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Did you happen to go home from work this evening and miss this AP Exclusive?

Funny, the following AP story broke this afternoon at 2:13 P.M. on the Forbes website yet it doesn't appear that any of the big mainstream newspapers covered it until well after most people left for home from work.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid collected a $1.1 million windfall on a Las Vegas land sale even though he hadn’t personally owned the property for three years, property deeds show.

In the process, Reid did not disclose to Congress an earlier sale in which he transferred his land to a company created by a friend and took a financial stake in that company, according to records and interviews.

"Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house... nor any thing that is thy neighbor's." -- Exodus 20:17

My colleagues Julia Seymour and Amy Menefee have an excellent piece at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org Web site about the media's latest twist on class warfare.

According to the Times, American houses of worship aren't rendering what is due Caesar.

The New York Times has put an ironic twist on the 8th Commandment: “Thou shalt not steal.” It’s accused churches nationwide of fleecing taxpayers and local governments using the First Amendment.

The Times devoted more than 17,000 words and a four-day series indicting religious groups for what it argued was essentially cheating taxpayers across the country. The pro-government, pro-regulation treatise by business reporter Diana B. Henriques was titled “In God's Name.”

The Mark Foley instant-messaging scandal is playing out like a massive October Surprise for Democrats. On Wednesday’s Good Morning America, ABC News anchor Christopher Cuomo spoke insistently: "Less than a month before the elections and the Mark Foley scandal just keeps growing." Reporter Jake Tapper added: "This is the scandal that will not go away."

To measure the aggression of TV assignment editors on the Foley story, MRC analysts counted the number of stories devoted to the scandal and the repetitive insistence that Republicans are in deep political danger and may need GOP leaders to resign. On the ABC, CBS, and NBC morning and evening news programs, from the story’s emergence on Friday night, September 29, through Wednesday morning, October 11, the Big Three networks have aired 152 stories. (A fraction of the stories were brief anchor updates.) The breakdown:

In an article posted this afternoon on its Website, the Chicago Tribune reports:

"A federal grand jury has indicted Antoin 'Tony' Rezko, a top fundraiser for Gov. Rod Blagojevich, on charges that he demanded millions of dollars in kickbacks from investment firms seeking business from the state teachers' pension system, according to an indictment unsealed today."

The story describes Rezko as a "longtime Chicago developer and active supporter of Republicans and Democrats."

According to Newsmeat.com, which tracks Federal Election Commission data, between 2002 and 2004 Rezko made political contributions (not to Blagojevich) of $20,500. Every dollar went to Democratic candidates.

Each year as the school year gets underway, I write a column about the mandatory communalism that takes place in numerous schools across the country where unsuspecting students and parents are forced to surrender their supplies to educational authorities, deemed by the state to be of superior enlightenment than those actually acquiring the school supplies, for redistribution as these demagogic pedagogues see fit. While satisfying to write as there are few topics as visceral as one’s school experiences and the attachment one has to one’s possessions, somehow these most debated of my epistles somehow felt incomplete as they primarily dealt with a symptom rather than the underlying disease. For the socialistic communitarians that have infiltrated the public school system and taken it over for the most part do not primarily want your paper and pencils; the thing the really lust over are the hearts and minds of your children.

It’s getting even stranger, folks. Little Green Footballs has posted a reader’s e-mail concerning the Department of the Interior actually blocking conservative websites from the computers of employees that work for it:

I’m a long-time reader, without ever actually commenting on anything. Yesterday the U.S. Department of the Interior (I work for the Mineral Management Service) installed blocking software on their entire network. Gates of Vienna is now blocked, as are all sites with a .blogspot URL. Also blocked are other conservative blogs, such as Wizbang. More than half the sites I check on a daily basis are now completely blocked. As of today, Little Green Footballs is not blocked, but that’s about the only one I’ve seen that isn’t. There’s not much that can be done, but I just thought I’d let you know. I’ll check later today when I get in to see if the liberal blogs are blocked. Take care, and thanks for the good stuff you folks post.

Update: As of now, Little Green Footballs is also being blocked, but DailyKos is not... Can we try to get the word out? Blocking conservative blogs and not liberal ones is BS.

LGF has now posted all the sites that are blocked, along with those that aren’t:

h/t to MsUnderestimated

A small aircraft crashed into a high-rise on the Upper East Side, setting off a fire and startling New Yorkers, police said. There were conflicting reports on whether the aircraft was a small plane or a helicopter.

Fire Department spokeswoman Emily Rahimi said an aircraft struck struck the 20th floor of a building on East 72nd Street. Witnesses said the crash caused a loud noise, and burning and falling debris was seen. Flames were seen shooting out of the windows. Video from the scene showed at least three apartments in the high rise fully engulfed in flames.

“There’s huge pieces of debris falling,” said one witness who refused to give her full name. “There’s so much falling now, I’ve got to get away.”

"Didn't the MSM get the memo? Keep Foley on the front page!" That seemed to be Chris Matthews' attitude when he was interviewed on this afternoon's MSNBC Live regarding Pres. Bush's press conference of this morning.

Appearing during the 2-2:30 PM ET slot, the transparently ticked-off Hardball host was asked: "The Mark Foley scandal has been dominating the news for over a week now. It was barely touched upon in the news conference today. Was the president, do you think, successful in refocusing attention on to the economy and national security today?"

A palpably PO'd Matthews:

"Well, he was successful to a large extent because the press, for whatever reason, decided not to ask him about the Foley scandal, which has dominated this network and so much else of the media for the last couple weeks and has been a big part of the American conversation. I don't know why though the correspondents - and they're the best in the business - chose to stick right to the issue of Iraq and North Korea, but they did, giving the president a chance to grab the headline tomorrow morning and tonight, with a big story about North Korea and his position on that topic. He has won the day on controlling the topic."

The networks were exquisitely attuned this spring to the unheard voices of illegal aliens "emerging from the shadows" to protest and demand their "rights." But what about the unheard voices of opponents of illegal immigration? On the evening of Wednesday, October 4, a speech at Columbia University in New York City by Jim Gilchrist of the anti-illegal immigration group the Minutemen was squelched by leftist protesters chanting "Minutemen, Nazis, KKK ... racist fascists go away."

Network coverage on ABC, CBS, NBC? In case you hadn't guessed, zero. ABC had a story on a Columbia, Missouri woman donating breast milk to South African orphans. CBS had a story on celiac disease (poor tolerance of glutens) with a Columbia University expert. NBC reported Columbia University professor Edmund Phelps won the Nobel Prize for economics. But nothing on this free speech-trampling event just a few miles from their New York studios. On October 5, the one CNN story was narrated with commentary by Lou Dobbs on his program:

All that was missing was the pets.com sock puppet.

On the heels of the Google purchase of YouTube, NBC warned of another dot-com bubble on the horizon. [See here for more on NBC's fixation on the "housing bubble."]

Of course, some experts will warn that's the worst-case scenario while others tend to think that the billions spent on YouTube will not lead to an escalating arms race for its less popular competitors like MetaCafe.

Meta what, you just said? Yeah, thought so. Here's a taste of my article. You can find the complete story here:

Over an onscreen graphic that read “Internet Insanity: Is the Dot.Com Boom Back,” Quintanilla suggested the Google purchase of YouTube may presage another “dot-com bubble” like the one that bedeviled the stock market, and the economy, in 2000.

This is pretty extraordinary stuff, folks. The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works has just issued a majority statement about an environmental magazine advocating Nuremberg-like war crimes trials for folks that question the existence of man-made global warming:

A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers, for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?” have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming. Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”

Amazing. The statement continued:

It's not something you often see talked about but there's basically an unwritten assumption in national political circles that if you're a political liberal and you're also a reporter, you should be willing to be a "team player" and not admit that you even are one.

This point is important, you see, because conservatives are liars bent on "hurting America" (to use Jon Stewart's phrase), so anything that gives them comfort is something you should never do.

That attitude was very much on display in an online chat today with former Washington Post reporter Thomas Edsall. If you recall, Edsall was the one who caused a stir by admitting (to conservative talker Hugh Hewitt) the blatantly obvious fact that liberals dominate the national elite media. Everyone who has any sort of contact with the New York and DC press corps knows this. People who work for Democrats tell me it all the time.

But in the mind of some liberals, most of them journalists, this is something that should never be publicly talked about for fear that if "the little people" get wind of this fact, we won't believe the proposition that journalists are demigods who can invariably see past their personal and group biases. And if we don't believe that line from them, perhaps we'll begin to question the received wisdom we get from them on a daily basis. Maybe then, we might start realizing that what you believe is primarily shaped by the information you take in.

Dante Chinni writes in the Christian Science Monitor that Watergate hero Bob Woodward has an uncanny ability to produce quotes for whatever his line of narrative is at the moment.

As this Michael Ramirez cartoon demonstrates, even the most innocuous statement can be modified for a preestablished narrative.

It's exciting to feel as though you're a fly on the wall when, on July 10, 2001, then-CIA Director George Tenet tells then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that there is a "compelling case" to be made that Al Qaeda is preparing for "the big one." And as a reader of "State of Denial," Woodward's latest book on the Bush administration, there's frustration when you learn Mr. Tenet felt that he was "not getting through to Rice" and she was giving him "the brush off."

But then you wonder: Why didn't I hear this before now? It's 2006. Why hasn't more been made of the fact that Ms. Rice, now secretary of State, brushed off the CIA director's warning only two months before the terrorist attacks of Sept 11, 2001? Those are good questions and they go to the heart of not only problems with "State of Denial," but the shortcomings inherent in the way Woodward puts his books together and the style of journalism he champions.

"Pope set to bring Back Latin Mass that divided Church," reads the headline for an October 11 story in the Times of London.

Yeah, that's right. According to the Times of London, Pope Benedict is a divider, not a uniter, because he wants Catholics worldwide to be able to attend Latin Mass without having to jump through hoops to find a parish that celebrates it.

The Catholic Church is catholic, that is, universal. It's all over the world spanning virtually every race, tribe, and tongue. Having a universal prayer language for such a diverse worldwide communion makes sense.

And aside from its historical nature as the language of Catholic prayer, Latin, a dead language, is equally accessible to worshipers from all over the world, regardless of native tongue. In other words, it's equally difficult (and simple) to learn regardless of your background.

So where's the divisiveness, exactly? Well, writes Ruth Gledhill, Times religion correspondent:

Tune your television to any political talk show during this venomous electoral season, and you're bound to hear a bunch of pundits speculating on the future of the Republican party. Even before the Mark Foley e-diddling scandal broke a couple of weeks ago, conventional wisdom held that the GOP was headed for a seriously weakened majority presence in Congress, and perhaps even minority status in one of the two houses.

For the first time in quite a while I've found myself agreeing with the conclusions of most political prognosticators on tv, yet I disagree with the reasons they usually give for the Republicans' decline in popularity. You see, the thing about conventional wisdom is that the truly wise among us have little to do with its evolution. The fact that the majority of opinion-meisters and political junkies sometimes reach the right conclusion, doesn't mean that the logic they've used to get there is sound. Their ability to occasionally place the right bet has more to do with the law of averages than anything else. Any blackjack dealer in Vegas will tell you that if you hold on 15 every time it's dealt to you, eventually the house will bust on a hit to a lower hand, but doing that doesn't make you a shrewd card player.

Tune your television to any political talk show during this venomous
electoral season, and you're bound to hear a bunch of pundits
speculating on the future of the Republican party. Even before the Mark
Foley e-diddling scandal broke a couple of weeks ago, conventional
wisdom held that the GOP was headed for a seriously weakened majority
presence in Congress, and perhaps even minority status in one of the two
houses.

For the first time in quite a while I've found myself agreeing with the
conclusions of most political prognosticators on tv, yet I disagree with
the reasons they usually give for the Republicans' decline in
popularity. You see, the thing about conventional wisdom is that the
truly wise among us have little to do with its evolution. The fact that
the majority of opinion-meisters and political junkies sometimes reach
the right conclusion, doesn't mean that the logic they've used to get
there is sound. Their ability to occasionally place the right bet has
more to do with the law of averages than anything else. Any blackjack
dealer in Vegas will tell you that if you hold on 15 every time it's
dealt to you, eventually the house will bust on a hit to a lower hand,
but doing that doesn't make you a shrewd card player.

He never fulfilled his promise to squish Fox News "like a bug," but Ted Turner has finally delivered up the $1 billion he promised to the UN. Already, the international racketeering organization has burned through $600 million of it.

Reports Reuters:

The United Nations Foundation, created by media mogul Ted Turner, has donated $1 billion to U.N. projects over the past nine years, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said on Tuesday.

Turner, the founder of the CNN television network, himself donated $1 billion and his foundation raised millions from other corporations, governments and charities.

Today's starter: Is it just me or does it seem to anyone else that the media's political memory doesn't go much further back than a month? For those with longer attention spans, the Weekly Standard provides a welcome dose of history in its latest issue.

On another front, NB contributing blogger Bob Owens is having a fund-raising drive to help replace his almost-dead computer. If you like Bob's posts, consider contributing.

Also, if you haven't contributed your two cents to the NewsBusters FAQ (frequently asked questions), here's the link. Ask questions you want answered by NB staff or answer ones you think new readers might have.

It's 27 days to the election and persistent Bush critic Lou Dobbs has a new book out detailing what he sees as the "War on the Middle Class." While Dobbs faults both the GOP and Democrats for policies he disagrees with, the lion's share of his criticism has fallen to President Bush and the Republicans, particularly for tax cuts and free trade policies.

So perhaps it's no surprise that CNN is ramping up Dobb's TV time. Not only will the business reporter/commentator have a role in election night coverage, but:

Associated Press television writer David Bauder noted in an October 10 article that anchor “Dobbs’ weeknight news show will expand to seven days a week, with the two weekend editions presenting highlights of the week’s reporting beginning Oct. 28.”

It’s fascinating that this decision came on September 19 and virtually went unreported up until now, but a Florida woman has been awarded a startling $11.3 million in her “Internet defamation” lawsuit. Without question, this decision has startling ramifications for Internet denizens, bloggers, and message board posters, as it makes it quite clear that folks can’t just write whatever they want regardless of facts with total impunity. As reported by WebWire (emphasis mine throughout):

It is not often a person is awarded $11.3 million dollars from a jury of their peers. But in the case of Sue Scheff and her organization Parent’s Universal Resource Experts, Inc. (PURE) v. Carey Bock, the jury felt compelled to send a very strong message – which they have. Included in their $11.3 million dollar verdict, they awarded Sue Scheff and PURE $5 million in punitive damages. “The punitive damages speak volumes,” says Scheff, “it was set to punish the defendant for what she did to my children and me. Just because you don’t like someone or what they do, it does not give you carte blanche to post false statements about a person on the Internet.”

The article continued, documenting threatening Internet exchanges that are altogether too common to those that spend a lot of time at message boards or comment sections:

To judge by its political cartoon of this morning, the Boston Globe apparently believes that if only the Bush administration had engaged in direct talks with North Korea, it could have prevented Kim from building his bomb.

Let's leave aside that the Bush administration has in fact been talking to North Korea. Indeed, the president was proceeding in precisely the way the MSM usually implores him to do - multilaterally, via the Six Party talks.

This doesn't actually fall under the heading of "media bias" but it does involve a blogger.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-10-10-internet-defamation-case_x.htm