HISTORIC SPENDING CUTS THE CENTERPIECE FOR FINAL CONTINUING RESOLUTION (CR) FOR FISCAL YEAR 2011

April 12th, 2011 - -

Historic Spending Cuts the Centerpiece for Final Continuing Resolution (CR) for Fiscal Year 2011



WASHINGTON, D.C. – The final Continuing Resolution (CR) legislation for fiscal year 2011 unveiled today by House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers contains historic spending cuts of nearly $40 billion, and will provide funding to keep the federal government operating for the remainder of the fiscal year. The passage of the bill in the House and Senate will mark the end of an arduous and long-overdue budget process initiated by the failure of the previous Democrat-controlled Congress to pass a budget or enact a single one of the 12 annual Appropriations bills last year.

“Never before has any Congress made dramatic cuts such as those that are in this final legislation. The near $40 billion reduction in non-defense spending is nearly five times larger than any other cut in history, and is the result of this new Republican majority’s commitment to bring about real change in the way Washington spends the people’s money,” Chairman Rogers said.

“My committee went line-by-line through agency budgets this weekend to negotiate and craft deep but responsible reductions in virtually all areas of government. Our bill targets wasteful and duplicative spending, makes strides to rein in out-of-control federal bureaucracies, and will help bring our nation one step closer to eliminating our job-crushing level of debt.” Chairman Rogers continu

To view the text of this Continuing Resolution, please visit    
 
To view a summary of the legislation, please visit:  
 
For a list of highlighted program cuts, please visit: 
 
 

President addressed the (AIPAC) annual policy conference.

American Israel Public Affairs Committee

President Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference. In his speech, he reiterated his call for basing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on borders that existed before the 1967 .. Read More

President Obama addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual policy conference. In his speech, he reiterated his call for basing Israeli-Palestinian peace talks on borders that existed before the 1967 Arab-Israeli War with mutually agreed land swaps, and also reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israel's security.

49 minutes

not available for the weekend............

I will be traveling the next two days by train, and will have not have internet access.  I will be away for the weekend.  I will be back on Monday the 30th.  My granddaughter will be graduating, and I will be at her ceremony on Tuesday night.  I am very proud of her. she is graduating from a tech school and from high school.  Duel enrollment.  See you then.  Have a fantastic, memorial Day weekend.

Ratko Mladic: war crimes fugitive arrested in Serbia

Ratko Mladic, the war crimes fugitive accused of orchestrating the Siege of Sarajevo and the Srebrenica massacre, has been arrested in Serbia.

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Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic Photo: REUTERS

By Murray Wardrop, and Damien McElroy 11:37AM BST 26 May 2011

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Serbia’s President Boris Tadic said British and American intelligence had assisted Serbian state security in the operation to find Mladic.

“Today, early in the morning, we arrested Ratko Mladic. The extradition process is under way,” Tadic said.

Croatian media, which first broke the story, said police there got word from their Serbian colleagues that DNA analysis confirmed Mladic's identity. Belgrade's B92 radio said Mladic was arrested on Thursday in a village close to the northern Serbian town of Zrenjanin.

Serbian media reported that the suspect was living under the name of Milorad Komadic.

The European Union said it has “all reasons to believe” that Mladic has been arrested. The EU has conditioned Serbia’s membership bid on the arrest of Mladic.

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Serbia had been told it must arrest Mladic, sought by the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide during the Bosnian war, if it wants to join the European Union.

Mladic has been on the run since 1995, when he was indicted for allegedly orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war.

It has long been suspected that he has been living in Serbia, where many people still regard him as a hero and a defender of Serb rights during the 1992-1995 conflict.

Two years ago, video footage emerged of Mladic living freely in the country, enjoying himself at a ski resort and dancing at a wedding.

The arrest comes after a report by the chief prosecutor at the UN's court for the former Yugoslavia scolded Serbia earlier today for not doing enough to arrest Mladic.

Prosecutor Serge Brammertz said the capture of the wartime fugitive was Serbia's biggest obligation.

"The capture is the biggest obligation of Serbia. Until now efforts by Serbia to detain fugitives have not been sufficient," Brammertz said in the report sent to the UN Security Council.

Under Mladic's command, the Army of Republika Srpska killed more than 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the Srebrenica massacre of July 1995.

Between April 1992 and February 1996, the army laid siege to Sarajevo killing an estimated 10,000 people.

William Hague, the foreign secretary, said: “The arrest of Ratko Mladic is a historic moment for a region that was torn apart by the appalling wars of the 1990s. Ratko Mladic stands accused of terrible crimes committed in Bosnia-Herzegovina and it is right that he will now be brought to face international justice. Today our thoughts are with the relatives of those killed during the siege of Sarajevo and genocide in Srebrenica.

“We congratulate the Serbian authorities on this arrest, which is evidence of the Serbian Government’s commitment to co-operation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia.

“We now look forward to the rapid transfer of Rakto Mladic to The Hague so that the charges against him can be heard in an international court of law. Our sympathies are with all those who lost loved ones during those conflicts. Today should mark the beginning of a new chapter for the countries of Western Balkans."

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Pres. Obama Addresses British Parliament

 

White House | Foreign Trip

President Obama addressed a joint meeting of the British House of Commons and House of Lords in Westminster Hall. It was the first address by an American President to a joint session of Parliament. In his remarks he talked .. Read More

President Obama addressed a joint meeting of the British House of Commons and House of Lords in Westminster Hall. It was the first address by an American President to a joint session of Parliament. In his remarks he talked about the strong ties between the U.S. and the United Kingdom, challenges to international security, global development, and pro-democracy protests in the Middle East and in North Africa.

1 hour, 1 minute |

Washington, DC
Wednesday, May 25, 2011

President Obama continued his state visit to the UK and spoke this morning to the British parliament. He discussed  the U.S.-European alliance saying that it is a "special relationship because of the values and beliefs that have united our people."
During his 35 minute address, the President discussed the future relationship of the two countries and the need for building a new economic partnership, investing in science and innovation.
Pres. Obama and first lady Michelle Obama are in England for a three-day state visit. Earlier today, he met privately with Prime Minister David Cameron at Downing Street for talks, which was followed by a press conference with the two leaders.
"Let there be no doubt," Obama said about Tunisia, Tehran and Tahrir Square, "our countries need to stand on the side of those who long to be free." He added, "Our patchwork heritage is an enormous strength, in a world that will only grow smaller."

During the press briefing both leaders stressed the need to "help affect change" in North Africa and the Middle East.  Responding to reporters, Obama pledged not to "let-up in pressure on Gaddafi," Cameron added that "patience and persistence is key."

U.S. - Ireland Relations

President Obama spoke about ties between the U.S. and Ireland. In his speech he said the enduring, centuries-old relationship the U.S. and Ireland enjoy is bound by history, friendship, and shared values. He also said that Ireland is the first stop on his visit to Europe because he wants to reaffirm those "bonds of affection."

52 minutes |

Holds Joint Briefing with P.M. Cameron

Pres. Obama Addresses British Parliament

White House White House | Foreign Trip

WHITE HOUSE 4:50A THE PRESIDENT holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Cameron 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray at the top 5:05A THE PRESIDENT holds a meeting with Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy .. Read More

WHITE HOUSE 4:50A THE PRESIDENT holds a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Cameron 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray at the top 5:05A THE PRESIDENT holds a meeting with Prime Minister Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Clegg 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray at the top 5:35A THE PRESIDENT holds an expanded bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Cameron 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray at the top 6:30A THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Cameron attend an event hosted by Mrs. Cameron and the First Lady to honor military families, U.S. and U.K. service members and veterans 10 Downing Street, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray 7:35A THE PRESIDENT and Prime Minister Cameron hold a a joint press conference Lancaster House, London, United Kingdom Travel Pool Coverage 10:30A THE PRESIDENT delivers remarks to the U.K. Parliament Parliament, London, United Kingdom Open to pre-credentialed press 11:55A THE PRESIDENT holds an U.S. Embassy meet and greet The Grosvenor House Hotel, London, United Kingdom Closed Press 3:30P THE PRESIDENT and the First Lady will reciprocate the hospitality of Her Majesty the Queen and hold a dinner in her honor at the residence of the American ambassador in London Winfield House, London, United Kingdom Pool Spray arrival and departure WH events fed by pool (including C-SPAN)

49 minutes

Tell Secretary Clinton to Say No to the Kochs

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The Elephant in the Green Room

 Why Ailes began to doubt Palin’s political instincts.

Ailes began to doubt Palin’s political instincts. He thought she was getting bad advice from her kitchen cabinet and saw her erratic behavior as a sign that she is a “loose cannon,” as one person close to him put it. A turning point in their relationship came during the apex of the media debate over the Tucson shooting. As the media pounced on Palin’s rhetoric, Palin wanted to fight back. She felt it was deeply unfair that commentators were singling her out. Ailes agreed but told her to stay out of it. He thought if she stayed quiet, she would score a victory.

“Lie low,” he told her. “If you want to respond later, fine, but do not interfere with the memorial service.”

Palin ignored Ailes’s advice and went ahead and released her now-infamous “blood libel” video the morning Obama traveled to Tucson. For Ailes, the move was further evidence that Palin was flailing around off-message. “Why did you call me for advice?” he wondered out loud to colleagues.

What had been an effort to boost ratings has recently become a complication for Fox. Employing potential presidential candidates has opened the network up to criticism that it is too politicized. As risible as liberals find the slogan “Fair and Balanced,” it was significantly more defensible before Ailes’s candidate-hiring binge.

As Ailes struggled with what to do with Glenn Beck in a changed political landscape, an older problem reared its head. In February, news broke that former lawyers for Judith Regan, the former HarperCollins publisher, claimed in sworn statements that Regan taped conversations in which Ailes had allegedly told her to lie to investigators about her affair with Bernie Kerik to help Ailes’s friend Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. News Corp. issued a statement that quoted Regan denying she felt pressure, but it sparked a media frenzy for a couple of days. Regan blames Ailes for her negative press in the wake of her 2006 ouster from News Corp. and claims Ailes is trying to protect powerful interests. “Connect the dots,” she told me.

As Ailes’s history with Regan was racing back to the present, he had little choice but to force the hands of the candidates on his payroll. In late February, Shine made calls to Palin and her husband, Todd, to ask if she was going to run for president. The Palins told him they hadn’t decided. “I’m not sure Sarah has made up her mind one way or the other,” a Palin adviser told me. The network is working hard to get a definitive answer out of her. A couple of weeks earlier, Shine and Fox general counsel Dianne Brandi called Mike Huckabee into a meeting to ask him about his presidential ambitions.

In early March, Fox News suspended contracts for Gingrich and Santorum. Santorum was said to be angry at Fox’s decision. He hadn’t formally declared his candidacy when Fox decided he had to go, even as Ailes had allowed Palin and Huckabee to keep their lucrative gigs before making a decision. Last week, Huckabee finally did, choosing the Fox paycheck over the GOP primary. And in making his announcement on-air, he turned his Saturday-evening show into an odd ratings-grab spectacle. “I didn’t like the endgame; it was a bizarre-type thing,” Ed Rollins, Huckabee’s former ’08 campaign manager, told me.

In the halls of Fox News, people do not want to be caught talking about what will happen to Fox News after the Ailes era. The network continues to be Ailes’s singular vision, and he’s so far declined to name a successor. One possibility in the event Ailes departs when his contract is up in 2013 is that Bill Shine could continue to oversee prime time and Michael Clemente would run the news division. But more than one person described fearing Lord of the Flies–type chaos in the wake of Ailes’s departure, so firm has his grip on power been.

This spring, the announcement by News Corp. that James Murdoch was being promoted to deputy chief operating officer triggered another round of speculation that the accession of the next generation would be problematic for Ailes. So far, James has had little interaction with Ailes. The last time the pair worked closely together was in the late nineties, when James was overseeing News Corp.’s dot-com properties and was briefly in charge of Fox’s website.

James likely witnessed his older brother Lachlan’s frustration over clashing with Ailes (one of the factors that caused Lachlan to leave the company). James has smartly avoided any major interactions with Ailes. Last year, when Matthew Freud criticized Ailes in a Timesarticle, James immediately e-mailed Ailes to say that Freud wasn’t speaking for him. At a budget meeting with Ailes and Rupert a couple of weeks ago, James, who clearly hopes to run the company some day, praised Ailes for his outsize profits. But the future could be different. Rupert’s wife, Wendi, recently agreed to host an Obama fund-raiser with Russell Simmons. “She’s a big fan,” Simmons told me.

Last week, Ailes turned 71. He’s spending considerable time thinking about his legacy. It bothers him that he’s still regarded as an outsider. “He doesn’t want to be hated,” a GOPer who knows Ailes well said. “It really bothers him. You can’t gross a billion a year and retain an outlaw sensibility forever.”

But there’s other unfinished business, which is why Chris Christie is so appealing. At dinner last summer, they talked about pension reform and getting tough with the unions, and Ailes saw in Christie a great candidate: an ordinary guy, someone you’d be comfortable talking to over your back fence. But Ailes may have seen something else. Christie’s got Fox News TV values with a ready-made reel. And of course, Obama versus Christie is a producer’s dream: black versus white, fat versus thin, professor versus prosecutor. Maybe, just maybe, Ailes could laugh all the way to the White House and the bank.

The Elephant in the Green Room

 Beck's dream ticket.

Just after 8 p.m., Beck took to the stage to rapturous applause. He paced in front of the sold-out crowd like an itinerant preacher bringing the good word to the faithful. “It has been an amazing ten days. I bring you greetings from people just like you from all across the nation,” he said. Days before, Beck had been in Chicago. “I think Chicago is one of the nicest cities in America, if you can get rid of the communists, the progressives, and the weather.” The crowd cheered again.

Beck then turned to the upcoming election.

“Someone asked me today, ‘Are we going to get a real politician, someone who is not manufactured?’ ”

“You!” came a cry from the darkened theater.

Beck chuckled, but he wouldn’t heed his audience’s wishes. He told them he won’t run, but he does have a dream ticket: Florida congressman Allen West and tea-party queen Michele Bachmann.

In Albany, Beck announced he’s not only leaving Fox, but he’s also leaving New York, taking his show somewhere to the middle of the country. Betsy Morgan, who runs Beck’s website the Blaze, told me Beck wants to remain authentic to his heartland fans. “I’m sure he’s sitting there thinking, My audience probably is saying, ‘Oh my God, he’s a total fraud,’  ” Morgan said recently. “I’m here in this high-rise, and they’re out in the country trying to make ends meet, watching gas going up to $4 a gallon, and I’m sitting here in New York City.”

By the beginning of this year, it was clear Beck would be leaving Fox. Ailes is a businessman, and he saw Beck, who had graced the covers of Forbes, Time, and The New York Times Magazine, leading rallies and becoming bigger than the Fox brand. Beck’s media company, Mercury Radio Arts, had broken the mold at Fox. He earned more than 90 percent of his reported $40 million income from non-Fox activities, including comedy tours, best-selling books, a magazine, and a subscription website. Ailes was peeved. When Beck rallied about 100,000 of his devoted followers in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Fox provided scant coverage of the event—CNN actually seemed to give it more play. And Fox executives told Beck he couldn’t promote the Blaze on-air.

“Ailes doesn’t want to be hated. It really bothers him.”

Ailes also faced internal resistance to Beck’s rise. Sean Hannity complained to Bill Shine about Beck. And it didn’t help matters that O’Reilly, who had become friends with Beck and can’t stand Hannity, scheduled Beck as a regular guest, a move that only annoyed Hannity further.

In March 2010, the Washington Post ran an article that reported on grievances Fox employees had about Beck. Fox’s PR department is notoriously strict when it comes to internal leaks, and the public griping was seen from the outside as a measure of the unease about where Fox was heading. Ailes was angry with the leak. Two days after the article was published, he visited Fox’s D.C. bureau and scolded the staff. “For the first time in our fourteen years, we’ve had people apparently shooting in the tent, from within the tent,” he said. “Glenn Beck does his show, and that’s his opinion. It’s not the opinion of Fox News, and he has a right to say it … I was brought up to defend the family. If I couldn’t defend the family, I’d leave. I’d go to another family.”

Recently, the Blaze ran an article debunking conservative provocateur James O’Keefe’s NPR sting, which had received wall-to-wall coverage on Fox. And during another meeting, Ailes called Beck into his office and told him the show had grown too religious.

“God’s really busy, Glenn,” Ailes told him. “He can’t be listening to you.”

As Ailes figured out what to do with Beck, a new problem emerged: Sarah Palin. Inside Fox, Palin had become a source of frustration in some corners. In the wake of the 2008 campaign, the network had wanted to capitalize on her celebrity. But as Palin contemplated her political future, she began to worry that being a celebrity pundit on Fox was potentially at odds with her presidential aspirations.

Last year, tensions between Palin’s camp and Fox erupted over a prime-time special that the network wanted her to host. Nancy Duffy, a senior Fox producer, wanted Palin to host the show in front of a live studio audience. Duffy wanted to call the program Sarah Palin’s Real American Stories. Palin hated the idea. She complained to her advisers that she didn’t want to be a talk-show host. She wanted to just do voice-overs. More important, she didn’t want Fox to promote her name in the title of the program. Not that it mattered: Palin’s ratings were starting to disappoint Ailes anyway. Fox hasn’t scheduled any additional specials.

Next: Why Ailes began to doubt Palin’s political instincts.

The Elephant in the Green Room

Why the war with the White House only stoked ratings.

Left: Ailes dreamed of a David Petraeus candidacy, but Petraeus decided to run the CIA. Right: Chris Christie, Ailes’s dream candidate, has consistently said no way.   (Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images (left); Splash News/Newscom (right))

Inside the White House, this statement was greeted with alarm. “The narrative was being hijacked by Fox,” Dunn told me. The White House attempted to isolate the network. In mid-­September, when Obama agreed to appear on the Sunday political shows, he skipped Fox News Sunday, leaving Chris Wallace to take to the air on O’Reilly and complain, “They are the biggest bunch of crybabies I have dealt with in my 30 years in Washington.”

In early October, Dunn went on CNN and declared Fox the “research arm of the Republican Party.” Then, in late October, a Treasury Department official tried to deny Fox an interview with tarp compensation regulator Ken Feinberg. The move backfired when journalists from other networks, angered that the White House was picking on a member of the press, rallied behind Fox. David Axelrod called Ailes and blamed the decision on a low-level Treasury employee.

On Friday, October 23, Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, called Fox News senior VP Michael Clemente to work out a deal. Clemente didn’t take the call. Gibbs complained to Fox’s well-regarded White House correspondent, Major Garrett, that Clemente had blown him off. On Monday, Garrett participated in a conference call with Ailes and Clemente and told them that the White House was looking to end the war. Clemente still hadn’t returned Gibbs’s call.

“Maybe I’ll call him,” Clemente said.

Clemente called Gibbs on October 27 and traveled to Washington the next day to try to defuse the tensions. In November 2009, on a trip to Asia, Obama granted an interview with Garrett, his first since the war with Fox began. But the entire episode was taxing for Garrett. After clashing with Sammon over his partisan journalistic agenda, Garrett quit Fox months later to become a correspondent for National Journal.

“God’s really busy, Glenn,” Ailes told Beck. “He can’t be listening to you.”

At one point, Dunn spoke with David Rhodes. The two had remained friendly despite their clashes during the ’08 campaign. Rhodes, who had left Fox to run Bloomberg TV, told Dunn the White House was making a mistake in attacking Fox. “You guys have this all wrong,” Rhodes told Dunn. “Everything you’re doing is anticipating that they’re somewhere having a meeting which is like, ‘What if Beck says something that embarrasses us?’ That’s an NBC meeting. They have eight guys in suits in a conference room, and you’re playing this like an NBC meeting. Now, let me tell you what a Fox meeting is: A Fox meeting is, ‘Boy, he’s really emotional. Now he’s tearing up. What if he gets really emotional and doesn’t do the show and we don’t get the ratings, what are we going to do?’ ”

Still, both sides walked away claiming victory. “[Ailes] is great at making the mainstream press feel guilty about their liberal bias,” Dunn later told me. “Fox had taken on a thought-leader role in the national press corps. What we could influence was the way everyone else looks at Fox. Frankly, that’s the real problem.”

For Fox, the war with the White House only stoked ratings. A Fox executive told Clemente that the White House’s attacks were like “a hanging curveball” for Fox.

While Dunn and others publicly engaged Fox, David Axelrod worked back-­channel diplomacy as the good cop. About a week before Dunn’s CNN appearance, Axelrod secretly sat down with Ailes at the Palm in midtown. They met before the restaurant opened to avoid drawing attention. Axelrod told Ailes they should try to defuse things and work together.

Going back to the 2008 campaign, Axelrod had maintained an off-the-­record dialogue with Ailes. He had faced off against Ailes in a U.S. Senate campaign in the early eighties and respected him as a fellow political warrior and shaper of narrative. But early on, Axelrod learned he couldn’t change Ailes’s outlook on Obama. In one meeting in 2008, Ailes told Axelrod that he was concerned that Obama wanted to create a national police force.

“You can’t be serious,” Axelrod replied. “What makes you think that?”

Ailes responded by e-mailing Axelrod a YouTube clip from a campaign speech Obama had given on national service, in which he called for the creation of a new civilian corps to work alongside the military on projects overseas.

Later, Axelrod related in a conversation that the exchange was the moment he realized Ailes truly believed what he was broadcasting.

On a cold, rain-soaked Saturday last month, I traveled to Albany see the final leg of Beck’s nine-city comedy tour. It had been just over a week since news had broken that Beck would be leaving Fox. Shortly before 7 p.m., a crush of fans waited in the stiff drizzle for the doors to the Palace Theater to open. An elderly woman standing in line next to me told me that, in a way, she was glad Beck was leaving his Fox show. “I can’t tell you how many times I almost got in a car accident racing home from work to catch him at five o’clock,” she said. When I told her she could TiVo the show, she insisted she had to see it live.

Next: Beck's dream ticket.

The Elephant in the Green Room

 "There is Roger, and there is everyone else.”

Left: John Bolton flirted with a run. His platform? Bomb Iran! Right: Rick Santorum was one of the first prospective candidates Ailes abandoned.   (Photo: Beowulf Sheehan/Newscom (left); Mark Wilson/Getty Images (right))

But as Fox was helping to inflate the tea party’s balloon, some of the network’s journalistic ballast was disappearing. Starting in July 2008, a series of high-level departures began when Brit Hume, Ailes’s longtime Washington anchor, announced his retirement inside Fox. Then, three weeks after the election, David Rhodes, Fox’s vice-­president for news, quit to work for Bloomberg. Rhodes had started at Fox as a 22-year-old production assistant and risen through the ranks to become No. 2 in charge of news. His brother was a senior foreign-policy aide to Obama, and Rhodes told staffers that Ailes had expressed concern about this closeness to the White House. Rhodes privately told people he was uncomfortable with where Fox was going in the Obama era.

A few months after Rhodes’s departure, John Moody, Ailes’s longtime news chief, left. Moody, a former Time correspondent, had been with Ailes from the beginning and wanted to run his own division. Murdoch put him in charge of News Corp.’s wire service. “The thing about that place is there is Roger, and there is everyone else,” a former Fox executive said.

Meanwhile, Hume’s replacement, Bill Sammon, a former Washington Times correspondent, angered Fox’s political reporters, who saw him pushing coverage further to the right than they were comfortable with. Days after Obama’s inauguration, an ice storm caused major damage throughout the Midwest. At an editorial meeting in the D.C. bureau, Sammon told producers that Fox should compare Obama’s response to Bush’s handling of Katrina. “Bush got grief for Katrina,” Sammon said.

“It’s too early; give him some time to respond,” a producer shot back. “This ice storm isn’t Katrina.”

Later, Sammon caused problems internally when the Fox watchdog website Media Mattersobtained a series of controversial e-mails about Fox’s coverage of climate change and health care. In one December 2009 e-mail, Sammon said Fox should question the science of climate change. “We should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without immediately pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question,” he wrote.

Inside the Obama White House, there was a debate unfolding over how to deal with Fox. Michelle Obama was said to particularly loathe the network and was most turned off by Hannity. Obama’s advisers began to talk about ways to fight back.

There was bad blood left over from the campaign. In the bitter primary fight for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton’s advisers, led by Howard Wolfson, courted Fox and fed them negative research about Obama and John Edwards. “She made some kind of compact with Murdoch,” Obama’s former media adviser Anita Dunn told me.

There had been back-channel efforts to broker a détente between Ailes and Obama. In the run-up to the election, Russell Simmons, who has built an unlikely relationship with Ailes, placed private calls to both Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett and John Moody to do shuttle diplomacy. “They couldn’t get Obama on the phone; I suggested they have a dialogue,” Simmons told me.

But from the moment of Obama’s inauguration, Fox went on the offensive. Its pundits pushed stories including tales of voter intimidation by the New Black Panther Party, ACORN fraud, Obama’s czars, and Obama’s rumored $200 million–per–day trip to India. As the summer of 2009 unfolded, with tea-party anger over the stimulus and health care ratcheting up, Fox and the White House went to war. In June 2009, Obama gave an interview to CNBC’s John Harwood and lashed out. “I’ve got one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration,” he said. “That’s a pretty big megaphone. You’d be hard-pressed, if you watched the entire day, to find a positive story about me on that front.”

But it wasn’t until a month later that a succession of media controversies convinced the White House that Fox was a dangerous opponent that needed to be taken on. On July 28, Beck went on Fox and Friends, called Obama a “racist,” and declared that his response to the dustup between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the Cambridge Police Department exposed the president’s “deep-seated hatred for white people.” Beck’s next target was Obama’s green-jobs “czar,” Van Jones, who had been blasted for signing a 9/11 “Truth Statement” in 2004. Jones resigned on September 6. Four days later, Fox broke the undercover video of conservative prankster James O’Keefe’s ACORN sting. “I had never heard of Glenn Beck before,” Dunn told me. “Obviously, August of 2009 was a disaster.”

All of a sudden, the rest of the media took notice. In an interview posted on the Times’ website after Van Jones’s resignation, Times managing editor Jill Abramson acknowledgedthat the paper would need to follow Fox’s reporting in the future. “We should have been paying closer attention,” she said.

Next: Why the war with the White House only stoked ratings.

The Elephant in the Green Room

Fox's competition with CNN for pundits.

Left: Building an opposition, Ailes hired Karl Rove even before Obama was elected. Right: When it became clear that Newt Gingrich would declare his presidential ambitions, Ailes pushed him out.   (Photo: Newscom (left); Ethan Miller/Getty Images (right))

It was, more than anything, a business decision. “It would be easy to look at Fox and think it’s conservative because Rupert and Roger are conservative and they program it the way they like. And to a degree, that’s true. But it’s also a business,” a person close to Ailes explained. “And the way the business works is, they control conservative commentary the way ESPN controls the market for sports rights. If you have a league, you have a meeting with ESPN, you find out how much they’re willing to pay, and then everyone else agrees to pay the same amount if they want it … It’s sort of the same at Fox. I was surprised at some of what was being paid until I processed it that way. If you’re ABC and you don’t have Newt Gingrich on a particular morning, you can put someone else on. But if you’re Fox, and Newt is moving and talking today, you got to have him. Otherwise, your people are like, ‘Where’s Newt? Why isn’t he on my channel?’ ”

Fox also had to compete with CNN for pundits. In early 2008, then–CNN-U.S. president Jon Klein invited Mike Huckabee to breakfast at the Time Warner Center. Klein sold Huckabee on the benefits of CNN. “If you believe what you’re saying, you should try and convince the middle,” Klein told him. It was the same pitch he made later to Karl Rove and to Weekly Standard writer Stephen Hayes. All three turned down Klein and signed with Fox.

Ailes was also intensely interested in Sarah Palin. In September 2008, he secretly met Palin during her swing through New York, when she toured the U.N. and had her photo op with Henry Kissinger. That afternoon, Shushannah Walshe, a young Fox producer who was covering Palin’s campaign for the network, had gone on-air and criticized McCain’s staff, who had prevented reporters from asking Palin questions during her U.N. visit. “There’s not one chance that Governor Palin would have to answer a question,” Walshe said on-camera. “They’re eliminating even the chance of any kind of interaction with the candidate—it’s just unprecedented.”

“Ailes doesn’t want Fox to be seen as a front of the Republican party.”

Ailes didn’t know Walshe, but he was furious when he heard her comments. Liberal media outlets like the Huffington Post were seizing on her statement and made it appear that Fox was turning on Palin. Ailes called Refet Kaplan, a senior Fox executive, and demanded Walshe be taken off the air. “It’s not fair-and-­balanced coverage,” Kaplan later told Walshe. Walshe was allowed to continue covering Palin but was barred from future on-air appearances. She later quit Fox to co-write a book about Palin.

After the campaign, Ailes stayed in touch with Palin. In September 2009, two months after Palin resigned the Alaska governorship, Ailes arranged for her to fly on News Corp.’s private Citation jet when Palin needed to travel from San Diego to New York to meet with her editors at HarperCollins. That fall, Palin’s agent, Bob Barnett, started shopping her to the news networks. CNN told Barnett they weren’t interested. Ailes put his programming chief Bill Shine in charge of recruiting Palin. Shine negotiated with Barnett and was able to close the deal. In January 2010, Fox announced Palin had signed a three-year contract worth $1 million a year to appear as a contributor on the network and to host prime-time specials. Palin made her Fox debut on Bill O’Reilly’s show. A week later, she appeared on Beck’s program.

Beck had been hired to solve a problem that had vexed Ailes for years: The five-o’clock hour continually failed to attract an audience, which delivered a weak lead-in to the shows that followed. Fox executives dubbed the slot the “black hole.” Ailes had unsuccessfully cycled through a slew of anchors, from John Gibson to Laura ­Ingraham. Ingraham’s turn was especially rocky. She would scream so loudly at her staff off-camera that producers in the newsroom would turn on the monitors for fun and watch the unfolding drama.

Beck’s debut was the day before Obama’s inauguration. Within a month, Beck became a phenomenon. He doubled the time slot’s viewership, providing a powerful boost that carried into the prime-time hours, when Fox earns most of its advertising revenue. But from the beginning, Beck had a different relationship to Fox than did Ailes’s other talent. Beck had a coterie of powerful advisers and PR reps behind him. He was a best-selling author and had a thriving radio franchise. He didn’t submit to Fox, which would later cause him problems.

Fox’s record ratings during the beginning of Obama’s presidency quickly put an end to Ailes’s fears that he would be bad for business. The network’s audience hit stratospheric levels as the tea-party rebellion provided a powerful story line that ran through Fox’s coverage. Sometimes Fox personalities took an active role in building the movement, something that Ailes was careful to check if it became too overt. In April 2010, Fox barred Hannity from broadcasting his show at a Cincinnati tea-party rally. “There would not have been a tea party without Fox,” Sal Russo, a former Reagan gubernatorial aide and the founder of the national Tea Party Express tour, told me.

Next: "There is Roger, and there is everyone else.”