From Six Hertz House of Pain:

This morning on the Laura Ingraham talk radio show, a caller who claimed she was the mother of a popular Hollywood comedy sitcom star (who remained nameless) mentioned that the voices of some right-wing or conservative celebrities, including her son's, were being stifled due to some blacklisting of those who go against the John Kerry line.

This woman's son is afraid to speak his mind, though she says she is trying to encourage him to make his beliefs public.

It's particularly troublesome when a group of individuals, ie, the Hollywood "elite", do not heed the basic tenets of our constitution's Bill of Rights. So, basically in this case, gays can come out of the closet in Hollywood and be embraced, but God help you if you're conservative. I sense double standards.

Just damn.

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According to information from the Kerry campaign, NewsCorp President Peter Chernin has endorsed Democratic candidate John Kerry for President.

Appearing on FNC's Your World with Neil Cavuto, this afternoo, Chernin said he was not anti-Bush but explained why he thought News Corp. would benefit from a Kerry presidency.

"I think the two things that will be most important to News Corp is--one is education. We're a company where we don't manufacture anything. We depend on ideas. We essentially export ideas around the world and our ability to create those ideas is based on a highly educated creative workforce and so I think more than anything education is the thing that will be of greatest value to News Corp.

" I think the other thing is a real global focus, a focus on, you know, it's a world-wide market of 5 billion people, and I think the more this country looks outward and develops close relationships with economies and countries around the world, I think it creates bigger markets for our products and our ideas.

"This democracy is about making choices," he said, "and my choice is that I believe that Mr. Kerry can do a good job moving our economy forward."

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WMAL Radio Washington is reporting this afternoon that the man known as the "20th hijacker," Zacharias Moussoui, was allowed access to a cell phone by a jail guard in the facility where he is being held in Alexandria, VA.

More details are obviously set to come in this one...

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According to this morning's Chicago Sun-Times, Democratic Senate candidate Barack Obama may have a real race on his hands after all.

The Illinois Republican party is reportedly speaking with former Presidential candidate and noted black conservative Alan Keyes about a run for the open seat.

''It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal,'' said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama. ''It would put this race on the map in this country -- just for excitement.'

''(H)e certainly has an interest, and he said if the group is interested in meeting with him and speaking with him about his views that he would be happy to come out and meet [later]," said Syverson, a Rockford member of the committee.

''He said that he was open to the idea. And he felt that Obama didn't really represent the views of the people of Illinois. So I think he was really just in the exploration stage."

It would make for an interesting race, indeed, but as one who was upset with the carpetbagging move of Hillary Rodham Clinton in New York, I have to say that I'm not comfortable with the notion of Keyes pulling the same stunt.

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The city of St. Louis has filed a lawsuit that would allow voters a two-week period leading up to Election Day to cast a ballot.

The suit is driven by the fiasco that presented itself to voters in the Gateway City in 2000.

If successful, the lawsuit would create a two-week window before Election Day in which any Missouri voter could cast a ballot. This would differ from absentee balloting, which requires a voter to provide a reason for casting an early ballot.

If a judge sides with the city, early voting would work this way:

St. Louis and all counties in Missouri would set up at least one polling center where votes could be cast starting Oct. 19, fourteen days before Election Day.

That location, and up to four others, would be open on business days for those two weeks and, at the option of local officials, on weekends as well.

Early voting, in some form, exists in more than half of the states. It's sometimes called "No Excuses Absentee" because, like absentee voting, it is done before Election Day.

The city's Election Board came under federal oversight after the 2000 election, in which voters were turned away from the polls because election workers could not verify their eligibility.

Missouri is again one of a handful of swing states that are expected to be key in deciding a close race. Slay is a co-chairman of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's national finance committee. Blunt, a Republican, is running for governor.

"This is about protecting people's access to the ballots," said U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay Jr., D-St. Louis. Clay joined the city as a plaintiff in the suit.

Also signed on as plaintiffs are Democrats Craig Hosmer, a former state representative from Springfield, Mo.; state Rep. Wes Shoemyer, of Clarence, Mo.; and Ernestine Hill, a committeewoman in St. Louis. The lawsuit was filed in Cole County Circuit Court.

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I get asked regularly about black outreach by conservatives in general and the GOP in particular.

One of the points that I insist on is covered by Jason Riley's piece for Opinion Journal("Dems Score With Blacks as GOP Forfeits the Game") last Friday.

We, as conservatives, allow liberals to dominate black media and by default, to define who and what we are to black America.

In most of the major radio markets, black radio dominates the dial. And among black radio, Tom Joyner rules the roost. His ABC-distributed program is amon the top draws not only in black radio, but in urban and suburban radio period. Joyner, a long-time radio veteran with extensive local market experience in Chicago and Dallas, holds court over a cornucopia of topics that he and his cohorts banter over, and they are frequently visited by phone or in person by newsmakers and commentators that maintain definite sway among black America. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond and other newmakers are among Joyner's semi-regular guests; NPR and PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley is a regular weekly contributor.

Joyner hosts regular gatherings at Disney World, at festivals around the nation and on board a cruise ship once a year.

His show holds regular fund-raisers for historically black colleges around the nation, and he is a very outspoken advocate of "giving back" to the community.

His regular mantra now is to get George W. Bush out of office. And while Joyner's program has hosted several of the Democratic candidates for the presidency, his program has not hosted anyone from the GOP. While part of this can be attributed to Joyner and his compatriots on the air, an equally large part of that lack of exposure to a segment of black America that would not otherwise easily be reached lies with the GOP.

The visible communication sources in black America, from Joyner to Smiley on the radio, from BET to TVOne on television, and print sources ranging Johnson Publishing's Jet and Ebony to Earl Graves' Black Enterprise are continual wastelands for a conservative message and presence.

Oh, sure, writings from myself and other Project 21 members are there occasionally, but why don't we see the President there? Wh don't we see Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell there? Why don'te we see John Ashcroft or Donald Rumsfeld there?

All those individuals will readily show up on Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh's bully pulpits, and that's not a bad thing -- it's always good to preach to the choir and the faithful among yor flock regularly.

But you won't expand your presence; expand your message unless and until you begin to step outside your comfort zone.

Going on black radio may not be easy or comfortable at first; a wariness that will exist on both sides. But as the ice is broken, as black America recognizes that this is not a matter or a means of being "used" or "pandered to" solely for the gain of votes, then both sides will begin to open up and to discover a common ground that truly exists, and discover that there not only is room but a necessity for a two-party system to exist within black America.

It will take work, but the long-standing antagonism that exists can be overcome.

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Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge announced this afternoon that the terror threat level for the "financial services sectors" of the US has been raised to ORANGE.

Specific targets include the World Bank/IMF in DC, the Prudential Building in Northern NJ, the NYSE and the Citigroup building in New York City. The method of attack would be truck and car bombs of varying destructive power.

Apparently there is specific information that has emerged in the past 24 to 36 hours regarding attacks to the economic infrastructure.

New York City has been at level Orange, or Very High level since 9/11, but the rest of the country's level has been raised and lowered several times since then. The country as a whole has most recently been at condition Yellow.

An attack on the financial infrastructure of the US would be devestating to the economy at best, but there's no additional information as to what heightened threat may exist for the public at large.

As the TV-types like to say, "Stay tuned."

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