Keith Olbermann accuses FOX News host Bill O'Reilly of doing a wrap up of his "rants and distortions" last week, however Olbermann's distortions have been well documented by me and many others at NewsBusters.

Olbermann plays the clip of the O'Reilly saying that the 4am rerun of The Factor beats Countdown 50% of the time. He claims that O'Reilly's viewers aren't bright people and follow him like sheep with a comparison to "800 billion flies". He ended his verbal attack on O'Reilly by calling him "one of those blissful idiots who can rationalize anything".

Keith spends the rest of the segment lambasting another FOX News host, John Gibson. Olbermann lashes Gibson for making what he called a "functionally stupid" mistake when he denied things that were caught on tape about a remark he [Gibson] made about his religion. He then went on to suggest that Gibson should resign.

For kicks: On Tuesday, Dec. 20, O'Reilly had 2,807,000 viewers while Olbermann had 405,000 during the 8pm Eastern hour.

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On October 7, 1970 the newspaper reported: "Black militant Ron Karenga was arrested with three of his followers today on charges he tortured two young women with a soldering iron and a vise. . .Investigators said the women were held at gunpoint, forced to disrobe and were beaten. At one point, it was charged, Karenga forced a hot soldering iron inside the mouth of one of the victims while the other woman's toe was squeezed in a vise."

Associated Press education writer Ben Feller tackles the question of how Bill Clinton's impeachment is being handled in high school textbooks. The quick answer: with quite a bit of euphemism and some sad editorializing.

Middle school texts describe it as "a personal relationship between the president and a White House intern." In high school books, it is Clinton's "improper relationship with a young White House intern," or Clinton "denied having sexual relations" with an intern. Students don't need the bawdy details to grasp the impeachment struggle, said Allan Lichtman, a presidential historian and professor at American University. 

As Michael's blog mentions, this is CBS reporter Kelly Cobiella's depressing story from Iraq this morning, another attempt to record new victories for the efficient terrorists:

"The final election results from the December 15 election still aren't in, but the preliminary numbers have sparked massive protests and a new wave of violence. Thousands of angry protestors marched in the streets of Baghdad demanding new elections under United Nations supervision, they say the religious Shiite coalition has stolen the mid-December vote; they're threatening to boycott the new parliament if they don't see a change. As many here feared, the election results are already sparking a new wave of sectarian violence across the country -- a pipeline up in flames, a well-coordinated attack on an Iraqi checkpoint in Baqouba, and six blasts which rocked Baghdad.

On Tuesday morning’s Early Show on CBS, host Harry Smith continued to spread media pessimism about the situation in Iraq while interviewing Michael O’Hanlon from the left leaning Brookings Institution in the 7:00 half hour. Smith began the interview by asking O’Hanlon about the return of violence in Iraq, "We just watched this piece with Kelly Cobiella, there had been this peace, this lull, this sort of seeming cessation of violence during the election period and for awhile, the violence is back again, there are lines at gas stations because the price of gas has gone up in Iraq, it seems a little bit like business as usual has returned there, what do you make of this?" Smith later expressed his doubts about democracy in Iraq and their future ability to establish a government, "people are encouraged to participate in this democracy, can they form a government was the question we were asking a couple of weeks ago, do you see any signs that this is actually going to take place?"

The Wall Street Journal’s Stephanie Kang and the New York Times’s Michael Barbaro today used similar language to describe the retail shopping season as so-so. But buried deeper in Kang’s story were facts which undercut her argument and Barbaro admittedly relied on “anecdotal reports,” mainly from recently transit-strike-plagued Manhattan, to sell his story.

Barbaro opened his December 27 article noting that “Many retailers hoping for a big finish to the holiday season instead had lighter-than-expected crowds over the long Christmas weekend, according to anecdotal reports, leaving stores to rely heavily on the next few days to pump up December sales.”