When NBC military affairs correspondent Jim Miklaszewski posed an ill-founded question to Donald Rumsfeld at a Pentagon press briefing today, the Secretary of Defense responded in, shall we say, animated fashion, leaving very little doubt as to where he stood on the matter.

The Mik apparently asserted that every time a security benchmark has been laid down, the Iraqis have failed to meet it.

You can view the Defense Secretary's muscular response - cataloguing Miklaszewski's myriad mistakes - here.

The Associated Press is continuing to report that Democrat Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland supports stem cell research despite the fact that his recent voting record contradicts such claims.

Fox, who supports research on embryonic stem cell for a potential cure for Parkinson's, also has lent his celebrity to Democrats Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, running for the Senate in Maryland, and Wisconsin Gov. Jim Doyle, who is seeking re-election. Both politicians also back stem-cell research. [emphasis added]

The claim that Mr. Cardin backs stem cell research flies in the face of his vote on July 18, 2006 where he joined 137 Democrats in a successful effort to kill a bill that would have expanded the non-embryonic form of stem cell research.

Sometimes, leftists make arguments that are just too odd to take seriously. On the blog News Corpse (an appropriate location to discuss whack-Bush movies, perhaps), there's great gnashing of teeth over CNN and NPR deciding not to air commercials (oops, that would be "enhanced underwriting" at NPR) for the Bush-assassination film "Death of a President."

CNN issued a brief statement that virtually admits its intention to censor, saying that…

“CNN has decided not to take the ad because of the extreme nature of the movie’s subject matter.”

By basing their decision on the movie’s “subject matter”, they have installed themselves as the public’s nanny. They believe that they are in the best position to decide for us which subjects matter. While they are a couple of yards further over the line than NPR, the public radio network’s excuse is not much better:

Ignoring the inaccuracies in Michael J. Fox's TV ads against some Republican Senate candidates, CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric gave him a lengthy forum -- more than eight minutes -- to react to Rush Limbaugh's suggestion his swaying in the ads was exaggerated beyond the real impact of Parkinson's disease and to advocate for federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. With video of Fox behind her, Couric portrayed Limbaugh as the aggressor: “The battle over embryonic stem cell research turns ugly, and he is a target.” Though Fox's ads denounce Republicans and insidiously suggest they are against curing his disease, Couric never challenged Fox on the false charges he made in the ads which injected Fox into partisan politics. She never even played those portions, instead only showed this positive line from one of the ads: "In Missouri, you can elect Claire McCaskill, who shares my hope for cures." In that ad against Missouri Republican Senator Jim Talent, Fox distorted Talent's opposition to cloning into how "Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us the chance for hope." In his ad for Maryland Democrat Ben Cardin, Fox alleged that Republican candidate Michael Steele “would put limits on the most promising stem cell research,” meaning embryonic. But embryonic has not shown promise and there's lots of research money going into it.

Couric noted, “in the spirit of full disclosure,” that “my dad has Parkinson's disease” and that “in the past I've made contributions for Parkinson's research through Michael J. Fox's foundation." But, she didn't note if she will give equal time soon to someone with a contrary view to Fox's on the desirability of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. (Full transcript and counter-information follows)

Once again taking "tolerance" to the level of societal self-destruction, the BBC has decided that showing the human side of the Taleban is an important story to cover.

They have ridiculously embedded a reporter with the Taleban in Afghanistan. Reporter David Lyon has been reporting from the Taleban and has filed a report filled with laudatory terms and brimming with respect for his subject.

Travelling with the Taleban

There is no army on earth as mobile as the Taleban.

I remember it as their secret weapon when I travelled with them in the mid-1990s, as they swept aside rival mujahideen to take most of the country.

Along with his wonderment at their "secret weapon", Lyon calls them "hardy" and gives them the opportunity to pass on this little bit of Taleban propaganda...

ACORN solicitors under scrutiny in Missouri

CLAYTON, Mo. (AP) — Hundreds of fraudulent voter-address changes have been submitted to St. Louis County elections officials by ACORN, the activist group that has been criticized for its voter sign-up work elsewhere in the nation, including in Ohio.

An ACORN official said it could be the fault of overzealous employees of the organization.

The address changes, including forged signatures, are among hundreds of questionable or fraudulent voter-registration cards submitted to the county in the past couple of months, election officials said.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, founded in 1970, has run voter-registration drives in 17 states this year. Similar allegations have been made in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Colorado; no charges have been filed. ...

Fox News' Geraldo Rivera did his part to feed the gas price election conspiracy theory on last night's Geraldo At Large. Rivera pondered about the lower prices, "Is it gas pump pimping?" and "Doesn't it make you even a little suspicious that the cost to fill ‘er up dropped almost a dollar a gallon and the elections are just two weeks away?" Rivera asked those questions and then proceeded to tick down several nutty theories during his final commentary on his October 25th show. Now the commentary wasn't completely without skepticism but it wasn't enough to keep his end of show rant from sounding utterly ridiculous.

From the opening and throughout the show Rivera tantalized the conspiracy nuts in his audience with the following teases:

Would Republicans be popular again if they’d only dump their conservative principles? That’s the advice in this week’s U.S. News & World Report, contained in Thomas K. Grose’s “Letter from Bournemouth, England.” Grose salutes Britain’s Conservative Party leader David Cameron for his thoroughly un-conservative approach of eschewing tax cuts, supporting gay marriage and the minimum wage, and calling Britain’s National Health Service a “great achievement.”

Grose thinks American Republicans should also morph into liberals: “Cameron’s centerward drive contrasts sharply with American conservatism, where the Republican Party is fighting the midterm congressional elections by lurching even further to the right to appease its base voters. While Cameron chirps about sunshine, Vice President Dick Cheney stumps for GOP candidates by depicting the world in gloomy terms and playing to voters' fears of terrorism.”

ABC’s Terry Moran featured three Republican campaign ads as examples of "mudslinging" in the run-up to November’s mid-term elections. On Thursday’s edition of "Nightline", Moran slammed Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of "beloved" actor Michael J. Fox and his Democratic pro-stem cell research campaign spots as a "vicious attack." On a GOP ad attacking Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. for attending a party hosted by Playboy magazine, Moran stated the ad used a white actress to "smear him." Moran’s point of view on these ads was easily discernable from this introduction:

Moran: "Tonight, on Nightline, mudslinging. Michael J. Fox's dramatic campaign commercials, Rush Limbaugh's vicious attack. With less than two weeks to go before the election, how low can they go? Hardball politics, where the stakes are high."

With a title like "Broken Government: Power Play," one could probably assume that the upcoming CNN special won’t be very fair to President Bush. But just in case there were any doubt, reporter John King appeared on Thursday’s "American Morning" to drive home the point:

Miles O’Brien: "Twelve days to the election. We're looking at the power of the presidency. A new CNN poll out this morning, we asked some people if they think the President does in fact have too much power. And like so many issues in this country, shows a lot of division among the electorate. CNN's John King is here with a preview of what's going on tonight in our 'Broken Government' series. Good morning, John."

John King: "Good morning to you, Miles. It's a fascinating subject. Many say, post-9/11, this President has crossed, stretched, some say trampled the Constitution in his pursuit of the war on terrorism. The president says whatever it takes. Some say he has busted the balance of powers, if you will, the constitutional lines. The President, of course, says no. It's one of the issues we're exploring as we look at the 'Broken Government.' He began on a very different course, a governor with a famous name who conveyed more West Texas than Washington. Compassionate conservative was his label of choice. Kinder, gentler, his promised world view. A crisp September morning suddenly changed from gorgeous to gruesome. A few whispered words in a Florida school room, transformed a presidency and a president."

How nice of CNN to offer the caveat that President Bush does, in fact, deny stretching and trampling the Constitution.

Thursday's Howard Kurtz profile of NBC Baghdad correspondent Richard Engel in the Washington Post has a real clash of perspectives. First, NBC anchor Brian Williams claimed Engel "is the most agenda-less person I've met in our business." Then Engel declared "I think war should be illegal...I'm basically a pacifist." The story included no critics of Engel's reporting, but praise from Williams and CBS colleague Lara Logan, and Engel's mother.

Williams asserted that Engel's reporting was fearless against annoying media critics: "In an era of instant media criticism, he calls balls and strikes in the middle of a war zone," says NBC anchor Brian Williams. "He is completely unbothered by any Web site that may have problems with his reporting while he's over in Iraq dodging bullets....He is the most agenda-less person I've met in our business, I think, in the past 20 years."

CNN might well prove a one-network full employment plan for myself and my colleagues at the MRC's Business & Media Institute, with its ongoing attacks against the strong economy.

You might even say CNN has gone to war against it.

That's the conclusion my colleagues Amy Menefee and Julia Seymour arrived at with their October 25 article.

CNN is no “CSI,” but its reporters and anchors keep declaring things dead. They’ve called the American dream “impossible” and “a lost cause” and said the middle class is “in crisis” or going “out of business” – all in the month of October.

“We hear every day on CNN that the middle class is getting beaten up and that it’s eroding,” said author Barbara Ehrenreich on the October 21 “In the Money.”

CBS’s ad expert claimed on Thursday’s "Early Show" that the Republicans in Tennessee are playing on "racist," "Reconstruction era" fears in the Senate campaign against Democrat Harold Ford Jr. While the RNC spot in question in its entirety hits Ford’s record and what his election would mean to Tennessee, CBS played only a brief segment, including where a "playboy bunny" tells Ford to "call me." Whereas this was denounced by the media as racist, there was no discussion on CBS of Mr. Ford making his moral values an issue by filming a political commercial inside of a church.

Fire away.

Journalists aren't the hard-charging watchdogs of government that they claim to be, and the romantic notion of reporters saving our democracy is fiction, says Jack Shafer in Slate.

Newspaper people have enormous egos, if you get my drift, and don't mind massaging the big hairy things in public. Yet the press is hardly the sentry and bulwark of society that reporters imagine it to be. I don't mean to disparage reporters who put their lives on the line to file from Iraq, nor the sleuths who sift through databases to uncover wrongdoing by pharmaceutical companies, or any other enterprising reporter. But too many journalists who wave the investigative banner merely act as the conduit for other people's probing, as George Washington University professor and former investigative journalist Mark Feldstein suggests in a paper-in-progress titled "Ventriloquist or Dummy?"

Feldstein cites a 1992 piece by the late Christopher Georges in the Washington Monthly to illustrate his thesis. Georges reviewed about 800 articles by investigative reporters from the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Times published over three years and found that "nearly 85 percent of them have been follow-ups or advances of leaked or published government reports." Georges' study is anecdotal since his piece did not name the stories analyzed or describe his methodology, but my hunch is that his conclusions aren't far from the truth.

Terrorists in Iraq know they can rely on CNN to carry their propaganda as if it were straight news, now the Taliban is having success in placing "news" with the publicly funded British Broadcasting Corporation.

The homepage blurb makes it sound, well, official [emphasis added]:

'Civilians killed' in Nato raids Scores of civilians have been killed in Nato raids against the Taleban in southern Afghanistan, officials say.

But the true nature of the reporting only becomes clear after you click on the headline to read the story itself [emphasis added]:

Scores of civilians have been killed during Nato operations against Taleban fighters in southern Afghanistan, local officials and civilians say.

Democrats are "bombing" the Google News site in order to ensure that any news about 50 Republican candidates will go to articles by left-wingers. But fortunately, the liberal activists decided to be fair and balanced, pulling some of the articles for being, according to the article, "too partisan."

Reports the New York Times:

If things go as planned for liberal bloggers in the next few weeks, searching Google for “Jon Kyl,” the Republican senator from Arizona now running for re-election, will produce high among the returns a link to an April 13 article from The Phoenix New Times, an alternative weekly.

Mr. Kyl “has spent his time in Washington kowtowing to the Bush administration and the radical right,” the article suggests, “very often to the detriment of Arizonans.”

The Times jumps into the liberal-inspired brouhaha over the RNC's supposedly racist TV ad against Democratic Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr., who is running in Tennessee against Republican Bob Corker.

Robin Toner gets Thursday's front page with "In Tight Race, Ad on Black Candidate Stirs Furor." The online headline is even blunter: "Ad Seen as Playing to Racial Fears."

"The Tennessee Senate race, one of the most competitive and potentially decisive battles of the midterm election, became even more unpredictable this week after a furor over a Republican television commercial that stood out even in a year of negative advertising.

Hollywood has always been run by those on the left, but before the 60's and 70's, executives knew that their films had to appeal to mainstream America. That all changed when Hollywood decided to no longer censor itself, and directors got a free reign to turn movies into left-wing advocacy films. As a result, Hollywood has suffered ever since, with more empty theater seats every year.

It's gotten so bad that famed director George Lucas no longer thinks that making big-budget movies is even a viable business model.

Edward B. Driscoll explores this at TCS Daily.

As a company town, Hollywood has always tilted to some extent or another to the left, but the studio heads who ran it from the 1930s through the 1950s understood that its product must resonate with the American public as a whole to make money, regardless of their filmmakers' personal politics. Or as Sam Goldwyn is frequently attributed as saying, "Pictures are for entertainment, messages should be delivered by Western Union".

For Hollywood, the late 1960s began to mark a retreat from that philosophy. In a Wall Street Journal piece a few years ago, Michael Medved used the mid-1960s transition from the Hays Office, which acted as an industry-wide censor, to the G/PG/R/X ratings system we now take for granted, as being, effectively, the end of the golden age of movies. And, as Medved notes, that change influenced not just Hollywood's content, but its box office returns as well. Medved writes that in 1965, "44 million Americans went out to the movies every week. A mere four years later, that number had collapsed to 17.5 million":

Just as we figured, a liberal was behind the first published leaks of the Mark Foley emails. The New York Times, amazingly enough, broke this story.

But the headline writers at the Times couldn't bring themselves to inform readers of the politics of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group that is very liberal on issues not pertaining to sexuality, and the former employer of the still-anonymous individual who started the blog stopsexpredators.blogspot.com.

It's also worth noting that not a single Republican or conservative media figure is quoted in the story denouncing Democrats for their personal attacks or gutter politics, something the Times certainly would have done had a Democrat been the victim. (HT: several readers.)