I'd like to add a word or two on the Washington Post's pickup today of the CNSNews.com story on John Murtha's medals. First, kudos to the Post for not ignoring the story, which it certainly could have done. (We all remember ABC going about three weeks with its fingers in its ears during the Swift Boat vets fight in 2004.) But the headline? "Web Site Attacks Critic of War." That's reasonably bland. But is that the way they see investigative journalism when they do it? "Post Attacks Tom DeLay"? Did they cover the CBS Memogate story as "CBS Attacks George W. Bush"? Or is there simply a story there to be told?

The story by Howard Kurtz and Shailagh Murray recounts the Murtha story well enough, and reasonably explains what CNSNews.com is all about. I think it's a little gratuitous to add that the site "averages 110,000 readers, mainly conservative, and provides material for other Web sites such as GOPUSA." Would Kurtz say the Post "averages a million readers, mainly liberals"? Would it go through the list of publications that buy Post articles through the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service or the Washington Post Writers Group for clues as to how liberal the newspaper is? (This was quickly used by lefty bloggers to tie CNS to "Jeff Gannon," the White House reporter they destroyed, although there's no real professional tie other than the Internet location.)

Mr. In Denial himself, Eric Alterman, is set to debate with Tucker Carlson over media bias. Alterman's take: "There’s no question that television leans rightward rather than leftward" and that "liberal points of view are underrepresented on national and cable news television."

Some other comical quotes from Alterman about this "bias":

“I would say that right-wingers, like Bill O’Reilly, like Rush Limbaugh, like Sean Hannity, definitely dominate the discourse on television.”

While Bill and Sean may "dominate the discourse" on FOX News, I hardly doubt that they dominate the discourse on CBS News, ABC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, The L.A. Times, The A.P., Reuters, USA Today, and every other media outlet, which Alterman fails to find an example of conservative bias coming from them. And even then, Alterman is comparing political talk shows to the Media that is supposedly presented in an unbiased fashion. Also, I wonder how Rush Limbaugh dominates discourse on T.V., unless Alterman was taking Rush's "show prep for the media" really, really seriously.

On tonight's edition of Hardball, host Chris Matthews makes it look like that we would not being this way if it wasn't for the oil resources in Iraq. His proof? Because Vice President Cheney CEO of Halliburton.

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Why is the President saying it's wrong to say this war was about oil or Israel. I can see where the Israel part would be sensitive, but why is he denying this was about oil? Does he think anybody think we would go into Iraq if it was down in the Congo or Bolivia. It's oil that makes that such a sensitive area, isn't it?

RICHARD HAASS: On one level, you're right. It's the strategic background to everything we do in the Persian Gulf. But it is fair to say that oil was not the thing that led the United States to pull the trigger. The people who are arguing for this war were not basing it on access to oil. They were arguing it on weapons of mass destruction, on the idea we would transform Iraq or the region politically. This was not a war about control of oil.

MATTHEWS: Even though there were promises made around the edges that we would get cheaper gas?

HAASS: Some people thought that. But as you know now, it's producing less oil been of that the war it was never a war about gaining oil supplies. It's always the left that talks about the economic motives to American foreign policy. The kind of thing the Marxists did for years, they were wrong then and they're wrong now. American foreign policy -- for better or for worse -- tends to be motivated by ideas, not things like oil.

MATTHEWS: Do you think that's true of Cheney?

HAASS: Very much.

MATTHEWS: Really? I think of the first resident Bush and Jimmy Baker who said the issue of going into Iraq the first time was jobs, jobs, jobs, he was right there saying it wasw about oil. These are guys from the oil patch. You've got a Vice President from Halliburton. You're telling me this has nothing to do with oil, that fact that we're over there fighting these wars?

During the time Matthews was going on about his conspiracy theories of why (the last thing he said) we're over there because of oil, Richard Haass was laughing.

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Marc Morano and Randy Hall at CNSNews.com also discovered that John Murtha has a past resembling John Kerry in telling different stories about his war wounds and a politicized process at seeking out Purple Hearts for surface wounds that did not require evacuation from the combat zone:

A Cybercast News Service investigation also reveals that one of Murtha's former Democratic congressional colleagues and a fellow decorated Vietnam veteran, Don Bailey of Pennsylvania, alleges that Murtha admitted during an emotional conversation on the floor of the U.S. House in the early 1980s that he did not deserve his Purple Hearts.

"[Murtha] is putting himself forward as some combat veteran with serious wounds and he's using that and it's dishonest and it's wrong," Bailey told Cybercast News Service on Jan. 9. Murtha served in the Marines on active duty and in the reserves from 1952 until his retirement as a colonel in 1990. He volunteered for service in Vietnam and was a First Marine Regiment intelligence officer in 1966 and 1967.

Judging by her comments on this morning's Fox & Friends, a five-week hiatus to attend to a detached retina has done nothing to mollify Ellen Ratner's malice. Only the bitterest of partisans would have said this, as did Ratner, of Mrs. Alito's very public distress at her husband's treatment at the hands of Senate Dems:

"Washington is a tough game. If you cannot play it, you shouldn't be in it."

Perhaps realizing that she had pushed the acrimony meter too far, Ratner added some boiler plate about "feeling sorry" for Mrs. Alito. But the cat was already out of the bag as to what was truly in Ratner's heart.

While the liberal media laud John Murtha so vigorously that their hearts almost glow out of their chests like E.T., some reporters have looked back to the larger career of John Murtha. At CNSNews.com (the online news outfit of the MRC), reporters Randy Hall and Marc Morano are relaying new information about Murtha's role in the FBI's Abscam sting -- the big scandal that forgetful reporters now say was the last big congressional scandal before Jack Abramoff's plea bargains.

Members of the press have given extensive and glowing coverage to Rep. John Murtha's criticism of the war in Iraq, but have overlooked a number of other controversies the Pennsylvania Democrat has experienced over the past 25 years. This includes his reported role as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the Abscam bribery scandal of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

You know the Ted, Chuck & Joe Show flopped when even Chris Matthews accuses the Dems of "buffoonery" in the Alito hearings. Yet that is exactly what Matthews did in his appearance on this morning's Today show:

"I don't think any points were scored by the Democrats. There was a lot of buffoonery by Democratic senators."

For whatever reason, Matthews was on his most 'fair & balanced' behavior. For example, in discussing Pres. Bush's joint appearance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday, Matthews described Merkel's predecessor, the left-wing Gerhard Schroeder, as "very obnoxious," having taken "one cheap shot after another at us" and exploited our tribulations in Iraq for his own political gain.

On Friday's Countdown show, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann questioned whether the leaking of an FBI investigation of terror suspects who tried to buy untraceable cell phones from Target and Wal-Mart stores was timed to bolster the administration's case for its controversial NSA wiretapping program. The Countdown host, who has a history of questioning whether the Bush administration politically times terror alerts to distract attention from events embarassing to the administration (see NewsBusters postings covering his Oct. 11 and Oct. 12 shows for details), made known his latest suspicions: "Reassure me it only looks too convenient to be believed." While interviewing Time magazine's Mike Allen, Olbermann proclaimed that "the administration sure gets a lot of these breaks. Their position is challenged, and then suddenly there is a hazy story about something that seems to at least tangentially justify that position."

Olbermann relayed to the audience that the recent leak by FBI sources, first reported by ABC News, regarding the arrests of terror suspects who had bought mass quantities of untraceable, disposable cell phones coincides with the NSA whistleblower who "suggests the illicit tapping of American phones is thousands of times larger and thousands of times less focused than the President claims." Olbermann reasoned that the story, if true, "makes the wiretapping look like a good idea and its leakers look like they've already helped terrorists outsmart the eavesdropping."

You can’t swing a dead cat lately without smacking into an article concerning Congressman John Murtha’s (D-Pennsylvania) view of the necessity to withdraw American troops from Iraq. In fact, as reported by the MRC’s Brent Baker, Murtha is going to be on CBS’s “60 Minutes” discussing exactly that on Sunday with none other than Mike Wallace. However, for some reason, that same demised feline has little chance of ever coming in contact with a report of the Congressman’s proclivities to take funds from Washington lobbyists. Today, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette broke ranks from the mainstream media in this regard.

In an article entitled “Santorum Reaps Money From Lobbyists,” the Post-Gazette’s Maeve Reston led with the revelation that Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) has taken more money from Washington lobbyists in the 2006 election cycle than anyone else on Capitol Hill. However: