Free speech is democracy's last line of defense. We must demand it. Defend it. And most of all, use it-now. - Amy Goodman

The same could be said of Henry Kissinger. While many in the United States still see Nixon and Ford's former secretary of state as an elder statesman, the rest of the world sees him as a war criminal responsible for the deaths and suffering of millions in Chile, Vietnam, Laos, Argentina, East Timor, and Cambodia, to name a few.

we need a media that cuts through the lies and fakery that obscure the truth. A media that is fiercely independent. Unembedded. Journalism that works to inform, not to deceive. The soldiers and civilians in harm's way in Iraq deserve no less. The citizens of the devastated and abandoned Gulf Coast are counting on it. And the people shackled in America's secret gulags cry out for it.

Even in this high-tech digital age with high-definition television and digital radio, still all we get is static: that veil of distortion, lies, misrepresentations, and half-truths that obscure reality.