The Star Tribune on steroids

John Podesta is the long-time Democratic staffer whose political career culminated in his service as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff from October 1998 until the time Clinton exited office in January 2001. Podesta frankly proclaims that he was a fierce defender of the Clinton administration.
Podesta currently serves as the president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, a relentlessly left-wing attack machine operating as a think tank. Podesta describes the center as “a liberal think tank on steroids.” (Marianne Jennings wrote an excellent 2003 column providing background on the center, reporting that the center’s 2004 budget was an astounding $10 million.)
The center’s blog is Think Progress. Both the center and the blog are unstinting critics of the Bush adminstration. On September 7 the TP blog posted its “Katrina timeline.” It is a highly tendentious, obviously partisan and unreliable document. (We have previously recommended Rick Moran’s “Katrina: Response timeline” posted on the Rightwing Nuthouse blog).
On September 11 the Minneapolis Star Tribune featured a “Timeline of key events in the Katrina story” in its expanded Sunday opinion section. The Star Tribune credited the timeline graphic to Kim Vu, but left the text of the timeline unsourced, apparently intending its readers to believe that the timeline was the creation of its editors. The Star Tribune timeline, however, bears a striking resemblance to the TP blog timeline; it is in fact essentially an edited version of the TP timeline.
Take the Star Tribune timeline entries for August 30 as an example. The TP timeline states: “BUSH SPEAKS ON IRAQ AT NAVAL BASE CORONADO.” The Strib timeline states: “Bush gives speech on Iraq at California naval base.” The TP timeline states: “MASS LOOTING REPORTED…” The Strib timeline states: “Mass looting reported.” The TP timeline states:

U.S.S. BATAAN SITS OFF SHORE, VIRTUALLY UNUSED:

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