After leading their evening newscasts with Democratic Congressman John Murtha’s call for a withdrawal from Iraq, the ABC and CBS shows on Tuesday skipped Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman’s disclosure that, after a recent trip to Iraq, he saw "real progress" and argued against withdrawing troops. The NBC Nightly News merely gave Lieberman a brief soundbite. But on Wednesday’s Tonight Show on NBC, Jay Leno raised the perspective of the 2000 Democratic Party’s vice presidential candidate with Howard Dean, the Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Leno characterized Lieberman’s position as one which “more or less agrees with the President” as he pressed Dean: “How about Joe Lieberman now? Obviously a prominent Democrat....He came back, and he's been there a few times to Iraq. And he more or less agrees with the President, correct?" Dean, who dismissed Bush’s speech as “repetitive dribble,” began his answer: “Everybody gets to march to their own drummer in this party...” (Transcript of the exchange follows.)

In the years before and during World War 2, Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbles, initiated a campaign he referred to as the "CONSTANT DRIZZLE". Put quite simply, the plan was to indoctrinate the population by a constant drizzle of propaganda repeated every day of every week of every month of every year via radio, movies, documentaries, newsreels, newspapers, books and pamphlets. In the beginning, it wasn't a deluge, just a subtle message drizzled in day and night. As time progressed, and the audience was being bent, the message became more and more overt.The concept, as we know, was, unfortunately, very effective in bending the will of the German populace to accept the unacceptable and to be complacent in the face of horror. It didn't happen overnight, it took a few years to take hold. It was, to say the least, insidious, its results, horrific. That is why we, as a people, have to be ever alert to and conscious of insidious propaganda being directed at us.

Must see TV this weekend: The MRC's Brent Bozell talks to fired CBS News producer Mary Mapes this Saturday on C-SPAN2's "After Words."

From the C-SPAN web site:

"This week on 'After Words' journalist Mary Mapes explains her investigative story on George W. Bush's National Guard record that aired on 60 Minutes II. Her new book about the experience is titled Truth and Duty: The Press, The President, and the Privilege of Power. Ms. Mapes tells her version of the controversy over the segment, and the ensuing internal investigation at CBS that led to Dan Rather's resignation as anchor of "CBS Evening News," and her own dismissal. She is interviewed by Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center."

The hour-long session, taped Thursday afternoon, airs Saturday, December 3 at 8pm EST and repeats Sunday at 6pm EST and 9pm EST on C-SPAN2. We'll have a live thread Saturday night. UPDATE, 3am EST Sunday: See this node for two video clips.

After rejecting overtures from CBS earlier this year, Katie Couric is being actively courted by new CBS News president Sean McManus, the L.A. Times reports:

While the 48-year-old morning host is contemplating the offer, sources said, it's unclear whether she can formally negotiate a new job until her NBC contract expires in May.

NBC News President Steve Capus said the network hopes to hold on to Couric, who has been the face of the "Today" show for almost 15 years. He called the growing speculation about her next step "premature." [...]

CBS Chairman Leslie Moonves had unsuccessfully tried to lure Couric away last spring when Dan Rather left the anchor desk. Since then, veteran Washington correspondent Bob Schieffer has served as interim anchor of the evening newscast, a stint he expected would only last a few months, while network executives pondered how to remake the show.

When McManus replaced news President Andrew Heyward in October, he announced that one of his immediate goals was to court new talent to the network. Couric has been his top priority, sources said, with the news president offering her "the moon" to come aboard.

If the question posed by the title of this post seems a little macabre, it nevertheless must be asked, thanks to either the FBI or Joel Hinrichs, Sr., father of the University of Oklahoma student who blew himself up just outside the school's football stadium during the OU-Kansas State game Oct. 1.

Here's why:

Hinrichs Sr. told The Sunday Oklahoman that, when he was informed by investigators Oct. 15 of an alleged suicide note left by his son, the FBI also showed him "photos of his son's headless body." (I can't provide a link to the Oct. 16 article because it is only available via a paid search of the paper's digital archives.) Hinrichs Sr. said he plans to cremate his sons remains when they are finally turned over to him by federal authorities.

But in the FBI's search warrant documents unsealed last week by a federal judge, we find a completely different description of the condition of Hinrichs' body following the explosion that killed him while sitting on a bench during the second quarter of the game.

CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday night speculated about whether America has reached a Walter Cronkite Vietnam war assessment "tipping point" as Cooper set up a laudatory profile of anti-war Republican Congressman Walter Jones. After an ad break, Cooper went to Christiane Amanpour who asked French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin if he feels his anti-war efforts have now been "vindicated?" Cooper recalled: "On hearing Walter Cronkite say the war in Vietnam had reached a stalemate after the Tet offensive, President Lyndon Johnson famously said, 'If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost middle America.' Fast forward thirty-seven years, there's no Walter Cronkite to speak for middle America, but reporting from middle America, from a congressional district where support for the military and the President traditionally runs high, we do have CNN's John King." King described Jones' "dramatic transformation" against the war and highlighted a pro-war veteran as well as a retired Marine Colonel who declared: "I'm more convinced than ever that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld will be the Republicans' Robert S. McNamara." King then contended: "Such talk in a patriotic place like this is telling."

In the next segment of Anderson Cooper 360, Amanpour sat down with the anti-war de Villepin, who as "France's Foreign Minister, was way out in front voicing French dissent." Amanpour cued him up: "You obviously did not support it, and you raised many of the issues that are currently unfolding there right now. What do you think? Do you feel vindicated when you look at what Iraq is going through right now?" Amanpour soon relayed de Villepin's shot at violence in the U.S.: "And on France's fiery unrest, two weeks of rioting by French youths of African and Arab origin, de Villepin admits these people do face discrimination, but he downplays the violence compared to what's happened in the U.S." (Transcripts of both stories follow.)

The Today Show was more fun!  Lauer interviewed old Whatsisname - Heinz' roommate.  He at least was able to speak without  obviously reading his questions.

Then followed Miss Kitty interviewing Mary Matalin.  She had to read her stuff very carefully, but Mary calmly trampled her ad lib.  Perhaps if Billery gets the nomination we should push for Mary Matalin to run against her.  Mary's terrific!

Why do I watch the Today Show??  Because it pays to know what the enemy is saying and because Uncle Ted and company are using them like puppets on a string - and because most of the Media "analysts" don't even suspect that they may be helping Dubya's cause.

Bill Moyers, the departed PBS host who has repeatedly condemned the Bush Administration for its support of the Patriot Act for allegedly being too intrusive in Americans' lives apparently has some experience in the matter.

In a column released today, Robert Novak reveals that during the 1964 presidential campaign while working for Lyndon Johnson, Moyers asked FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to dig dirt on a rival presidential campaign:

Even worse than "dirt collection," [federal judge Laurence Silberman] continued, was Hoover's offering of Bureau files to presidents. He exempted only Harry S. Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower from this use of FBI files, but said, "Lyndon Johnson was the most demanding."

When President Johnson's aide Walter Jenkins was arrested for homosexual conduct in a men's room during the 1964 campaign, Silberman said, LBJ aide Bill Moyers directed Hoover to find similar conduct on Barry Goldwater's staff. "Moyers' memo to the FBI was in one of the files," he continued. An "outraged" Moyers telephoned Silberman, he said, to assert that the memo was "phony." "Taken aback," said Silberman, he offered an investigation to publicly exonerate Moyers. "There was a pause on the line, and then he [Moyers] said, 'I was very young. How will I explain this to my children?'" "Silberman's account of our conversation is at odds with mine," Moyers told me when I asked for comment.

Link away, folks.

Yesterday afternoon the Washington Post filed to its website a quick take on Bush's speech to the Naval Academy on Iraq, including the president's emotional quotation from a letter found on the laptop of Marine Cpl. Jeffrey Starr, six months to the day after his death in a firefight in Ramadi.

"Reading from a letter written by a U.S. soldier on his lap-top computer before his death, an emotional Bush said America owes those who have died in Iraq to 'take up their mantle, carry on the fight and complete their mission.'"

By contrast, the Times online story from Christine Hauser made no mention of Starr's letter. Perhaps one reason why: As Michelle Malkin first learned, The New York Times quoted Starr's letter in a story last month, but managed to miss the point, leaving off the very part Starr's family and President Bush found significant.

The proliferation of trolls and off-topic ranters has reached a level where some serious moderation is needed.

Equally undesirable are the parrots, (who repeat a particular point ad nauseum), the fanboys (whose (usually) vulgar cheerleading merely takes up space), and the gainsayers who are just boring.

It's time to boot some jerks, set some rules, and bring this site back to some sort of civility.

Kudos to Washington Post columnist in reporter's clothing Dana Milbank today for his piece on the abortion debate outside the Supreme Court yesterday. It's not that it doesn't contain his usual liberal flavor, but that he quotes the protesters of both sides for readers to hear:

"Over 47 million of America's finest have fallen at the hand of Roe v. Wade !" shouted Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "You're out here to kill kids!" another demonstrator, Joan McKee, shouted. The women from NOW answered the antiabortion taunts with pep-rally chants. "Pro-life? That's a lie! You don't care if women die!" And: "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. Right-wing judges, go away!"

Sometimes even Marxists get it right, and no, I'm not speaking of John Kerry. It was Karl Marx himself who famously said "history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”

To judge by his treatment at the hands of Matt Lauer this morning, John Kerry: Part Deux teeters on the brink of being dismissed as farce even by his quondam comrades in the MSM.

Kerry was in to offer his critique of Pres. Bush's speech of yesterday in which he laid out his plan for victory in Iraq.

When Kerry argued that "the insurgency has to be dealt with through a political reconciliation," Lauer cut him off peremptorily. "With all due respect," interrupted Lauer, not-so-subtle code for "not much respect is due."  Lauer pointed out that "the President talked about the political process as well and laid that out in his plan for victory."

You know those new hostages in Iraq? The ones whom the Washington Post describes as working for a "peace" group? You know, the one with lots of experience going into war zones?

The Chicago-based organization - supported by several Protestant denominations that believe Christianity forbids all war-making and violence - has sent activists into war zones, including Bosnia and Haiti, since the late 1980s. It has about 160 members around the world and about a dozen in Iraq.

Turns out they've got lots of experience in one particular war zone that the AP doesn't bother to mention:

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.