GOP war on NPR

So today there is an "emergency" meeting (3 pm EST, in room H-313 Capitol building--you can watch the meeting live here) of the House Rules Committee to discuss a bill intro'd yesterday. This bill is HR 1076, quite clearly (yet verbosely) called: "To prohibit Federal funding of National Public Radio and the use of Federal funds to acquire radio content." The bill spells it out:

(d) Federal Funds Defined-

(1) IN GENERAL- In this section, the term ‘Federal funds’ means, with respect to receipt by a non-Federal entity from the Federal Government, the following:

(A) Grants.

(B) Loans.

(C) Property.

(D) Cooperative agreements.

(E) Direct appropriations.

(2) GRANTS OR SUBGRANTS FROM NON-FEDERAL ENTITY- Such term also includes grants or subgrants from Federal funds made available to a non-Federal entity.

So, anyway, yes that's right. An emergency meeting to defund NPR entirely. Now, if you recall, the House passed a Continuing Resolution (CR) amendment (to fund the government through September) that defunded the Corporation for Public Broadcasting--which supports NPR and PBS--but the Senate defeated that. The latest CR cuts funding but does not eliminate entirely. This is new. This is an entire bill devoted to totally eliminating NPR (PBS is not affected). The person behind this bill--which has no co-sponsors--is Doug Lamborn (R-CO). Also:

Mortensen [Catherine, spokesperson for Lamborn] added that Lamborn "will definitely" seek to include an additional amendment blocking NPR funding through 2011 in any final deal with Senate Democrats on a 2011 continuing resolution.

This is, of course, retaliation for the recent "controversy" regarding a doctored video that showed Ron Schiller, former NPR exec, allegedly making "rude" statements about Tea Party people and saying things like NPR doesn't really need federal funding. Schiller had already resigned from NPR to take another job, but left immediately as a result of the fall out and Vivian Schiller (of no relation), the CEO of NPR, resigned (or for the more cynical, was ousted). All of which happened before NPR even watched all the footage:

DAVE EDWARDS: It seems like it happened quickly, but a lot happened during the course of that day. With all that was going on in Congress, with all that was going on around the country, we had to make that assessment again, and so we did.

FOLKENFLIK: In those first hours, executives were relying on transcripts, and the full board had not watched the full video. In the days since, the Blaze, a news aggregation site set up by Fox News's Glenn Beck, and then NPR News, found many instances in O'Keefe's shorter news-setting tape where key elements of Ron Schiller's remarks were significantly misrepresented.

So now the GOP has rushed to have an emergency meeting to entirely defund NPR. Priorities.