As has been widely reported by NewsBusters, the media have been actively misrepresenting the burgeoning Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal as being exclusively a Republican problem. Today, Jim Abrams of the Associated Press logged a report dealing with House minority leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-California) assertions Thursday that Republicans have created "one of the most closed, corrupt congresses in history."  Yet, in a ten-paragraph article, Abrams devoted six of them to Democratic ties to Abramoff, as well as Republican efforts to craft new legislation dealing with the problem.

Certainly, one has to get past the headline – “Pelosi Wants Probe of 'Corrupt Congress'” – as well as the sub-headline – “House Democratic Leader Pelosi Urges Investigation of Republicans Linked to Lobbyist Abramoff” – and the lede – “House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi on Thursday said Republicans had created 'one of the most closed, corrupt congresses in history' and urged the House ethics committee to investigate GOP lawmakers linked to lobbyist Jack Abramoff " – to find the balance. Yet, once there, the reader is treated to a side of this story that few in the mainstream media dare to disseminate:

The AP’s Jennifer Loven used President Bush’s trip to the Gulf Coast region to throw in some not so subtle digs at the Commander in Chief.

Loven started the piece by pointing out the President’s “three-month absence from the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.”  After Katrina, President Bush was criticized for not visiting the disaster area fast enough.  Then the President was criticized for visiting the area too much and going to the Gulf Coast region just for photo-ops. The President should coordinate a timetable for disaster area visits with the media so the spacing is more appropriate.

Few shows have shown more of an anti-Bush, anti-conservative slant than CBS's "60 Minutes." (See this report on their complete Bush v. Kerry one-sidedness in 2004.) But that doesn't mean CBS people will admit it. CBS's "Public Eye" site has a question and answer feature called "10 Plus 1," which is ten questions from Public Eye staffers and one from the public. Today, the interviewee was "60 Minutes" producer Andy Court, and the inquiry was "a (slightly edited) question from reader Chester W." (Oh, to see the original):

Q. "60 Minutes" has a long standing tradition in seeking out the facts on stories that greatly effect public opinions in the world. Have you ever considered investigating the "60 Minutes" staff (or other news outlets like yours) to see if there really is a slant towards the democrats left wing policies?

Since the 1920’s or thereabouts, secularists have invoked the imagery of the Scopes Monkey Trial as evidence that conservative Evangelicals are bent on suppressing knowledge in the realms of science and literature.

Most following the news are no doubt aware of the ongoing angst on the part of unbelievers and Modernists regarding the propriety of introducing Intelligent Design into the Biology classroom since in their eyes suggesting anything but the materialist hypothesis (itself a faith-based assumption) diminishes the rigor of so-called scientific education. Instead, they suggest such ideas should be considered as part of the Social Studies or Humanities curriculum.

Yet such gestures of enlightened magnanimous compromise are little more than a canard. For when it becomes time to examine the metaphysical issues within what liberals previously promoted as the appropriate venue for such a discussion, they then cry Separation of Church and State. Thus, what they really want is a monopoly on the perspective taught across all of public education.

According to Eric Alterman, conservative Christians don’t really like the Jews. The left-wing writer suggested this in the Thursday edition of his MSNBC blog, despite admitting that he knows "darn few" right-wing Christians. (Alterman is known for writing books such as "What Liberal Media?" and others.) He came to this conclusion while expounding on the perceived anti-Semitism of some Europeans:

"I wouldn’t argue that the French are not anti-Semitic and that American right-wing Christians are not philo-Semitic, but it’s not that simple. France had Jewish prime ministers in both the thirties and fifties and might get another one soon. No way that could happen in the United States even today. So what does that say? Here’s what I think, though it’s not provable. In France, they don’t like "the Jews" but they have no problem with Jews. I lived in Paris for a bit and it was never an issue and I’ve never heard of it being an issue for any of my friends. Among Christian right-wingers, however—of whom I know darn few, I’ll admit—I get the feeling they love "the Jews" but don’t have much use for Jews, as individuals. It’s just a thought."  (Emphasis added)

NewsBusters' Geoffrey Dickens reported earlier that the Seattle Times has a policy against using the word "Redskins" when reporting on the team facing the Seattle Seahawks on Saturday. All reporters for the paper are to refer to the team merely as "Washington," which, incidentally, is the name of the state.

In one article about Redskins running back Clinton Portis, the father of our country is used in a number of different, conflicting contexts.

Marcus Washington plays in a different Washington, but he still can sympathize with Seahawks who feel overlooked. This is because Washington finished with 93 tackles, 7 ½ sacks and one interception and, like the rest of the Washington defense, didn't make the Pro Bowl....

The biggest advantage Washington quarterback Mark Brunell sees from his days at the University of Washington? "That's one good thing about playing in Seattle all those years," he said, "you get used to throwing a wet ball."

A friend e-mailed me a press release issued today with the headline “National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association Receives $100,000 Gift from CNN for Journalist Scholarships.”

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) is pleased to announce that CNN will make a $100,000 donation to the NLGJA Scholarship Fund endowment to support the Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship Award. The academic award is named in the memory of NLGJA's founder, the late Leroy F. Aarons, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor.

A Wednesday editorial, “Lost Time, Lost Lives in the Mine,” once again jabs a crude finger at Bush for the West Virginia mine disaster.

“….vital positions at the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration have gone unfilled in recent years, inviting only further laxity on the part of companies that have been allowed to outsource their safety responsibilities to off-site contractors that are not subject to regular federal inspections. And the safety administration, which once maintained rescue experts at regional offices, now has them dispersed across the nation on the theory that they can be summoned fast enough to save lives. Warning signs have abounded in recent years. Yet The [Charleston] Gazette found that a plan begun a decade ago to upgrade the mine rescue program was quietly scuttled by the Bush administration. The pro-company bias of the administration is itself a factor deserving full investigation if the inquiries now being promised are to have any credible effect.”

Over at the American Thinker, William Tate has a good post on how the New York Times, which is currently scourging the Bush Administration over concerns it's "abusing" surveillance powers, blythely ignored evidence of greater "abuse" of such powers by the Clinton Administration. Here's an excerpt from the conclusion:

[D]uring the Clinton Administration, evidence existed (all of the information used in this article was available at the time) that: an invasive, extensive domestic eavesdropping program was aimed at every U.S. citizen; intelligence agencies were using allies to circumvent constitutional restrictions; and the administration was selling at least some secret intelligence for political donations.

These revelations were met by the New York Times and others in the mainstream media by the sound of one hand clapping. Now, reports that the Bush Administration approved electronic eavesdropping, strictly limited to international communications, of a relative handful of suspected terrorists have created a media frenzy in the Times and elsewhere.

Read the whole thing.

You can watch Imus in the Morning for a couple of years before this will happen, Don Imus thinks a guest goes too far with a joke. Normally, the I-Man enjoys finding humor in the agony of public figures. On today’s program Craig Crawford tried to play along and tested his new Samuel Alito material at 6:44.

Craig Crawford: "I actually think, you know, the wife leaving the room crying, that made all the evening news and, you know, it was the better video and made him look like a sympathetic figure. Although, you know, she started crying when Senator, when Lindsey Graham said Alito is not a bigot, that seemed to make her cry. I guess she thought she had married a bigot. It was surprising to her to hear that he wasn’t a bigot."

ABC News’ Martin Bashir last evening on “Nightline” brought on an Arkansas “abortionist” to sell America the virtues of this oftentimes ghastly procedure, while making a political statement against the confirmation of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. Bashir even suggested that those who have abortions are “born again.” The piece began with Bashir sharing some abortion statistics – with graphics – to demonstrate how commonplace it is in our society (ABC News video link to follow):

MARTIN BASHIR: (Off-camera) For anyone who thinks that abortion is not a daily ritual of American life, then consider these statistics.

GRAPHICS: 1 IN 4 PREGNANCIES END IN ABORTION

MARTIN BASHIR: (Voiceover) One in four pregnancies ends in abortion. And at current rates, a third of all American women will have an abortion by the age of 45.

GRAPHICS: ONE THIRD OF AMERICAN WOMEN WILL HAVE AN ABORTION BY AGE 45

Today's Washington Post "Style" section carries a front-page article by Linton Weeks (normally on the book beat) headlined "Kate Michelman, The Public Face Of a Woman's Right to Privacy." Weeks finds no critics of Michelman, only "friends and well-wishers" at a Women's National Democratic Club event. It comes to a bizarre close with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's tribute: "Albright told everyone that Michelman had provided 'a voice for those who didn't have a voice and a brain for those who didn't have a brain.'" Isn't it just a wee bit perverse to hail the doyenne of the right-to-kill-the-unborn lobby as speaking for the "voiceless"?

Much as the MSM likes to bury stories inimical to Democratic interests, there was no way the Today show could ignore Mrs. Alito's tears. Not only was it clearly the political story of the day, but the footage of Mrs. Alito's distress was much too riveting not to run.

Above the graphic "Democrats Gone Too Far?", Katie Couric interviewed Delaware senator Joe Biden. Was Katie speaking from feminine solidarity, or was she assuming the role of Democratic strategist, concerned that her party had hurt itself with its latest antics?

In any case, she gave Biden a rather rough going-over, beginning with her question as to whether the Dems had indeed gone too far in their questioning that ultimately led to Mrs. Alito's weeping. Without apologizing, Biden recommended that the current confirmation process be junked. Since nominees are so cautious in their comments, Biden suggested cutting out the hearings entirely and going directly to a Senate floor debate on nominations.

Click here for instructions on running Gaggle daily on your own site. There's also an archive of previous toons available here.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) has been largely preoccupied and extraordinarily concerned about potential Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s apparent affiliation with a conservative, all-male organization while he attended Princeton...and America’s press are eating it up. A perfect example is Dana Milbank’s column in today’s Washington Post:

“It looked to be a second dreary day in the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court pick Samuel Alito, as the senators droned and the nominee dodged. Then, just before lunch, the old lion roared.

“Actually, it started as a growl. The gray-maned Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) read quotations published by a conservative Princeton group to which Alito belonged, protesting that blacks, Hispanics and women ‘don't know their place’ and suggesting medical experiments for gay Princeton students.”

Yet, the delicious irony that Milbank and most of the media failed to inform the public is that Kennedy himself was a member of an all-male social club when he attended Harvard. As reported by the Washington Times (hat tip to the Drudge Report):

All three broadcast network evening shows on Wednesday night highlighted Mrs. Alito crying at the Senate confirmation hearing for her husband Samuel, as Republican Senator Lindsey Graham apologized for character attacks on her husband by left-wing Senators. Citing the breakdown, CBS’s Gloria Borger suggested the emotional outburst “may be the picture that people really remember from these hearings,” and she asked: “The question is whether the Democrats took this a step too far today?" But ABC adopted as fact the liberal Democratic allegations about the supposedly bigoted agenda of Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP). World News Tonight anchor Elizabeth Vargas referred to Alito’s “membership in a controversial group opposed to women and minorities at his college.” The subsequent report from George Stephanopoulos highlighted a soundbite of Democratic Senator Richard Durbin describing CAP as one which “would discriminate against women and minorities." Stephanopoulos relayed how Democrats “say the group was notorious for its discriminatory agenda when Alito listed it in his 1985 job application for the Reagan Justice Department. So notorious that prominent Princeton alumni like Senate Republican Leader Bill Frist had publicly disavowed it."

In fact, a founder of the group, William Rusher, told National Review Online that CAP was simply “a group of alumni who were concerned over various liberal tendencies that had developed in the Princeton administration." A member of the group, former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano, now an FNC contributor, told FNC’s John Gibson late Wednesday afternoon that it was not “anti-integrationist, anti-feminist,” but instead “was a traditional, conservative mainstream organization.” Napolitano added that the group’s magazine, from which Senator Ted Kennedy read to smear Alito with guilt by association, had as its editor a woman as well as a man who was a native of India. (More from Napolitano, as well as transcripts of the ABC and CBS stories, follow.)

At an event in Louisville, Kentucky Wednesday afternoon, President George W. Bush said that “I expect there to be an honest debate about Iraq” and he urged people to be “mindful about what messages out of the country can do to the morale of our troops.” He went on to “welcome the voices of people saying, you know, ‘Mr. President, you shouldn't have made that decision,’ or, you know, ‘you should have done it a better way,’” but castigated those who say “‘he lied.’ Or, ‘they're in there for oil.’ Or ‘they're doing it because of Israel.’ That's the kind of debate that basically says the mission and the sacrifice were based on false premise.”

But on Wednesday’s World News Tonight, Martha Raddatz centered an entire story around, in response to the question of “How can people help on the war on terror?", this soundbite from Bush: "One way people can help as we're coming down the pike in the 2006 elections, is remember the effect that rhetoric can have on our troops in harm's way." That was all viewers heard from Bush -- nothing about how he was specifically admonishing politicians against derisive “Bush lied/war for oil/blame the Jews” hate speech. Nonetheless, Raddatz then moved to discredit Bush’s point by highlighting how “Marine Corps reservist Andrew Horne, a two-time Iraq veteran and now a congressional candidate” asserted that “the President is attempting to limit debate about the war because it is not going well." Horne then denounced Bush for trying to censor the very kind of “honest” analysis Bush specifically said was within bounds: "I don't think, you know, honest criticism damages morale at all, you know. When I was there, it didn't damage my morale one bit."

Raddatz recited how nine of eleven Iraq war vets running for Congress are Democrats, before she wrapped up: "The Republicans are clearly worried about some of these candidates and the war in Iraq, or the President wouldn't keep making these speeches, Bob." Co-anchor Bob Woodruff then endorsed her spin: "Good point.” (Transcripts follow.)

In a new column just posted at MSNBC.com, Newsweek’s Michael Hirsh offered some truly defamatory comments concerning America’s current president. In fact, much of this article could have been written by Harry Belafonte.

For example:

“In fact, [Iranian President] Ahmadinejad, who has piled idiocy upon idiocy in a series of offensive remarks that have alarmed the world, has achieved a truly amazing feat. He has made George W. Bush look like a statesman.”

That was just the beginning ("Day O Day O") :