I was watching the Show PUNK'd on MTV with some friends and I could of swore that every time someone said Jesus or Christ, they Bleeped it out as if it was a cuss word.

Was I just hearing things and if not, how long before the MSM takes up this tatic? LOL

A Friday, November 4, 2005, op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times by HBO host Bill Maher begins as follows (emphasis mine):

"President Bush's new Supreme Court nominee, Samuel Alito, must bomb an abortion clinic."

It gets ... worse. Four paragraphs later (emphasis mine):

"Is Alito a decent man with Christian values? Until he kills a nurse with a pipe bomb, there's no way to be sure. Sometimes the only way to convince some people that you're truly pro-life is to kill a few of them. Like when a gang member has to knife some random guy to prove himself."

"Kill[ing] a nurse with a pipe bomb"? Comparing pro-lifers to murderous gang members? Maher has been outrageous in the past, but ... this?

In yesterday’s (Saturday) Washington Post is a brief article in its Metro section, responding to well-attended press conference the previous day in front of the newspaper’s offices.

The press conference accused the Post of violating the privacy rights of certain individuals on the website FreeRepublic.com This exchange, printed by the Post, explains the charge, and the newspaper’s response to it, so far:

"How in good faith could The Washington Post access a private Internet account without the express permission of the account holder?" Kristinn Taylor, a spokesman for the conservative FreeRepublic.com, asked in a morning news conference in front of The Post's offices in Northwest Washington.

"In response, R.B. Brenner, The Post's Maryland editor, said: ‘As part of our reporting, we needed to verify that the chat room postings were authentic. We were authorized to view them, and it was appropriate to do so under the circumstances.’ [Sic: This was not a "chat room." This was a private e-mail exchange between two individuals.]

Yesterday (Friday November 4, 2005), the Labor Department announced that the national unemployment rate dropped from 5.1% to 5.0%.

Good news, right? Well, some media outlets did not seem to think so.

In the 3pm PST news updates on ABC News radio and CBS News radio on Friday, anchors made the employment picture sound dim. They highlighted that the net job gain in October of 56,000 jobs was "not as many as expected." Although CBS News tagged their story with the fact that the unemployment rate had dropped, ABC News radio made no mention of this at all!

The Los Angeles Times followed suit today (Saturday November 5, 2005). The (very) bold headline on the front page of their Business section blares the negative, "Job Report Falls Short of Forecasts." You have to go well below the fold to learn of the drop in the unemployment rate.

Despite nearly being killed by her boyfriend, country singer Mindy McCready insists she still loves the scumbag.

This misguided sentiment runs so deep that she became with child well after the incident of abuse. She insists this was unintentional, of course.

This must mean she became pregnant after eating a watermelon seed or something was in the water because one does not become impregnated unexpectedly unless she wants to file charges of rape. Or perhaps, her man is so oozing with testosterone that, besides his bestial rages, he can have the impact in question from clear across a room without even touching a woman.

Since she is not bound by matrimony to this human detritus, there is nothing keeping her in this situation. Given her fame and fortune, she is perfectly free to leave whenever she wants; and given her celebrity status, it is well within the scope of her resources to acquire someone else slightly used like herself with a more amicable disposition. It’s not like she is dependent upon him as her only means of support.

Picking up on a Wednesday Washington Post story about how “the CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe,” on Inside Washington this weekend NPR’s Nina Totenberg declared her shame of her country: “We have now violated everything that we stand for. It is the first time in my life I have been ashamed of my country." Totenberg’s first thought about Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito: "We know he's very conservative." She also managed to squeeze in her near-weekly blast at tax cuts as she chided the Senate for how it “cut $35 billion from the poorest people in the country and food stamps and things like that and at the same time they're going to try to cut, boost tax, tax cuts for the wealthiest people in this country by $70 billion." In fact, the Senate proposal is only an effort to slow the rate of spending growth.

Appearing on the same show, Newsweek Assistant Managing Editor Evan Thomas asserted that Bush’s decision to dump Harriet Miers “takes him from stand-up guy to tool of the right.” Thomas urged Bush to move left and drop Rove who “is the problem because Rove's entire engine is to polarize the country.” Thomas recommended: “If he's ever going to moderate, and if he's ever going to create any kind of national unity, Rove is going to have to go."

Video of Totenberg’s “ashamed” comment, in Real or Windows Media. [UPDATE, 9:25pm EST Saturday: Version of show with ads ends seconds before Totenberg's "ashamed" remark. Details below.]

The AP proves once again that it can take a poll and create any conclusion about the findings that it wants.

So naturally, it was all doom and gloom for recent Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito in the latest AP-Ipsos poll. The headline: "Poll: Early Public Support for Alito Weak." (Via Times Argus.) Adding that "The survey put public sentiment for Alito closer to the level of early backing for the failed nomination of Harriet Miers." Interestingly enough, the AP Could have also run the headline "Early Public Opposition to Alito Weak - Fewer People Opposed to Alito than were opposed to Roberts, Miers." Obviously, the AP did not go that route.