According to CNSNews.com, a number of New Zealand airlines will not allow unaccompanied children to sit next to men on flights claiming this prevents the danger of potential molestation.

In light of the increasing number of female teachers that can't seem to keep their pants on around their students, shouldn’t women be treated in a similar manner?

The real threat to children are the parents that let their little ones saunter across the country and around the globe unchaperoned.

So instead of treating innocent passengers as deviants, perhaps regulations should be promulgated forbidding children from flying unattended.

But then again such rules would impinge upon the single parent and other related rackets that insist it is everybody's responsibility but their own to look out for the best interests of their progeny.

WHY MOMMY IS A DEMOCRAT A different kind of children's book.

Why Mommy is a Democrat brings to life the core values of the Democratic party in ways that young children will easily understand and thoroughly enjoy. Using plain and non-judgmental language, along with warm and whimsical illustrations, this colorful 28-page paperback depicts the Democratic principles of fairness, tolerance, peace, and concern for the well-being of others. It's a great way for parents to gently communicate their commitment to these principles and explain their support for the party.

Why Mommy is a Democrat may look like a traditional children's book, but it definitely isn't just for children. With numerous subtle (and not-so-subtle) satirical swipes at the Bush administration and the Republican party,Why Mommy will appeal to Democrats of all ages!

She will not be around long if she does not at least show some respect the office of the President (and First Lady).  Was she trying to make the President of ABC think she had guts?  Maybe she does, but she does not have brains......or class.

The San Francisco Chronicle created a comic today to suggest what it would look like if al Qaeda planted propaganda stories in US newspapers. This is evidently a take on the recent story of the US using the means necessary to do what needs to be done in Iraq.

Let me be the first to suggest al Qaeda doesn't need to; MSM is doing just fine on their own. But seriously, if they were to plant stories the headlines might read like this:

• We’re on a road to nowhere - Huffington Post
• Prisons of Darkness - The Villiage Voice
• The Insurgencies Are Winning - Tom Paine
• Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces - New York Times
• Taking on torture: Vermonter arrested while protesting U.S. military school - Vermont Guardian
• Democrat asserts that Army is 'broken' - Boston Globe

Ken Shepherd alerted me to a story ABC's Dan Harris did on "World News Tonight" on evangelical Christian sensation Rick Warren ("The Purpose-Driven Life") and his new passion for an AIDS ministry. This Harris sentence really stuck out: "He's urging them to start serving people with HIV/AIDS — a disease that many evangelicals have either long ignored or called God's punishment of gays."

Harris doesn't provide any evidence for this broad-brush attack, this alleged apathy and ill will on the part of evangelical Christians -- just the anecdotal evidence that Warren seems quite contrite about not having done enough until now. He underlined the notion that Christians are behind the curve with an affirming quote from Dr. John Green of the liberal Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life: "For many years, evangelicals have claimed that they hate sin but love the sinner. Now here's an example where they're starting to live that out." They're just starting to have compassion. No one offering a counterpoint is aired.

Start your engines...

Exactly one year ago tonight (Friday), Brian Williams took over the NBC Nightly News after Tom Brokaw’s 21-year run as anchor. Of the three men who dominated network news during the 1980s and 90s, Brokaw wasn’t the most biased, but he still reflected the liberal prejudices of his profession.

A year later, the same could be said of Brian Williams. Bob Schieffer’s CBS Evening News is no friendlier to conservatives than Dan Rather’s Evening News, and the medley of ABC anchors who have replaced Peter Jennings haven’t altered World News Tonight’s liberal slant. Indeed, the only big change in network news content in 2005 has been a continuation of the move towards softer, general interest stories and away from more serious topics like U.S. politics and foreign news, a trend that’s been underway for years.

Strident debate seems to rage today about freedom versus democracy.  Some seem to think America should be fighting for and attempting to establish freedom in the Middle East, especially Iraq, as opposed to establishing democracy.

To me, freedom is simply the result one can gain from a democracy or a representative republic.  There has never been much freedom granted under any other type of government.

If we do not fight for democracy, we deny any opportunity of freedom in the future.  Without democracy, dictatorship or oligarchy is likely.
 And, history shows, the granting of freedom(s) under autocracies is the exception rather than the rule.

A democracy or a republic is simply the gateway to freedom; it never guaranties freedom.  But no other form of government offers such a gateway. Whether people choose to use the gateway depends on their own personal will and desire for freedom.  It is a choice people make and pursue—as did the founding fathers of this country.

The New York Times claims "An American-backed program appears to defy the basic tenets of freedom of the press" as it continues to play catch-up to the Los Angeles Times, which had the dubious honor of breaking the story of the Pentagon-led PR-journalism campaign in support of the U.S. effort in Iraq.

On Friday, NYT reportrs Eric Schmitt and David Cloud file "Senate Summons Pentagon To Explain Effort to Plant Reports in Iraqi News Media." The text box: "An American-backed program appears to defy the basic tenets of freedom of the press."

As has been reported by NewsBusters before, the mainstream media largely ignore the polling work of Scott Rasmussen. Certainly, it is quite unlikely they will report polling data that he just released concerning how Americans feel the War on Terror is going:

“December 2, 2005--Confidence in the War on Terror is up sharply compared to a month ago. Forty-eight percent (48%)  Americans now believe the U.S. and its Allies are winning. That's up nine points from 39% a month ago and represents the highest level of confidence measured in 2005.

“Just 28% now believe the terrorists are winning, down six points from 34% a month ago. The survey was conducted on Wednesday and Thursday night following the President's speech outlining his strategy in Iraq.”

As is typical, these sentiments are much different depending on party affiliation:

Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan (pronounce that zhiv-AHN, darlings) has drawn great attention to herself in the last five years by writing about the fashions of America's top politicians, often with a nasty edge toward conservatives and a thoroughly enraptured take toward liberals. But today's column is a wonder. She can trash Katherine Harris, and Dick Cheney, and John Bolton. But you have to hand it to Saddam. He's a fashion plate. The title is "The Dictator, Dressing Down the West." Make that "former dictator," thanks. He reminds her of Sinatra in Vegas. He was...

I kept waiting for some stern guy from the ACLU to show up. Maybe a Multi-Cultural Sensitivity Trainer from a nearby college.

But, lo and behold, I waited in vain, as the Today show aired a segment this morning on the Christmas Tree controversy sweeping the nation that was strongly . . . pro-Christmas Tree!

Matt Lauer introduced Tucker Carlson of MSNBC, who narrated the segment. And while the bow-tie bedecked Carlson is no Pat Buchanan when it comes to the culture wars, he's at least the MSM's idea of a conservative.

Carlson said Christian conservatives see "secular forces trying to take the Christ out of Christmas," and observed that "this year they are fighting back."

On Thursday night's CBS Evening News, while filing a story about a "change in tone" by the Bush administration that is "an answer to critics who claim the President won't acknowledge errors or learn from them," correspondent John Roberts distorted soundbites by both President Bush and Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace to boost Roberts' story theme which implied that the administration is finally admitting to mistakes in conducting the war in Iraq. Remarks by both men were characterized by Roberts as part of a "campaign of contrition."

In Pace's remarks, made in a speech at the National Defense University on Thursday December 1, the Joint Chiefs Chairman, rather than admitting to any mistakes in conducting the war, merely lamented that military people like him "have not articulated well enough" positive developments "in Iraq and in Afghanistan" to the American public to combat negative portrayals by the media. Roberts, evidently desperate to find something in Pace's speech he could characterize as "admitting mistakes," ignored the overall positive theme of the speech that much progress has been made in Iraq, and zeroed in on the rare self-critical remark Pace made in the speech.

For the AP, there's never a lost opportunity to turn Iraq into Vietnam. Now, Saddam's WMDs are the same thing as the Gulf of Tonkin, only worse:

WASHINGTON - A spy-agency analysis released Thursday contends a second attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened, casting further doubt on the leading rationale for escalation of the Vietnam War.

Much as faulty U.S. intelligence preceded the invasion of Iraq, the mishandling of intercepted communications 40 years earlier is blamed in the National Security Agency paper for giving President Johnson carte blanche in the conflict.

There's more than one parallel here, and it goes to the blinders the AP is wearing when it reports on either war. The idea that America was going to go to war over the Gulf of Tonkin alone is absurd. Unless there was a much more serious threat, like the notion that Communists were going to overrun southeast Asia (which they did), a couple of bullet holes in the side of a ship weren't going to goad this country into a 10-year, 500,000-man commitment half a world away.

The media’s pessimistic holiday shopping forecasts fail to register with reality.

Don't miss my latest at the Free Market Project:  Contrary to the media’s pessimistic forecasts for the Christmas shopping season reported by the Free Market Project in late October, strong retail sales this Thanksgiving weekend got the annual end-of-the-year buying bonanza off to a bang. In fact, the economic data available prior to this weekend looked so strong that the National Retail Federation, the world’s largest retail trade association, actually raised its sales forecast for 2005 holiday shopping from a 5 percent year-over-year increase to 6 percent.

Regardless of this upgrade in expectations by retailers themselves, and the fabulous start to the shopping season, the media continued to rain on everybody’s parade.

On this evening's (December 1, 2005) edition of Fox News' Hannity and Colmes, Alan Colmes misleadingly suggested that many or all of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were "destroyed by Bill Clinton."

COLMES: ... And Bill Clinton and his pinpoint bombing in the Iraqi facilities in 1998 destroyed many of those weapons that President Bush and Cheney said were there.

GEN. TOMMY FRANKS (guest): I also want to point out, there was little doubt in David Kay's mind that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. I think we all know that he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people.

COLMES: But they were destroyed by Bill Clinton.

Colmes did initially say "many" of Iraq's WMD were destroyed (a problematic claim in its own right), but his response to Gen. Franks clearly implied that Clinton's 1998 strikes eliminated Saddam's WMD. Unfortunately, Colmes echoes a common deceptive talking point. The whole truth? David Kay has stated that he believes that the 1998 Desert Fox strikes simply played a contributing role in dismantling Saddam's chemical weapons. ("Information found to date suggests that Iraq's large-scale capability to develop, produce, and fill new CW munitions was reduced -- if not entirely destroyed -- during Operations Desert Storm and Desert Fox, 13 years of UN sanctions and UN inspections." [link to Kay text]) Biological weapons and nuclear weapons are an entirely different matter. In Kay's 2003 speech, he mentions no such destruction of these weapons as the result of Desert Fox. (In fact, "We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002.")