On Tuesday night, ABC's World News Tonight ran a report placing some of the blame for high gas prices on government regulations that make it difficult to build new refineries in a timely manner. Charles Gibson introduced the piece by noting that since 1981, "the number of refineries [in the U.S.] has fallen by more than half."

Betsy Stark did start her piece on an anti-business note, saying that "refiners are a pretty content group right now" who are "making record profits" and are "under growing pressure to spend some of those profits on new refineries," but she later outlined the difficulty of building a new refinery in Arizona: "It's taken five years to get the air quality permits. The site had to be moved from Phoenix to Yuma for environmental reasons. And after a decade of planning, they still haven't broken ground." Stark ended the story by noting that many Americans also oppose building refineries in their neighborhoods, the "not in my backyard" syndrome. A complete transcript of the story follows:

Credit the New York Times for getting the biggest Able Danger interview to date.

The August 16th edition of the paper reveals allegations from one of Congressman Weldon's primary sources, a man now identified as Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. Shaffer stepped forward to add weight to the story he had already told Weldon and staffers from the 9/11 Commission.

As interesting a story as it is, it's incomplete. The Times omits a very important details in the timeline.

In a statement issued last week, the leaders of the Sept. 11 commission said the panel had concluded that the intelligence program "did not turn out to be historically significant." The statement said that while the commission did learn about Able Danger in 2003 and immediately requested Pentagon files about the program, none of the documents turned over by the Defense Department referred to Mr. Atta or any of the other hijackers.

In a piece on the passing of Ebony publisher John H. Johnson, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts writes that Mr. Johnson, "codified African-American dreams between glossy four-color covers. And because he showed us ourselves as doers, achievers and people of worth."

Well, not always. For years, Ebony published a list of the 100 most influential black Americans. For years, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas didn't make that list. Certainly one of the nine highest judicial officers in the Nation should have qualified. Justice Thurgood Marshall did.

Justice Thomas wasn't included because he's considered a conservative. In 2000, Ebony asked: "Why does it appear that he consistently votes for issues supported by racists and archconservatives, and opposed by white liberals and almost all blacks?"

Apparently, someone at CBSNews.com doesn't think much of President Bush's annual summer trip to his home in Crawford, Texas.

In a (now-edited) story about how some area residents don't like all the out-of-towners coming into the area to protest, someone wrote the following:

Sheehan has vowed to continue her Texas vigil through the rest of President Bush's vacation ugh Bush's August vacation, unless he meets with her. She began her protest 10 days ago and has since been joined by more than 100 anti-war activists.

Hat tip: James Taranto of the WSJ's Best of the Web.

Last week Brent Baker posted a preview of an episode of FX’s new sit-com, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia entitled “Charlie Wants an Abortion.” This episode will re-air Wednesday night at 11:00pm EDT, but check local listings for other dates and times.

While the idea of men using abortion rallies to find dates is appalling in general, at first the show comes at the issue from both sides. Towards the end of the show, however, there is a definite turning point. (video available: Windows Media, Real Media) From that point on, the pro-life side is depicted as irrational, radical and angry while the pro-choice side is shown as being rational, normal and fairly calm.

I have been struck by the way the same network reporters who tripped all over themselves to suggest "Bush knew" about 9/11 in advance and could possibly have prevented the whole thing are practically mute on Congressman Curt Weldon's charge -- seconded by a U.S. military intelligence official -- that civilian law enforcement agencies felt they could not act when the military figured out that Mohommed Atta and three other men were al Qaeda operatives in the U.S.

Could the networks' unenthusiastic approach be because the lapses Weldon is talking about happened during the Clinton era?

This afternoon I put together a Media Reality Check fax report laying out the ways the TV networks approached both stories. The network piece that really struck me as most over the top was one by CBS's Michelle Miller for the April 12, 2004 Early Show, who showed off a widow who insisted her husband (in Miller's paraphrase) “might have escaped the 76th floor of the South Tower, she says, if key facts in the August 6th memo were released to the public.”

The Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday that it is once again reducing its estimate for the fiscal 2005 federal budget deficit due to a surprise windfall of tax revenues, especially from corporations. However, our press seems to be doing whatever it can to once again make up look like down, good look like bad, and an improving condition look like the onset of cancer.

For instance, today's Los Angeles Times column by Joel Havemann states:

"A windfall of tax revenue, especially from corporations, has substantially brightened the short-term budget outlook, but beyond this year the deficit is still an unsolved problem, the Congressional Budget Office reported Monday."

The Post backing down on providing a little free ad space to a September 11 memorial walk for the employees murdered in the Pentagon is fascinating. They should put out a statement: "The Washington Post Company greatly regrets its support for the "Freedom Walk." We did not mean in any way to suggest that we are in favor of either freedom or America."

Jokes aside, it's amusing to see Post science reporter Rick Weiss acting distressed for Editor & Publisher in his role as the paper's Newspaper Guild hack. The paper cannot support the walk since it would not allow the paper to maintain "its appearance of neutrality on polarizing issues of policy." Mm-hmm. In an earlier piece, Weiss complained, "It is dismaying, to say the least, that I can be fired for participating in a peace march while my employer feels free to co-sponsor an event that so blatantly beats the drum of war." Doesn't that tend to compromise Weiss's "appearance of neutrality"?

Unlike last week's brief but welcome departure from biased coverage on gas prices, CBS's Early Show was back to form with its biased reporting today, this time with correspondent Mark Strassmann faulting businesses for factoring higher gas prices into the price of goods and services: "And as prices keep going up, more businesses want customers, want you, to pay fuel surcharges, as if paying for your gas wasn't enough, now you're expected to pay for other people's."

Of course, it shouldn't have to take a brilliant economist to tell Strassmann that all businesses always pass on all their input costs to consumers in the final price of their goods and services, including the costs of fuel as well as wages, health care, taxes, and regulation, and that if not for a separate "surcharge," the additional fuel cost would just be factored and hidden into the "regular" price.

Read the entire transcript below:

The Washington Post has pulled its support for the Pentagon's Sept. 11th Freedom Walk:

"The newspaper notified the Department of Defense that it would no longer donate public service advertising space to help promote the Freedom Walk, an event planned for Sept. 11. At the conclusion of the procession from the Pentagon to the Mall, there will be a performance by country star Clint Black, who recorded the song “I Raq and Roll.”

“As it appears that this event could become politicized, The Post has decided to honor the Washington area victims of 9/11 by making a contribution directly to the Pentagon Memorial Fund,” said Eric Grant, a Post spokesman. “It is The Post’s practice to avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of The Post’s news coverage.”

ABC’s quick-cut radio news broadcasts, two minutes or less of content dropped in at the hour and half hour on thousands of stations across the country, reduces the key content of any given media day to one or two stories. That’ll be the message most of the country gets, because that’s how most of the country gets its news. So language is significant.

Yesterday, I heard ABC describe the Japanese surrender as having taken place on "a battleship in Tokyo Bay." That may be the first time I’ve ever heard the occasion described without a reference to "the battleship Missouri." Don’t have to go into a lot of detail about the Mighty Mo, just a nod to the name will do. But at some news desk somewhere up in ABC New York, some writer or editor took a blue pencil to "Missouri" – or never wrote it in the first place.

Anti-Bush mom Cindy Sheehan praised the media coverage journalists have granted her.

According to the Dallas Morning News, during a news conference to introduce other military families against the war, Sheehan remarked, "The media attention has been fabulous."

She has nothing to complain about, as the media would rather cover her than those with a different message.

Sheehan added, "We have finally gotten this war back on the front page and back in the headline news where it belongs."

It is not clear whom she means when she says "we," but it is obvious that a huge portion of that "we" is made up of liberal activists in the media.

In today's Washington Post, staff writers Amy Goldstein and Jo Becker relay excerpts from Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts writings during his tenure in the Justice Department and the Reagan White House which show conservative leanings on social issues like abortion and affirmative action. Goldstein and Becker start off citing a 1985 memo, then hint that it provides perhaps the "clearest insight to date on Roberts's personal views on abortion.' Of course, Roberts's personal views on abortion aren't as relevant to legal precedents like Roe v. Wade, as much as the legal reasoning underpinning such precedent. As a Court justice, Roberts would be expected to interpret the Constitution objectively and correctly, not according to his personal views. So that said, it seems Goldstein and Becker really buried the lede as later, deep within their piece, they relay something you'll never likely see front and center in a liberal metropolitan newspaper: the fact that liberal and conservative legal scholars alike agree Roe v. Wade is bad case law, arrived at by shoddy legal reasoning.

The bloggers at Get Religion (a nicely done conservative blog about religion and the news media) have posted an article for the Notre Dame Journal by Ken Woodward, the longtime religion reporter for Newsweek, exploring how averse the New York Times is in particular to the terminology of partial-birth abortion:

From the outset, the Times determined to avoid using “partial-birth” in its news headlines. A computer search of the newspaper’s database since June of 1995 shows how persistently this prohibition has been enforced. Only once, on a news story published in April 2004, has “partial-birth” appeared in a headline. Instead, the Times has employed whenever possible a selection of opaque substitutes. The most frequently used terms were “type of” abortion and “form of” abortion, abortion “method” or “procedure” or “technique,” or simply a generic abortion “ban” or “curb.” Here is a sample of Times headlines, chosen for their variety of usages and published between 1995 and 2004:

Frank Rich of the New York Times wrote a scathing criticism of President Bush regarding the war in his op-ed on Sunday, "Someone Tell the President the War is Over."I know it's an opinion piece, but his comments are so blatantly biased they shouldn't get a pass. Here's just a sample of what Rice wrote, but the whole article is telling:"Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over.