Happy Passover!

Wikipedia entry here.

Dorothy Rabinowitz on AIPAC's Trial

From The Wall Street Journal:

In October 2005, with pro bono attorney Plato Cacheris at his side, Lawrence Franklin pleaded guilty--a decision he could not avoid making, given the indisputable proof of offense--to keeping classified documents at his home. His indictment charged much more--conspiring to communicate national defense information to persons not entitled to receive it, meetings with representatives of foreign nation A (Israel), and Messrs. Rosen and Weissman, cited as furtherance of a conspiracy. The former desk officer for Iran stood charged with conspiracy to "advance his own personal foreign policy agenda" and influence people in government. One Washington insider, hearing this, tartly noted that if all government officials who leaked material to effect policy changes were charged and convicted, the prisons would soon be packed.

The guilty plea brought a sentence of 12 years, seven months--not a light one. Mr. Franklin's hope for reducing it hinges on the cooperation he gives government prosecutors in the trial of the lobbyists. The role assigned him has from the beginning been noteworthy--a reversal of norms. Government officials don't normally get to take part in stings of ordinary citizens. But Mr. Franklin, an official with top security clearance, sworn to protect classified information, is the one asked to wear a wire to amass evidence against the two men with whom he has allegedly conspired. It usually goes the other way around. There is a reason that the government official caught taking a bribe is the object of the law's pursuit, rather than the citizen who has tried to pay him off--and why it is the citizen, crooked as he may be, who wears the wire and gets the possibility of a deal. That reason, of course, is the higher standard expected of those sworn to uphold their offices. If nothing else, the role assigned Mr. Franklin testifies to the government's singular focus on nailing the AIPAC lobbyists.

Even so it remains to be seen what help Mr. Franklin will give the prosecutors at the forthcoming trial of Messrs. Rosenvand Mr. Weissman. In the course of his guilty plea, the otherwise respectful Mr. Franklin forcefully objected to the government's characterization of the self-typed paper about Iran he'd faxed to Mr. Rosen--a document at the heart of one of the significant charges against the lobbyist--as "classified."

"It was unclassified," Lawrence Franklin told the court, "and it is unclassified."

The government would "prove that it was classified," announced the U.S. attorney.

Mr. Franklin: "Not a chance."

What chance the defendants--who asked no one for classified information--have of acquittal and the avoidance of prison remains to be seen. Though Judge T. S. Ellis rejected defense motions to dismiss the charges on constitutional grounds, his early rulings have so far shown a keen appreciation of the meaning this case. In this he stands in sharp contrast to the nation's leading civil rights guardians, these days busy filing lawsuits against the government and fulminating on behalf of the rights of captured terrorists in Guantanamo and elsewhere, while accusing the U.S. of failing to provide open trials and assurances that the accused have the right to view the evidence against them. As of this day neither the ACLU nor the Center for Constitutional Rights has shown the smallest interest in this prosecution so bound up with First Amendment implications. Nor has most of the media, whose daily work includes receiving "leaks" from government officials far more damaging to national security than anything alleged in this case. In this as in the Scooter Libby matter, the desire to see Bush Administration officials nailed apparently counts for more than First Amendment principle.

The government has also moved (in the interest of protecting classified information) to impose strict limits during the trial, on the testimony the public and press will be allowed to hear. If the proposal is allowed, significant portions of the testimony will be available only in the form of summaries. Witnesses, furthermore, would not be allowed to deliver certain testimony directly to jurors, who would instead be told to look at secret documents. It will be, as a member of the Reporters Committee For Freedom of the Press, now opposing the government efforts, describes it, "a secret trial within a public trial." (Dow Jones, publisher of this newspaper, has joined the Reporters Committee in filing an objection.)

Will US Bomb Iran?

Russian News Agency RIA-Novosti seems to think so:

MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces have nearly completed preparations for a possible military operation against Iran, and will be ready to strike in early April, a security official said.

The source said the U.S. had already compiled a list of possible targets on Iranian territory and practiced the operation during recent exercises in the Persian Gulf.

"Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory," the source said.

American commanders will be ready to carry out the attack in early April, but it will be up to the country's political leadership to decide if and when to attack, the source said.

Official data says America's military presence in the region has reached the level of March 2003 when the U.S. invaded Iraq.

The U.S. has not excluded the military option in negotiations on Iran over its refusal to abandon its nuclear program. The UN Security Council passed a new resolution on Iran Saturday toughening economic sanctions against the country and accepting the possibility of a military solution to the crisis.

The source said the Pentagon could decide to conduct ground operations as well after assessing the damage done to the Iranian forces by its possible missile strikes and analyzing the political situation in the country following the attacks.

A senior Russian security official cited military intelligence earlier as saying U.S. Armed Forces had recently intensified training for air and ground operations against Iran.

"The Pentagon has drafted a highly effective plan that will allow the Americans to bring Iran to its knees at minimal cost," the official said.

More Confessions From Iran's British Hostages

From the BBC:

All 15 Britons held by Iran accept they were in the country's waters despite the UK's insistence they were in Iraqi territory, Iranian state radio says.

The BBC report can be watched here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_6510000/newsid_6516700/6516753.stm?bw=nb&mp=rm.

The video names the British frigate involved as HMS Foxtrot.

A friend mentioned that this story reminds him of the Pueblo incident, when an American naval vessel was captured by North Korea on January 23, 1968, humiliating the United States during the Vietnam War. The commander of the USS Pueblo, Lloyd M. (Pete) Bucher was recommended for Courts Martial. The crew was kept prisoner in North Korea for 11 months--and the USS Pueblo remains in North Korea to this day...Wikipedia entry here.

The US Code of Military Conduct would seem to prohibit American POWs from delivering the type of public confessions broadcast on television by Iran's British hostages:

5. When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.

When questioned, a prisoner of war is required by the Geneva Conventions and this Code to give name, rank, service number (SSN) and date of birth. The prisoner should make every effort to avoid giving the captor any additional information. The prisoner may communicate with captors on matters of health and welfare and additionally may write letters home and fill out a Geneva Convention "capture card."

It is a violation of the Geneva Convention to place a prisoner under physical or mental duress, torture, or any other form of coercion in an effort to secure information. If under such intense coercion, a POW discloses unauthorized information, made an unauthorized statement, or performs an unauthorized act, that prisoner’s peace of mind and survival require a quick recovery of courage, dedication, and motivation to resist anew each subsequent coercion.

Actions every POW should resist include making oral or written confessions and apologies, answering questionnaires, providing personal histories, creating propaganda recordings, broadcasting appeals to other prisoners of war, providing any other material readily usable for propaganda purposes., appealing for surrender or parole, furnishing self-criticisms, communicating on behalf of the enemy to the detriment of the United State, its allies, its Armed Forces, or other POWs.

Every POW should also recognize that any confession signed or any statement made may be used by the enemy as a false evidence that the person is a "war criminal" rather than a POW. Several countries have made reservations to the Geneva Convention in which they assert that a "war criminal" conviction deprives the convicted individual of prison of war status, removes that person from protection under the Geneva Convention, and revokes all rights to repatriation until a prison sentence is served.

Recent experiences of American prisoners of war have proved that, although enemy interrogation sessions may be harsh and cruel, one can resist brutal mistreatment when the will to resist remains intact.

The best way for prisoner to keep faith with country, fellow prisoners and self is to provide the enemy with as little information as possible.

I wonder if this type of code applies for British military personnel?

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Wins Nobel Peace Prize

(April Fool)

On the other hand, here's a link to Mark Steyn's Chicago Sun-Times column:

On this 25th anniversary of the Falklands War, Tony Blair is looking less like Margaret Thatcher and alarmingly like Jimmy Carter, the embodiment of the soi-disant "superpower" as a smiling eunuch.

Gus Chavez: Ken Burns Documentary "Shameful"

From the San Diego Tribune:

SAN DIEGO – Gus Chavez of San Diego had five uncles who served in World War II, including two who were injured and one who was captured by the Germans. The uncle he's named after died during training for the war.

So Chavez took it personally when he learned that acclaimed filmmaker Ken Burns' seven-part documentary about the war, scheduled to air nationally on PBS in September, doesn't feature any Latinos.

“It's a misrepresentation,” said Chavez, a retired San Diego State administrator and longtime local activist. “You have a documentary that runs 14 hours and it doesn't mention the Latino experience? It's unacceptable. It's shameful.”

Chavez, 63, is helping spearhead a campaign called “Defend the Honor” to pressure Burns and PBS not to air the series until changes are made.

The campaign drew support this week from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the American GI Forum, a Hispanic veterans group. Cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz – tipped off to the controversy by Chavez – has been lampooning Burns in his comic strip “La Cucaracha,” which runs in newspapers including The San Diego Union-Tribune.

In a written statement, Burns and co-producer Lynn Novick asked viewers to “refrain from passing judgment on our work until they have seen it.” The statement said:

“We are dismayed and saddened by any assumption that we intentionally excluded anyone from our series on the Second World War. Nothing could be further from the truth.

“For 30 years we have made films that have tried to tell many of the stories that haven't been told in American history. In this latest project, we have attempted to show the universal human experience of war by focusing on the testimonies of just a handful of people. As a result, millions of stories are not explored in our film.”

Carlos Guerra on Maggie Rivas-Rodríguez v. Ken Burns

From the San Antonio Express News:

It was at a meeting in New Orleans' World War II Museum last fall that Rivas learned about "The War," Ken Burns' seven-part epic that will air on PBS in the fall and will be followed by releases of a major book, a soundtrack CD, educational packages and a DVD box set.

"Carmen Contreras Bozak, who was a WAC during World War II, asked if women were (included in the 60-plus interviews) and the producer said that no, (only) women in the home front," Rivas says. Neither has Burns included Native Americans or Latinos in his series.

" 'We're not really looking at individuals' ethnic-group experiences, except for Japanese Americans and African Americans because of their experiences,' " one producer told them, suggesting, Rivas says, that "Latinos' experience wasn't rich and unique, and it was."

Rivas also adds that she won't be satisfied if Burns "finds and interviews someone named Garza and inserts it into this thing because it is being billed as a definitive look at World War II in our country.

"We need the Latino perspective included across the board, in that overall picture," she says. "But there is a much bigger, longstanding issue: Why do Latinos continue to be excluded from PBS specials and general history books across the board?"

If you think Burns' and PBS' blind spot is limited to Latino veterans' contributions, however, consider this: "The War" will premiere nationally on Diez y Seis de Septiembre [Mexican Independence Day].

2nd British Marine Confesses on Iranian TV

Nathan Summers submits:

So, This is the Little Lady Who Started The War (Against Ken Burns): Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez

From her official University of Texas biography:

Rivas-Rodriguez received her Ph.D. as a Freedom Forum doctoral fellow from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998. Her dissertation, "Brown Eyes on the Web: A U.S. Latino Newspaper Site on the Internet," included a content analysis of a Latino Web newspaper as well as one of the mainstream newspapers in the same market. Rivas-Rodriguez received her master's degree from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism in 1977. She received a bachelor of journalism degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1976.

She has more than 17 years of daily news experience, mostly as a reporter for the Boston Globe, WFAA-TV in Dallas and the Dallas Morning News. Her first job was as a copy editor for UPI in Dallas. Her most recent professional work was for the Morning News state desk as bureau chief of the border bureau, based in El Paso, covering border states.

Her research interests include the intersection of oral history and journalism, U.S. Latinos and the news media, both as producers of news and as consumers. Since 1999, Rivas-Rodriguez has spearheaded the U.S. Latino and Latina World War II Oral History Project, which has collected interviews with over 450 men and women throughout the country. Stories based on those interviews have appeared in a newspaper dedicated to the project. The project has several other components: a conference, an edited volume of academic manuscripts, a play (through Arizona State University Public Events and the University of Texas' Performing Arts Center), documentary film with educational materials, a general interest book, and a video, audio tape and photographic archive. The project is self-supporting and has enjoyed support from the Austin American-Statesman and the San Antonio Express-News, and has received financial contributions from several foundations, corporations and hundreds of individual donors.

Rivas-Rodriguez was on the committee that organized and founded the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in 1982. She began two of the NAHJ's most successful student projects: a convention newspaper produced by college students and professionals and a nationwide high school writing contest. The convention newspaper has become the model for most other industry organizations (ASNE, NABJ, AJA) as a way to develop mentoring relationships and to train students.

She is the Associate Director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

Recent Courses: J320D Intermediate Reporting, J335 Narrative Journalism, J349T.7 Oral History as Journalism, J395 Covering the U.S.-Mexico Border and J395.1 Professional Writing for Journalists.

Publications: "Brown Eyes on the Web: An Alternative U.S. Latino Newspaper on the Internet" (New York: Routledge), 2003. She was also the editor of "Mexican Americans and World War II", an edited volume (Austin: University of Texas Press, forthcoming).

Guillermo Martinez: Ken Burns' "Intolerable" Documentary

From Florida's Sun-Sentinel:

Like a forest fire in its earliest stages, the flames have not yet erupted. They soon will, however, for the complete disregard of the Latino experience in World War II in a documentary by Ken Burns, scheduled to air for 14 hours starting Sept. 23, is insulting and discriminatory.

This fire has been simmering for weeks, the result of work by a group of Latino civic leaders -- Dr. Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas in Austin; Angelo Falcon of the National Latino Policy in New York City; Marta Garcia, second vice chair of the executive board of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Gus Ch–vez, retired administrator from San Diego State University.

The movement these four activists began a few short weeks ago is catching on and drawing the ire of Hispanics across the nation. For what Burns and PBS have done is simply intolerable.

Current: Ken Burns' Anti-Latino Bias "Civil Rights Issue"

In the trade paper of the public broadcasting industry, Karen Everhart Bedford's article is headlined: Burns’ omission seen as Latino civil rights issue.

As long as television and other media continue to marginalize Latinos’ military service and wartime sacrifice, “we continue to be invisible,” said Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin who is leading the charge against The War. “This is one that we’re not going to allow.”

The War documents a “major national experience and we’re not part of it and we don’t want it to be shown until it’s corrected,” said Gus Chavez, a retired university administrator from San Diego who participated in a March 6 meeting with PBS execs. “We are not going to sit still and let historical events of this nature be presented without our input and representation.”

Chavez, a Navy veteran, joined Rivas-Rodriquez in organizing the campaign for recognition that they call “Defend the Honor.”

“We are totally geared to making the general public aware of our concern that this documentary is misrepresenting the war as it’s presented to exclude the Latino experience,” Chavez said.

Defend the Honor

Here's a link to Defend the Honor, a website countering Ken Burns's exclusion of Latino war heroes, which has posted some anti-Ken Burns cartoons. Their mission statement:

A "documentary" about Americans and World War II, to be broadcast by PBS next fall, deliberately excludes any mention of Latino heroes who found to defend the United States from its enemies. This exclusion makes this documentary historically flawed! PBS and the corporate and foundation sponsors of this “documentary” need to know it now, before the film is aired. You need to tell them. Look for contact information at The US Latino & Latina WWII Oral History Project

This website is dedicated to supporting efforts of individuals and organizations to ensure that WWII-era Latinos and Latinas are included in today's general historical narratives. Currently, the focus of this effort is the scheduled September 2007 airing of a 14-hour PBS WWII documentary which fails to include any mention of the Latino experience. Their stories are significant and should be included. The story of our country's wartime experiences are incomplete without including the telling of what happened to Latinos.

AP: Hispanic GIs Protest Ken Burns Documentary

The anti-Ken Burns movement is growing, Suzanne Gamboa reports in the Houston Chronicle:

The latest group to take their grievance to PBS is the American GI Forum, an Hispanic veterans group that has waged numerous civil rights battles for Hispanics and Hispanic veterans.

The American GI Forum is appealing to Hispanic veterans and other Latino groups to write members of Congress and their local PBS affiliate about the documentary that has been six years in the making.

This week, GI Forum President Antonio Morales and other Latino leaders met in Washington with PBS President Paula Kerger to lodge their complaints about the 14-hour Ken Burns documentary set to air this September, Hispanic Heritage month.

"We are not going to tolerate this omission," Morales said after the PBS meeting.

PBS Ombudsman Defends Ken Burns

Apparently the documentary will broadcast four-letter words at a time when children are watching TV, so PBS is asking that the FCC not enforce its obscenity ban against Burns.

Charming.

Read Michael Getler's pre-emptive apologia for the as-yet unbroadcast film here.

Ken Burns' Anti-Latino Agenda

From The Unapologetic Mexican:

Now, Ken Burns, famous "documentary" filmmaker is doing his part as a good American soldier of media, to insure that the future thinks even less of us.

KEN BURNS is a documentary filmmaker who has a lot of cred, and chances are good that you've seen his work. If you use Macintosh's iMovie (or if you've seen any documentary these days that uses still shots as part of its presentation), you are familiar with what is named the "Ken Burns Effect," an editing technique made ubiquitous by his documentaries.

When it comes to American documentary filmmaking, Ken Burns is an institution, frequently hailed as “the most accomplished documentary filmmaker of his generation,” or some other such thing. And I am not denying his chops. (Nor his very disarming and Opie-like aura of amiability!) The man can wield a mean editing decision, script, and shotlist. Ultimately, his presentations are engaging and very well-received, mainstreamed, and most important to this essay—considered fact.

The PBS site tells us that "for over 25 years, Ken Burns has been producing films that are unafraid of controversy and tragedy." And I would have to agree. Because his latest seven-part, fourteen hour film The War, an epic undertaking that took six years to make and that covers the second world war by interviewing forty veterans from four towns—one of them Sacramento, California—and does not include even one Mexican (or Puerto Rican, or Native American, or Latino at all) is a tragedy, when it comes to respecting an accurate history, or the contributions of the descendants of the Indigenous of these Americas.

Mark Steyn on Britain's Iranian Hostage Crisis

He spoke on Hugh Hewitt's radio show:

MS: Well, they were weak when this happened three years ago, and I believe I wrote in the Telegraph at the time that this was a great act of weakness by the British against an act of piracy by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Now if you allow people to get away with it, they try it again. They get a little more bolder. This parading of this woman, this female sailor, Royal Navy personnel rating, as they call it in the Royal Navy, in Islamic clothing, is a clear breach of the Geneva Conventions.

HH: Yes.

MS: But all the people who complain and whine about Gitmo all day long don’t care about countries like Iran violating the Geneva Conventions. Iran can violate them with impunity, and so will continue to do so. And I’m very concerned. Iran, you talk about the chronology, Iran respects far fewer of the basic courtesies between states than the Soviet Union, or the Chinese Communists, or any other traditional enemy of the United States has ever done. And the fact of the matter is that we respond weakly every time this happens. The absolute low point of the Cold War was nothing to do with America’s relations with the Soviet Union, but was Jimmy Carter’s completely disastrous behavior, vis-à-vis Iran in 1979. And the British are in effect reenacting a Carter strategy, 28 years later.

HH: Do you…I noted that you quoted at Nationalreview.com, Speaker Gingrich’s suggestion on this program yesterday, Rush even played it today, that first, blow the gasoline refinery, and then stop the tankers. Do you think there’s a chance in the world the Brits will adopt such a strategy?

MS: No, and I think the thing about it is that if you were to propose that either in the House of Commons, or in the United States Congress, people would regard you as an extremist. You would be accused of escalating the situation. Now I think you could make the case that in fact, you don’t even need to do as Newt was talking about with you, which is to threaten them privately with it for a week. I mean, you could make the case that they should just do it. I mean, Iran surprises us all the time. It seizes sailors, it takes out hit contracts on British subjects like Salman Rushdie, it blows up community centers in Argentina, it seizes the U.S. Embassy. Iran doesn’t threaten to do that, it just gets on with it and does it. And maybe there’s a case to be said for well, maybe we should just do something against Iran. Maybe we should just take out that refinery, and they can wake up to it, and see it smoking when it happens, and then they’ll realize we’re serious. But the fact of the matter is that at the moment, when you hear Speaker Gingrich talk about that on your show, you then think well, can I imagine the British Foreign Secretary threatening that? Can I imagine Condoleezza Rice threatening that? And it’s actually there, and you realize how far all the options have bled away, so that now, Tony Blair is threatening, threatening to very quietly raise the possibility of sometime down the road, getting a U.N. resolution on possible trade, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And we all know that anything meaningful can’t be done by the U.N., because it would be vetoed by some combination of the Chinese, the Russians and the French. So in other words, it’s a non-threat, and the Iranians understand it as such.

HH: And back in Tehran, they say I guess we can push even further, don’t they?

MS: Exactly.

HH: And as a result, great power status, as you wrote at National Review, erodes, and is not quickly reassembled. I don’t know if Great Britain gets it back. As Arthur Herman said, they used to wonder if they’d left a navy big enough to defend Great Britain. Now the question is do they have a navy big enough to defend the navy.

Afghanistanica

I found this interesting blog about Afghanistan via a link Nathan Hamm posted on Registan.

Bloggers Blast Ken Burns

Here:

It always frustrates me whenever I hear stories like this - the ethnic minority experience in America being reduced to the sidelines, especially when it comes to paramount events such as WWII. But the sad fact is that Burns is just the latest in the long list of notable historians who have concocted these white-centric narratives.

And here:

> Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2007 19:02:10 -0600
> To: Ron Takaki
> From: Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez
>
> Hello, Professor Takaki,
> I am very well aware of your work and indeed was very moved by Double Victory.
> Thank you so much for contacting me.
> A couple of things, in case you haven't sent out the letter. Apparently the
> Burns documentary does include the African American and Japanese American
> experience, but leaves out Native Americans and Latinos, as well, it seems,
> women in the military.
> I'm totally in agreement with you: they mustn't air this in September. I'll be
> meeting with Ms. Kerger and one other PBS executive next Tuesday, March 6. Gus
> Chavez of San Diego will also be with me.
> I'll add you to our listserve and let's see if we can stop this train wreck
> before it happens.
> All my best,
> Maggie

And here:

The two major financial backers to the film are two brands very familiar to the Latino community: General Motors and Anheuser-Busch.

As all in the Latino community know, both companies believe strongly in providing support to la raza.

Wonder how GM and Anheuser-Busch would feel if they knew some of their most loyal consumers were overlooked and flat-out dismissed when it came to acknowledging their important roles in a war story that, thanks to their money, will be broadcast across the nation without even a nod to the fact that Latino soldiers were even there.

Jorge Marsical Slams Ken Burns for "Erasure" of Hispanic Veterans

In a syndicated Scripss-Howard News Service column, Vietnam Veteran Jorge Marsical blasts Ken Burns with both barrels:

First, by erasing the contributions of this nation's Spanish-speaking communities, Burns distorts the collective history of all the people in these United States.

Second, his erasure means that he has no clue about where we are and where we are going as a nation. That as many as half a million Latinos and Latinas served in that war as well as in Vietnam, Iraq and every other U.S. conflict cannot be disconnected from the fact that today Latinos are the largest minority ethnic/racial group in the country...

...Recently, when confronted by a small group of Latinos in San Francisco, Burns offered a flippant, "The film doesn't include gays either."

Mr. Burns, the Latino community will pursue our future by pursuing our past. Despite your obstinate refusal to recognize willful ignorance, we are insisting that we do indeed have a past whether or not you can see it from your isolated outpost in New England.

Our collective future will not be understood without an acknowledgement of the service and the sacrifices that decades of Latinos have bestowed upon the nation.

Is Ken Burns Anti-Hispanic?

According to Josphine Hearn's article in The Politico, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus seems to think think that he is--because his latest PBS documentary about World War II fails to include a single Hispanic veteran:

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus has joined a campaign to include Hispanics in an upcoming PBS documentary on World War II, vowing to "put the squeeze" on top public television executives.

"We're very much concerned about the lack of Hispanics in the documentary," Chairman Joe Baca (D-Calif.) said. "That's appalling. That's a no-no to us."

The Hispanic Caucus and other Latino interest groups have been troubled that the 14-hour series -- "The War," by renowned filmmaker Ken Burns and scheduled for broadcast in September -- features no Hispanics, even as it highlights African-Americans and Japanese-Americans. They note that 500,000 Latinos served in World War II.

Rep. Ciro Rodriguez (D-Tex.) echoed Baca's concerns.

"There is a lot of outrage and anger and disappointment," he said. "We've come so far, and then we haven't. It's our responsibility to put the squeeze on people and educate them."

Baca, Rodriguez and a half-dozen other caucus members met with PBS President Paula Kerger on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss the issue. They did not rule out trying to restrict federal funding of public television if PBS officials do not address some of their concerns.

"The bottom line is we also have the right to do what we can economically with PBS to show our displeasure," Rodriguez said. "I hope it won't come to that."

To help Ken Burns and PBS figure out why Hispanic members of Congress believe he is a racist, here's a link to a website listing Hispanic Medal of Honor recipients from World War II. And, as an old PBS-watcher, might I suggest to the Hispanic Caucus that to speed up a response they might contact Ken Burns' other agency, corporate and foundation sponsors, as well? Here's a list from the PBS website:

Corporate funding is provided by General Motors and Anheuser-Busch. Major funding is provided by Lilly Endowment, Inc.; Public Broadcasting Service; National Endowment for the Humanities; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; The Arthur Vining Davis Foundations; The Pew Charitable Trusts; The Longaberger Foundation; and Park Foundation, Inc.

BTW, I didn't see any Hispanic surnames in these credits listed on the documentary's website:

A Production of Florentine Films and WETA-TV

Directed and Produced by KEN BURNS and LYNN NOVICK; Written By GEOFFREY C. WARD; Produced by SARAH BOTSTEIN: Co-Producers PETER MILLER and DAVID McMAHON; Supervising Film Editor PAUL BARNES; Editors PAUL BARNES, ERIK EWERS and TRICIA REIDY; Cinematography BUDDY SQUIRES; Associate Producers MEGHAN HORVATH and TAYLOR KRAUSS; Narrated by KEITH DAVID with TOM HANKS, JOSH LUCAS, BOBBY CANNAVALE, SAMUEL L. JACKSON, ELI WALLACH, among others; Original Music Composed and Arranged by WYNTON MARSALIS; “AMERICAN ANTHEM” music and lyrics by GENE SCHEER.

Accompanying the series will be a companion book, written by Geoffrey C. Ward and introduced by Ken Burns, that will be published by Alfred A. Knopf in August 2007. The soundtrack will be released in September 2007 by Sony BMG Legacy Recordings.