Using the very same expert the CBS Evening News cited on Monday, Wednesday's NBC Nightly News made -- as its second story of the night -- the case that the current heat wave can be blamed on global warming. Anchor Brian Williams set up the piece by ruminating about how “you hear a lot of people saying it didn't used to be like this, didn't used to be this hot, and because of global warming we've done this to ourselves.” Reporter Tom Costello asked: “So is our current heat wave a symptom of global warming?" Jay Gulledge of the self-interested Pew Center on Climate Change confirmed “this heat wave” is “completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming,” before Costello noted there have been heat waves in the past, but insisted that “experts say our current heat wave is unique."

Costello soon cautioned that “scientists want to see whether this heat wave is part of a pattern of longer more intense heat waves before declaring it all part of a bigger global warming phenomenon.” Costello concluded, however, without any doubt, as he referred to “the concern that in the coming decades 100 degrees may be the new summertime norm.” (Transcript and more follows)

It is safe to say that most conservatives hold Congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan) in minimal esteem, which is probably putting it mildly. So, when a member of the press goes gaga over anything this man says, it really makes for a boatload of chuckles. As such, the reader is hereby warned to make sure all drinking vessels are tucked safely away from proximity.

Assuming you have followed directions, Jack Cafferty, on the 5PM ET installment of Wednesday’s “Situation Room,” used his media platform to promote another in an ongoing litany of anti-Bush rants by the gentleman from the Great Lake State (video to follow). Cafferty began:

Well, somebody has finally worked up the nerve to say it out loud. We have a constitutional crisis in this country. So says Congressman John Conyers of Michigan.

Dontcha just love the delicious irony of a Congressman with the kind of ethics problems Conyers has talking about a Constitutional crisis? Obviously, this was lost on Cafferty, who continued...with a straight face, no less:

Elizabeth Hasselbeck gets talked down by the Doyenne of Liberal Media: Barbara Walters.

http://www.tvsquad.com/2006/08/02/now-its-barbara-vs-elizabeth-on-the-view-video/

Hmm. Because it's never happened before where one of the Viewettes got into a heated argument before, yes?

The Financial Times, as posted by MSNBC.com, has unilaterally promoted Hezbollah to a state and re-introduced Syria into Lebanese affairs. On a piece describing the ongoing cease-fire negotiations at the UN, FT said this:

Any agreement between Washington and Paris, as well as London, would also need approval from other Security Council members such as Russia, buy-in from Israel, Lebanon and Hizbollah, and the acquiescence of Syria.

Hizbollah is a militia. It's not a state, it's not treated like a state, and it doesn't have negotiating power. I suppose ever since the UN let Arafat carry a pistol onto the floor of the General Assembly, and created a special status for the PLO, this line - like much of the UN's vision - has been a little blurry. Still, when there's an existing resolution, 1559, calling for the dismantlement of this militia, saying that a Security Council resolution has to go to Bint Jubeil or Baalbek for approval is making some rather astonishing leaps.

Fidel Castro is a brutal dictator but you wouldn't know it from listening to many of the current reports about his health. Time and time again members of the U.S. media fall over themselves in describing Castro in poetic terms. On last night's Geraldo At Large, Fox News' Geraldo Rivera went over board in his final commentary about Castro's legacy with such flowery descriptions of the man as: "the iron man of revolutionary rhetoric," "romantic revolutionary," and "charismatic commie."

Oh to be sure Rivera acknowledged "to some" he's "a ruthless and absolute dictator," but when he counters that he is also "Loved and admired by many," Rivera engaged in that game of moral equivalency so often played by liberal reporters where, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."

David Segal of the Washington Post profiled Ned Lamont and his hard-left crusade against Sen. Joe Lieberman in the Style section Wednesday. (It might seem a little weird since Segal is usually a rock-and-pop critic, but he used to work at The Washington Monthly.) Segal avoids the liberal and left-wing labels most of the time --and certainly the ultra labels his backers deserve. The headline is "True Blue or Too Blue?" But this sentence is the laugh-out-loud one, trying to nudge Lamont's image to the right by writing up his website position paragraphs:

"They are the views of a fiscal conservative, a social liberal and a foreign-policy moderate. He is a few degrees to the right, generally speaking, of the bloggers who have championed him."

Former ABC reporter and host of "This Week," Sam Donaldson, was called a "has been" by President Bush during a news briefing today. Donaldson was famous for harassing past presidents, especially Reagan, with embarrassing questions.

He was joined by seven former press secretaries: Joe Lockhart, Dee Dee Myers, Marlin Fitzwater, Tony Snow, Ron Nessen, James Brady and his wife Sarah Brady. Rush Limbaugh has the video.

Reports NewsMax:

As President George W. Bush joined the last daily press briefing in the White House press room, which will undergo a nine-month renovation, Bush took a moment to take some questions.

At that time, a reporter shouted:

In my usual site search for the latest on-goin's around the world I ran across this little jem from Matt Drudges' site. I found it quite humorous, once again the dem's/Lib's attempt to duplicate anything successful that the Right is doing.

Although I do not view Matt's site as a Right-Winger web site, just as an informational poster, I have heard it said on many occasions from the Left. I can not wait to see what comes next.

Thanks again, Matt Drudge.

As Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba since 1959, malingers in a shadowy state of sickness, the Times for some reason points us to the embarrassing reports filed by Times reporter (and Castro dupe) Herbert Matthews between 1957 and 1959.

On yesterday's The Early Show, as noted by Michael Rule, CBS's Dave Price blamed the current heat wave on global warming but over on NBC's Today this morning, as noted by Mark Finklestein, Al Roker refused to take Matt Lauer's bait to do the same.  While Roker hedged a bit and didn't completely rule out global warming as a cause, the fact that he expressed some reservations contrasted with Price who went as far to take time out of the weather update to cite his "experts." Still one can only assume Roker will be brought back in line by Lauer.  After all it was Lauer who brought viewers this very serious and sober piece of journalism. The following is a quick recap of the different takes taken by the CBS and NBC morning weathermen:

If an active member of the Marine Corps sued a sitting United States Congressman for defamation, do you think this would be front-page news?

Well, if the Congressman in question happens to be an anti-war media darling, the answer would clearly be “No.” 

Such was the case Wednesday when the Washington Post decided to put the story about Marine Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich’s lawsuit against Rep. John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) concerning events in Haditha, Iraq, on page A5:

An email was sent out to Associated Press staffers that praised the work of its photographers during the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict. There's even a cash prize of $500 dollars that apparently will get split eight ways. The photographers who took the pictures of dead children in Qana will take part in the reward.

Is this what it takes? If we paid them $500 dollars, maybe photographers in the region would take pictures of terrorists hiding behind human shields.

HT Little Green Footballs.

Dear Staffers:

Last Sunday proved to be one of the most dramatic days in the war between Israel and Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. AP’s extensive photo team produced a stunning series of images that day that beat the competition and scored huge play worldwide.

On Wednesday’s Good Morning America, ABC’s Diane Sawyer hyped the release of yet another book attacking Christian beliefs. During the 8am half hour, Sawyer interviewed Kathleen McGowan, author of The Expected One. Like The DaVinci Code, The Expected One is premised on the theory that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene had children together, and that their bloodline lives on in the present day. It should also be noted that McGowan believes that she herself is a descendant of Christ, which she and Sawyer discussed at length.

When Sawyer asked the author for proof to bolster her "facts" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the author had no hard evidence to provide :

Sawyer: "For everybody who says, a novel, fine, write a novel, promote a novel. But there’s no proof here. There’s really no proof either of Mary Magdalene and Jesus being together."

McGowan: "That’s absolutely untrue, there’s all kinds of proof."

Sawyer: "Tell me."

McGowan: "It’s just not the traditional academic proof."

Hat tip to Little Green Footballs.

On the one hand, liberals enjoy portraying themselves as models of tolerance and racial sensitivity. But woe betide those who run afoul of their orthodoxy. Liberals don't hesitate to bring out the crudest racial imagery to mock them.

We've all seen the vulgar caricatures of Clarence Thomas, Condi Rice and Ward Connerly. Updates: GOP candidate for senator from Maryland Michael Steele has been depicted as Simple Sambo, and former WaPo cartoonist Ted Rall used a variant on the N-word in drawing Condi. Hat tip to Michelle Malkin.

Add Joe Lieberman to the liberal media hit list. Have a look at the image of Lieberman that popped up at Huffington Post today. It's in a column by one Jane Hamsher, who, her bio informs us, is a 'progressive blogger.'

Rachel Neuwirth writes in The American Thinker that the media have made the job of the terrorists much easier as the media provide the version of reality the terrorists hope to convey. The media never blame the terrorists who hide behind civilians who get killed, and Neuwirth writes that therefore the media are "directly complicit in enabling this tactic to continue and for more Lebanese civilians to be killed."

A major segment of the global media is behaving in a manner that makes terrorism and mass killings more likely rather than less likely. They enable and encourage terrorist slaughter of innocents by supplying providing a propaganda bonanza for the terrorist cause. Without the gain, there would be less incentive for the horrific behavior.

This is true now with Israeli defense measures against Hezbolla terrorism, and has been true for many years, especially during the long Arab-Israeli conflict. Not enough attention has been paid to media manipulation. It is long overdue that this be exposed and the media be confronted and held accountable.

As news organizations update their obituaries of ailing Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, it’s worth recalling how many liberal journalists have fallen under Castro’s spell over the years, sounding like paid Cuban government propagandists as they touted the “great success stories” of Castro’s decades of communist rule. A new report from the Media Research Center offers some of the most egregious pro-Castro quotes of the last couple of decades.

For example, back in 1988, then-NBC reporter Maria Shriver let Castro himself lead her on a tour of Havana. “The level of public services was remarkable: free education, medicine and heavily-subsidized housing,” Shriver marveled on Today. The following year, ABC’s Peter Jennings trumpeted how “health and education are the revolution’s great success stories.”

In its endless pursuit of the fair & balanced truth, ABC News wants to hear from you on global warming - if you have anecdotes that support the theory, that is.

Have a look at this ABC News International web page: Global Warming Affecting Your Life? E-Mail Us

ABC explains that it's "currently producing a report on global warming and want[s] to find out if you've seen differences in your daily environment that you think are caused by climate change." Note that the photo displayed here is taken from the web page.  Subtle, eh?

Assures ABC: "We hope to hear from you."

Actually, that's not entirely true.  Apparently ABC only wants to hear from you if you can vouch for global warming.  Others need not apply.  These avatars of objective journalism want you to know that 'the differences can be large or small — altered blooming schedules, changes in plants or animals in your community, erosion or droughts.' 

The Jerusalem Post reports today that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is investigating arguments, first raised by bloggers, that Hamas may have staged the alleged "atrocity" that occurred when building collapsed in the Lebanese city of Qana.

As reported by NewsBusters and elsewhere, significant doubts are being raised as to whether the building's collapse was caused by Israeli bombs or was deliberately destroyed by Hamas to gin up anti-Israeli sentiment.

Mentioned prominently in the article is NewsBuster Bob Owens's blog, Confederate Yankee, which in the fine MSM tradition of accuracy, is called "Conservative Yankee" by the Post. (See Bob's response post here.)

An excerpt from the JP article is after the jump...

From the Counterterrorism Blog:

In CNN's coverage of the current battles between Israel and the terrorist group Hezbollah, CNN has provided a list of "aid groups" to assist civilians in the "Mideast crisis". One of these groups is the Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) group - which has been reported to have disturbing links to Jihadism and recently documented fund-raising links to US State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) Hamas.

A wave of New Testament fever seems to be gripping liberal media types. As reported here, during a recent Good Morning America, Chris Cuomo stated that the Gospel of John identifies Qana as the place where Jesus turned water into wine. Who would have imagined that Adam Shatz - of the far-left Nation magazine - would be a New Testament maven? But, saints alive, he leads his op-ed in today's LA Times with the very same story.

What could account for this new-found interest in the New Testament? You don't suppose it could have anything to do with a desire to add fuel to the anti-Israel fire in the wake of its bombing of Qana, do you?

Since Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans last summer, there has been a lot of media and left-wing speculation that the apparition called global warming is responsible for an upsurge in hurricane activity and intensity. Fortunately, for those seeking sanity amidst the hysteria, a new study written by a group that includes two members of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration published in this week’s Science Magazine refutes this contention (hat tip to Gary Hall).

Since this phantom meteorological nexus was first introduced to the public, it has become almost commonplace in the lexicon of the new religious cult known as the Global Warmingists, and is a mainstay of the sect’s leader, famed political scientist sans climatology degree Dr. Albert Arnold Gore, Jr. In fact, this is a central tenet in Gore’s recent schlockumentary, An Inconvenient Truth, as evidenced by the following passages at the movie’s website:

• With 2005, the worst storm season ever experienced in America just behind us, it seems we may be reaching a tipping point – and Gore pulls no punches in explaining the dire situation.

• The number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes has almost doubled in the last 30 years.

Yet, as first reported by Martin Merzer of the Miami Herald on June 27, not all scientists are drinking Gore’s Kool-Aid:

The uniformed Cuban military officer pictured here barks commands at a smallish crowd in Havana that responds with pro-Fidel chants. Imagine you're an objective journalist. How would you report it? "The Castro regime orchestrates a public show of support," perhaps? Not Andrea Mitchell. Appearing on this morning's Today show, here's how NBC News' Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent characterized what you have to imagine was a less-than-spontaneous event:

"In Havana, Cubans turn out to show support for their long-time leader."

Andrea managed to get through her segment without mentioning Communism, repression or anything else that would cast aspersions on Los Hermanos Castro. She even obligingly passed along this bit of Castro propaganda: "He [Fidel] is calling on Cubans to remain calm, and they seem to be." Despite all the conjecture as to the state of his health Fidel hasn't made any public appearances. How can Mitchell know that it was indeed the great leader who was 'calling on' the Cuban people? And was it Fidel's reassuring words, or living in a police state, that had that calming effect on the Cuban people?

The Poynter Institute's Romenesko weblog draws some strange letters, where some feel passionately that dictators like Fidel Castro and terrorist groups like Hezbollah have been maligned by media labeling. Yesterday, Harrison Chastang of the non-commercial San Francisco radio station KPOO-FM complained:

Many news outlets doing stories on Cuban leader Fidel Castro's surgery have lead stories with "Cuban dictator Fidel Castro...." The term dictator is rarely, if ever used to describe the leaders of China, Vietnam or Saudi Arabia, all nations with unelected leaders of governments that match the classic description of the term dictatorship. In regards to Castro, the term dictator is the favorite word President Bush and the Miami exile community uses to describe Castro. Do reporters and editors buy into the mindset of the Bush administration and the exile community in using the term dictator to describe Castro, but not leaders of other Communist or unelected governments.

There’s absolutely no doubting where The New Yorker magazine has come down on the War on Terror – it’s been there from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to insist the anti-terrorist side is full of human rights abusers. Former Time reporter Jon Lee Anderson is the latest New Yorker correspondent on the bandwagon, finding Israel has completely mucked up Lebanon and Hezbollah. PBS gave him a platform on the July 31 edition of "Charlie Rose."

MRC intern Eugene Gibilaro transcribed the exchange. Rose asked simply where "we are in this war," and Anderson was quick to whack Israel: "It’s a scene of devastation in a lot of the places and people coming out, old people, you know about Qana yesterday, the dead children. A fundamental error of the type that often happens in these air wars where inevitably, a refuge full of women and children gets killed and sort of wrong-foots the warring party, in this case Israel, with the preponderance of the military might."

Traditionally, the networks have loved a slow, strict, statist bent at the Food and Drug Administration. In the 1990s, they warned that the FDA might be too lax on the threat of milk and hailed FDA head David Kessler for seizing crates of dangerous orange juice. But when it comes to sex and abortion, all the rules change. Suddenly, the networks go libertarian.

NBC's Tom Brokaw once called Newt Gingrich's criticism of the FDA "very ominous." (Scroll up from the orange juice Newsbite, and you'll see.) But when Hillary Clinton's the corporation-loving deregulator, then NBC has a different view. The topic was "Plan B," the abortifacient pill. Social conservatives hope to at least keep the drug from being easily available to minors without parental permission. On Tuesday's Today, substitute news anchor David Gregory implied delay was anti-woman: "After years of delay, women may soon be able to get the morning-after pill without a prescription. The FDA indicates it may be open to the idea, but with restrictions."