Monday's Today on NBC devoted over seven minutes of its last half hour to a friendly story and interview with “raging grannies,” some elderly women in Tucson who hold small rallies outside military recruiting offices where they don big, colorful hats and sing song parodies, such as “we're here to stop the war machine, don't get in our way!", "Halliburton profits from war," “taxes unending, military spending, what a waste, what a waste!" Reporter Peter Alexander trumpeted their efforts: "With their will and their words as their only weapons these grannies from 53 to 93 years of age protest on this downtown street corner every Wednesday." As they sang, “Down with the one who would drive the country under," the camera showed a George W. Bush doll decked out in a black and white striped prison shirt with an American flag draped on his shoulder. Four of the grannies then sat for an interview with a delighted Natalie Morales who tossed softballs at them, such as “What do you hope...that people will get out of this, out of seeing you be an activist and protesting the war in Iraq?" Morales didn't follow up when one one proclaimed that “we'll try and remove our President from his office because he is lying to the public and making war all over the world. It's, it's just unacceptable.” Morales soon hailed their “witty lyrics” and sounded in awe as she wondered: “Tell me what it's like to be able to, to speak and to be a voice for a demographic that, generally we don't hear that much from, especially as activists?"

Transcript follows. Real and Windows Media video also available.

Then at 11, in my last few minutes in the car, WAMU aired "As It Happens" from the CBC. They devoted a loving segment to Marc Emery, the Maple Leaf marijuana menace, fulminating egomanically about how he is the mighty ruler of the "cannabis people," and they are oppressed by America, which somehow resembles the Chinese government in its tyranny against Pot.

On Friday night's drive home from the Nats game, I tuned in to WAMU, American University's NPR station, and found a special Peace Talks radio documentary hosted by Walter Cronkite on the "Lessons of Hiroshima." The primary lesson, according to Walter the World Federalist, is that "Nuclear weapons and human beings cannot coexist. In the end, I believe this is the most important lesson of Hiroshima. We must eliminate nuclear weapons before they eliminate us."

An article from today's MRC CyberAlert: The former number two editor of the Washington Post, Robert Kaiser, yearns for the U.S. to follow the cradle-to-grave welfare state system enacted in Finland. In a Sunday Outlook section piece, “In Finland's Footsteps: If We're So Rich and Smart, Why Aren't We More Like Them?,” Kaiser contended that “for a patriotic American like me, the Finns present a difficult challenge: If we Americans are so rich and so smart, why can't we treat our citizens as well as the Finns do?” The former Post Managing Editor, who is now an Associate Editor, listed the free services Finns get: “They pay nothing for education at any level, including medical school or law school. Their medical care, which contributes to an infant mortality rate that is half of ours and a life expectancy greater than ours, costs relatively little.... Unemployment benefits are good and last, in one form or another, indefinitely.” Kaiser conceded that Finland has some downsides, such as high taxes, but still maintained the nation “can be an inspiration.”

The rest of the CyberAlert item follows, but first links to a couple of other Monday CyberAlert articles: