A quick plug: Jeff McIntire-Strasburg at sustainablog will be conducting a fundraiser “Blogging ‘Round the Clock” marathon for the Missouri Botanical Garden’s Earthways Center on July 11 & 12. Head over and pledge something today.

Well it looks like the war on public broadcasting has fired its first salvo. A House subcommittee voted on Friday to sharply reduce funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, effectively knee capping public television and public radio stations across the country. I guess there’s no place for NOVA, Masterpiece Theater, Reading Rainbow or Sesame Street in George Bush’s America.

PBS, in particular, drew harsh criticism in December from the Bush administration for a “Postcards From Buster” episode in which Buster, an animated rabbit, “visited” two families in Vermont headed by lesbians. And programming on both PBS and NPR has come under fire in recent months from Tomlinson, the Republican chairman of the CPB, who has pushed for greater “balance” on the public airwaves.

God, there’s that pesky question of ‘balance’ again, being used as a bludgeon against something good and useful.