The headline, “US Has Detained 83,000 in War on Terror”, greeted me when I logged on the Internet on Wed. Nov. 16 after lunch.  I was stunned. Where were all the prisoners being held?  Was this another leak from the CIA?  I clicked on the link without thinking twice.

Surprise, Surprise – another AP story extolling the negatives from Iraq.  Another day, another negative story from the AP.

The article opens with the statement “The United States has detained more than 83,000 foreigners in the four years of the war on terror, enough to nearly fill the NFL’s largest stadium”.  Since when do we equate the war on terror and terrorists with the size of football stadiums? I have yet to see an article where the writer compared the number of Coalition soldiers and Iraqi civilians killed by the terrorists in Iraq to the capacity of a sports arena.  I was at a loss trying to understand why such a comparison was necessary or appropriate.

Salon is about to turn ten years old, and Gary Kamiya, who helped found the left-liberal online magazine and is now its "Vice President of Content/Executive Editor," has penned a look back. (Hat tip: Romenesko.)

Kamiya acknowledges that

[p]robably the most significant, certainly the most lurid, event in Salon's editorial history was the Henry Hyde story, in which we revealed that the esteemed and respected head of the House Judiciary Committee, who was standing in judgment on Bill Clinton, had had a longtime affair with a married woman. We thought long and hard about whether to run the story, but decided in the end that it was completely legitimate: We decided we had to reveal that the Clinton persecution was a hypocritical farce, driven by right-wing zealots and unopposed by a slack-jawed media.

It's hard to believe this story actually ran, front page (online) no less, but a little easier to believe when you realize it was the San Francisco Chronicle. Let me recap some of the highlights:

Stop It, Breeders
"We can't be breeding right now," says Les Knight. "It's obvious that the intentional creation of another [human being] by anyone anywhere can't be justified today."

"As long as there's one breeding couple," he says cheerfully, "we're in danger of being right back here again. Wherever humans live, not much else lives. It isn't that we're evil and want to kill everything -- it's just how we live."

Knight's position might sound extreme at first blush, but there's an undeniable logic to it: Human activities -- from development to travel, from farming to just turning on the lights at night -- are damaging the biosphere. More people means more damage. So if fewer people means less destruction, wouldn't no people at all be the best solution for the planet?

Back during the impeachment days of the late 90s Ken Starr was portrayed as an out-of-control prosecutor peeping through Bill Clinton's Oval Office window. Fast forward to this morning's Today show and we find Patrick Fitzgerald is getting the star treatment from People magazine.

At 7:51am Today had an exclusive unveiling of People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive issue and it turns out Fitzgerald made the list:

Katie Couric: "Do you have the thinking woman's sex symbol in there at any point?"

Julie Jordan, People magazine: "Yes. Yeah like we got lots of smart men. Patrick Fitzgerald. I love that he actually is..."

Couric: "The special prosecutor. Oh my gosh he must've been so freaked out when he got the call! He keeps dirty socks at work and apparently has pizza boxes up to the ceiling at his house."

The Hill is a specialized publication, mostly for Members of Congress and those whose living depends on Congress. Still, an article in The Hill today (Wednesday) is typical of the media coverage of the Senate vote yesterday to require “reports” to Congress on the progress of the Iraq War.

The title is “Needed: An Exit Strategy from Iraq.” It is written by Rep. Jane Harman (D. Calif) and its lede includes these paragraphs.

There is now a strong bipartisan consensus that we need an exit strategy. But yet to emerge is the content of that strategy.

We have two overriding objectives in Iraq: to facilitate a viable power-sharing agreement among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds and to turn over responsibility for security to the Iraqis on a steady basis.

One day after Katie Couric snapped at Bill Frist for "parroting" the administration line on Iraq, Matt Lauer asked Joseph Biden if a new Senate resolution on Iraq had, "any teeth in it?" NBC’s Today show has been hoping to use a new Republican resolution on Iraq as a way to show even supporters are fleeing from Bush. Unfortunately for Couric and company Senator Frist merely reiterated administration policy yesterday so this morning they turned to Biden to slam the administration.

Couric opened this morning’s Today: "Then the war in Iraq. It’s becoming increasingly unpopular and Congress is trying to respond." A few minutes later NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell opened her report using language that Joe Biden would later cite in his interview:

A New York Sun editorial (subscription may be required) notes the New York Times and a couple of (surprise) Democratic liberal senators are "in a lather over Kenneth Tomlinson's just-ended chairmanship at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. They're particularly incensed over a report released yesterday by CPB's inspector general, for which [Democratic Senators] Dingell and Obey pressed, that suggests Mr. Tomlinson 'broke the law' in the course of pursuing his attempt to restore some balance to public broadcasting."

Indeed, the Times' report today is written by Stephen Labaton, who has previously filed many pro-PBS stories on Tomlinson's quest to bring political balance to public broadcasting, some of them relaying bad information, and none admitting the obvious liberal slant of PBS programming (Labaton wouldn't even call PBS omnipresence Bill Moyers a liberal, though he readily labeled the Wall Street Journal editorial page "conservative.")

The Sun goes on to make a broader point -- why, in this golden age of media diversity, is the government still in the journalism biz?

It’s become almost too commonplace of late – an article by a major, mainstream newspaper suggesting that President Bush misled the American people, as well as Congress, concerning the existence of WMD in Iraq, and the threat Iraq represented to America. For instance, just yesterday, the New York Times published an editorial with such a premise:

“To avoid having to account for his administration's misleading statements before the war with Iraq, President Bush has tried denial, saying he did not skew the intelligence. He's tried to share the blame, claiming that Congress had the same intelligence he had, as well as President Bill Clinton. He's tried to pass the buck and blame the C.I.A.”

And, a front-page Washington Post article this past Saturday by Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus asserted this same theme:

“President Bush and his national security adviser have answered critics of the Iraq war in recent days with a two-pronged argument: that Congress saw the same intelligence the administration did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence.”

Yet, neither of these two publications was so convinced about this issue before Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001, and both took rather strong positions about the existence of such WMD in Iraq, and the threat that country represented to America.

anyone know what happened to the act by congress to set aside 1,000,000 acres for drilling?

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr.’s op-ed yesterday did not mince words. In Dionne’s view, the president’s speech on Veterans Day was pure, “partisan politics” that “will only add to his troubles.” Dionne’s contention was that the president is just continuing a pattern of partisan attacks that he started in October 2002 as Congress was debating the Iraq war resolution:

“There is a great missing element in the argument over whether the administration manipulated the facts. Neither side wants to talk about the context in which Bush won a blank check from Congress to invade Iraq. He doesn't want us to remember that he injected the war debate into the 2002 midterm election campaign for partisan purposes, and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he used the post-Sept. 11 mood to do all he could to intimidate Democrats from raising questions more of them should have raised.”

Concluding a probe prodded by Senate Democrats, the inspector general of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Kenneth Konz, released his report yesterday on whether former CPB Board Chairman Ken Tomlinson violated agency rules and procedures in his attempt to bring some (or any) balance to the routinely liberal on-air content of public broadcasting. Konz said yes. Stephen Labaton of the New York Times, who was hot in outrage on Tomlinson's conservative trail, tarts it up this morning with the headline: "Broadcast Chief Violated Laws, Inquiry Finds."

The report itself is tamer (although Tomlinson rejects it as inaccurate and political) reveals the classic split in CPB's statutory founding in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, which both asks the CPB to protect pub-casting from political influence AND insure objectivity and balance in all programming of a controversial nature. What's happened instead, as Konz reports: the controversy over Tomlinson hiring contractor Fred Mann to analyze PBS and NPR content is the first time in forty years that CPB has actually evaluated an individual program for balance. (What the request for an IG report says to conservatives in Washington is: never, ever try again to balance out public broadcasting.) Tomlinson attempted to balance the Friday night lineup with "Tucker Carlson Unfiltered" and "The Journal Editorial Report." Tucker's show is already gone. The pub-casting newspaper Current says the Journal show will also end, on December 2. Bye-bye to the balance attempt...

WuzzaDem has a hilarious "interview" between Simpsons character Comic Book Guy and Mary Mapes. CBG is known for sarcasm, making him a perfect fit with Mary Mapes.

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.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

A September 28 NewsBusters posting presciently forecast how “ABC's new Commander in Chief drama...clearly intends to make the conservative Republican 'House Speaker Nathan Templeton,' played by Donald Sutherland, the foil on the show revolving around Geena Davis as 'President Mackenzie Allen.'” On Tuesday's episode, the villainous Templeton has been told that “Special Assistant to the President Vince Taylor” is HIV-positive and he plans to reveal his health situation and to out him as gay, a move that so outrages Templeton's chief aide that she alerts the White House. Friends of the parents of “Kelly Ludlow,” Press Secretary to the independent President, then come to DC with a tape of a 16 millimeter film of a 1965 fund-raiser, featuring the future House Speaker, made by their father who recently died.

On the grainy black and white videotape of a smoke-filled room, Templeton contended that “segregation is the word of God” and railed about how “if the Lord Almighty wanted colored people to mix with whites...he wouldn't have placed them on separate continents.” Referring to the Supreme Court, the early Templeton argued that “nine men in Washington can't change natural law” and, bringing up the KKK, that “black robes are worse than white robes." Templeton then laughed. President Mackenzie calls Templeton to the Oval Office where he explains: “I was a young, Southern Democrat saying whatever I had to say to get elected." Showing him the video works, though, and he backs off his nefarious scheme to out Taylor.

Video of what ABC portrayed as the background of the conservative Republican politician, in Real or Windows Media. (Transcript follows as well as link to actor Donald Sutherland's recent rant against President Bush and the U.S.)

There are times when you watch the TV news that you wonder if the 2004 election is over yet. All the arguments that the Kerry campaign tried to use against George W. Bush on the war in Iraq and the war on terror are still being pounded. It’s as if the liberal Democrat-media complex still can’t get over the fact that Kerry lost, and can’t accept that perhaps the election returns meant that the public endorsed Bush’s record of defending the country.

The dominant theme of recent news coverage remains the MoveOn bumpersticker echo that Bush lied his way into war in Iraq. Howard Dean goes on “Meet the Press” to chant “corrupt and incompetent, corrupt and incompetent” to describe the Bush White House, which he says lied about Iraq and “has a fundamental problem telling the truth.” Dean should first try to get through ten minutes on TV without unloading a whopper – like falsely accusing the chairman of the Maryland GOP of smearing him – before he lectures others about truth-telling.

Why would failing to report on an anti-war group's openly displayed 'Letter from God' be a case for media bias? Because every time President Bush makes reference to his belief in God the mainstream media is all over it, like fleas on a dog. And not only his faith, but that of his appointees, as in Maureen Dowd's article, on former Supreme Court nominee, Harriet Miers.  You probably read how after calling into question the qualifications of Condoleeza Rice, Karen Hughes and other women on his staff, referring to them as office wives "who steadfastly devote their entire lives to doting on him", Dowd goes into some detail about Miers' faith:  "Bushie and Harriet share the same born-again Christian faith, which they came to in midlife, deciding to adopt Jesus Christ as their saviors. The Washington Post reported that she tithes to the Valley View Christian Church in Dallas, "where antiabortion literature is sometimes distributed and tapes from the conservative group Focus on the Family are sometimes screened," and where, when she returns, Ms. Miers asks well-wishers to pray for her and the president....W. is asking for a triple leap of faith. He has faith in Ms. Miers as his lawyer and as a woman who shares his faith. And we're expected to have faith in his faith and her faith, and her opinions that derive from her faith that could change the balance of the court and affect women's rights for the next generation. That's a little bit too much faith, isn't it?"  There are numerous other examples of media bias regarding the President's faith, such as during the 2004 election debates, as David Limbaugh pointed out, "President Bush gets so much flak for his faith and John Kerry is applauded for his professions of faith -- by the very same people? As I recall, while President Bush made no secret during the debates of his reliance on God, it was not him, but John Kerry who was citing Scripture -- or trying to. And it was Kerry who said, "My faith affects everything that I do, in truth."

So, I guess we shouldn't be surprised to find zero mention by the media, even with tongue in cheek, of CODEPINK's "Letter from God" delivered by Lea Arellano , applauding the group for their efforts. Which, by the way, I ran across while researching for a piece on CODEPINK's upcoming anti-military recruitment invasion on school campuses and recruitment offices this week, with their "Not Your Soldier" & "National Stand Down" student days on November 17th & 18th.