CNN's Jack Cafferty, on Monday afternoon's The Situation Room, took a cheap shot at Karl Rove's weight and expressed delight in the possibility Rove will be indicted. Just past 3pm EDT, Cafferty announced his question of the hour: “What should Karl Rove do if he is indicted?” Cafferty then answered his own question: “He might want to get measured for one of those extra large orange jump suits, Wolf, 'cause looking at old Karl, I'm not sure that he'd, they'd be able to zip him into the regular size one." Wolf Blitzer pointed out: “He's actually lost some weight. I think he's in pretty good shape." Cafferty conceded: "Oh, well then maybe just the regular off the shelf large would handle it for him." Blitzer then cautioned the indictment might not come: "Yeah, but you know, it's still a big if. It's still a big if." A giddy Cafferty replied: "Oh, I understand. I'm, I'm just hoping you know. I love, I love to see those kinds of things happen. It does wonders for me."

Just under a month ago, Cafferty took a shot at Tom Delay: "Has he been indicted yet?" And then a week later insisted that "I had no inside information on DeLay's upcoming indictment,” but boasted of how “it's probably a piece of videotape that I'm going to hang onto." (Full transcript, and links to his earlier comments, follow.)

Video excerpt: Real or Windows Media

James O. Clifford, Sr., a retired reporter and editor with UPI and the Associated Press, has an interesting guest column, "Cardinal Law Was Looking For Media Sin In The Wrong Places," in this month's edition of the conservative Catholic magazine, New Oxford Review. Clifford argues that while the national media have rightfully reported aggressively on systemic abuses and coverups among the Catholic hierarchy regarding priestly sexual abuse of children, the media have played down similar concerns within the teaching profession about nationwide problems with student-teacher sexual misconduct in American public schools.

The article can be found teased here, featuring the first five paragraphs. There is a $1.50 charge for reading the full article.

On this past weekend's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, comedian Bill Maher pointed to the liberal scriptwriters of NBC's West Wing for political guidance. Maher touted how “Alan Alda plays a Republican Senator who tells the Christian Right to go screw.” Maher yearned: “Why can't we have that in real life?” Last Tuesday (October 11) on MSNBC's Hardball, the Chicago Tribune's Jim Warren had also held up how the Alda character "confronts a top Christian Right official who insists on a public pledge that Alan Alda, if elected President, will only pick anti-abortion judges to the federal court. And Alan Alda, seeing the world as much more complicated, declines to do that." Maher proceeded to wonder: “Why can't we have a real Alan Alda character who says to the Christian Right what the Democrats basically say to the black people, which is, 'you know what? Where else are you going to go?'"

Full transcripts of Maher's comments, the Alan Alda character's lines on the October 9 episode of The West Wing and links to previous NewsBusters items on The West Wing, follow.

Associated Press writer Darlene Superville wrote a serious expose on Karl Rove's garage. The headline: "Karl Rove's Garage Proves to Be Typical"

Superville wondered if Rove can "organize his own garage? Can the master of Bush's political planning figure out where to put the ladders, paint cans and cardboard boxes?"

Below are the earth shattering revelations uncovered by Superville:

There was no car in the garage. And the stuff left behind turned out not to be much different from what gathers dust inside most American garages.

The inventory, seen from outside:

*Some cardboard file boxes stacked one on top of the other, labeled "Box 6," "Box 4" and what appears to be "Box 7." No sign of boxes 1, 2, 3 and 5.

NewsBusters contributor John Armor reported that on the ABC News website there is a story with the misleading headline: "White Supremacists Riot in Toledo Ohio."

The neo-Nazis in Toledo were unable to carry out their protest, and the actual rioters were mostly gang members looking for an excuse to make trouble.

John Armor reported that "both the Associated Press and ABC News have now changed the title to the accurate statement that "Anti-White Supremacists" were the ones who rioted."

But here on this page, ABC News has kept the same misleading headline.

Mr. Schieffer had another virtuoso performance in liberal bias during his Sunday morning talk show commentary.  Mr Schieffer was celebrating the Bush administration's "second term blues", i.e. low approval ratings, high oil prices, war problems,  the troublesome Myer's nomination, and above all the special prosecutor's investigation into the Valerie Plame "affair".  Mr. Schieffer had to tap into his vast memory and reservoir of experience to find an analogous situation...The Nixon era and Watergate.  I guess Bill Clinton's impeachment and the concurrent heavy Democratic congressional losses didn't rise to the blockbluster level of the Plame "scandal".  Mr Schieffer cloaks his brazen partisanship and bias with grandfatherly "wisdom and common sense".  His efforts merit close scrutiny.

No bias here, but kind of amusing: The front of Saturday's Sports page featured a picture of the 16-year old golf phenom Michelle Wie taking a free drop of her ball after it was ruled unplayable in the first round of the Samsung World Championship. The headline over the accompanying story read "Wie Knows How to Play, And She Knows the Rules."

Or does she? Monday's sports page declared "Infraction Costs Wie First Payday."

Another free drop that Wie took during the third round on Saturday was ruled illegal on Sunday, after it was determined Wie had perhaps inadvertently moved the ball closer to the hole when she made her drop.

The Washington Post has an article about the deteriorating relationship between White House press secretary Scott McClellan and the reporters who cover the White House.

CBS correspondent John Roberts says McClellan "has adopted this siege mentality in which the best way to deflect the question is to attack the questioner. I'm not quite sure who he's playing to -- maybe the segment of the Republican Party that believes we're a bunch of liberals who have our own agenda."

McClellan claimed he was trying to "mix it up a little bit and keep them on their toes. Reporters like to swing away at others, but they don't like it when you punch back. The pack mentality goes into overdrive... The media's trying to get under our skin and get us off-message. My job is to help the president advance his agenda."

Does the Associated Press take sides against the U.S. military when reporting in Iraq? You decide. In a story today describing retaliation for a roadside bomb that killed five American soldiers on Saturday, the ABC/AP story titled, “U.S.: 70 Insurgents Killed in Airstrikes,” opens:

U.S. helicopters and warplanes bombed two villages near the restive city of Ramadi…

The “restive” city of Ramadi? My dictionary defines that word as “uneasy or fidgety.” Hardly the way to describe a rat’s nest of terrorist activity; one that even UPI said is “exploding with violence”. The story continues: