U.S. News & World Report's idea of "news" this week is what amounts to another warmed-over press release from the folks at the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center about the far-right threat. The story's headline is: "Fighting Fire On The Right: The Feds Are Keeping An Eye on Homegrown Extremists." (Why is is always just the "Right," not even the "Far Right" or the "Kooky Right"?) It quotes the SPLC, the Anti-Defamation League, a liberal Democratic congressman, an FBI agent who specialized in infiltrating white-supremacist groups, and a bureaucratic spokesman from the Department of Homeland Security. The story hammers DHS for being soft on the right-wing threat.

Cindy Sheehan, the Vacaville, CA woman whose son was killed in Iraq in 2004, has been a major media phenomenon for the past several days since she showed up outside the President's ranch in Texas. But looking at the latest release from the AP, Grieving Mother's War Protest Draws Notice, you'd think they were breaking news.

The mother of a fallen U.S. soldier who started a quiet roadside peace vigil near President Bush's ranch last weekend is drawing supporters from across the nation. Dozens of people have joined her and others have sent flowers and food. One activist called her "the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement."

Jeanine Pirro, the attorney from Westchester County, announced that she is running in next year's Senate race against Senator Hillary Clinton. The New York Times heralded the news with the first of many, if history is a guide, hit pieces against Pirro.

Pirro's husband, Albert Pirro Jr, served time in prison for tax fraud. The Times editorial breathtakingly lectures candidate Pirro that she "should be grateful to Mrs. Clinton for demonstrating that a woman with a controversial husband can still run, win and serve in the Senate in her own right - even if an ex-felon is not exactly the same as an ex-president."

Not a word from the Times that former President William Clinton was convicted for "misleading testimony" in 2001 from Independent Counsel Robert Ray, forcing Clinton to surrender his law license for 5 years, and pay a $25,000 fine. It is common knowledge that what Clinton did was commit perjury before a Grand Jury. It is also common Knowledge that "In April 1999, U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright found Clinton in civil contempt of court for his "willful failure" to obey her repeated orders to testify truthfully in the Jones case, and fined him $90,000."

Want to find out how many Americans have died in the Iraq and
Afghanistan conflicts over the past couple of years? The number of sources available for learning such information is astonishing, and many include a list of the names of our troops killed since the invasion of Afghanistan.

A lot of websites, newspapers, and tv/radio networks are also keeping track of civilian war casualties, particularly in Iraq, however, the numbers vary widely between them, and few seem to be able to distinguish between civilian innocents and civilian terror suspects when compiling their data.

While it may come as no surprise to most people that such sources rarely include any references to enemy war casualties, what I find to be truly disturbing is that I have yet to discover one truly authoritative source for the total number of enemy combatants killed and captured over the past three years and ten months.

Sometimes it’s not what the networks report that is the problem. With global warming, it’s what they leave out. President Bush signed a pivotal climate change agreement on July 27 and the three broadcast networks totally ignored it. This pact even includes China and India, both of which were left out of Kyoto.

Instead of this agreement, CBS and ABC focused on the questionable link between climate change and allegedly more powerful hurricanes. For anyone who has followed this debate, the network treatment isn’t new, but it is amazing. For more, see Amy Menefee's article on the Free Market Project Web site.

In a rare departure from the media's template on gas price reporting, you know, raise the specter of price gouging, blaming SUVs and other "gas guzzlers," et cetera, CBS's Julie Chen actually mentioned that lack of oil refining capacity is seen by experts as one factor in high gas prices.

Chen relayed this as the second item in her 8:30 a.m. newsdesk briefing on today's edition of The Early Show.

Julie Chen: "The price of gas makes hitting the highway expensive, especially in California. In Hollywood, drivers are now paying $2.99/gallon for regular unleaded. But so far, it's not stopping people from filling up."

Unidentified man at gas station: "Three bucks a gallon isn't nice but, if it bothered me, I'd think of some way around it, right? Drive less."

NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams on Tuesday night wondered, “with many of the numbers and many economists saying the economy is in good shape in this country, the question is: Why isn't President Bush benefitting from that?” Reporter Kelly O'Donnell inadvertently provided part of the answer when she suggested the lack of public confidence in the economy is “fueled most notably by record gas prices, an issue the White House concedes overshadows other economic successes." But while gas prices are rising, they are far short a “record” high price. NBC isn’t alone in spreading this canard. On Monday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Bob Schieffer asserted that “the government reported today that gas prices jumped eight cents in the past week to a record high of $2.37 a gallon. And oil soared to another record high, today just short now of $64 a barrel." The same night, ABC anchor Charles Gibson falsely cited how the cost of gas and oil “hit new highs.”

Full August 10 CyberAlert item follows. For today's MRC CyberAlert, click here.

Chutzpah defined, as the most influential newspaper in America criticizes the Bush administration for -- get this -- insufficiently publicizing Iraqi war heroes.

Damien Cave's Sunday piece "Missing in Action: The War Heroes" opens (italics added): "One soldier fought off scores of elite Iraqi troops in a fierce defense of his outnumbered Army unit, saving dozens of American lives before he himself was killed. Another soldier helped lead a team that killed 27 insurgents who had ambushed her convoy. And then there was the marine who, after being shot, managed to tuck an enemy grenade under his stomach to save the men in his unit, dying in the process. Their names are Sgt. First Class Paul R. Smith, Sgt. Leigh Ann Hester and Sgt. Rafael Peralta. If you have never heard of them, even in a week when more than 20 marines were killed in Iraq by insurgents, that might be because the military, the White House and the culture at large have not publicized their actions with the zeal that was lavished on the heroes of World War I and World War II."

And just what might that "culture at large" consist of? Professor Cori Dauber has a lot to say about the hypocrisy of the Times: "It is beyond nerve for the New York Times to come along at this point in the war and publish a piece tsk-tsking the White House and the military for not publicizing these men and women sufficiently. I love that out, that it's 'the culture at large,' you know, 'the zeitgeist,' no names please. Well which media outlet is more important to defining the zeitgeist than any other? Which media outlet has 650 or so subscribers to its wire service? Which media outlet is read by every television producer in the country before they decide which stories are 'newsworthy?' How many articles did the Times run on Sgt. Smith? On Leigh Ann Hester? On Rafael Peralta I found none."

Times Watch has more.

        The mainstream media is silent after Planned Parenthood Golden Gate (PPGG) posted an animated video that displayed gross acts of brutality against those who wish to advance the messages of life and abstinence. In addition to its violence, the video also extended its own degree of tastelessness and disrespect. [Note: The video was removed from PPGG's site around midday, Tue. Aug. 9, 2005).]

        In the span of a few minutes, the Planned Parenthood video displays the following:

• A female "superhero for choice," named Dionysis, tells a strange-looking proponent of abstinence, "The only truth here is you're ugly, and your momma dresses you funny." The superhero then drowns the man by stuffing him upside down in a trash can full of liquid. "It looks like it's time to take out the trash," the superhero adds.
• Pro-life picketers are portrayed as very ugly looking, one of whom has awful green skin and yellow eyes.
• The superhero observes pro-life protesters (she calls them "anti-choice demonstrators") and remarks, "Mostly I wish they would just disappear." She then zaps them with a gun which covers each of the protesters with a giant condom. After a moment, each of them explodes, killing them.
• In a scene in Washington DC, the Washington Monument is completely enveloped with a giant condom (!).
• A pro-life senator is dumped in boiling green liquid and lifted out to reveal that he's naked on a plate with an apple in his mouth.
• Dionysis makes the questionable comment, "Besides, money spent now for the funding of family planning will save billions of dollars in future social expenditures." (Hmmm. Eugenics, anyone?)
• Dionysis remarks, "I have an appointment with Jerry Falwell, that schmuck."
• In the closing credits, a pro-life protester is knocked over with a condom and another is completely decapitated!

Hard to knock Today this morning for its take on the President's latest poll numbers. Today's theme? That while W's poll numbers on his handling of the economy are down, in fact the economy is up.

As Katie Couric put it: "The President's poll numbers on Iraq and economy are falling even though by all measures the economy is doing well."

Katie returned to the theme in her interview of Tim Russert: "The President's staff should be scratching their heads. In theory they have reason to crow" about the economy, yet the polls show that by a margin of 47%/41%, Americans disapprove W's handling of it.

Today went so far as to trot out a variety of statistics making the case that the economy is doing well, pointing to strong numbers on GDP growth, home ownership and home prices, and low unemployment.

A word about Paul Waldman of Media Matters for America making a big deal about the Cyber Alert item "exploiting death" by noting in passing our archive of Peter Jennings material. Not linking to it, mind you, but mentioning it. Anyone who reads the item will note it's pretty soft in tone, but apparently MMFA thinks it's unbelievably rude to "exploit" a death for political gain? But usually after someone prominent dies, their political legacy comes up for debate. They apparently missed the pile of anti-Reagan myths the media began spreading last year. Oh, and in case you're wondering, after Reagan died, it was Media Matters that began worrying that right after Reagan's death, "misinformation" surfaced that Reagan and George W. Bush had similarities. Is that exploiting death for political gain?

Matt Drudge reports:

CNN has reviewed and agreed to run a controversial ad produced by a pro-abortion group that falsely accuses Supreme Court nominee John Roberts of filing legal papers supporting a convicted clinic bomber!

The news network has agreed to a $125,000 ad buy from NARAL, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, for a commercial which depicts a bombed out 1998 Birmingham, AL abortion clinic.

The Birmingham clinic was bombed seven years after Roberts signed the legal briefing.

The linking of Roberts to "violent fringe groups" is the sharpest attack against the nominee thus far.

However, the non-partisan University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Factcheck.org reviewed the NARAL ad and found it to be “false.”

The August 9 CBS Evening News drummed up pessimism over the Iraqi government's ability to move forward with drafting a constitution, warning that "Iraqis fear brighter days may not be ahead,' and that "Many Iraqis fear it could be the next thing to blow up here." There was even a shot at President Bush in the form of a clip of an Iraqi leader who complained about being pushed to meet a deadline "because Mr. Bush wants to claim a success of his adventure in Iraq." The complete transcript is after the break.

For almost two years since the current economic expansion began to really pick up steam, impartial economists worldwide have been wondering why so many Americans seem to not believe that a recovery is even transpiring. Unfortunately, the cover-story of the Washington Post’s business section on Saturday, August 6, gives us all a perfect example of why this disconnect between perception and reality exists. 

On the surface, this story was seemingly intended to address the absolutely fabulous employment report that was released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics last Friday. However, given the party currently in power, the Post obviously felt it was more important to rain on what should have been a very delightful parade rather than stick to the facts imparted by this monthly employment survey.

Mercifully, the opening three paragraphs of this diatribe that appears to be more editorial than anything resembling a serious business piece aptly prepares the reader for the almost suffocating Chicken Little motif:

From today's (Tue. Aug. 9, 2005) New York Daily News, in an article by Greg B. Smith and Helen Kennedy:

"During her husband's trial, evidence emerged that linked Jeanine Pirro to her husband's dubious tax practices ... But the far more notorious womanizing was done by Bill Clinton, who was nearly impeached for lying about his relationships with Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky." (emphasis mine)

"Nearly impeached"?? Of course, President Clinton was impeached. He, along with President Andrew Johnson, hold this "distinction." Both were acquitted.

Today, the New York Times printed an editorial titled "One Mother in Crawford," which depicts the the protest staged by Cindy Sheehan, who's son who was killed in Iraq in April, 2004. Among a litany of charges and observations regarding Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, the Times built its editorial around the rantings of an obviously distraught woman.