Gloria Borger on the “CBS Evening News” tonight demonstrated some humanity and compassion that is quite rare and sorely lacking from most members of the modern American media. In her report today about the Samuel Alito confirmation hearings, Borger stated that Mrs. Alito crying behind her husband “may be the picture that people really remember from these hearings.” Furthermore, she twice stated that Democrats might have gone too far with their questioning today (video link to follow).

In the middle of a fairly balanced presentation of the day’s events, the screen showed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) questioning Judge Alito, and facetiously asking him if he was a bigot:

Columnist Todd Manzi describes why left-wing media bias is advantageous to liberals in terms of marketing principles, and why new conservative media outlets are ineffective at targeting the masses.

Some people think media bias is not a fact, but merely a debatable opinion. These people are quick to point out that conservatives have venues for their ideas: talk radio, the Internet, Fox News and The Wall Street Journal.

But from a marketing perspective, liberals hold the advantage.

Consider three target audiences: passionate liberals, passionate conservatives and normal people who vote. Those of us who fall in one of the first two groups, battle for market share of the third group. We want our ideas embraced. We want our candidates elected....

The target audience - people who swing elections and influence policy because of their answers to public opinion polls - is reached through the mainstream media. These people spend a few minutes with the newspaper and catch their local news on television.

As MRC colleague Brent Baker reported, former National Security Agency official Russell Tice unveiled himself on ABC News last night as one of the sources for last month’s New York Times scoop on the National Security Agency’s terrorist surveillance program.

Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online predicted something like this last week, asking: “If Tice turns out to be one of the NY Times' anonymous sources for its NSA stories, didn't the Times readers deserve to know that its information came from a potentially unbalanced ex-employee with an ax to grind?”

Spruiell is referring to the fact that Tice lost his job after the NSA revoked his security clearances, citing psychological concerns."

Have you ever asked yourself: Why, when evidence overwhelmingly shows gun banners are wrong, do they persist in making outrageous claims about law-abiding gun owners? There may finally be an answer, so read on.

“Protecting your proverbial castle would not only include your home, but also your car and any place you are legally allowed to be. "It would decriminalize the use of deadly force or lethal force in self-protection circumstances," said Wayne Groth – a supporter of [Michigan] state House Bill 5142 and House Bill 5143.” 

“There is no reason to pass a law that sends a signal to the most aggressive people in society that they can act more aggressively than they can now,” said Peter Hamm, Communications Director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. [Emphasis added] 

A piece by Neil Lewis in today's Grey Lady has a curious pseudo-profile of some of the prosecutors (led by head prosecutor Noel Hillman) who cut the plea bargains and deals in the Abramoff case. Members of the Department of Justice's Office of Public Integrity are highlighted in the piece. It begins with a somewhat misleading lede, which is an indication of the cloudiness to come:

"The plea agreement from the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which has the potential for a multitude of legal troubles for Congressional Republicans, has been largely the work of a team of career prosecutors in the Justice Department led by an avid surfer and early Bruce Springsteen fan from New Jersey."

Sam Alito fans must feel confident when the Washington Post Style section is mocking the Democrats for their "tender roast" of Alito. Marcia Davis writes lightly about how the Democrats promised a feisty brawl, but didn't deliver. When Sen. Cornyn suggested Alito was a lock, Davis wrote:

That's hard to take when Americans have been promised a smackdown. This is a reality TV nation, a WWF kinda country, where we like to see a fight even when we know it isn't real, even when we know the stakes might just be a bag of Cheetos.

So when it's the Supreme Court, well, that's when the sparks are supposed to fly. That's what Democrats had promised in the Alito hearings. The New Jersey judge with humble roots would replace the all-important swing seat of Sandra Day O'Connor, they said. Abortion rights are at stake. The issue of executive power is on the table like never before in light of the president's recent wiretapping episodes. Alito is a guy who may be an extremist posing as a moderate.

This morning's AP article on the Alito hearings from yesterday is actually fairly straight, at least by the Associated Press' normal standards. But there are still examples of typical AP anti-conservative bias.

Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito said Tuesday he would deal with the issue of abortion with an open mind as a justice, though he defended his 1991 judicial vote saying women seeking abortions must notify their husbands.

In the first place, the construction of that sentence clearly implies that he won't deal with the issue with an open mind. Basically what they've written is Alito "said" he'd do this, but he defended the time when he did that. Secondly, they've have, yet again, misconstrued what happened in 1991. This is not the first time. He did not say that "women seeking abortions must notify their husbands." The state of Pennsylvania did. All he said was that, according to the Supreme Court's precedents on the issue, the state was constitutionally allowed to do so.

Alito pledged in 1990 that he would recuse himself from cases involving the Vanguard companies. Some Alito opponents say his participation in a 2002 Vanguard case raises doubts about his fitness for the Supreme Court. Alito holds six-figure investments with Vanguard. "If I had to do it over again there are things that I would do differently," said Alito, although he also said he did nothing wrong.

As do all of the legal ethicists who have been asked about it. It was interesting to watch Senator Hatch walk him through the issue, as the completely answered the question about what had happened, how he'd taken the case without recusal, and what happened later (he urged the court to vacate the opinion, and have the case re-heard by a new panel. This was done, with the same unanimous result.) He also instituted new procedures in his office to prevent the situation from arising again. "Some...opponents" may think the case raises doubts, but an unbiased reading of the situation suggests, as the AP does not, that those opponents oppose Alito for other reasons and are raising this non-issue in a purely political attempt to defeat the nomination.

He defended his 2004 dissent in which he supported the strip search of a 10-year-old girl, explaining that his interpretation was based on "common sense" that a warrant included searches of anyone on the premises of a drug suspect.

"Supported" is loaded language. It makes it sound as if he were standing there watching the search with pom-poms. He didn't "support" the search, he merely determined that a police officer could reasonably have taken the search warrant to allow that search. That doesn't sound nearly so sinister, though, does it?

Lyflines - Lyford's other blog…

Last night, ABC's "Commander-in-Chief" was about a U.S. submarine in trouble after doing covert operations off the coast of North Korea, forcing the President to ask the Chinese for help in performing rescue operations. The entire premise was laughable and insulting to the entire U.S. Submarine Force (to which I am currently assigned).

After the Russian submarine rescue this past Summer, you'd think the writers at ABC would do a little research.  We have an organization called the International Submarine Escape and Rescue Liaison Office (ISMERLO), an organization created after the Russian submarine Kursk went down in 2000.  ISMERLO is based here in Norfolk, Va., and consists of an international team of submarine escape and rescue experts. When a submarine, of any nation, is in trouble, the call goes out around the world. Through the internet, each country shows what assets they have available to assist in the rescue and sends help where needed.  With such an organization in place, why would we need to go to the Chinese for help?

As we detailed here, on yesterday's Today show Matt Lauer yesterday blurted out in the midst of an interview "let's face it, [Alito] is an ultra-conservative."

If that weren't slur enough in the liberal mindset, Dem strategist James Carville continued the assault on this morning's Today, accusing Alito of being: "completely enamored and impressed with power."

Carville and consulting sidekick Paul Begala were in to chew the fat with Katie Couric over the Alito hearings and the pair's new book, "Take it Back," their prescription for reforming the Democrat party and the country at large.

A leitmotif of the interview was Katie Couric's exasperation with Democrats. Exasperation at Dem failure to sufficiently rake Alito over the coals, exasperation at Dems for ignoring the Carville-Begala bromides for recapturing power.

In the latest issue of The Weekly Standard there is an interesting article by Stephen F. Hayes titled “Saddam’s Terror Training Camps”. In it the author reports the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein... “Trained thousands of radical Islamic terrorists from the region at camps in Iraq over four years immediately preceding the U.S. invasion, according to documents and photographs recovered by the U.S. military in postwar Iraq.”

Now this can’t possibly be correct. The mainstream media and the liberal left have repeatedly told us there were no terrorists in Iraq and it was only the United States involvement in mid-east that brought terrorists into the country. This is the stock statement when anything on the matter is broadcast or placed in print. It would be difficult indeed, to find an article in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times that makes those contrary statements penned by Stephen Hayes.

As reported on tonight's O'Reilly Factor (January 10, 2006), Sunday's episode of NBC's Dateline (January 8, 2006) declared that recent attacks on the traditional meaning of Christmas were a "giant, laughable lie."

A segment on blogs narrated by Josh Mankiewicz also aired a snippet from Bill O'Reilly's recent appearance on Letterman's Late Show. Which snippet? The part where Letterman told Bill, "I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap." Real balanced, eh?

From the Dateline segment, as shown on the Factor tonight (available at foxnews.com) (emphasis mine):

MANKIEWICZ (voiceover): "That nutty war on Christmas thing got plenty of traction on the blogs before it ever hit your TV set. Now a lot of bloggers say it's finally been put to bed."

LETTERMAN (snipped from O'Reilly's guest spot): "I have the feeling about 60 percent of what you say is crap." (audience laughter)

You can just feel the media’s euphoria over lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleading guilty to fleecing clients and throwing goodies at legislators. Overnight, Rush Limbaugh could play an audio montage of various anchors and pundits proclaiming it was the biggest scandal to hit Washington in decades. Everywhere you turned, it was “huge,” of “historic proportions.” Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz called it “potentially delicious.” The joy was reminiscent of old Post editor Ben Bradlee’s line about Iran-Contra: “We haven’t had this much fun since Watergate.”

This scandal is big – no questions about that. But by what measure is this story so huge and historic? How does it compare to the House Bank scandal of 1992, which resulted in a number of congressional careers ended? How does Abramoff compare to the related mess at the House Post Office, which led to the eventual conviction of House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski?

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