conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh. Belling previously hosted a Sunday-morning television panel, Belling and Company, on WISN-TV (Channel 12) until 2000, when it moved to WDJT (Channel 58). The program was discontinued in 2005 reportedly due to editorial conflicts between Belling and the management of WDJT owner Weigel Broadcasting.

A native of Wisconsin's Fox Valley, Belling is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. He has been with WISN since March 1989. Before joining WISN he was news and program director of WTDY-AM in Madison, Wisconsin, where he began his talk radio career. Belling also served as a radio news director in Springfield, Illinois; St. Joseph, Michigan; Benton Harbor, Michigan; and Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

Radio Program
Belling discusses a wide variety of topics on his program, including Milwaukee area politics, Wisconsin politics, and national issues. Belling tends to lean to the right politically, though he has been known to frequently criticize local and national Republicans for straying from conservative principles. Throughout the 2008 presidential campaign, Belling regularly proclaimed his disdain for Republican candidate John McCain, though eventually he sided with McCain over Democratic candidate Barack Obama.

Belling also regularly discusses sports on his program, including football, baseball, basketball, golf, NASCAR and Formula One racing. Each year Belling makes numerous sports picks, often including the audience and show producer Paul Kronforst. Each week during the football season, Belling, Kronforst, and an audience member make NFL and college football picks. He also discusses his picks for the NCAA college basketball playoffs and horse racing's Triple Crown. In 2006 Belling correctly selected Barbaro as the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

Belling is also a music fan, often discussing it on the show. He has been known to play entire songs on the air, often taking credit for "discovering" them for his audience. His love of country music is especially prevalent, as he previously worked as a disc jockey at a country station. Some of his favorite current recording artists include Alanis Morissette, Black Eyed Peas, The Eagles, Fountains of Wayne, and Bruce Springsteen. The theme song for the Mark Belling Late Afternoon Show is an instrumental version of Lost in the Shadows by Lou Gramm from The Lost Boys (soundtrack).

In 2004 the host was briefly removed from the air following his use of an ethnic slur. He refused to talk further about it and continued to receive high ratings. The station and Clear Channel stuck by him. Faced with no further response from the host or company, the controversy eventually died down.

Other Journalism
In addition to his daily three-hour radio program, Belling is frequently asked to guest-host Rush Limbaugh's prestigious national radio program. When doing so, WISN usually broadcasts this program twice rather than have someone fill in for Mark due to his popularity.

Mark writes a weekly op-ed column for the Waukesha Freeman. It usually covers local politics or scandals but occasionally remarks on national headlines and even sports.

Although Mark claims not to be a journalist, he has broken innumerable stories, usually covering Wisconsin politics. Some headline news broken by Mark includes the announcement the 2017 PGA tour would be at Erin Hills, that Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle was paid money by an attorney days before being hired as the Governor's legal counsel in a pay to play scheme , Milwaukee Police Chief Edward A. Flynn was involved in an affair with a local journalist, that when Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett violated his own city's occupancy laws for years the agency he runs never fined him for the violations.

Mark also maintains a website which includes a podcast of his daily show, his favorite websites for news, and important news articles including those Mark reports on exclusively.

Awards
Mark is a 2001 Marconi award recipient for best medium-market radio personality, a three-time Milwaukee Press Club winner for best radio editorial, has twice won the Radio-Television News Directors Association award for best investigative reporting in the Midwest, and was a 1986 finalist for "Journalist of the Year" in Illinois as awarded by United Press International. Belling also was named one of the Top 100 Heavy Talkers—the most influential talk show hosts in America—by Talkers Magazine, an industry publication
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Who is Julian Assange?

Julian Paul Assange (ə-SAHNZH; born 1971) is an Australian internet activist and journalist best known for his involvement with Wikileaks, a whistleblower website. Assange was a physics and mathematics student, a hacker and a computer programmer, before taking on his current role as spokesperson and editor in chief for Wikileaks.

Biography
Early life
According to The New Yorker, Assange was born in Townsville, Queensland, in 1971. In the past, Assange did not publish his exact age, only stating that he was born in the 1970s.

Assange has said that his parents ran a touring theatre company, and that he was enrolled in 37 schools and six universities in Australia over the course of his early life. From age eleven to sixteen, he lived on the run with his mother and half-brother, avoiding his half-brother's father who was believed to belong to a cult led by Anne Hamilton-Byrne.

Assange helped to write the 1997 book Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier which credits him as researcher. It draws from his teenage experiences as a member of a hacker group named "International Subversives", which involved a 1991 raid of his Melbourne home by the Australian Federal Police.

Wired, The Sydney Morning Herald, and The Sunday Times have pointed out that there exist similarities between Assange and the person called "Mendax" in the book.

The New Yorker has identified Assange as Mendax and explains its origin from a phrase of Horace: "splendide mendax", or "nobly untruthful". Assange was reported to have accessed various computers (belonging to an Australian university, Canadian telecommunications company Nortel, and other organizations) via modem[ to test their security flaws; he later pleaded guilty to 24 charges of hacking and was released on bond for good conduct after being fined AU$2100.

According to the Personal Democracy Forum, Assange founded a civil rights group for children called "Pickup".

Computer programming
After the hacking trial, Assange lived in Melbourne as a programmer and a developer of free software.

In 1995, Assange wrote Strobe, the first free and open source port scanner. Strobe inspired Fyodor to develop the Nmap port scanner.

Starting around 1997, Assange co-invented "Rubberhose deniable encryption", a cryptographic concept made into a software package for Linux designed to provide plausible deniability against rubber-hose cryptanalysis, which he originally intended "as a tool for human rights workers who needed to protect sensitive data in the field".

Other free software that Assange has authored or co-authored includes the Usenet caching software NNTPCache and Surfraw, a command line interface for web-based search engines.

University studies and travel
Assange studied physics and mathematics at the University of Melbourne until 2006, when he began to focus heavily on Wikileaks.

He has been described as being largely self-taught and widely read on science and mathematics. He has also studied philosophy and neuroscience. vOn his personal web page Assange described how he represented his University at the Australian National Physics Competition around 2005.

Assange has said that it is "pretty much true" that he is constantly on the move, and that he is "living in airports these days".

Assange has lived for periods in Australia, Kenya and Tanzania, and has visited many other places including Vietnam, Sweden, Iceland, Siberia, Iraq, Belgium, and the United States.

Assange began renting a house in Iceland on 30 March 2010, from which he and other activists, including Birgitta Jónsdóttir, worked on the collateral murder video.

In May 2010 upon landing in Australia, his passport was taken from him, and when it was returned he was told that his passport was to be cancelled. The Australian Customs Service stated that such confiscation was only because his passport was worn, and that Assange was otherwise free to travel.

In 1999, Assange registered the website, Leaks.org; "but", he says, "then I didn't do anything with it".

WikiLeaks
Main article: Wikileaks
Wikileaks was founded in 2006.[1][19] Assange now sits on its nine-member advisory board,[26] and is a prominent media spokesman on its behalf. While newspapers have described him as a "director" or "founder" of Wikileaks, Assange has said "I don’t call myself a founder", but he does describe himself as the editor in chief of Wikileaks, and has stated that he has the final decision in the process of vetting documents submitted to the site. Like all others working for the site, Assange is an unpaid volunteer.

Assange was the winner of the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media), awarded for exposing extrajudicial assassinations in Kenya with the investigation The Cry of Blood – Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances.


Julian Assange at New Media Days '09 in CopenhagenIn accepting the Amnesty International Media Award 2009, Mr. Assange stated:

It is a reflection of the courage and strength of Kenyan civil society that this injustice was documented. Through the tremendous work of organizations such as the Oscar foundation, the KNHCR, Mars Group Kenya and others we had the primary support we needed to expose these murders to the world. I know that they will not rest, and we will not rest, until justice is done.

—“WikiLeaks wins Amnesty International 2009 Media Award for exposing Extra judicial killings in Kenya”.

He has also won the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship Award; and various other media awards.

Assange says that Wikileaks has released more classified documents than the rest of the world press combined:

That's not something I say as a way of saying how successful we are – rather, that shows you the parlous state of the rest of the media. How is it that a team of five people has managed to release to the public more suppressed information, at that level, than the rest of the world press combined? It's disgraceful.

Public appearances
Since WikiLeaks has opened, Assange has appeared at news-oriented conferences such as New Media Days '09 in Copenhagen, the 2010 Logan Symposium in Investigative Reporting at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, and at hacker-oriented conferences, notably at the 25th and 26th Chaos Communication Congress (representing Wikileaks together with Daniel Schmitt).

In the first half of 2010, he has appeared on international news agencies such as Al Jazeera English, MSNBC, Democracy Now, RT, and The Colbert Report to discuss the release of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike video by Wikileaks. The same was covered in literary journalistic fashion by The New Yorker.

On 3 June Assange appeared via Skype at the Personal Democracy Forum conference with Daniel Ellsberg. Daniel Ellsberg told MSNBC "the explanation he [Assange] used" for not appearing in person in the USA was that "it was not safe for him to come to this country". On 11 June he was to appear on a Showcase Panel at the Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in Las Vegas, but there are reports that he cancelled several days prior. On 10 June 2010, it was reported that Pentagon officials are trying to determine his whereabouts. Based on this, there have been reports that U.S. officials want to apprehend Assange.

Ellsberg said that the arrest of Bradley Manning and subsequent speculation by U.S. officials about what Assange may be about to publish "puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now".

In The Atlantic, Marc Ambinder called Ellsberg's concerns "ridiculous", and said that "Assange's tendency to believe that he is one step away from being thrown into a black hole hinders, and to some extent discredits, his work". In Salon, Glenn Greenwald questioned "screeching media reports" that there was a "manhunt" on Assange underway, arguing that they were only based on comments by "anonymous government officials" and might even serve a campaign by the U.S. government, by intimidating possible whistleblowers.

On 21 June 2010 Assange took part in a hearing in Brussels, Belgium, appearing in public for the first time in nearly a month. He was a member on a panel that discussed Internet censorship and expressed his worries over the recent filtering in countries such as Australia. He also talked about secret gag orders preventing newspapers from publishing information about specific subjects and even divulging the fact that they are being gagged. Using an example involving The Guardian, he also explained how newspapers are altering their online archives sometimes by removing entire articles.

He told The Guardian that he does not fear for his safety but is on permanent alert and will avoid travel to America, saying "[US] public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable". He said "politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period".

On 17 July, Jacob Appelbaum spoke on behalf of WikiLeaks at the 2010 Hackers on Planet Earth conference in New York City on 17 July, replacing Assange due to the presence of federal agents at the conference. He announced that the WikiLeaks submission system was again up and running, after it had been temporarily suspended. Assange was a surprise speaker at a TED conference on 19 July 2010 in Oxford, and confirmed that WikiLeaks was now accepting submissions again. On 26 July, after the release of the Afghan War Diary, Assange appeared at the Frontline Club for a press conference.

Legal difficulties
In the mid-1990's Assange stood trial for breaking into several government and corporate servers. In August 2010, Assange found himself the subject of two charges in Sweden - one of rape and one of molestation - but the rape charges were dropped within days. Assange has denied both accusations and referred to them as "dirty tricks" in response to his recent activities on Wikileaks.

Characterisation of Assange and his work
Assange advocates a "transparent" and "scientific" approach to journalism, saying that "you can’t publish a paper on physics without the full experimental data and results; that should be the standard in journalism".

In 2006, Assange was described in the magazine CounterPunch as "president of a NGO and Australia's most infamous former computer hacker". The Age has called him "one of the most intriguing people in the world" and "internet's freedom fighter". Assange has called himself "extremely cynical". The Personal Democracy Forum said that as a teenager he was "Australia's most famous ethical computer hacker".

Pentagon Papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg stated in an interview that Assange "is serving our (American) democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country." On the issue of national security considerations for the U.S., Ellsberg added that:

..any serious risk to that national security is extremely low. There may be 260,000 diplomatic cables. It’s very hard to think of any of that which could be plausibly described as a national security risk. Will it embarrass diplomatic relationships? Sure, very likely—all to the good of our democratic functioning. [...] "[Assange is] obviously a very competent guy in many ways. I think his instincts are that most of this material deserves to be out. We are arguing over a very small fragment that doesn’t. He has not yet put out anything that hurt anybody’s national security."[70]

Daniel Yates, a former British military intelligence officer, believes Julian Assange has gravely jeopardized the lives of numerous Afghan civilians for his central role in publishing the classified Afghan War Diary.

"As more detail of the information contained in the ‘Afghan war logs’ emerges it appears clear to me that, despite his protests otherwise, Julian Assange has seriously endangered the lives of Afghan civilians. The logs contain detailed personal information regarding Afghan civilians who have approached NATO soldiers with information. It is inevitable that the Taliban will now seek violent retribution on those who have co-operated with NATO. Their families and tribes will also be in danger. That danger should not be underestimated."

Personal life
In 1989, Assange married in an unofficial ceremony at the age of 18 and later had a son. His wife left him in the mid-1990's and took their son and they engaged in a lengthy custody struggle.

Who is Greta Van Susteren?

In this blog, I share biographies (from fair-use Wikipedia) on politicians, journalists, anyone Rush mentions on his program, or people whose biographies I think my readers need to read. I've been concentrating on political biographies for a while, on the politicians we need to watch for the all-important November 2 election, and to leaven that, here's a bio of Greta Van Susteren.

Greta Van Susteren (born June 11, 1954) is an American journalist and television personality on the Fox News Channel, where she hosts On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren. A former criminal defense and civil trial lawyer, she appeared as a legal commentator on CNN co-hosting Burden of Proof with Roger Cossack from 1994 to 2002, playing defense attorney to Cossack's prosecutor.

Personal life
Van Susteren was born in Appleton, Wisconsin, and is of Dutch, French and German ancestry on her paternal side.

Van Susteren's sister, Lise, is a forensic psychiatrist in Bethesda, Maryland. In 2006, Lise was a candidate for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Her brother, Dirk Van Susteren, was a journalist and long-time editor of the Vermont Sunday magazine, jointly published, until folding in 2008, by the Rutland Herald and the Barre-Montpelier-Times Argus. Van Susteren's father, Urban Van Susteren, was an elected judge, was a longtime friend of U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, and was campaign strategist for him, although Urban later broke with him.

Van Susteren is married to John P. Coale. They are both Scientologists. [Who knew? Here's an article on their Scientology beliefs from 1998. http://www.sptimes.com/Floridian/121398/High_profile_couple_n.html

Coale serves as an adviser for Sarah Palin.

Since 2006, she has been part owner of a restaurant, the Old Mill Inn, in Mattituck, New York, on the North Fork of Long Island.

In recognition of her Dutch heritage she was asked to assume the role of Honorary Chairperson of the Little Chute Windmill Committee. The windmill, an authentic reproduction of a Dutch one, will be built in Little Chute, Wisconsin, where Van Susteren's family lived for some time.

Career
Van Susteren graduated from the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin having studied geography and economics. She later earned a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center in 1979 and prior to the start of her television work returned to Georgetown Law as an adjunct faculty member in addition to her full-time legal career.

During coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder trial, she appeared regularly on CNN as a legal analyst. This led to her stint as co-host of CNN's Burden of Proof and The Point.

In 2002, Van Susteren switched to the Fox News Channel after a highly publicized contract bidding war. Since then, she has hosted the current affairs show On the Record w/ Greta Van Susteren.