Happily, NewsBusters wasn't the only conservative outlet to pick up on the Christmas Day "Meet the Press" with Tom Brokaw and Ted Koppel. The spectacle spurred columns by David Limbaugh and Jonah Goldberg. Limbaugh summarized:

"Russert was uncharacteristically tame toward these two, offering them repeated softballs concerning the past year's main stories. But the relaxed atmosphere gave us a clearer picture of the worldview these men share, which is doubtless representative of most of the Old Media players. From race and taxes to health care and Iraq, they spoke in a monolithic liberal voice, accented by its familiar air of moral superiority."

Did you know that a brave Navy Chaplain by the name of Gordon Klingenschmitt has been on a fast since December 20th?  Probably not because the coverage in the mainstream media has been very limited, if not at all.   An examination of the websites of ABC News, CBS News, and NBC News all come up with nothing.  Cable news has also barely covered this story.  Fox News has one short story, MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson had Klingenschmitt on as a guest, while CNN has completely ignored the story.

However, this story is one that needs to be shouted from the rooftops because if you’re a Christian and you believe in praying in the name of Jesus, and you believe that those military chaplains who are Christians have the right to pray in the name of Jesus, then you need to be aware of the blatant hostility and intolerance going on in the United States Navy.

On MSNBC's Countdown show Tuesday night, Keith Olbermann devoted the first segment of his show to more discussion about President Bush's impeachability over the NSA wiretapping controversy. On the December 20 show, as detailed in an earlier Newsbusters posting, substitute host Alison Stewart discussed the issue with Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer without any conservative guest to provide balance. Similarly, this time Olbermann interviewed, without rebuttal from any Bush supporter, former Nixon White House Counsel John Dean, a longtime critic of the Bush administration, who notably helped inspire Boxer's inquiries into impeachment by proclaiming to her that Bush was "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." At one point, after quoting from Dean's book, Worse than Watergate, that "terrorism presents its real threat in provoking democratic regimes to embrace and employ authoritarian measures," Olbermann concluded that it "sounds kind of like a forecast of this NSA spying story."

James Carville appeared, all alone, on the December 28^th edition of the Today. Let’s count the number of things wrong with the piece, airing at 7:15AM: During the interview, Campbell Brown questioned Carville uncritically, never challenged his assertions, and, worst of all, allowed the man to pimp his new film. Brown opened the piece this way:

"As we prepare to ring in the new year, we can’t help but wonder what big political stories will dominate in 2006. Democratic strategist James Carville is going to peer into his crystal ball this morning."

CNN’s promotion of Cindy Sheehan's anti-war crusade continued on today’s American Morning. During the show’s Top Five in ‘05 segment, anchor Carol Costello profiled ‘The Peace Mom’ who "forced the nation and President Bush to take a long, hard look at the war," as number three in their countdown. And while a billion Catholics worldwide may disagree, CNN actually ranked Sheehan’s "national movement" and "worldwide spectacle" higher than the legacy of one of the most influential religious leaders of our time, Pope John Paul II, number four on American Morning’s list.

During the mostly fluff piece on Sheehan and her "fight," one line was particularly laughable. Costello asserted, "Love Cindy Sheehan or loathe her, the one thing that was almost impossible to do in 2005 was to ignore her." CNN helped make that possible, thanks to their constant coverage of Sheehan's every move from Crawford to D.C. to her most recent trip to Britain, as reported by Newsbusters.

A full transcript from the 9:45 am segment follows below.

I know this is the week between Christmas and New Years, but did CBS really need to dig up 12 year old news to fill time this morning? The subject was commercial advertising on public school buses in Colorado Springs, an outrage pretty much contained to liberals who hate commercials and lower school taxes.

In the 7:00 half hour of Wednesday’s Early Show, host Harry Smith interviewed two guests about the growing trend of school districts selling advertising space on their school busses, and once again the Early Show is more than a decade late in reporting the controversy (Christmas Card Controversy). Elaine Naleski, Director of Communications for Colorado Springs District 11 school, told Harry Smith "Colorado Springs District 11 started putting ads on busses in 1993 and it was because they couldn't pass a tax increase of any kind..." So why is this news? Could it be that CBS wanted to put on a guest that would argue that higher taxes are the answer? Gary Ruskin of the "consumer group" Commercial Alert opposed the idea of private revenue sources and called for higher taxes when he told Smith, " The answer is for school districts to band together and to demand a partial revocation of the Bush tax cuts and send it back to schools and police and fire departments that are absolutely abjectly poor." Ruskin neglected to mention that the Federal government is spending more money than ever on education, and that spending on education has risen faster under President Bush than it had under President Clinton, nor did Harry Smith feel the need to mention that fact either.

Check out the promotional ad for this Thursday evening's (December 29, 2005) episode of ABC's Primetime. The promo is for the story, "On the Trail of Pope Joan" (audiotape on file; emphasis mine):

"Diane Sawyer takes you on the trail of a passionate mystery. Just as intriguing as The Da Vinci Code. Chasing down centuries-old clues hidden even inside the Vatican. Could a woman disguised as a man have been Pope? Thursday night. One astonishing Primetime."

It doesn't get much uglier than this, folks. Quite simply, there was never a female pope, or "Pope Joan." The tale is a complete fabrication dating back to the 13th century - nearly 400 years after the reported "reign" of the so-called "Joan." For reliable summaries of the bogus tale, see this and this. Scholars debunked the fable hundreds of years ago, and recent books (this and this, for example) have further repudiated it.

Over the centuries, the "Pope Joan" story has been used as a slanderous tool to tarnish the Catholic Church and degrade Catholics. In his acclaimed 2003 book The New Anti-Catholicism, Philip Jenkins writes, "The Pope Joan legend is a venerable staple of the anti-Catholic mythology" (page 89).

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse's Friday "news analysis" is devoted to Congress departing for its Christmas break amid the usual hectic end-of-session machinations ("A Messy Congressional Finale"). And it's all Republicans' fault.

"In the end, Republicans largely have themselves to blame for the muddled and haphazard finale of the Congressional session....At nearly every crucial turn in recent weeks, it was a group of Republicans, painfully aware of President Bush's decline in popularity, who broke from the White House and the party leadership in the House and Senate and forced concessions in major legislation or stalled it until the bitter end."

[This article was reprinted at length and with favor in "Inside Politics" in the Washington Times today (Thursday).]

A poll by Rasmussen Reports today (Wednesday) illustrates the pervasive dishonesty of the American press in dealing with the NY Times story about the National Security Agency’s (NSA) intercepts of international communications. There are both minor dishonesties and major ones in this story as first reported by the Times and later a gaggle of reports throughout the media.

The major dishonesties are demonstrated by the two questions asked in the Rasmussen poll just reported. Here’s the first, and the responses:

Should the National Security Agency be allowed to intercept telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States? Yes 64% No 23%

The key fact is that these conversations cross international boundaries. Many parts of the MSM persist in calling this “domestic” spying. This is a lie. These calls are international, not domestic.

Here’s the second question and the responses:

Is President Bush the first President to authorize a program for intercepting telephone conversations between terrorism suspects in other countries and people living in the United States? Yes 26% No 48%

New York Times writer John Leland reviews the growing phenomenon of Christian film criticism -- and how it now both evaluates the artistic and moral content. While it's nice to see the Times notice and even publicize conservative cultural efforts, Leland still employs the notion that the permissive liberal critics represent the "mainstream" of the media. They love the gay-cowboy flick "Brokeback Mountain," while the conservatives are cooler to it:

"Brokeback Mountain" has received overwhelming acclaim from mainstream critics, but elicited a different reaction from conservative Christian media: respectful and often laudatory, but finding biblical fault with the film's content."

According to the note at the bottom of his column, "John Merrow . . . reports on education for The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS." [Emphasis added]

"Reports"? Then what was Merrow [pictured right] doing writing an op-ed opinion column distributed nationally by the Christian Science Monitor?

And what was the gist of Merrow's opinion piece, entitled "We need the voices of America's college presidents?" That America's college presidents aren't spending enough time being advocates for liberal causes.

Oh, to be sure, Merrow didn't quite put it in those terms. But it didn't take much reading between the lines to understand what kind of advocacy Merrow had in mind.

As a follow-up to today's NewsBusters posting on MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who on his December 27 Countdown show made a comparison between the radio show of conservative host Janet Parshall and an "Al-Qaeda Show on Al-Jazeera talking about infidels," a further example of Olbermann's hostility to religion occurred on his November 23 show. On his Countdown show on Wednesday November 23, the MSNBC host attacked proponents of intelligent design theory, which he labeled as "nonsense," and compared its supporters to those who believed the world is flat and who supported burning scientists at the stake.

During his "Worst Person in the World" segment, in which the Countdown host normally lists three nominees for the dishonor of the same name, Olbermann awarded the top dishonor to "those fine folks behind the intelligent design nonsense" because corporate sponsors refused to donate to an exhibition devoted to Charles Darwin in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He then mocked those who "dreamt up intelligent design" as "the same people who brought you 'the world is flat, the earth is at the center of the universe, and let's burn a scientist at the stake today.'" A complete transcript of the relevant portion of the November 23 Countdown show follows:

On Tuesday night's Countdown show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann launched his latest attacks on FNC's Bill O'Reilly and John Gibson, at one point saying O'Reilly is "one of those blissful idiots who can rationalize anything." Olbermann also indirectly called Gibson "functionally stupid" by contrasting him with O'Reilly, saying that O'Reilly "is not so functionally stupid as to deny things that are preserved on tape, which is what Mr. Gibson is doing." After playing a clip of Gibson from Janet Parshall's radio show in which Gibson mentioned the concept that religious people should tolerate people of other religions and leave any judgements as to whose religion is wrong to God, Olbermann took exception with some of Gibson's and Parshall's comments and compared the show to "an all-access Al-Qaeda show on Al-Jazeera talking about infidels." Olbermann ended up calling on Gibson to "leave the airwaves for good" because he has "forfeited his right to stay here."

As the economy has improved, President Bush's association with its results has decreased, and now has virtually disappeared.

Good economic news has poured out as if from a geyser during the past couple of weeks: consumer confidence, GDP growth, Christmas retail sales, unemployment, durable goods, the booming online sales, just to scratch the surface.

Not coincidentally, in my opinion, the term "Bush Economy," which had been fairly prevalent in 2002 and 2003, has gone AWOL, especially in the three weeks since the President's December 5 North Carolina speech praising the economy's performance.

A Google News search on "Bush Economy" (in quotes) for the past 30 days done just before midnight Eastern Time on December 27 yielded a grand total of thirty results.

Click on the link to see the latest results. When I did the search, only five of them were dated after December 8, and one of them (from CNN) referred to a "Reggie Bush Economy" (after college football's Heisman Trophy winner). None of the remaining four results were from a major media outlet.

Ombudsman Deborah Howell put more work into her column about a Nov. 4 military recruiting story than the reporter did in the story itself, Youths in Rural U.S. Drawn To Military by Ann Scott Tyson. But first, some background.

The subhed of that story is closer to its spirit, Recruits' Job Worries Outweigh War Fears; basically the military is exploiting poor rural youth by disproportionately recruiting them. This is the spin you'd expect from the National Priorities Project, which has been campaigning against the war for a long time and is anything but how Tyson described it: "a nonpartisan research group that analyzed 2004 recruiting data by Zip code." In fact, it analyzed data in a joint project with Peacework Magazine, which filed a FOIA request for the data and handed over analysis and distribution to NPP, whose Cost of War Clock ticks merrily along. Oddly enough, Tyson did not include these and many other items about the nonpartisan National Priorites Project. I blogged about it on Nov. 4 when Tyson's story came out, and on Dec. 5 when Howell agreed, in a column, that NPP could have been described as "liberal leaning."