Roy Hallums, the American hostage rescued September 7, 2005 appeared on 60 Minutes to discuss how life was when he was held captive and when he returned home. Lesley Stahl conducted the interview and tried ever so hard to get Roy to give an anti-Bush remark.

STAHL: Has anyone from our government called you, like our President?
HALLUMS: No
STAHL: Senator?
HALLUMS: No
STAHL: Congressman?
HALLUMS: No
STAHL: Noone?
HALLUMS: No
STAHL: Nothing?
HALLUMS: No, no one has called me.
STAHL: How do you feel about that? (with a huge grin)
HALLUMS: If nobody calls thats small potatoes compared to what I was in. You know, I'm just happy to be back.

In March 2003, in the midst of the lead-up to the war in Iraq, CBS’s Dan Rather sat down with Saddam Hussein to allow the Iraqi leader to present his side of the story to the American people.  This week, Newsweek and Lally Weymouth gave one of the world’s foremost despots, Venezuela's president Hugo Chavez, a similar opportunity.  The following is a sample of the exchange, with Weymouth's questions in bold:

Why did you call the United States a terrorist state? 

The country is one thing; we have lovely relations with the people—like in the Bronx [where Chavez paid a visit]. We have economic relations. We have a company [Citgo] that refines daily 800,000 barrels of oil... We have 14,000 gas stations in this country. We have sent major-league baseball players here. But the media is trying to make the American people see me as an enemy. What I said is that this U.S. administration—the current government—is a terrorist administration, not all U.S. governments.

On ABC’s “This Week”, host George Stephanopoulos cherry-picked a recent USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, and referenced yesterday’s anti-war rally, to press Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz) on how to pay for New Orleans reconstruction:

“Seems like the American people disagree with you across the board. Let me show you this poll from 'USA Today'/CNN/Gallup poll. How should we pay? 54% say cut Iraq spending, 17% say raise taxes, 15% say increase the deficit. Only 6% say cut the spending you're talking about.”

This last sentence is a misrepresentation of the poll results as well as McCain’s statement.  What Stephanopoulos neglected to mention is that this poll question asked, "If you had to choose, which of the following would you say would be the best way for the government to pay for the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina: increase the federal budget deficit, raise taxes, cut spending for the war in Iraq, or cut spending for domestic programs such as education and health care?"

McCain wasn’t talking about cutting education or health care.  McCain was talking about cutting pork out of fat pieces of legislation like the Highway Bill:

Ever since the dust and debris had been cleared away from where once stood the World Trade Center, a cultural fight has ensued these many months over what kind of memorial should be erected in honor of the victims of 9/11, and the memory of that fateful day. 

It is becoming increasingly clear that the people of New York--and the rest of the country--are not enamored over the prospect of a 9/11 memorial that depicts--as one of the original designers of the International Freedom Center, Tom A. Bernstein, proposed: "Illuminate humankind’s sometimes uneven but ultimately enduring aspiration for free and open societies."

Today (25 September) the NY Times ran an editorial, “The Hard Bigotry of No Expectations.” It excoriates the Bush Administration for two principal “failures,” the bad response to Hurricane Katrina and the defective Iraq Constitution. Instead, the Times demonstrated that its entire staff is incompetent.

Regarding Katrina, the Times opines, “Four years after 9/11, Katrina showed the world that performance standards for the Department of Homeland Security were so low that it was not required to create real plans to respond to real disasters.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.c...

The Times has dozens of its reporters and editors working on various aspects of hurricane coverage. Apparently, none of these crack “journalists” have yet discovered what the blogosphere has known for two weeks. There WAS an existing Evacuation Plan for Southern Louisiana. It was dated 1 January, 2000. It required (paragraph 5, page 13) the use of “public buses” for those citizens who “do not have, or cannot afford” private transportation.

As part of its massive love letter to the left-over hippies and their anti-war march in D.C. yesterday, the Washington Post left out some pretty laughable details. While one Style section piece called protester Cindy Sheehan “the Rosa Parks of this generation,” the Post ignored the true nature of the event, evident to those who tuned in to the speakers on C-Span.

Viewers of the C-Span broadcast got to see the wide range of wackos that filled the stage protesting virtually everything except the war in Iraq -- from Israel, to Puerto Rico to Haiti, racism and Katrina. Toward the end, the speakers nearly outnumbered the audience, outraging lefties watching from their homes who filled the Internet with complaints about their own protest. Finding mention of the organizing group A.N.S.W.E.R. and its true anti-U.S. and anti-Israel agenda was hard to do if you relied on the Post.

Actor Alec Baldwin, on Thursday night's Too Late with Adam Corolla on Comedy Central, denigrated President Bush as "the little guy that snuck into the theater and he popped the window open so that all these other hooligans could come in and just rape and rip off and plunder the government." Baldwin's attack on Bush followed his explanation that the only reason he can't be President himself is that "to do that would mean to give up what I'm doing now. And I've said this a few times over the last couple of years is that I don't know whether I'm ready to give up what I'm doing now." (Baldwin appeared on the midnight EDT/PDT show to promote his role on the season debut this week of NBC's Will & Grace sit-com.)

Transcript follows. Video excerpt: RealPlayer or Windows Media