Gaggle is a daily comic strip about the Washington press corps and Larry the press secretary. Larry deals with the shenanigans of reporters who couldn't imagine anyone voting for a Republican.

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Cued up by MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Tuesday's Countdown, Al Franken repeated the same “joke” he told on Letterman and the Today show about how he's “worried” that “Rove and Libby and others...may be executed." Olbermann then quipped: “But it would be a hell of a story for cable news." To which Franken chipped in to laughter from Olbermann: "It would. Especially if it got to the President and the Vice President because, and I think there should be a constitutional amendment passed as soon as possible that we can't execute either a sitting or recently-impeached President and Vice President." Olbermann picked up on a Monday NewsBusters item by Dave Pierre which highlighted how “in a 'comedy' skit for a promotional video at Amazon.com, Al Franken knees a self-described 'right-wing jerk' in the groin.” After playing an excerpt from the video, Olbermann didn't mention the name “NewsBusters,” but made his target clear as he denigrated the MRC's President: “One of the blogs affiliated with noted media watcher Brent Bozell, or as he's sometimes known, 'Red Beard the Pirate,' asks, 'Is there a theme of violence in Al Franken's work?'"

Two recent posts recount Franken's jokes about executions and offer video clips: On Letterman, Al Franken Jokes About Execution for Treason of Rove, Libby and Bush, and Al Franken's Rerun Rove and Libby Execution Remark Draws Laughter From Lauer.

Video excerpt of Olbermann/Franken in Real or Windows Media. (Full transcript follows.)

In its zeal to promote the “right” kind of candidates, the Associated Press put out a piece called, “Death Penalty, Bush Loom in Va. Race.” While citing the main issues as capital punishment and the popularity of President Bush, author Ron Fournier seeks to paint Democrat Tim Kaine’s Virginia gubernatorial candidacy as one reaching out to “so-called values voters:”

Kaine is a Roman Catholic who opposes the death penalty. That puts him at odds with most Americans (two-thirds support capital punishment for murderers), and poses even greater peril in a conservative Southern state that favored Bush by 9 percentage points last year.

[An update to my colleague Tim Graham's posts on Good Night and Good Luck co-star and director George Clooney found here and here.]

CBS Early Show host Harry Smith today interviewed George Clooney in the last half hour of the program. At one point Smith---who apparently from the interview really liked the film---notes he saw a screening of the film in New York City, with other journalists and asks Clooney for the reaction he received from his colleagues:

Harry Smith: "I saw it at a screening here in New York. Every newsperson in the city was in the room. You were there. What did they tell you afterwards?"

[Clooney: "...for us, it was quite something to have Morley Safer or Walter Cronkite or Tom Brokaw, any of the guys come over and tap you on the shoulder and say, 'you got it right.'"]

Smith: "Got it right, got it right. It's interesting because the battle in the newsrooms. We think of that time back then as being simpler in some way, because here is Murrow who is clearly on a crusade. But he's fighting with his bosses, he's fighting with Bill Paley. Let me run this clip, and it shows that, were it ever thus. Things never change. Take a look at this."

Smith went on later in the interview to lament the lack of modern day Murrows willing to "sacrifice" what Murrow was when airing the McCarthy documentary:

I'm a conservative and I have some concerns about the way the president is handling Iraq. I'm not going to support him just because he is a Republican president - I'm going to support him as long as he does the right thing. At the start of the war I thought that deposing Hussein was a good thing because he was a ruthless dictator who was reponsible for killing thousands of his own citizens. As ugly of a situation as it was only America and Britain had the guts to stand up to him. Now that we've been in the war for some time I've changed my position because it seems that the opportunity that we've given the Iraqi's has been met with thankless anger and I don't think that the whole issue is worth any more American lives. I certainly wouldn't want my son there fighting and risking his life. FYI, I served in the Seabee's for 6 years.

From avoiding Joseph Wilson's credibility collapse to misreading columnist Robert Novak, the New York Times just can't seem to get the facts of the Plame "scandal" straight.

Tuesday's lead scoop by David Johnston, Richard Stevenson and Douglas Jehl puts Vice President Cheney in the middle of Plame-gate ("Cheney Told Aide Of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report").

The aide in question is Cheney's chief-of-staff, I. Lewis Libby, who is being investigated by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the matter of who leaked the name of C.I.A. officer Valerie Plame.

The paper describes its revelation this way: "Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson [Plame] worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003."

Adage.com has published this article* about the harm caused to the United States by (gasp!) BLOGS!

Blog this: U.S. workers in 2005 will waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs.

Waste? If your only info on Rathergate came from watching CBS News or from reading blogs, which one are you wasting time with? But I digress...

About 35 million workers -- one in four people in the labor force -- visit blogs and on average spend 3.5 hours, or 9%, of the work week engaged with them, according to Advertising Age’s analysis. Time spent in the office on non-work blogs this year will take up the equivalent of 2.3 million jobs. Forget lunch breaks -- blog readers essentially take a daily 40-minute blog break.

For those of you not used to corporate media speak, let me translate the above for you: "Oh God, blogs are taking over news and we don't get ad money for blogs. Our Big Media readership can't win in the marketplace of ideas, so - EMPLOYERS: your business is being destroyed by blogs! Stop the bleeding now and ban all blog reading at work while you still can! (But don't pay attention to all the news sites that your employees read, that's okay and we don't consider that a waste of your company time.)

*Registration required, Bugmenot login: everyone@adage.com, password: password

What the heck is a "tangy meringue of maudlin and giddy?" Check out this overwrought introduction from last night's Hardball:

Chris Matthews: "In Washington, where no one`s ever late for a hanging, the sky is grim and cloudy. The mood, a tangy meringue of maudlin and giddy. The President today called the CIA leak probe a very serious investigation, is reported to be cranky and bitter, pointing blame at his top aides and the Vice President who he has reported to have said got too deep into the intel use to sell the Iraq war. Let`s play Hardball."

Later on Hardball special correspondent David Shuster went so far out on a limb in his forecast of doom for Karl Rove and Scooter Libby that even the New York Daily News' Tom DeFrank felt the need to distance himself from his report. First Shuster's dire forecast:

Earlier today, CNN.com had a headline on its front page about the 78 percent of Iraqis who voted in support of the constitution. Apparently not wanting to appear pro-Bush, that headline has been removed and replaced with a much more MoveOn-friendly title: U.S. death toll in Iraq hits 2,000.

Currently, nowhere on the front page does it mention the landslide victory in favor of the constitution.

As reported here by NewsBusters, U.S. News and World Report’s editor-at-large David Gergen on CBS’s “Early Show” last Friday made the claim that the Wilson/Plame affair had some similarities to Watergate. Today on the same program, Gergen changed direction, and is now comparing this “scandal” to former President Clinton’s impeachment proceedings (video link to follow):

“Well, you know, the country went through a large conversation about that just a few years ago about Bill Clinton because the underlying events there with Monica Lewinsky were not illegal. But what he got charged with and what he was impeached by in the house was whether he had lied about it after the fact. So -- and we know -- you know, Harry, going way back to Watergate, that the standing rule -- standard rule in Washington is the cover up is always worse than the crime. So I would be cautious in dismissing the idea that if there's no underlying crime, there's nothing serious about this. Perjury and obstruction of justice have long been regarded as serious crimes. You're expected under the majesty of the law, to tell the truth to investigators. And Richard Thornburgh, a former Republican attorney general, has taken a view, I think rightly, that perjury and obstruction are in and of themselves serious.”

The Paris-based Reporters Without Borders has produced its annual World Press Freedom Index for 2005.

The Associated Press reports that "European countries lead the world in providing freedoms to news media, while the United States lost ground."

North Korea retained the last spot, 167, and the U.S. fell to 44.

"The United States dropped more than 20 spots, to 44th place, mainly because of the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller and judicial action that was 'undermining the privacy of journalistic sources,' the statement said."

The top five countries: Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Iceland, Norway.

Other countries that ranked higher than the U.S.: Canada, France, South Korea, Italy

Beginning in the Middle Ages, there was a widely popular puppet show called “Punch and Judy.” Most of its content and humor were based on two characters flailing away at each other with slap sticks. Today, we have a verbal equivalent of the same thing, occurring in the pages of the New York Times. These protagonists are Arthur (“Pinch”) Sulzberger Jr., boy-publisher of the Times, and Judith (“Judy”) Miller, one-time rising star writer for that paper.

Judy says she told the truth and upheld the values of the Times. Slap! Pinch says she misled her editors and brought the reputation of the Times into question. Slap! Slap! But unlike its medieval ancestor, the Pinch and Judy Show has four participants. And they are not evenly matched.

As Geoff Dickens just pointed out, Today’s Matt Lauer just smiled and laughed when left-wing radio host Al Franken predicted the execution of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby. But a few weeks ago when Pat Robertson called for the assassination of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, an anti-American dictator who has cozied up with Iran’s ayatollahs and Cuba’s communists, Today was outraged enough to lead the show with Robertson’s supposed transgression.

“We fine broadcasters for using four-letter words, we say that’s offensive. So is it offensive to call for the assassination of a world leader?” NBC’s Matt Lauer castigated back on August 23. But a left-wing host talks about executing top ranking officials of the executive branch — that’s just a joke, right? Or perhaps Today’s indignant reaction to Pat Robertson was, shall we say, a little “staged.”

The first half-hour of today's Early Show featured a brief anchor read by Hannah Storm on the 1,998th and 1,999th American deaths in Iraq, followed two segments later with a Bill Plante segment on the Valerie Plame leak investigation (sandwiched between was an obituary for civil rights icon Rosa Parks who died yesterday). At the end of Plante's piece, he suggested the upcoming 2000-fatality benchmark is just the cherry on top of the problems the White House is having with the Miers nomination and the Plame investigation:

Adding to the President's problems, of course, the fact that the U.S. death toll in Iraq will soon pass 2000, and that links directly back to the argument at the heart of the leak investigation, the justification for the war. Hannah?

Yet the particular political tussle which sparked the leak and hence the investigation---the assertions of Valerie Plame's husband Joseph Wilson--- has since been discredited or severely questioned in a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, a fact Plante doesn't mention but was reported prominently at the time, including Susan Schmidt of the Washington Post on July 10, 2004:

On Today, at 8:52am Al Franken was on to promote his new book The Truth and repeated his twisted joke from Friday's Letterman in which he predicted that Rove and Libby will be executed for treason. Franken's "joke," drew laughter from Matt Lauer and the rest of the Today show studio. The following is just a portion of this morning's interview:

Matt Lauer: "All right, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby what’s their future? What’s your prediction in terms of indictments? Yes or no?"

Franken: "Oh they, they’ll be indicted. I, I am absolutely sure and this is about, of course, the war in Iraq really. It’s about the justification for the war and smearing Joe Wilson by outing his wife who’s a CIA agent. George H.W. Bush, the President’s father, said, as, when he was head of the CIA, that outing a CIA agent is treason. I, I agree. So I think that Rove and Libby will be executed." Lauer laughed along with those in the studio.

Video excerpt: Real or Windows Media

Brian Maloney at The Radio Equalizer, a leading blogger on the Air America scandal, offered the transcript of the other part of the Letterman segment with Al Franken. Unlike the "mainstream media," Letterman at least asked about the Air America financial scandal.

The Iraqis have approved their new constitution, but the AP is not real happy about it. Look how quickly they go from good news to bad news in this report:

Draft Constitution Adopted by Iraq Voters

Iraq's constitution was adopted by a majority in a fair vote during the country's Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday. A prominent Sunni politician called the balloting "a farce."

The U.S. military also announced the deaths of two Marines in fighting with insurgents last week in Baghdad, bringing the number of American service members killed in the war to 1,999.

It's almost as though they used the news of the vote as an excuse to rerun the combat death numbers.

I'm on the road this week, but a quick take from this morning's Today.

As it did the day after the Iraqi referendum, Today buried the story today that, with tabulations completed, 78% of Iraqis voted in favor of adopting the proposed new constitution.

At least 10 x more time was accorded to yet more car bombings in Baghdad, Hurricane Wilma and storms in the Northeast. Even the story of some stranded dolphins merited several times more airtime than the Iraqi vote, not to mention some sympathetic tongue-clucking by Katie.

Such are the skewed priorities of our MSM.

Peter Baker and Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post pulled no punches in their front-page article this morning about the challenges currently facing President Bush:

“Rarely has a president confronted as many damaging developments that could all come to a head in this week. A special counsel appears poised to indict one or more administration officials within days. Pressure is building on Bush from within his own party to withdraw the faltering Supreme Court nomination of Harriet Miers. And any day the death toll of U.S. troops in Iraq will pass the symbolically important 2,000 mark.”

Rarely?  I guess 9/11 doesn't count, for regardless of what happens this week, it’s got to be a cakewalk by comparison to the days following the first attacks on this country since Pearl Harbor.

They continued:

Should lawmakers give journalists the right to refuse to divulge their sources in court? Many states have laws to this effect governing their jurisdictions. Today there is no such law at the federal level. Should there be? At 11:00 today, the Heritage Foundation invites former radio talker and congressman Mike Pence (R-Ind.) as he makes the case in the affirmative. Event info here

UPDATE 12:45. Monday, Pence stated that he believed his law would also cover bloggers in a protective shield. Does that change any minds?