ABC led Tuesday’s World News Tonight by touting an “exclusive” story from Brian Ross -- an interview with one of the sources for the December 16 New York Times story which disclosed an ongoing secret operation to monitor communication by people inside the U.S. with terror suspect abroad. "Tonight, the whistleblower who spent decades spying for the U.S.," co-anchor Bob Woodruff teased before co-anchor Elizabeth Vargas joined in with an ominous-sounding warning: "He says millions of American may have been monitored illegally. An ABC News ‘Exclusive.'" Three times ABC championed the man as a “whistleblower,” never once suggesting less pure motives, and Ross didn’t raise any questions about damage the leak may have caused.

Woodruff announced: “Targeted by the probe,” of who leaked the secret knowledge, “is a former NSA official who now wants to tell Congress exactly what he knows about the surveillance program.” Ross identified him as Russ Tice and relayed how "Tice now says some of those secret black world programs run by the NSA were operated in ways that violated the law." Ross also passed along how “Tice told ABC News he was one of the Times' dozen anonymous sources" for the “story of the NSA eavesdropping without warrants.” But instead of showing any concern for the disregard of secrecy, as the two sat in an eerily dark setting, Ross empathized with Tice’s plight: "Are you concerned you could be prosecuted and sent to prison for talking to the New York Times and talking to us today?" Not until the very end of the story did Ross note how "Tice lost his job last May after the NSA revoked his security clearances citing psychological concerns.” So, he may just be a disgruntled ex-employee with an axe to grind, not a heroic “whistleblower.” (Transcript follows.)

UPDATE, 1:45am EST Wednesday: Cynthia McFadden introduced the Nightline version of the Ross story by hailing Tice’s “candor,” as she fretted about how he “may now face a government investigation” because of it. In the slightly longer piece, Tice insisted he did not divulge any classified information to the New York Times and Ross noted how Tice reported that intercepting al Qaeda communication has been “a huge success,” so he pressed Tice about “what’s wrong with” the effort to listen in when it could “stop terror attacks?” (Details below.)

In the Promoting 2008 Democratic Presidential Hopefuls category, the Washington Post carried a goopy story promoting outgoing Gov. Mark Warner, hailed by some as the Southern-fried moderate alternative to Hillary "I Love New York So Much I Adopted It" Clinton. George Will used to scour Reagan by disdaining his "Morning in America goo." What the Post gave us today is "Morning in Virginia goo."

Michael D. Shear's article was headlined "Warner's Triumphant Legacy No Easy Feat: Bipartisan-Minded Governor Broke Tax Vow But Revived Va." It began:

Mark Robert Warner, the businessman-turned-politician, faced an immense budget gap, a steep learning curve and a legislature happy to see him fail when he was inaugurated as Virginia's 69th governor in 2002.

Today's web-only column on the Alito hearings by Newsweek's Jonathan Darman contains an irritating sentence ("In the coming days, Alito and the White House will use small gestures to assure moderate senators, and moderate Americans, that he lives in the same world they do") that suggests that Jonathan may be related to Richard Darman, the famously centrist OMB director under Bush 41.

Far worse, though, is Jonathan Darman's smirky, ahistorical quip, bolded at the end of the excerpt below, at the expense of Clarence Thomas:

Women were everywhere in the first two days of Alito’s confirmation. Seated just behind him as he took the podium yesterday were nine females, including his wife, sister, daughter and mother-in-law. These women were largely silent (though the Alito women were overheard breezily joking with one another on a ladies’ room break). But their mere appearance makes a difference. TV cameras zooming in on his face couldn’t help but capture two striking figures seated behind him wearing robust red. One was the nominee’s wife, Martha, the other, Rachel Brand, the Justice department attorney charged with preparing his nomination. This image, an earnest jurist with a rosy angel on each shoulder sent a message: Let the Democrats say what they like, this judge will remember the ladies.

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One side benefit to my beloved Redskins advancing in the playoffs is the incredibly awkward position it's forced upon the Seattle Times. Even their liberal friends at the Washington Post found it notable enough to point out how Seattle Times' policy regarding Native American-inspired nicknames has put them in a bind regarding their coverage of this week's playoff game:

CHEAP SHOTS: To avoid insulting native American heritage, the Seattle Times decided to limit severely the use of the term Redskins in the paper -- even if a team with that name will dominate news coverage this week. The Times will not use the moniker in headlines or captions. Reporters can use it only once, as a first reference, in all stories. The Redskins will be referred to almost exclusively as Washington -- which could get a little confusing for local readers who also live in that state.

Apparently there is room for only one left-wing presidential drama on TV. NBC's long running 'The West Wing' has sunk further in the ratings.

Media Life reports:

The death of “West Wing” star John Spencer did not spark new interest in the long-fading show when it returned last night from a nearly month-long hiatus.

In it first new episode since Spencer’s death in December, “West Wing” tied a season-low with a 1.9 overnight rating among viewers 18-49 last night, 17 percent lower than the 2.3 overnight rating the show had averaged through its first nine episodes of the season.

Six years after a Democratic president was around to make the show meaningful, NBC has kept the show on life support, unwilling to pull the plug.

At the top of the lead story for Tuesday's New York Times, reporters Richard Stevenson and Neil Lewis put the onus on Bush’s Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito to show he’s not “too much of an ideologue.”

“Addressing concerns among Democrats that his past support for conservative positions makes him too much of an ideologue for a seat on the Supreme Court, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. began his public drive for confirmation Monday by saying judges should have no agendas or preferred outcomes of their own.”

Later, they make this claim to suggest Alito may find the vote rough going:

“But the biggest difference from the Roberts hearings may have been in the political climate. Since then, Mr. Bush has been weakened by the failed nomination of Harriet E. Miers to the Supreme Court, the continued bloodshed in Iraq and the corruption inquiries that have ensnared Republican lobbyists and members of Congress.”

Call me overly suspicious, but the story of 16-year-old Farris Hassan traveling to Iraq on a whim strikes me as unbelievable. The Florida teen of Iraqi descent was all over the news in December when he apparently took off without telling his family and headed to Iraq to see what all the fuss was about. Hassan was able to finance his plane ticket to Kuwait with money he earned trading stocks on the Internet.

All the media coverage portrayed Hassan as a naïve young man who simply wanted to, in his own words, "experience…the same hardships ordinary Iraqis experience everyday." In an essay written by Hassan and e-mailed to his teacher from Kuwait, he seemed to have pro-American views and he spoke passionately about the need to defeat the terrorists in Iraq. He was also interested in a career in journalism and after taking a course in "immersion journalism," he made the decision to go to Iraq. In the process, he found himself smack dab in the middle of a war zone.

On last night's (Monday's) Hardball Norah O'Donnell, subbing for Chris Matthews, threw out the old feminist canards about the gender and wage gaps at National Review's Kate O'Beirne. During her description of her new book Women Who Make the World Worse, O'Beirne called the gender gap, "phony," to which O'Donnell blurted: "But there is a gender gap! There is a gender gap that exists, that, that there are more women who vote for Democrats. This President tried to court the so-called security moms. There is a gender gap. Men and women vote differently." Then later in the interview O'Donnell brought up the wage gap: "But don’t you think feminists, to some degree, have at least brought attention to issues like inequity in health care. That there isn’t amount the same amount of research on women as men. That they brought attention to the issue that women are still paid less than men." O'Beirne adroitly dispelled the myths as you can see in the following exchange:

Amid all the media-fueled angst over the Bush administration’s “domestic spying” program — a word formula chosen to make the National Security Agency’s monitoring of terrorist communications seem as if ordinary Americans were the target, not the beneficiary — today’s Wall Street Journal reminds us that real domestic spying took place not that long ago, during liberals’ Golden Age, the 1960s.

As federal judge Laurence Silberman revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed last July, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover “had allowed — even offered — the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends.”

You might think the mainstream media holds Pat Robertson in contempt, mocks him behind his back, and snickers at his every utterance. You're probably right, and for the most part they are right to do so. But as long as Robertson keeps his self-appointed position as God's spokesman, the mainstream media will try to keep him in the Christian mainstream. This was once again exemplified when he commented last week on the cause of Ariel Sharon's suffering:

"(Sharon) was dividing God's land, and I would say, 'Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the [European Union], the United Nations, or the United States,'" Robertson said on his Christian Broadcasting Network program, The 700 Club, last week. "God says, 'This land belongs to me, and you'd better leave it alone.'"

This after his embarrassing warning in November to the citizens of Dover, Pa., whom Robertson said "had just rejected [God] from your city" when voters threw out their school board, after they overreached in their efforts to bring intelligent design into science classrooms.

"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover," Robertson said, "if there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God." He said in a later clarifying statement, "If they have future problems in Dover, I recommend they call on Charles Darwin. Maybe he can help them."

Sometimes, liberal media types just can't 'hep' themselves. This morning's Today show provided a prime example, as Matt Lauer, in a bolt from the blue, revealed what really lurks in liberal hearts.

By all appearances, Lauer was headed for a genial stroll in the park with affable former GOP Sen. Fred Thompson, in to discuss the Alito hearings. Thompson had been the successful 'sherpa' for John Roberts in his confirmation process.

Matt got off to an even-handed start, noting that from their opening statements it seemed clear that most senators had already made up their minds. Lauer asked whether the confirmation process was really all about giving senators a chance to make partisan speeches.

Today's "legal context" article in the NYT shifted the focus of the Alito confirmation hearings from abortion to the limits of presidential power. Once again, reporter Adam Liptak offers a confusing round-up of the issues Alito will likely face in the hearings today and during the week.

The opening line of the article, however, is key when asking some later questions:

"The opinion is more than 50 years old, and it is not even binding precedent."

The opinion Liptak is referring to is a 1952 decision from Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, in which President Truman attempted to sieze private steel mills in order to put down labor disputes during the Korean War. The Truman Administration argued that it was in the interest of national security to have steady steel production, but this position was rebuked a court which felt Truman was over-stepping his presidential authority.

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