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NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell is appearing on FNC's "Hannity & Colmes" to discuss Ted Turner's comments on North Korea and how he thinks it's difficult to choose sides in the war on terror. Tune in now (or 2am Eastern) and watch. Post your comments here.

Bozell appeared with former ABC News reporter Bob Zelnick, now with Boston University. Sean Hannity set up the segment by playing a clip of Turner at the National Press Club on Monday:

“He said, 'either you're with us or you're against us.' And I had a problem with that because I really hadn't made my mind up yet. You know, what if you haven't made your mind up? What if you're thinking about it, doing some studying, doing some reading? Because it's an important decision to go to war, whether to go to war or not to go to war. I mean, you're either with us or against us -- that's pretty black and white.”

Video clip (5:10): Real (3.9 MB at 100 kbps) or Windows Media (3.3 MB at 81 kbps), plus MP3 audio (1.8 MB)

In a recent article, More Guns, More Problems, the author considers getting a concealed carry permit in her new home state, and consults some “anti-gunners” to help her decide.

This idea is just wrong, said Joshua Horwitz, the executive director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Horwitz was quick to point out that Naveed Afzal Haq, the man who shot up a Jewish community center in Seattle last month, had a concealed carry permit.

“I think the idea that these people [legal concealed carriers] don’t do any damage is wrong,” said Horwitz. “More guns equal less crime is just false.”[1] 

The video sharing site YouTube, just recently purchased by Google, has once again allowed a band of determined users to censor something they don't like.

The latest casualty is a a controversial spoof political ad by a Republican filmmaker David Zucker (producer of such films as "Scary Movie 4," "Airplane," among others) which depicts former secretary of state Madeline Albright, a Democrat who served in the Clinton administration, acting as a maid, servant and cheerleader for Islamic terrorists and North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. After the Republican party declined to run with it, the ad was sent to Matt Drudge who splashed it worldwide by embedding it in a page on his site.

The story doesn't end there, though. After Drudge picked it up, Democratic YouTube viewers used the site's software to "flag" the video as "inappropriate," a designation usually reserved for extremely violent or sexually explicit video clips. There is nothing even remotely sexual or violent in the clip. The closest thing to an explicit image in the ad is a scene in which "Albright" bends over and her skirt tears a bit in the seat, hardly the stuff that sets FCC commissioners' hearts aflutter.

While you can still view the video if you watch it embedded on another web site, if you try to watch it on YouTube, you'll be greeted with the message:

In all the media fuss about whether the GOP House leadership knew about former representative Mark Foley's behavior, hardly anyone in the press seems interested in whether Democrats knew about the story and declined to expose Foley's conduct, thus "putting at risk" the congressional pages in the way we constantly hear that Speaker Hastert and others did.

Turns out, Democrats did know about Foley's antics. According to Ken Silverstein, a writer for the liberal Harper's magazine, he was approached with the story way back in the month of May--by a Democrat.

House Majority Leader John Boehner has charged that the release of the Foley documents so close to the elections “is concerning, at a minimum.” Meanwhile, accounts I've heard about the FBI's initial inquiries suggest the bureau is as interested in uncovering how the story came to public attention as it is in investigating Foley's actions.

After more than 100 stories on ABC, CBS, and NBC on the Mark Foley Internet-messaging scandal, it wouldn’t be hard for the average Joe to conclude the Democrats are now the Party of Moral Values. 

Democrats are demanding that Republicans return the monies Foley gave their campaigns. Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader who would very much like Denny Hastert’s job, is predictably fanning the flames. “We want to know,” she thunders, “why the Republicans chose to protect Mark Foley's political career rather than protect the children who were in our charge.”

Jack Cafferty, the CNN host of "The Cafferty File" segment of "The Situation Room," Tuesday asserted that Virginia Senator George Allen doesn’t "have much" character and lamented the fact that Allen is leading his opponent in the polls. He derided a new advertisement by Allen that calls for voters to focus on his stand on the issues:

Cafferty: "Allen doesn’t want voters to focus on his character, because it’s becoming more and more apparent in recent weeks that he may not have much. There was the time he called an Indian American volunteer from his opponent’s campaign ‘macaca’ and welcomed him to America. Allen’s been accused of using the N-word to refer to blacks. He denies ever doing that.

He’s been in the Senate for six years, but voters just learned a few weeks ago that he’s Jewish. He claims his mother never bothered to tell him. Sure.

And the Associated Press reports that for the last five years, Allen has not bothered to tell Congress about stock options that he got for being a director of a high tech company in Virginia. Allen says he did not report the stock options because he saw them as worthless. When his lawyer was told that Senate ethics require that stock options be reported regardless of their value, his lawyer said he was unfamiliar with that provision. You want to know why things are so screwed up in Washington D.C.? In spite of all the things I just mentioned, Allen is leading in the polls, four weeks before the election.Maybe Allen is on to something, maybe character doesn’t matter to Virginia voters."

Thirteen months before North Korea exploded a nuclear bomb, CNN founder Ted Turner predicted that such an event would never happen. “I think we can put the North Korea and East Asia problems behind us,” Turner confidently proclaimed in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer back on September 19, 2005.

Referring to the North Korean regime’s claim they were “committed to abandoning all nuclear weapons and existing nuclear programs,” Turner, having just returned from a trip to North Korea, found those promises to be 100% credible.

“I am absolutely convinced that the North Koreans are absolutely sincere,” he told an incredulous Blitzer.

One of the real challenges in following the liberal protests of disgust at the Mark Foley scandal is their ever-changing yardstick of morality. Take Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman, whose nationally syndicated dose of feminism seems to wander based on whose ox is gored. Goodman sounds like every other Democrat in suddenly discovering the sheer power of a sex scandal, something she must have decried in the Clinton years:

This scandal is what has registered on the political Richter scale. This is what voters are asking their representatives about. The late political scientist James David Barber once said that nobody understands the word "deficit,'' but everyone understands the word "adultery.'' Maybe nobody knows what to think about solving the problem of Iraq, but they know what to think about the Florida congressman instant-messaging a teenage page: "how's my favorite young stud doing?''

Tuesday's Washington Post carries one of those editorials disguised as a "news analysis" headlined "Bush's 'Axis of Evil' Comes Back to Haunt United States." The writers displayed their liberal stripes by quoting only Democrats and Clinton staffers. Reporters Glenn Kessler and Peter Baker began:

Nearly five years after President Bush introduced the concept of an "axis of evil" comprising Iraq, Iran and North Korea, the administration has reached a crisis point with each nation: North Korea has claimed it conducted its first nuclear test, Iran refuses to halt its uranium-enrichment program, and Iraq appears to be tipping into a civil war 3 1/2 years after the U.S.-led invasion.

Writer-editor Kurt Andersen, a card-carrying member of Manhattan's liberal cultural elite, may be coming around to the idea of bias in the Times, judging by his New York magazine story on the paper's slanted coverage of the Duke lacrosse "rape" case, "Rape, Justice, and the ‘Times.’"

Here's the subhead to the provocative story, on what many have come to feel is a perversion of justice on the Durham college campus driven by a politically motivated prosecutor: "'I've never felt so ill,' says one reporter about the paper’s coverage of the Duke lacrosse-team case. Luckily, a blogger’s on the story, too."

Andersen celebrates blogger K.C. Johnson, who'd been on the case:

David Broder and Dan Balz wrote a rather lengthy, front-page story for the Washington Post this morning with the cautionary headline “Poll Shows Strong Shift Of Support to Democrats.” However, Broder and Balz chose not to share some key information from this poll with their readers, the most important of which being the political breakdown of those questioned. In fact, the meager percentage of Republican respondents to this survey should have led the Post to headline this article "Poll Shows Strong Shift Of Questions to Democrats!"

The article began: “Democrats have regained a commanding position going into the final weeks of the midterm-election campaigns, with support eroding for Republicans on Iraq, ethics and presidential leadership, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.”

Yet, nowhere did the authors let their readers know that 41 percent more Democrats were questioned for this survey than Republicans. That’s right. The breakdown was:

Saved by Foley
AT, 10/10/06

According to one political consultant with ties to the DNC and other party
organizations, "I'm hearing the Foley story wasn't supposed to drop
until about ten days out of the election. It was supposed the coup de
grace, not the first shot."

So why the rush? According to another DNC operative: bad polling numbers across the
country. "Bush's national security speeches were getting traction beyond the base, gas prices were dropping, economic outlook surveys werepositive. We were seeing bad Democratic numbers in Missouri, Michigan,
Washington, Arizona, Florida Pennsylvania, even parts of New York,"
says the operative. "A month before, we were looking at launching an
offensive against Republicans who according to polling barely held a
five-seat majority if the election were to be held at the end of
August. That was doable for Democrats from September 1 to November 7.
But by mid-September, Republicans were back to having held seats for a
15-seat majority. In the Senate, it looked like a wash. We held seats
in Florida, Nebraska, picked up seats in Pennsylvania, but that that
was about it. They were holding in Missouri and possibly within reach
of Maryland and Washington. We were looking at a disaster in the
making."

ABC anchor Charles Gibson doesn't have much of a nose for business it appears. In an interview with Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Gail Shister, he asserts that if the broadcast networks stopped running advertisements for products that target older viewers (denture cleaners, medication, etc.) and started running ads for products younger viewers like (cars, vacations, etc.) the younger folks would somehow tune in.

Sorry, Charlie, it doesn't work that way. Advertisers cater to those who watch your shows, not vice versa. A better solution would be to stop running healthcare hype stories and stop trying to scare viewers about various bugaboos.

With its lead anchor having such a poor grasp of how his own industry works, is it any wonder that ABC and the other liberal-dominated networks can't seem to understand the slightly more difficult concepts of basic economics?

Note to Shister: Cool people don't use the phrase "hip-a-doodle-do."

The Disney movie ‘102 Dalmatians’ should be R-rated instead of G, two anti-smoking activists insist. Not because they antagonist was a demented woman bent on turning cute puppies into a fur coat. Nope. Cruella De Vil’s real crime was smoking.

“Movies that depict smoking are the single greatest media threat to children say two prominent doctors,” ABC’s Heather Nauert warned her “Good Morning America” audience.

Nauert’s October 10 story focused on two activists who call for the Motion Picture Association of America to automatically assign an R-rating to movies with any smoking in it. Yet in her story, Nauert left out how biased her sources were as well as failed to balance her story with any criticism of the doctors’ claims.

Today's starter: Is it possible that the Foley story was supposed to break closer to the election than it did?

Everybody's got an opinion about what should've been done, and what needs to be done, about North Korea's nuclear weapons tests - especially, newspapers. An article by Susan Jones of CNSNews.com recaps how papers are blaming Bush and China, and providing foreign affairs advice about how to defuse the situation.

NBC's obsession with the Kennedy family is beginning to border on the absurd. A few days ago I noted how the liberal media and in particular NBC worships at the altar of the Kennedy clan, reporting on every little Kennedy item that comes across their news desks. Well now the Kennedy references are showing up in the most random places. On this morning's Today, NBC's Michael Okwu reported on a USA Today study that showed most CEOs were spanked as children. After a back and forth on the appropriateness of spanking, Okwu finished with this endorsement:

Michael Okwu: "Damage or discipline? Whatever the answer CEOs like Joe Moglia are in good company. One mother describes spanking as the most effective 'means of instruction,' her name was Rose. Her son, the future president, John F. Kennedy. For Today, Michael Okwu, NBC News, Los Angeles."

With the Phil Angelides California gubernatorial campaign fizzling out, it now sounds like Alec Baldwin is casting himself for that role. Baldwin's not so subtle auditioning pitch to become the Democrat gubernatorial candidate in California comes at the tail end of a typically rabid anti-Republican rant in his Huffingon Post blog:

Sad to think that it took the Foley situation to get the "Embarrassed Republicans" to start voicing their embarrassment. Nearly six years of lies, incompetence, lies, hate, lies, corruption, lies and war. Misguided, meaningless war that has destroyed the landscape of Iraq and the souls of the Iraqi people. And what has the war done for us, other than line the pockets of Bush, and his father's friends?

While many Americans were watching football games on Sunday, the best battle was actually on MSNBC where conservative radio talk show host Steve Malzberg took on liberal radio talk show host Mike Malloy.

There was clearly bad blood between these two from a previous fight earlier in the day, and referee Contessa Brewer warned the combatants to behave themselves this time. Thankfully, the contestants ignored her requests, and by the end, the encounter turned into full scale war, with Brewer concluding, "At this point, I feel like I could use a nap." Malzberg wasn't going to let the ref get the last word, parrying, "You wonder why you're in last place" referring to MSNBC's pathetic ratings. Brewer responded, "Oh that's kind of a low blow for a Sunday afternoon. Low!"

For those that like a good fight as much as a Gershwin tune, this is must-see TV right here.

The New York Times is doing its best to convince Republicans that they should stay home on Election Day, because after all, “With four weeks left before Election Day, the poll indicates that the scandal involving Mr. Foley, a former Republican congressman from Florida, is alienating Americans from Congress, and weakening a Republican Party that was already struggling to keep control of the House and Senate.”.

The New York Times comes to this conclusion based on the recently released NY Times – CBS opinion poll despite the fact that that two-thirds in the poll said the Foley matter will make “no difference” in how they vote (as reported by Brent Baker earlier).

Have a look at this screen capture from the opening of this morning's 'Today': Barbra Streisand says "SEND IN THE #$&!! CLOWNS"

Since 'Today' only offered a tease at the top of the show, it was hard to know just what Babs had been up to. Was she cursing out a fan or, perhaps, calling for a takeover of power by her team of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Conyers, Henry Waxman et al.?

Turns out the correct answer was 'A' - cursing a fan. According to this New York Post article, VULGAR BABS RIPS BUSH - AND FAN - AT MSG:

In Tuesday's Washington Post, Peter Marks praises "Get Your War On," a left-wing comedy performance at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre. Unsurprisingly, the critic from the liberal paper finds invective is a lovely thing, if applied to conservatives: 

Invective can be a wonderful tool. Especially when it's wielded as brilliantly as the verbal gunslingers brandish it in "Get Your War On," which contains some of the funniest ridicule of a president and his policies I've ever heard on a stage.

The five performers from Rude Mechs, an Austin-based theater gang that has come to Woolly Mammoth's D Street space for an all-too-brief run, have other weapons in their arsenal: contempt. Fearlessness. A hilarious grasp of absurdity. And perhaps most important, a nifty array of targets, from the dubious authenticity of some of the CIA's intelligence-gathering to the intelligence of the president himself.

Asked at the National Press Club's luncheon on Monday “what do you see as the future vision for CNN now that Fox is gaining in market share and popularity?”, CNN founder Ted Turner leaned