The HBO doc about journalism legend Helen Thomas, Thank you, Mr. President, is now slated for its first airing next Monday.  My colleague at E&P, Joe Strupp, interviewed the director, Rory Kennedy, this week and has a full report at our site, see link below.

Here are a few highlights:

-- The story opens with this:  "When Rory Kennedy told her mother, Ethel Kennedy, that she was going to make a documentary about Helen Thomas, the former Mrs. Robert Kennedy responded, 'Do you really want to do that? She was awfully hard on Jack.'

Eventually, though, her mother understood what the veteran documentary-maker with the famous name wanted to do, even allowing her to interview Thomas at her famed Hickory Hill home in McLean, Va., over five days in the spring of 2007.

Almost everyone who comes to this site has probably seen the ad for the Ghosts of Abu Ghraib (it is to the right as I write this), but I everyone who has HBO will watch it Feb 22nd  or when it repeats many times through the end of March (it will be out on DVD in June for those who don't).

We've all read about Abu Ghraib and seen the photos, but this documentary puts it together with a stong narrative in a way that hasn't happened before.  

My husband Richard, my friend Marietta and I just returned from one of the more disturbing evenings of our lives inside the beltway; the Council of Foreign Relations/HBO presentation of Rory Kennedy's documentary, Ghosts of Abu Ghraib.

Rory opened the evening by talking about the balance between national security and the rule of law, and how fluid that line has become.  The price we have paid is a commitment to human rights first.  She would like to see the film raise questions that lead to a policy debate, and ultimately, a rethinking of what we are doing.

So would we.