Chris Matthews’ interview with actor Matt Damon, which was recorded last week, was aired on Monday’s “Hardball”. Apart from what was reported here Saturday, Damon also made some disparaging remarks about Dick Cheney (video available here), while Matthews addressed what it would be like to waterboard the Vice President...I kid you not.

Conceivably the most amazing part about this interview was the whole idea that Chris Matthews was actually discussing the war in Iraq with an actor as if Damon was some kind of expert on geopolitics. For instance, after Damon suggested that the entire war was a “PR battle,” Matthews asked the audience if they agreed. This met with great applause. When it died down, Damon said: “There’s no other reason to rush that fast to war unless you know you don’t have it. They didn’t have it.”

Matthews followed this up as if he was questioning Colin Powell:

In his "Best of the Web Today" column on Opinion Journal, James Taranto noticed the New York Times recently reported a story on the eagerness in Iraq to see Saddam Hussein executed, but reporter Kirk Semple's piece transmitted that all-too-familiar tendency to identify with the convicts, and not the ones they caused to suffer:

From a New York Times story on Iraqi execution methods, set to be used on convicted murderer Saddam Hussein:

The victims are led up a set of steel stairs to a platform, about 15 feet above the ground, and nooses fashioned from one-and-a-quarter-inch-thick hemp ropes are slipped over their necks. The executioners are different each time, drawn from among employees of the Justice Ministry who volunteer for the job. Many have lost relatives or friends in insurgent attacks, officials said.

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Most NBers are likely aware that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly just got back from a tour of Iraq. On Monday’s “Factor,” he played a video montage of his trip. This needs no transcript or intro, for the pictures and words of the soldiers ably speak for themselves (must-see video available here courtesy of our friend at Ms Underestimated).

As you watch, pay particular attention to how the soldiers who were interviewed don’t vaguely represent the gross caricature of the military presented by folks like Sen. John Kerry (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), or actor Matt Damon. And, see if these folks agree with the media contention that Iraq is a quagmire needing to be retreated from as quickly as possible.

The New York Times' "Immigrants' Families Figuring Out What to Do After Federal Raids" clearly sees illegal immigrants as sympathetic victims, putting the wet-eyed focus not on the criminal acts that resulted in the raids by immigration authorities, but how the raids have made immigrants afraid to venture out in public.

Julie Preston's Saturday story is set off with a four-day-old AP photo of a weeping mother who "held her 3-month-old son on Tuesday as her husband was held at a Swift meat plant in Greeley, Colo."

In the midst of all the civil war, quagmire, cataclysmic, doom and gloom reports about Iraq comes a shocking story from an even more shocking source. According to Newsweek, Iraq’s economy is booming (hat tip to Drudge, emphasis mine throughout):

Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and—mother of all surprises—it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.

Amazed? Shocked? Sound like those who claim that only the negative side of the story is reaching our shores? Well, there’s more:

Nigerian terrorists got free ink in the Baltimore Sun while the company that employs their victims, Shell Oil, got nothing, not even an acknowledgement from the Sun's reporter that the group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND).

That's the gist of my latest story at the MRC's BusinessandMedia.org.

Here's a taste:

One country’s terrorist menace is one Baltimore Sun reporter’s insurgency.

In his December 18 article, “Paying the price for resistance,” Sun foreign reporter Scott Calvert gave readers a snapshot of a “violent insurgency that has forced a 20 percent to 25 percent cut” in Nigerian oil exports.

It has been widely speculated that President Bush will call for an increase in the number of U.S. troops in Iraq as part of his new war strategy. Though no changes have been officially announced, ABC's Dan Harris on Good Morning America Monday predicted gloom and doom in terms of public support for the war. Introducing a live report from reporter Jonathan Karl at the Pentagon, Harris prognosticated that this new policy would be 'very unpopular':

Dan Harris: "And now to the expected surge of U.S. troops in Iraq. As Robert Gates is sworn in today as the new defense secretary, thousands more Americans may soon be headed into the war zone. This could be a very unpopular policy, and ABC's Jonathan Karl is standing by at the Pentagon this morning. Jonathan?"

Monday's first hour of National Public Radio's Diane Rehm show out of Washington focused on the health and political ramifications of Sen. Tim Johnson's brain surgery. Guests were Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Early in the show (about 7 and a half minutes in), Rehm grew a little crass, asking if Sen. Johnson's family could ruin the slender majority the Democrats hold in the upper chamber. Consider this through the lens of the Terri Schiavo debate, and see the liberal flip-flop coming:

Rehm: "What’s if Johnson’s family were to say ‘Tim Johnson can no longer serve’? Do they have the right to do that?"

The original (from Daily Gut and LGF; link is to LGF):

What it says now (as of 12:15 ET; halfway down to the SECOND picture of Ahmadinejad on right; link may require skipping Chrysler ad):

ABC's Laura Marquez displayed last night how the media just don't get religion.

Introducing her story on a rift in the Episcopal Church as conservative parishes in Northern Virginia voted to leave the American branch of the Anglican Communion for greener theological pastures, Marquez blamed conservatives for troubling the church's still waters.

"Members of Virginia's Truro Church may have been singing the words "The Church's One Foundation," but the action they took today rocked that foundation to its core."

In other words, conservative, orthodox Episcopalians are the bad guys, prompting a "secession" as Marquez called it, from the Episcopal Church. But that just shows Marquez's confusion as to the church's true foundation.