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Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at why we should pity the oil industry, how invasion of privacy is sold as a good thing, and kids fighting back. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Philip Morris's ability to see into the future. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

Mt. McKinley: one big mistake.Colorado Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Bob Schaffer proclaims his devotion to the state in his latest television ad, saying "Colorado is my life ... I proposed to Maureen on top of Pike's Peak ... " Problem was, the mountain featured in the ad was Mount McKinley in Alaska, not the famous Pikes Peak in Colorado. The spot ran in the two most conservative areas of the state, but the error was caught quickly by people, including Schaeffer's Democratic challenger Mark Udall, who recognized the incorrect peak. Schaffer's campaign manager said the spot would be re-edited to replace Mt. McKinley with Colorado mountains, and would start running again almost immediately.

Some U.S. Congresspeople want to limit direct to consumer marketing of drugs. Rep. Bart Stupak is head of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce investigative panel. At a hearing to discuss specific ads by Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Merck and Schering-Plough, Stupak said that "It appears that we need to enforce significant restrictions on DTC (direct–to–consumer) ads to protect American consumers from manipulative commercials designed to mislead and deceive for the profit of pharmaceutical companies." Referring to the fact that other than New Zealand, the U.S. is the only country to allow direct to consumer advertising of drugs he added, "Pharmaceutical companies should consider it a privilege to be allowed to air DTC ads in this country. We should make sure that pharmaceuticals companies conduct themselves responsibly." The ranking Republican on the committee, John Shimkus of Illinois, said that since the Food and Drug Administration was just recently given oversight of drug ads, it is too soon for congressional intervention. But as CMD has reported previously, there is significant concern as to whether the FDA and other government agencies are able and willing to stand up to industry and government pressure.

It’s Tuesday, so you know what that means: primary election day! Voters in West Virginia are headed to the polls for both the Democratic presidential primary AND the congressional primaries and Nebraska voters get to vote in their congressional primaries in addition to the already decided GOP presidential primary. As always, Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project has the low down on the competitive congressional primaries:

It was a busy last week in Congress, as major deals were reached on the Farm Bill and Congress' response to the mortgage crisis. The stalled nominations process for the Federal Elections Commission received a new twist with big ramifications for the 2008 presidential election, the Senate Ethics Committee cleared Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Rep. Vito Fossella (R-N.Y.) got into trouble with the law, Barack Obama picked up 24 superdelegates, Hillary Clinton picked up 7, and North Carolina and Indiana had their congressional primaries.

On Thursday the House passed a new, catch-all housing bill that combines several bills already passed by the House and Senate by a 265-153 vote. The House bill's most remarkable feature is a program championed by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), the powerful head of the House Financial Services Committee. Under the program, the government would offer banks a deal: taxpayer-backed insurance on the mortgages of homeowners likely to default in exchange for making the terms significantly easier for the homeowners to make. While this would cost banks substantial amounts of money versus what they would receive if the mortgages were all paid off, it would also reduce the number of homeowners who default on their mortgages, keeping them in their homes and theoretically saving the banks money in the long run.

Homeowners who are behind in their payments and whose home values have fallen below the amount of their mortgage (thus creating an incentive for them to walk away from the loan) would be eligible for the program. The FHA would offer to insure their mortgages if the bank lowered the amount of the loan to no more than 90 percent of the current market value of the home (thus giving the homeowner positive equity in the home) and reducing the monthly payments. If the value of the insured homes rise and the homeowners sell or refinance at a profit, a portion of that profit goes back to the FHA. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that up to 500,000 homeowners would qualify for the program.

For more on the week's legislation and other developments, click through.

Several big votes are expected this week, as the farm bill finally leaves conference negotiations and hits the floors of the House and Senate for possibly final votes, amendments to the latest Iraq War funding bill wind through the House, and congressional elections are held in Mississippi, West Virginia and Nebraska.

Farm bill
The Farm bill is finally hitting the floor in the Senate and House this week. President George W. Bush has threatened to veto the bill, and White House actually posted a list of its objections on its Web site this afternoon. They include:

• $20 billion over Bush’s recommendations
• insufficient cuts to subsidy levels for individual farmers
• more farm subsidies even while food prices hit record levels

Iraq War funding
In addition to action on the Farm bill, expect votes on three separate amendments related to the Iraq supplemental. House Democrats have decided to push the amendments to give different factions within their caucus an opportunity to vote on the war and on troop withdrawal, all while forcing a slate of domestic funding options into a must-pass defense bill.

Doug Goodyear, the CEO of the Washington D.C. PR and lobbyshop, DCI Group, was selected to manage the forthcoming Republican National Convention (RNC), in St. Paul, Minnesota, because of his "management experience and expertise," a spokeswoman for John McCain said. Michael Isikoff reported in Newsweek that in 2002 DCI was paid $348,000 to represent Burma's military junta. "It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing 'falsehoods' by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses," Isikoff reported. Goodyear defended the company's work: "It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago," he said. Shortly after the story broke, the RNC issued a media release quoting Goodyear stating he had resigned "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign." DCI's other clients have included Exxon, Google and AT&T.

Bruce Falconer is calling out the mainstream media for ignoring the disturbing testimony that dominated recent U.S. Senate hearings into corruption by private contractors in Iraq. The testimony came from whistleblowers Frank Cassaday, Linda Warren (both former employees of Kellogg Brown and Root) and Barry Halley (who worked in Iraq for Worldwide Network Services, the Sandi Group and CAPE Environmental Management.) They told stories of widespread theft of materials and supplies needed by soldiers, looting Iraqi treasures (in one case melting down Iraqi gold to make cowboy spurs), and a prostitution ring run by the manager of a "major defense contractor," which led to the death of a colleague whose armored car was diverted "to transport prostitutes from Kuwait to Baghdad." Cassaday, Warren and Halley say they were punished and harassed when they tried to alert their companies to these abuses. Aside from Mother Jones, the only news outlet to file a report on their testimony was David Ivanovich of the Houston Chronicle, although a transcript of the hearings is available on the Senate's website.

Listen to this week's edition of the "Weekly Radio Spin," the Center for Media and Democracy's audio report on the stories behind the news. This week, we look at radio shows on drugs, when U.S. think tanks meddle overseas, and mad policies on mad cow. In "Six Degrees of Spin and Fakin'," we look at Dow's chemical legacy. The Weekly Radio Spin is freely available for personal and broadcast use. Podcasters can subscribe to the XML feed on www.prwatch.org/audio or via iTunes. If you air the Weekly Radio Spin on your radio station, please email us at editor@prwatch.org to let us know. Thanks!

While the presidential race is getting all the attention, voters in Indiana and North Carolina also selected their parties' nominees for their 22 House of Representatives seats and one Senate slot on Tuesday. Each seat's incumbent is running for reelection, but this is a turbulent election year, and the three high-school teachers, three attorneys, several small business owners and elected officials, and one TV weatherman challenging them could give them a run for their money. The Democrats are defending twelve House seats to the Republicans ten, plus Elizabeth Dole's seat in the Senate.

Each candidate and incumbent has a profile within Congresspedia's Wiki the Vote project, which you can find at the Indiana and North Carolina portals, or through the full listing of the primary victors below. We need your help to find out more about these candidates, so remember that these profiles are editable by anyone and jump right in. You can always contact one of the staff editors for help.